Lord, open our eyes that we may be whole wondrous things out of your law. Lead us forth in your truth and teaches for you are our God, and our hope is in you. Help us especially, we pray, with the difficult situations that we face, that we may understand how to apply your word faithfully, that we may seek your face in all these decisions. Be with us to that in we pray, for Jesus sake, amen. And we started last time, this area of the resolution of moral conflicts, that was going through a number of methods, we want to be careful in adopting a method not to undermine our ethic. Now, sometimes we come out at the same place in terms of a particular decision, such as the way we evaluate the villages of Lechambon and their protection of Jews during the occupation of France. But then in retrospect, the way in which that's justified tends to be very different. We look last time at consequentialism, which in fact reduces conflict by maintaining that there's only one, one absolute principle for the greater balance of good over evil in every situation, and we saw how that led to subjectivism, how it's really a principle for tyrants. The 20th century is filled with millions of lives that have been murdered in pursuit of an ideal, and the grounds that the end justifies the means. So cruelty for the time being was argued, we'll seem to be in, as we bring in the new humanity to have been justified, terrible, terrible deeds have been done under that principle. The next approach, what I call tragic morality, has been adopted by some evangelical Christians who reject consequentialism, who see the dangers in that, but understand that in a fallen world, God's absolutes come into conflict, and when they do, we choose the lesser of two evils, although we're still responsible for the evil that we have chosen, and therefore must confess our sins. Now Norman Geisler is the one largely associated with this third principle of hierarchy colonialism. He's a prominent evangelical theologian, he is a philosopher and his specialty is apologetics, philosophy, religion. He's written a lot in that area, but he's also written in ethics, and he adopts the view called hierarchicalism. He agrees with the evangelicals of the tragic morality type, that God's absolutes do come into conflict, but he has a particular theory about the way in which they are resolved, so that we're not held guilty when we obey a higher absolute and disobey a lower absolute. The position may be simply expressed, when two moral duties clash, and in his view these are absolute moral duties, these are God's absolute commands, when two moral duties clash, the believer is exempt from his duty to the lower by virtue of his obedience to the higher. So we are exempted from the lesser evil, in this case, to use the language of tragic moral choice, and so we don't sin in doing that, but we are doing the right thing. So Geister posits a system of graded absolutes, in which God's commands, all of which are moral and absolute, are arranged hierarchically so that in cases of conflict the higher exempts from the lower. Now one example that he gives, that he makes a big point of distinguishing between an exemption and an exception, he says, when one kills another human being in self-defense, he is exempt from guilt, citing Exodus 22, yet there's no exception made to the law, which requires us to always treat another human being, even a would-be murderer, as a human being with intrinsic value. And that's not the precise question. Even within that sphere there's something that he obscures, the issue is, what kind of an act is it to act in self-defense and whether or not the Bible approves that act. I have three difficulties with Geister's hierarchicalism. The first problem, as I see it, is the imposition upon scripture of a preconceived definition of a moral absolute. All God's commands, he says, are absolute because they all derive from the Holy nature of God. We saw earlier that we have to make some distinctions with respect to God's commands. Some do indeed derive from the Holy nature of God. It could not be otherwise that God would command cruelty, that's not his nature. God is love, therefore his commandments must embody love. Other commandments we understand are derived from the will of God for human beings that he has created in his image in this life, so that the norms for marriage and so forth derive from his will. And there's another category that derive from God's positive will, such as the ceremonial law, which are his temporary regulations for his people, including the dietary laws. Now those commandments are not absolute. They could be overridden by the commandments to preserve life. We saw that in the instance of David and the showbred that David got the permission to eat the showbred which was strictly speaking only lawful for the priest to eat because it was not God's purpose in giving that to commandment, or it would be interpreted so absolutely that it cannot be relieved for the preservation of human life. Geister says that the commandment not to eat the showbred was just as absolute as the commandment not to commit murder. Well I think that we need to distinguish between the commands of God, and it's this preconceived definition of a moral absolute that I have is my first difficulty which in Geisler's system has to be qualified by a questionable distinction between an exception and an exemption. You see he insists that the absolute that is overridden is still