Why Lying Is Always Wrong
It’s not uncommon for people to believe that lying isn’t always wrong. Even many Christians today feel an intuition that, whereas something like murder is always and everywhere (intrinsically) evil, lying can sometimes be justified. However, it may come as a surprise that this belief is firmly rejected by the Catholic Church, which instead teaches that, “By its very nature, lying is to be condemned.”1 This teaching that lying is, by its very nature, intrinsically evil is primarily based on the Eighth Commandment our Lord gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (Ex 20:16), as it has been interpreted by the Church throughout the ages, from St. Augustine,2 to St. Thomas Aquinas,3 to Pope Innocent XI.4 In this article, I’ll be using reason, Scripture, and Tradition to defend the traditional Catholic case against lying, the “absolutist position” that lying can never be morally justified.
To begin, before we can understand why lying is always immoral, we first have to properly define what it means to lie. As John Skalko demonstrates in his dissertation on the morality of lying,5 this matter is a bit more complicated than it initially appears. It may seem like the answer is simple: to lie is to say something that’s not true. But if this is what it means to lie, then it raises some questions. For example, what if you say something that you believe is true, but actually isn’t, is that still a lie? It doesn’t seem like it. Or what if someone trained a parrot to repeat things that aren’t true, would the parrot be guilty of lying? That’s clearly absurd. In light of these considerations, perhaps one would add that a lie has to be intentional, that is, in order to be guilty of lying, the liar has to know what the truth is and then purposefully say something contrary to it. While this is a better definition, it still has some problems. What about actors in a play? Surely the man playing Captain Hook knows that he’s not really a fictional pirate, yet he still speaks as if he is when play-acting. Is this lying? Most people would agree that it’s not, so what is lying then?
Although an entire article could be written on the definition of a lie, this article will simply stick with the conclusion arrived at by Skalko after his lengthy treatment of this subject:
[T]he correct definition of lying is “asserting what one does not believe to be true,” where asserting is “presenting something to another as if it were true.” By “presenting” is meant putting yourself behind it, that is, binding yourself to it; such does not occur in jokes, play-acting, or writing fiction. By “something” is meant a verbal or nonverbal proposition. By “to another,” is meant to another rational being, as assertions are a part of language, which is inherently relational. Since language is conveying the conceptions of the mind to another, assertions must be in relation to another if they are to be a part of language. Further, since the proper use of assertions falls under the virtue of truthfulness, and truthfulness shares in the notion of justice since it is in relation to another, it follows that assertions are only in relation to another. By “as if it were true” is meant that your speech (whether in verbal on nonverbal signs), by social convention of the signification of the words, corresponds to what’s in your mind, to what you believe to be true in reality.
John Skalko, Disordered Actions: A Moral Analysis of Lying and Homosexual Activity, Chapter I: What is a Lie?, pp. 56-57.
Skalko’s definition is useful because it immediately excludes from the definition of a lie many counter-examples often cited against the absolutist position on lying, chief among those being fictional narratives, jokes, and play-acting. On Skalko’s definition, which is shared by St. Thomas, these are not lies properly understood since they’re not attempting to make true assertions at all. Indeed, there are many ways in which speech can be used, however, it’s not possible to lie with all of them. For example, it’s not possible to lie when asking a question because, in order to lie, you have to be asserting something as true that you know is not. It’s also not possible to lie when play-acting because, while you may be saying things that are objectively false, you’re not actually asserting those things as if they were really true. Liars are only capable of using one form of speech to achieve their end, namely, assertion, otherwise lying itself would be superfluous. Thus, lying can truly be defined as, “asserting as true what one does not believe to be true.”
Now that we have our definition of a lie, let’s get into the foundational Catholic argument against lying: the perverted faculty argument (PFA). While this category of argumentation is most famous for its condemnation of fornication, homosexual activity and contraception in Catholic moral theology, many are unaware that it’s also at the heart of the Church’s absolutist position on lying. Edward Feser states the argument formally:
Where some faculty F is natural to a rational agent A and by nature exists for the sake of some end E (and exists in A precisely so that A might pursue E), then it is metaphysically impossible for it to be good for A to use F in a manner contrary to E.
Edward Feser, In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument, p. 398.
In other words, the PFA assumes what’s called teleology, which is the belief that certain things are intrinsically, i.e. of their very nature, ordered towards certain ends. The argument reasons that, if some rational agent has a faculty that’s naturally ordered towards a certain end, but uses that faculty in a manner that actively prevents it from achieving that end, then the agent is doing something immoral.
