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Originally Posted by SRoper  Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivanhoe I dont think many here actually see the horns of the dilemma:
Horn 1: You lie and save the Jews (which is following the sixth commandment but breaking the 9th).
Horn 2: You tell the truth (obeying the 9th commanmdnet) but Jews die (which implicates you in breaking the sixth commandment).
Riddle me that, batman.
Of course, I am assuming the Westminsterian understanding of the ten commandments. If you are not Reformed in your understanding of the ten commandments, cease posting on this thread. | Jacob, may I suggest it's because there is disagreement over whether the lie is actually breaking the ninth commandment? Most who are advocating option one think there is a sort of wartime exception like there is with self-defense. I think another example is needed that doesn't involve deception.
I'll suggest an alternative. Let me know what you think.
A married woman is in a concentration camp with her family. A guard offers to let them escape if the woman will sleep with him. If she refuses, the family will be killed the next day. She has reason to believe the guard because she has witnessed others let go if they agree. She has also witnessed others who refused killed by the guards. What should she do? |
Maintain her fidelity to her husband and keep her vow, same thing in this scenario. One's covenant obligations to God supercede men. This and the issue with the Nazi's is more about the third commandment than the dichotomy between the sixth and ninth that Jacob proposes.
In my view those that have a conscience problem about lieing to the Nazi's presuppositionally hold to a moralistic standard which includes an implicit statism. Hence, they can't put together or understand their standing in the Covenant and hold that as a unity against the wicked civil magistrate that has enjoined itself as a false prophet against God.
To them, then, the unlawful means of communication is to "lie" to the Nazi's not the "truth" they told. To them a lie or a truth is the revelation of abstract facts - not the revelation or maintainence of concrete truth. This position concedes to satan a moral justification for sin and like Adam and Eve in the garden it compounds sin by placing the blame of the outcome on satan and refuses to recognize their own potential guilt.
When satan tempted Christ in the desert He responded with: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
him only shalt thou serve." Satan claimed a power that was not his to give, likewise the Nazi's claimed a power that was not theirs.
While Rahab is the correct example in Scripture - the opponents talk circles around the lie, never dealing with the fact that she was a harlot, and the spies (who are engaged in deception for espionage purposes) lodged with a harlot. She then made a covenant with the spies, "swear unto me by the LORD," and the spies did upon the grounds "if ye utter not this our business." Rahab was not concerned with her own life, but the life of all of her family, her father, mother, brethern and sisters.
So, Rahab not only lied to the king, but she did so upon covenant grounds in the name of the LORD, consistent with the third commandment. In other words, to tell the truth would have been perjury against the LORD. I am really amazed at people that would perjure against the Lord before they will perjure against the civil magistrate and then argue that the blame falls upon the civil magistrate.
God took a harlot, and when she received angels of the Lord with peace and entered that Covenant in the name of the LORD, enjoined their espionage activities, and adopted her unto the family of God. While Scripture honors her for this, moralists condemn her, no that was a heinous sin they say - but God made her into a covenant child and honorable married woman in Israel the loins of which were blessed as a progenitor of the incarnate Christ.
Her espionage activity in harboring spies and lieing to the civil magistrate is held up by Scripture as evidence of true faith - because it is covenantal in it's scope, not moralistic.