an absolute, but when it comes down to it he talks about them being relative absolute. I think that's a contradiction in terms if one absolute preempts, another absolute, the absolute that is preempted is no longer absolute. It's qualified by its place in that hierarchy, and although Geisler insists that they're still absolute, I think it's a verbal solution. The distinction between an exception and an exemption is a verbal solution. So on the issue of the taking of human life and his the way he interprets a self-defense, the precise issue is whether God has absolutely forbidden the taking away of human life under all circumstances. It's often assumed that that is the absolute that God has absolutely forbidden the taking away of human life under all circumstances. If God has not absolutely forbidden that, then there is no conflict of absolutes in the kind of case that Geisler mentions. I suggest that we think of the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill. If we state that in terms of an absolute, this would be the proper way of putting it. That human life is sacred to God and may never be taken away without divine warrant. Human life is sacred to God and may never be taken away without divine warrant. And then we know that there are exceptional circumstances in which God warrants the taking away of human life. They're not exceptions to an absolute, the absolute includes the idea of divine warrant and where God has given them warrant. Those so-called exceptions really serve to define what the absolute is. If we state the universal norm this way, God forbids the taking away of human life except in the case of public justice, lawful war, necessary defense as our catechism does. These are not stating exceptions to an absolute or exemptions within the absolute. They are defining the absolute in such a way as to require the burden of proof that the taking away of human life has divine authority. I think if we more carefully state what the absolute is, human life may never be sacred to God and may never be taken away without divine warrant, then you have a universal principle. The only question then is to search the scriptures to find out when human life is warranted by God to be taken. That to me solves the problem with Abraham and Isaac. It runs through the literature that Abraham broke an absolute when he offered Isaac upon the altar, at least in terms of his intention, although God only let it proceed as far as the binding of Isaac. If we take the principle that human life is sacred to God, may never be taken without divine warrant, it was warranted in that instance. Isaac was a guilty sinner before God, whose life was forfeit to God. God for his purposes makes it clear that human sacrifice, merely human sacrifice, human sacrifice of a sinner cannot avail for substitution, that only God himself can be the sacrifice. The Lord will provide himself a sacrifice, and that's why the place is called in the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. So that there is a redemptive historical purpose that God has in showing that principle. The binding of Isaac is an absolutely unique case in scripture for a particular purpose, and would be very pedantic to always include that in our definition of how we define the absolute. It's sufficient to say human life is sacred to God and may never be taken without divine warrant. That one instance God did warrant Abraham from proceeding as far as he did with the taking of Isaac's light, because God is sovereign over life and God had his lesson to present in that respect. It wasn't a conflict of absolutes, if you properly state the absolute in terms of human life being sacred to God, never to be taken without divine warrant. That was a particular warrant that was unique to that situation. The general warrant, when we get to the sixth commandment, we will give the biblical basis for it, are in the areas of lawful war, when we need to go over the criteria for what lawful war are, for public justice, we need to discuss the issue of capital punishment and how it can be justly administered in a fallen world, and necessary defense. We need to think about how that bears on our lives as Christians, but I think that the way in which it's set up, I think is a better solution at hand than the appeal to the exemption from absolutes. My second critique is the insistence that all God's commands are absolute, that create many problems where none exists. A lot has been run through the literature on this issue that one conflict of absolutes is God's command of obedience to the state and God's commands to obedience to Himself. That is not a conflict of absolutes. God has not commanded absolute obedience to the state. When the state commands something that God forbids, we only have one duty, and that's to obey God rather than men. So the way in which we approach, I think that one of the problems has been the tendency to find absolutes that go beyond the scripture. Our duty is to obey their lawful commands. That's the very precise wording of our shorticaticism. Our responsibility as Christians is to obey their lawful commands. That's the absolute, what they command that is lawful is to be respected and to be obeyed. Now, we will come back to the issue of civil disobedience after we've had time to go over the biblical authority of the state. So there's more to be said about that, and we need to make some distinctions between types of civil disobedience. I think that