The PFA can be seen in action in the classic dispute over the moral liceity of contraception. We start by considering the sexual act itself, which, of its very nature, is ordered towards the production of children. This is evident from a few simple observations of reality: (1) sexual arousal arises most often when the partners are most fertile, (2) even in societies where contraception is easily accessible, sexual arousal arises so quickly and intensely that the partners often engage in the sexual act in ways that make pregnancy very likely, and (3) in order to reliably separate the sexual act from reproduction, extreme measures must be taken, ranging anywhere from covering sexual organs to mutilating and chemically destroying the body. This is so obvious that even Darwinian biologists agree that, considered in itself, the purpose or end of sex is reproduction. What the PFA does is take this uncontroversial reality and draw moral conclusions from it. Because contraceptive sex is, by its very nature, contrary to the conception of children, which is the natural end of sex, it is an intrinsically disordered act according to the PFA. This same logic applies to homosexuality, wherein the conception of children isn’t even possible.
With this in mind, recall how we defined a lie: “asserting as true what one does not believe is true.” In order to determine whether or not this action is intrinsically wrong according to the PFA, we must simply ask the question, what is the natural end of making an assertion? That is, when someone asserts something to be true, what is that speech-action, of its very nature, ordered towards? Clearly, it must be ordered towards the communication of what one believes is true, which is evident from the description of the action: an assertion of the truth. Indeed, as Skalko explains, “If assertions were also naturally for the purpose of lying, then society would become confused as nobody would trust anybody’s assertions, since they might just as well be lies as acts of truth-telling. Lying’s success is parasitic upon the natural telos of asserting: conveying the truth. In telling a lie one is presupposing (in most cases at least) that the listener believes you are telling the truth. If this were not the case, one would not lie.”6 Human society, and even lies themselves, presuppose that the natural end of making assertions is conveying the truth. As such, assertive speech cannot be reasonably defended as having any other natural purpose, making truth its telos.
At this point, we know what the natural end of an assertion is, as well as what lying is, and so now the PFA demands us to ask the question: is lying intrinsically, of its very nature, contrary to the natural end of making assertions? The answer is obviously, yes. By definition, a lie is asserting what one believes is not true, which is directly opposed to the natural purpose of making assertions, which is to assert what one believes is true. Thus, according to the PFA, which is the only means by which one might rationally condemn moral actions like contraception and homosexuality,7 lying is an intrinsically disordered action. That is, just as, of their very nature, contraceptive and homosexual acts actively prevent sex from achieving its natural end of procreation, so too does lying, of its very nature, actively prevent assertive speech from achieving its natural end of communicating what one believes is true. The logical conclusion is that lying has the same moral status as homosexual activity, fornication, and artificial contraception, that of being intrinsically wrong, i.e. never permissible under any circumstances whatsoever.
In order to avoid this conclusion, one would either have to argue that lying is one of the intrinsic purposes of assertive speech, which is absurd for natural reasons explained above and for theological reasons that will be explained below, or that the PFA cannot be used to demonstrate the moral liceity of an action. While secularists and other non-Christians might be able to latch onto this latter position (though they would still be wrong), faithful Christians don’t even have this option in principle. This is because, as mentioned above, apart from PFA arguments, there is absolutely no rational grounds for rejecting things like homosexual and contraceptive acts as immoral, which is required for biblical sexual ethics. Without the PFA, these just become fideistic beliefs that aren’t grounded in anything rational, and could only be believed by appeals to the revealed Law. However, this would directly contradict St. Paul’s teaching on homosexuality in Romans 1:18-32, wherein he makes it clear that homosexual acts are “contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26), and even the heathens “know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die” (Rom 1:32). The Bible itself uses PFA reasoning to condemn homosexuality, and so faithful Christians cannot, in principle, reject this method of ethical inquiry. Thus, if Christians wish to have a rational (and biblical) basis for our moral beliefs, we must condemn lying as intrinsically evil.