there are at least five different types of civil disobedience, and whether we judge them to be biblical depends upon analyzing the circumstances. My third criticism is that as a method of resolving conflicts, which Geister says is a conflict between absolute, it's so open-ended that inadvertently, although he protests against this, I think that he ends up with little that cannot be done that would be done under situation ethics. For example, the highest value, this is to quote Geister, there is really only one thing, which is ultimate and absolute, that's love. So that's the one indifesible absolute, the one absolute from which there are no exemptions. Now, the notion of an overriding personal value, that's at the top of his pyramid, that is so broad that the conflict that's liable to create hardly admits of any limitation. If you arrange your moral absolutes in terms of a pyramid and the higher exempts from the lower, then what's at the top of the pyramid is really your only absolute. And that is love, or to seek the most personal value. If we can be exempt from all the other commandments, all the other absolutes under that, then we have ended up with the same principle that there being no moral norm other than the law of love that may not be exempted under some circumstances. I think that the practical outworking of that, although Geister himself is a critique of situation ethics, I think it ends up not being able to hold ultimately its ground against that. So I think we must look for some other way. Geister's view has, I think, attracted a number of adherents by default. It gets out of the idea of tragic morality. It seems to deal with these hard cases in a way. I'm saying that be careful before you adopt that because it tends to undermine the other commandments. If you're only absolute is the overriding personal value, almost anything can be justified on that basis. It just doesn't admit of any strict limitation, although Geister is better than his principle would lead in to be. He would be much more conservative in application than Joseph Fletcher because the whole of Scripture is very strong in Geister, but still in terms of a method, I think we have to question it. Now, there's a fourth view that moves, I think, in the right direction. Geister follows the lead of W.D. Ross, the British philosopher. Instead of talking about absolutes, Ross talks about primafacial duties and all the commandments would be primafacial duties, but our actual duty may be something different in those situations. So rather than talk about absolutes, he talks about primafacial duties and our primafacial obligation may not be our actual obligation in a particular situation. And this has been adopted by a number of evangelicals as well. There's a certain amount of truth to it that you shall not kill means there's a primafacial obligation not to take human life. We have to justify it, but we justify it on the basis of what God has warranted for the taking of human life. The way in which Ross works out primafacial duties is not clear as to how you distinguish between your actual duty and your primafacial duty. Moreover, there is this problem with it that it wants to say that the primafacial duty continues as an unmet obligation, sort of bringing in the tragic morality ideal, although not saying you're guilty for it, it's also trying to get that lower absolute that Geister exempts from, still in effect. And so the primafacial obligation always continues as an unmet obligation. Stephen Modd is an example. He's a friend of mine, social ethics at Gordon Conwell for most of his academic life. He applies this to civil disobedience. He says our primafacial duty is to obey the state and certain circumstances it's right to disobey the state, but still civil disobedience is a wrong-making characteristic of that act. I think that that blurs the bright line between right and wrong. How can an act be right and still have wrong-making characteristics? I think we need to make a clean break. If it's right, it's right. Is there a way in which we, is there a way of approaching which we can resolve that particular issue? And I think that there is, rather than following Ross, and there's more about that in the book if you want to proceed on that. We come finally to what I'm calling case analysis. This is historically the way of resolution of moral conflicts. The term casuistry is used for this, but casuistry has gotten a bad name. In fact, the very form of casuistry, it's like sophistry, it has that term itself has a negative connotation from the beginning because it's rules for getting around the rules. That's the way a lot of casuistry has been. You figure out a way to morally justify sin, and of course, that's liability in form of human being. But we can't escape dealing with cases, and I think that we need to recover the legitimate understanding that lies behind case, I think we can't recover the term, we should write DNR over the term casuistry. I don't think it's possible to resuscitate that, but there are emphasis who are making a case for casuistry even as a term, but we can't escape the need to analyze cases. What the slogan of tragic morality is to choose the lesser two evils, and the sloger of hierarchicalism is to choose the higher absolute. The slogan of case analysis is circumstances alter cases. They do not alter moral rules. They don't dispense with moral rules, which is consequentialism. The end justifies the means. It's a very different thing to say that the end justifies the means, and so I can virtually do anything as long as I have a good end, and to say that circumstances alter cases doesn't do a deal away with rules, but it alters the moral understanding of the case that you're dealing with. Now, there are three things that we need to bear in mind as we proceed with case analysis as a way of dealing with moral conflicts. John Frank, who has had a parallel career at Westminster Seminary in ethics, he was a fellow student of mine at Westminster when I was there. He's a good thinker, trained in philosophy, which makes him so precise in these areas. He has developed what he calls a triperspectivalism, and I think that it's relevant, it's mostly relevant at the point of resolution of moral conflicts. His triperspectives, his three perspectives, the first existential perspective, the existential perspective, examines our heart and our character. Do we really want to know the will of God? That's the first question. Do we want to just bend the rules so we can do what we want to do all along? Or are we sincerely searching for the will of God? That's the first issue is to make sure our hearts are right in seeking to do the will of God. In this area, such as the villages of Luxembourg, they were sincerely seeking the will of God. They used to do the right thing. They're used to habitual veracity, habitual truthfulness or veracity, and so it pained them when they came to the situation of how to protect Jews under those emergency circumstances. So there's first of all the existential perspective. We need to get our hearts right before the Lord, and be sure they're right before the Lord and are sincerely seeking God's will. And there is the normative of perspective, and the way it's relevant here is that it's the whole teaching of Scripture that we bring to bear on the subject. Not isolated texts. You can prove a lot of things by isolated texts. You can prove absolute obedience to the government from Romans 13, but you have to compare Scripture with Scripture. You have to ask what is God's purpose in giving His commands. So there is a lot of hermeneutical process that goes into finding out what the will of God is. It can't just be read off the surface of the biblical texts. So we both first have to have a heart's right, that's the existential perspective. The normative perspective is that it's the whole teaching of Scripture, that is Scripture, and so we have to look at it from that view. Then I think there is the situational perspective which takes into account all the relevant facts. You need to take into account all the relevant facts in order to properly characterize a moral case. And when this is done, when you take the whole teaching of Scripture and all the relevant facts in the case, a person with his heart is really seeking the will of the Lord, can remove many of the perplexities that show up in the literature on conflict resolution. Let me give you some examples. For example, one of the things that runs through the literature has to do with making of vows. Bible says, when you make a vow, keep your vow. And so Edwin Lutzer, also another fine evangelical, his pastor of Moody Church, he had an academic career as well, poses the example of a man bowing to kill another man. And now he is faced with the tragic choice, either he must break his vow, which is sinful, or must he carry it out, which is sinful, to take the life of another human being. He is an advocate of the tragic moral choice. He says, in this case, we hope that the man will not carry out his vow, that he will do the lesser sin and break his vow. But I think that this is not really a moral dilemma. If you think through, from the normative perspective, what about his in Scripture, what is a vow? It's calling God to witness in order to strengthen your resolve to do something. God is not going to be made a party to sin. You can't call on God to be your witness to carry out some sin. There's only one thing, if you've made a vow to sin, there's only one right course of action, and that is to repent for having made that sinful vow. Now that was worked out at the Reformation, it's in our confession that a vow cannot oblige to sin. It just can't do it. God will not be a part of it. And I think that looking at the normative perspective is one of those areas where that yield, that dilemma disappears, that dilemma is resolved when you think about what bowing is. Take an example of Herod. The Loma dances before him, he's half drunk, he's pleased, he says to her, the young woman of asking me anything to the half of my kingdom, and I will give it to you. And she goes and asks her mother what much she'll ask, he's promised to the half of his kingdom. She says, ask for the head of John the Baptist to be brought here on a platter. Well what should Herod have done? Well he should obviously not have fulfilled that vow. He should repent for his foolishness in making that kind of a blanket promise in front of the people that are there, and two persons who had evil intent on their mind, it's really not that difficult to see what he should have done. Another example, I think that that may illustrate the importance of the normative perspective, getting the whole teaching of scripture, and when you do with respect to vows, that no longer is a moral dilemma. On the situational perspective, I think that this illustration is to the point. I once wrote to the editor of Christianity