With our Bibles now open, let’s get into the scriptural case against all lying. Prima facie, Scripture is very clear in its condemnation of lying. The Decalogue expressly forbids lying in a general sense, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (Ex 20:16). This Commandment is unlike the Decalogue’s condemnation of killing, wherein only murder, i.e. unjust killing, is prohibited (Ex 20:13). This is made even more clear in Leviticus 19:11, which simply forbids “lying” or “dealing falsely,” תְשַׁקְּר֖וּ, the very action Scripture says God is incapable of doing because of His divine perfection (1 Sam 15:29). The Psalmist boldly declares, “You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man” (Ps 5:6), and Solomon concurs, “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death” (Prov 21:6). This teaching is further reaffirmed in the New Testament, wherein Christians are commanded to “put away falsehood” and only “speak the truth with [their] neighbors” (Eph 4:25). Our Lord Jesus also taught that the Devil is “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), and that all lying springs from his demonic nature. And of course, in his final revelation to St. John, our Lord revealed that, at the Judgment, “all liars… will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Rev 21:8).
However, Scripture isn’t all smooth-sailing for those who affirm the Catholic position on lying. What about Rahab lying to save the Israelite spies (Josh 2:4-6), wasn’t she declared righteous for this (Js 2:25)? Didn’t Jacob’s lie to Isaac end with him being blessed by God (Gen 27:19)? What about the Hebrew midwives lying to Pharaoh (Ex 1:15-19), wasn’t God pleased with them (Ex 1:20)? Didn’t the Archangel Raphael lie about his identity to Tobit and Tobias (Tob 5:13), and aren’t holy angels incapable of sinning? These are all good and challenging questions to Christians who adhere to the natural law, but before we answer them, I think we ought to examine Scripture’s teaching on lying from a broader theological perspective. This, I believe, will give us sufficient motivation to read all of the aforementioned passages in harmony with the traditional Catholic position on lying.
Let’s start by considering an argument in favor of lying made by Janet Smith, a Catholic moral theologian who opposes the Church’s teaching on this matter. According to Smith, the Catholic tradition is wrong about lying because it operates “with a prelapsarian understanding of the purpose of signification, an understanding that presumes the innocence of man before the Fall.”8 Smith reasons that, before the Fall, all communication was between innocent and trustworthy human beings, and so of course the natural end of signification, i.e. assertive speech, was the communication of truth. Before sin was introduced into the world, any form of lying would have been an obvious abuse of language, as there would be no reason to lie. However, “after the Fall,” Smith concludes, “as is the case with words of consolation and encouragement, certain falsehoods uttered in certain circumstances can be fitting and morally licit uses of language.”9 In other words, Smith recognizes that the original purpose for which God created assertive language was the communication of truth. This is quite self-evident as, in a world intended to be sinless, why would God make lying one of the natural and intrinsic purposes of assertions? That wouldn’t make any sense. However, she also recognizes that, if the prelapsarian purpose of language is still its purpose today, then the PFA is successful in demonstrating that lying is intrinsically evil, i.e. contrary to the natural purpose of speech. Because she disagrees with that conclusion, however, Smith is forced to believe that original sin fundamentally changed the nature of language such that, after the Fall, lying is also one of its natural purposes.
Unfortunately, this belief, which really is the only way a Christian could defend lying, has disastrous theological consequences. For starters, this would mean that, rather than merely damaging human nature, original sin would have actually changed human nature. This is because language doesn’t exist in the abstract, rather it flows from man’s nature as a social animal. As such, the nature or purpose of language could only change if man’s nature changed as well. But to say that man’s nature could change is absurd. As Skalko reminds us, “Nature, by definition, is unchanging.”10 Because a triangle, by nature, has three sides, the moment it ceases to have three sides is the moment it ceases to be a triangle. Likewise, the moment the nature of man or one of its essential properties changes, is the moment it ceases to be the nature of man, and instead becomes the nature of something else. This is especially problematic for Christian theology because, traditionally, it’s believed that our Lord Jesus Christ had a prelapsarian, i.e. unfallen, human nature. If human nature “changed” after the Fall, however, this would mean that Christ doesn’t truly share our nature, which is directly contrary to the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon that Jesus is “consubstantial with us as touching His manhood.”11 In other words, by maintaining that the nature of assertive speech changed after the Fall, one consequently believes that man’s nature “changed” after the Fall as well, which is to say that man became a different creature, which, in turn, means that Christ assumed a different nature than our own.
Nor is it just “speculative philosophizing” that stands behind this line of argumentation. Scripture itself testifies that, prior to the Fall, lying was never something God intended to be part of the natural order. This is evident from the fact that the very means by which sin was brought into the world was a lie. It was Satan’s lie about the reason for God’s ban on the tree of knowledge that ended up enticing both of our first parents into the slavery of sin (Gen 3:4-5). This is why our Lord wisely referred to Satan as “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44). God never intended language to be used for the purpose of communicating falsehood, lying doesn’t originate with Him, rather He intended it for the purpose of communicating truth. It was the Devil who first abused language by lying, which is why Christ says that, when Satan lies, he does so “out of his own character” (Jn 8:44). Lying is not intrinsic to God’s design of assertive speech, but it is intrinsic to Satan’s plan of distorting God’s design; it flows from his very “character.” Just as he distorts the original purpose of sex by enticing people to fornicate and contracept, so too does Satan distort the original purpose of language by enticing people to lie.