today, he had had an editorial on lying as the lesser of two evils, he had defended the kind of thing that the villagers of Lisbon had done on the basis that it was the lesser evil, but they were still guilty. And I wrote to ask him to some questions that I had about that, and I got a letter that gave me this example, a man's seasoned terrorist or grenade into a group of women and children, and the man falls on the grenade in order to save the lives of the crowd, and in the process is killed himself, but suicide is forbidden, what would I do with this kind of a case? Well, you look at all the relevant facts of that situation, I think it's wrong to characterize it as a suicide, what you have to ask is, given the facts of this case, is this kind of act forbidden by scripture, and obviously it's not. Greater love has no man than this, than a man laid down his life for his friends. We're not forbidden to lay down our lives for other people, rather than call that self-murder, which is what suicide means, you know, it should be described as self-sacrifice. Now these things happen, I was once teaching a Sunday school class on this material, and I saw in the class a man suddenly well up with tears, and he didn't seem to want to share that with the class, but I saw him after class, and he told me the reason he was moved is that he was in the Second World War, and he had a buddy who had actually done this. He had fallen on a grenade to save his colleagues. Miraculously, this person had survived, must have had some heavy duty jacket or something, or the grenade had been partially a dud, but he had bored the scars on his chest of having been willing to sacrifice his life for his friends. That wasn't suicide. You know, when you know all the relevant facts in that case, this is not someone who is in despair over the war, and it takes this as a way out, this is an authentic self-sacrifice. So I think that looking at the principle, all the teaching, it's the whole teaching of Scripture, the Scripture, and that circumstances alter cases yields us with a resolution of many of these conflicts. And I think that the conflicts are multiplied in the literature in order to provide some analogy to the reasoning in the kind of falsehoods that were told during the Holocaust to protect Jews. And I think that is the most difficult of these questions, it's the most intractable of these issues, because the Bible places such a high premium on truthfulness. It's necessary for human community, deceit is like violence and assault against the human person. And so it should have the caution that it does. The value of truth is very much indirigated in our society, and therefore we need to be very cautious in this area because of the Zionist to be the city of truth, speak truth to one another. I mean, it's all over the Scriptures that that's our primary responsibility. So we're the falsehoods justified under the circumstances. This is a question that has been mind-boggling since the early church with great fathers taking one position, Augustine another, and it's gone through the whole of history. Frank says that Scripture assumes that in emergencies normal regulations may be transcended in the interest of human health and safety, it doesn't elaborate on that, but we are talking about an emergency situation where there is murderous intent on the part of people. How do we deal in a situation where you've got that kind of radical breakdown in human relations during an emergency situation? Well, I think that there's some things that we should bear in mind as we look at this. We're not talking about everyday life. We're talking about the abnormal conditions that prevail when we've got murderers seeking information, should we give it to them? Should we give them false information? That's the issue, how strict is the standard of truthfulness under these emergency circumstances? I think that we should go back to what we looked at earlier in terms of Jesus' teaching on the weightier matters of the law, which are justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Look at the Shabbanae, certainly what they did was in the interest of justice. It was not just for murderers to know the whereabouts of their intended victims. They were engaged in an unjust policy of extermination. So clearly the Shabbanae in offering protection to the innocent are on the side of justice and justice required that they not convey, at the very least, that they not convey information that would be useful to the enemies of the Jews whose purpose was to exterminate them. That says a matter of justice, clearly they're on the right side. There is the element of mercy. It is clear, especially in this village, all over Europe, you get examples of this. The New York Times in February had the New York Times magazine in February had that random article on Germans in Germany who protected Jews during the Holocaust. But the villagers of Shabbanae stand out because of their welcoming attitude that they had toward these people. They delighted in being merciful to them. And certainly that was there to be commended for that. It was part of their plan of mercy. Part of their showing mercy was to not reveal to the authorities of the truth. The one issue that might still remain is whether they are faithful in their use of language. I argued that with respect to this third to wade your matter of the law, that they were faithful in their use of language, that God has not given us human