Indeed, Scripture tells us that the reason why we can trust God’s Word is because He is, by nature, incapable of lying. “God is not man, that he should lie” (Num 23:19), “[we have the] hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began” (Titus 1:2), “it is impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18). The very foundation of our trust in God is that, when He asserts something to be true, it must necessarily be true. Perhaps what He says is unclear, or even deceptive at times (as when Christ God spoke in parables to the Pharisees), but the “sure and steadfast anchor of our souls” is the fact that God will never assert something as true that is actually false (Heb 6:18-19). This isn’t just something He does to be nice, rather it’s because lying contradicts God’s very nature as Truth Itself (cf. Jn 8:31-32; 14:6). When compared with Satan, who has “no truth in him,” who lies “out of his very character” (Jn 8:44), and who, because of this, is untrustworthy, the biblical case against lying seems to fit perfectly with the rational case against lying. If one of the natural purposes of assertive speech was the communication of falsehood, then everyone would be as untrustworthy as the Devil, including Christ the God-Man. However, if the only natural purpose of assertive speech is the communication of truth, then everyone is called to be as trustworthy as God. “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Because our heavenly Father never lies, nor does His Son, we ought never to lie.
So what do we make of the apparent lies told by Rahab, Jacob, the Hebrew midwives, and the Archangel Raphael? Do these biblical counter-examples refute everything that’s been written above about the intrinsic immorality of lying? Certainly not! I believe the best response to these classic difficulties was offered by St. Thomas Aquinas, whose answer, once fully unpacked, still holds up to this day. Responding to the objection that God blessed lying in Scripture, the Angelic Doctor writes:
The midwives were rewarded, not for their lie, but for their fear of God, and for their good-will, which latter led them to tell a lie. Hence it is expressly stated (Exodus 2:21): “And because the midwives feared God, He built them houses.” But the subsequent lie was not meritorious.
In Holy Writ, as Augustine observes (Lib. De Mend. v), the deeds of certain persons are related as examples of perfect virtue: and we must not believe that such persons were liars. If, however, any of their statements appear to be untruthful, we must understand such statements to have been figurative and prophetic. Hence Augustine says (Lib. De Mend. v): “We must believe that whatever is related of those who, in prophetical times, are mentioned as being worthy of credit, was done and said by them prophetically.” As to Abraham “when he said that Sara was his sister, he wished to hide the truth, not to tell a lie, for she is called his sister since she was the daughter of his father,” Augustine says (QQ. Super. Gen. xxvi; Contra Mend. x; Contra Faust. xxii). Wherefore Abraham himself said (Genesis 20:12): “She is truly my sister, the daughter of my father, and not the daughter of my mother,” being related to him on his father’s side. Jacob’s assertion that he was Esau, Isaac’s first-born, was spoken in a mystical sense, because, to wit, the latter’s birthright was due to him by right: and he made use of this mode of speech being moved by the spirit of prophecy, in order to signify a mystery, namely, that the younger people, i.e. the Gentiles, should supplant the first-born, i.e. the Jews.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 110, A. 3, Response to Objection 2, Response to Objection 3.
Although St. Thomas doesn’t address every biblical counter-example cited above, I believe the explanations he laid out can apply to all of them, even if one disagrees about which specific explanation applies in which specific case. When it comes to these counter-examples, Catholics basically have three routes of interpretation: either (1) the biblical person was being blessed for the motivation behind their lie, namely, the fear of God, not for the lie itself, (2) the person was not actually lying but rather concealing the truth, as was the case with Abraham “lying” to Pharaoh, or (3) the person was moved by the Spirit of prophecy to utter something mystical that wasn’t properly understood by the person to whom it was being said.
Let’s take these one at a time. In Rahab’s case, I think it’s very clear that she lied, as she falsely asserted that the Israelite spies she was hiding had left when she knew that they hadn’t (Josh 2:4-6). Thus, I believe St. Thomas’ first explanation applies to Rahab. She wasn’t blessed for her lie, but rather for her fear of God and good will towards His people. Since she was a Gentile from a wicked culture, but had a godly intention, her culpability for the sin of lying was greatly reduced, and she was fit to receive God’s blessing. Indeed, it wasn’t unheard of for old covenant Gentiles to be blessed because their hearts were in the right place, even when their actions weren’t perfectly in line with God’s will. I believe King Nebuchadnezzar’s over-zealous anti-idolatry laws after his conversion to the true religion (Dan 3:28-29), and Naaman the Syrian’s apparently excused idolatry (2 Kg 5:17-19), serve as good examples of this.
In Jacob’s case, I think we can run with this same explanation. While St. Thomas’ speculation about Jacob “mystically” calling himself Esau in a truthful way is possible, I think we can simply draw a comparison between Jacob’s lie to Isaac and other aspects of his life that were overtly immoral, yet where we don’t see a direct rebuke from God. Should we forget that, for seven years, Jacob worked with the intention of entering into a polygamous union with his wife’s sister (Gen 29)? This is something that’s explicitly forbidden by Leviticus 18:18, “you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.” Yet, not only did God never rebuke Jacob for this, but Rachel’s hand is seemingly portrayed as a kind of “reward” or “blessing” for Jacob’s suffering under Laban. In strange cases like these, we must remember what St. Paul taught in Romans 5:13, “for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.” The patriarchs were living in an era prior to the giving of the Law, and so even though they did have the natural law written on their hearts, we shouldn’t interpret God’s silence about their immoral actions as an endorsement of those actions. This is especially the case when those very actions are explicitly condemned by God in the Law, as both polygamy (Lev 18:18) and lying (Lev 19:11) are.
When it comes to the Hebrew midwives, I believe we could go with this same interpretation. The text does say that it was their “fear of God” that was acceptable in His sight (Ex 1:21), not every one of their actions. However, I think we could also go with the second explanation St. Thomas gives, which is that they weren’t lying at all. When Pharaoh asked the midwives why they let the Hebrews’ male infants live even after he had ordered their deaths, they answered, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them” (Ex 1:19). There’s no reason why this must be understood as a lie, it could very well be true. It could be the case that Hebrew women were very “efficient” when giving birth, and, because of this, they often did so before the midwives got there. Now, this would certainly be concealing the full truth, which is that the midwives allowed the Hebrew babies to be born because of their fear of God, but it wouldn’t be asserting anything as true that’s actually false, which is what lying is. Regardless, though, either St. Thomas’ first or second explanation can apply here, and so whichever you choose, lying still doesn’t have biblical support.
The last case is definitely the most difficult to explain, that of the Archangel Raphael’s apparent lie to Tobit and Tobias. Scripture tells us that, in order to conceal his identity from these two men, Raphael identified himself as, “Azariah, son of the great Hananiah, one of your own kindred” (Tob 5:13). At face value, this appears to be a blatant lie. Archangel Raphael seems to be saying that he is a man named Azariah, whose apparently human father is Hananiah, and that he belongs to the same extended family as both Tobit and Tobias. What makes this case so difficult is that, unlike in previous cases, St. Thomas’ first explanation, i.e. that the intention behind the lie was good but the lie itself wasn’t, cannot apply. This is because, according to traditional Catholic theology, holy angels like Raphael are incapable of sinning, regardless of how little culpability is involved. Their wills are fixed in sanctity and cannot move away from God even one iota, and so Raphael cannot be lying here. As such, I believe this is an instance where we must apply St. Thomas’ third explanation for apparent biblical lies, the “mystical” explanation.
As Fr. Ryan Erlenbush explains,12 in Hebrew, the name “Azariah” means “the healer of Yahweh,” and the name Hananiah means “the grace of Yahweh.” As such, we can follow St. Thomas in saying that, when identifying himself as Azariah son of Hananiah, St. Raphael “made use of this mode of speech being moved by the spirit of prophecy, in order to signify a mystery,” namely, that he is “the healer of Yahweh,” the son of “the grace of Yahweh.” Indeed, we know from Job 1:6 that angels can be referred to as “the sons of God,” and so Raphael was speaking in a “mystical” way to signify what is actually true, i.e. that he’s an angel sent from God, but in such a way that that truth wouldn’t be understood by Tobit and Tobias. Fr. Erlenbush explains that this is what moral theologians call “broad mental reservation,” which “is when a person uses discreet language which may be ambiguous but is not directly a lie. While it is true that the other person may be deceived, the deception is not from the words themselves being false, but from the hearer making a false assumption based on true words.”13 When Raphael asserted that he was a “healer” sent from God, and appropriated the angelic title “son of God,” identifying himself as a “kindred” of both Tobit and Tobias, who themselves are “sons of God” by virtue of their covenant identity, he wasn’t lying. All of those assertions are objectively true. Raphael is a healer of God, he is an angelic son of God, Tobit and Tobias are his covenanted kindred. However, because he was moved by the Spirit of prophecy to speak in this obscure way, Tobit and Tobias misunderstood Raphael’s words. The defect was in the understanding of the hearers, not the spoken words themselves, meaning that this wasn’t a lie.