speech in order to allow it to be manipulated for the destruction of human beings. That a murderer in search of an innocent victim has no right to expect truth from me. It's not being unfaithful to a murderer to tell him the falsehood. I think that that's the key here. If we look at the commandment, the ninth commandment in terms of faithfulness and speech, you have to recognize that in this emergency situation with a breakdown of communication, it's not being unfaithful in the use of speech that God has given us to mislead even to falsify information for those who are seeking the lives of innocent people. We have an example here. I say these emergency situations. We use the Holocaust. It also is the under Soviet domination. You have the same patterns of police power in murderous intent for its victims. So it's broader than just the Holocaust. Those kinds of conditions prevail in various parts of the world at various times, especially in terms of secret police power, but sometimes it happens in everyday life. There was a, some while back, a story in the newspaper of an escaped convict, says a local story, escaped convict who broke into the house of a quadriplegic and asked him if he had any guns. And the man said, no, well, the escapee searched the house and found that there were guns there. Now can you imagine him bringing those guns to the poor man in the wheelchair and said, what kind of a person are you? You lied to me. You lied to me. Can you imagine how bad a person you are? Well, it's absurd, isn't it? He has no right to expect truth. It's not unfaithful to him to say, I don't have any guns in the hopes that he wouldn't find them and then precipitate a shootout. He took a great risk, you know, but he's not helping, I mean, either way the man is helpless. As it turned out, he was then held hostage and finally the police persuaded the man to give up the weapons. But that's an emergency circumstance. There's no unfaithfulness in speech in those circumstances. Now there are a couple of biblical precedents that should give us comfort in these respects. So that this is not just rationalizing on the basis of Scripture, but rather to looking at the whole of Scripture and its teaching. One thing that Scripture clearly sanctions is concealment of the truth from murderers. That's first Samuel where the Lord says to Samuel, this is the time that Saul is on his rampage and he's broken with Samuel, Saul is apostate now. And the Lord tells Samuel to go to Bethlehem and he's got somebody to anoint as the next king. Samuel says, I can't do it, Lord, Saul will find out and he'll kill me. And the Lord says, you tell them that you've come to sacrifice the house of Jesse and I'll show you who's the one to anoint him. The Lord in fact gives him a cover story, it's true, but it does conceal. It conceals what's going on. It conceals the real intent of the visit because Saul has no right to that knowledge. Saul is murders. He would kill David, the young boy, he tried to kill him later, as you well know, it's the breakdown of communication that warrants this incident. So when Samuel comes to the village and they say, they come out nervously, the elders and say, are you coming in peace? They're not going to get us in trouble, are you? I'm here to sacrifice for the feast. So it puts them at ease, but it's a cover story. It's concealing the truth. And that was at God's command. So very least, we recognize in that a principle that murderers don't have a right to know the truth and we have a right to conceal it if we can. Now there are the two famous examples that bear on this topic that we should look at. First is the Hebrew midwives in Exodus, chapter 1, verses 15 and following, Exodus, I'm sorry, Exodus chapter 1 beginning at verse 15. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives whose names were Shipra and Pua. My wife has an Israeli in her ESL class named Shipra, so that name at least is still in use. I don't know about Pua, but those were their names, Shipra and Pua forever immortalized because of their bravery. The king of Egypt said, when you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy killing, but it is a girl that are live. The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do. They let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live? The midwives answered Pharaoh, Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women, they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive. So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous and because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Now there are two questions there. Well, that's what the midwives told Pharaoh, true or false. I think it's false. I use clearly false. Why would they need midwives if they gave birth this easily? The midwives just come clean up the house after it's over, that's not likely. We know that Hebrew women suffered in childbirth, so they are taking advantage of Pharaoh's cross-cultural ignorance and perhaps even his lack of sex education. This is, you can't prove it definitively, but what are the likelihoods? And then does God approve, assuming that it is, they falsify their report, which I think is certainly true, does God approve it? Narrative, you have to judge in terms of the way it's presented. And here God rewards the midwives for not carrying out Pharaoh's order. And a part of the way in which they continued in their service was through the misrepresentation of what's going on