So does this mean that, if someone asked me who I was, I could reply with a completely different identity and, so long as I internally understood those words in a different sense than what they actually signify, I wouldn’t be guilty of lying? No. That would be called “strict mental reservation,” which was condemned by Pope Innocent XI, who illustrated it with the following example: “[When] a man either alone or before others… swear[s] that he did not do a thing which he really did; having a secret meaning, either of some other thing which he did not do, or of another way of doing it, or of any other truth which he adds to it.”14 Essentially, the difference between broad mental reservation, which isn’t lying, and strict mental reservation, which is lying, is that, even though they both result in deception, the cause of deception in the former case is a defect in the hearers’ understanding or knowledge, whereas the cause of deception in the latter case is a defect in the spoken words themselves.
If I tell someone that I’m Robert F. Kennedy, nephew of President John F. Kennedy, even though I’m really not, anyone who’s deceived by my words would be deceived because those words are false. It wouldn’t matter if I assigned a secret meaning to “Robert F. Kennedy” in my mind, since that meaning doesn’t exist in external reality. However, when St. Raphael identified himself as “Azariah son of Hananiah,” it was the prophetic Holy Spirit speaking through him who signified something that God had, externally, revealed as true, namely, that Raphael is the healer of God and an angelic son of God. This is the significance of St. Thomas’ third explanation of apparent biblical lies, and how it’s different from his second explanation. Archangel Raphael didn’t have an internally secret meaning assigned to the words he spoke to Tobit and Tobias, rather that meaning was divinely, “mystically,” revealed by God. Based on the words Raphael said, Tobit and Tobias could have, in principle, figured out he was an angel. Raphael himself tipped them off when, just before revealing his name as “Azariah,” “the healer of God” (Tob 5:13), he said, “God’s healing is near to you!” (Tob 5:10). However, because they didn’t understand what the Holy Spirit was mystically revealing about this apparent man named Azariah, they were deceived into thinking he was just a man. Thus, St. Raphael engaged in broad mental reservation, not strict mental reservation, and therefore was not lying.
In conclusion, we all intuitively understand that lying is intrinsically evil. If there were circumstances that could justify lying, then your ability to trust someone’s word, including God’s, would depend on the situation. If the intrinsic purpose of “asserting something as true” was not to actually assert something as true, but depended on one’s judgment of the context, then how could we meaningfully speak of “truthful speech” at all? It wouldn’t really exist, rather what would exist is something like “relative speech,” i.e. asserting something that one believes is appropriate given the circumstances. If our society and faith were built upon relative speech, rather than truthful speech, then everything would break down. Everyone would be untrustworthy, everyone would be suspicious of his neighbor, forever uncertain about whether he’s communicating truth or falsehood. If communicating truth isn’t the only natural purpose of making assertions, then true assertions might just as well be false, including in Scripture. However, since this would fundamentally undermine Christian faith and society, it cannot be the case. According to reason, Scripture, and Tradition, then, the only natural purpose of assertive speech is the communication of the truth, which means that lying is intrinsically evil.
St. Augustine, To Consentius, Against Lying.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 110.
John Skalko, Disordered Actions: A Moral Analysis of Lying and Homosexual Activity, Chapter I: What is a Lie?.
Skalko, Disordered Actions, Chapter II: Why Is Lying Wrong? Aquinas’s Argument, p. 89.
See Edward Feser, In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument, pp. 410-413.
Smith, “Fig Leaves and Falsehoods,” qtd. in Skalko, Disordered Actions, Chapter II, p. 72.
Ibid.
Skalko, Disordered Actions, Chapter II, p. 75.
Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), Session V.
Fr. Ryan Erlenbush, “Did St. Raphael lie when he said, ‘I am Azarias’?”
Ibid, emphasis mine.
A question I've had for a while, I really appreciate the intuitiveness of your explanation! What a gift you have