in those Hebrew homes. The other example is less ambiguous in terms of whether there was a falsehood. This is a familiar story of Rahab in Joshua. Joshua chapter 2. When Joshua son of done secretly sent two spies, go over the land, he said, especially Jericho, so they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. The King of Jericho was told, look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land. So the King of Jericho sent this message to Rahab, bring out the man who came to you and entered your house because they have come to spy out the whole land. But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don't know which way they went, go after them quickly, you may catch up to them. But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under stalks of flags. She had laid out on the roof. So the men set out and pursued the spies on the road that leads to the fords of Jericho, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut. Well, you know, there's no ambiguity here. They went that way. Go get them. I didn't know who they were. She concealed them with the flags. I think she puts on another layer of quacks in her verbiage here. Remember the warrant for concealment was murderous intent. She was strictly speaking a traitor to Jericho in that she's identifying with God's people. And she's praised for that. The question always comes up, is what she said about the spies no longer being there? Is that a part of what we should affirm in the Rahad story? That's hard to prove definitively, but it seems to me that it's the narrative as a whole that's being given approval. Because the King of Jericho has no right to the knowledge of that truth, further concealment by putting the soldiers who arrive, the authorities who arrive off the trail. It seems to me it's one of those emergency circumstances where faithfulness in speech does not require the literal truth, but rather is use, faithfulness in speech is used to deceive. After all, I think that we should remember that the essence of lying, the essence of lying, is in deception, not in the word used. The essence of lying is in deception. Some people can deceive and still be, you know, claim the literal truth. You know, they have in their mind some qualification that is different from other people. Ministerial candidate is suspected of adulteries, ask the question, have you ever committed adulteries as never in his mind he adds on Sunday? Well, that's a lie. And though, I mean, the qualification in his mind brings it, it's said, his words and his mind into conformity, but that's not the real locus in terms of faithfulness in speech. You can lie with the truth, you know, you can give a misimpression with the truth. So there's something more to lying than just the form of words that you use. It is the intention to deceive. Don Murray is the strongest of modern day advocates of the Augustinian position that we may never utter falsehood, but even Murray acknowledges that we may use equivocation that in a just cause and that we're not always obligated to tell the plain truth when the circumstances are such we can do that. I agree with that, but I think that that puts a premium on cleverness. You know, if you're clever enough, you can always think up some way to be ambiguous. I did it once intentionally. I'll let you be the judge of this, but it happened when I was young on the faculty here. And we were looking for a church history professor and Wil Barker, who taught history and specialized in church history at the college, had been announced that he was going to be on the faculty of Covenant Seminary. Now Wil Barker is also dean at the college, and so the question went around, is he also going to be dean at the seminary? Well I had been told that he was. Wil was a personal friend, and so I knew that he was, but that had not yet been announced. There were various reasons why that needed to be kept in confidence. And had a student at that time, it hadn't been Nat Hatch, Jim Hatch's brothers, now provost at Notre Dame, who had a year of Covenant then went to wash you to get his PhD in history, but we were in the same church and we maintained our friendship, and they had us over to dinner. And I knew what was going to happen because of his interest in history. I knew he was going to ask me whether Barker was going to be dean. And sure enough, it played out like I had written the script in advance, after the pleasantries and getting into things, he said, isn't it great that Barker is going to come teach church history at the seminary? I say, yes, it's great. Now for the last couple of years, I've been hoping for that and encouraging to do it, is he also going to be dean? Well, that I can't say. And I changed the subject. Now that is the only time that I intentionally thought up an ambiguous expression, can't say. Can't say because I don't know or can't say because it's in confidence. But it was the latter. I think if I have been pressed on it, that's not so opaque that you can't figure that out. I actually asked Matt had some years later. Do you remember the time? Yes, I remember. I remember feeling that I had stepped over some kind of a line. But the confidence was preserved. And I think that there are circumstances where you're going to need to ask a counter-question when you get these prime people, these gossips they want to push you, sometimes a frontal attack is best. That's gossip. We don't have to talk about that. Other times, who knows, though you may very well know, the counter-question is appropriate. But I think that there are some instances where, such as in the village, where that's not a viable option, there's simply too much by way of deception that goes on for you to have several little answers all the time. And therefore, I think that, you know, come back to it, you know, what is God really expect of us in terms of faithfulness and speech? Is there any divine precedent? Well, there is the psalm that says, with the pure, you show yourself pure with the cookie, you show yourself perverse, that's very striking assertion. Second Thessalonians 2, 11 and 12, is even more startling, in a sense. This is not exactly parallel to our situation, but it's sufficient to give us pause. Thessalonians 2, I'll begin with verse 9. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit, miracle signs and wonders. Every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing, and Satan is culpable for that. But listen, they perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. So they're responsible, too. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. Verse 11, for this reason, because they refuse to love the truth, they have made a definitive stand against the truth. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie, so that all will be condemned to have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. God's judicial hardening, there's plenty of background, plenty of opportunity for them to have believed the truth, but having hardened their heart, there is now this judicial delusion. So God Himself is not always just to open with everyone. Now that's not exactly fitting our situation, but I think that it raises the issue or supports the idea that faithfulness in speech has to take into account relationships and sometimes those relationships are so badly distorted and broken that open communication is impossible and falsehood is justifiable. Say that with a great deal of difference in caution and would add this one qualification, I think when we're asked whether we trust in Jesus as our Savior, even at the risk of our lives, our only answer can be yes, to affirm our faith in Christ. You see, there's more going on there than murderous design against us. You know, if we deny our Lord that exposes a whole commitment as really a fraud, that our life is worth more to us than our profession of faith. So in Ukraine, when they were asked that question, they answered yes, let your yay, deyay, and your nay, nay, that came through very clearly, and I think that's right. I think when it's that question, when it's your faith itself that is on the line that we have to confess our Lord. So if we go back to the villagers, I think that the last page of my chapter, I have last couple of pages to, page 150, to insist on verbal truthfulness in such circumstances is manifestly against the purposes for which God has given us speech. The radical disruption of human relationships alters the nature of the case. And I was reading the story of Rehab to one of my sons and at preschool, it was just going through the Bible, and I got to the end of the story, and he asked, you know, he said, Dad, Rehab told a lie, but it was a good lie, wasn't it, Dad? My old purpose answer is to ask your mother, well, you know, we had to talk about that because it's very important as children are growing up to, no, there's not any exceptions. And there are no good lies. There is the, well, it's maybe justified in extreme cases as a last resort in the protection of human life, but they arise from an abnormal circumstance. You know, that's why you get this, this why you get this element in tragic morality and high-architalism and primal fascia duties, wanting to hold on to something. And I would say that it's not really that we can call them without qualification good, that that leads into that. I think that they're right, but I would say they're regrettably necessary. The Shanvene were as open as they could be in those times. They were kind also to the authorities, you know, apart from this issue of revealing the whereabouts of Jews, they treated their countrymen with respect. And you know, it's just, it's not that because that this justifies any kind of thing against that. One other thought that I have, I didn't put this down, but I think it's relevant, that consider the proportionality, if you accept, unless we haven't talked about, but if you accept taking a life in necessary defense of innocent life, that itself is a problematic statement. But generally that has been to end the reformed tradition, that necessary defense of innocent human life is one of those circumstances where human life may be taken. I would say if that's the case, then why should we not spare those murderers' lives by telling them falsehoods? I think that the personal relationship has been so broken down that if we may take their lives in the defense of innocent life, that this is not the step so far, I mean, the reason for that is because of the, their evil intent to break down a relationship doesn't seem to me that, reasonable, proportionally to insist on, that God would insist on literal truth in these circumstances. And there are at least these two instances in the narrative portion of Scripture that I think set a precedent. If we look carefully at the circumstances and don't use this to justify, you know, to weaken our commitment to truth at all times, except for these emergency situations.