When Even the Apostles Found a Lie Useful

Taught by examples like these, the blessed apostle James and all the chief leaders of the early church urged the apostle Paul, because of the weakness of feeble people, to stoop to a pretended arrangement. They insisted that he purify himself as the law required, shave his head and pay his vows. They thought the immediate harm that would come from this hypocrisy counted for nothing, and they looked instead to the gain that would come from his preaching for a longer time. For the gain to the apostle Paul from his strictness would not have outweighed the loss to all the nations from his early death. And the whole church would certainly have suffered that loss then, if this good and wholesome hypocrisy had not kept him alive to preach the gospel. For we may rightly and pardonably go along with the wrong of a lie when, as we said, a greater harm hangs on telling the truth, and when the good that comes to us from speaking the truth cannot outweigh the harm it will cause. [a]

Elsewhere the blessed apostle testifies in other words that he himself always kept to this frame of mind. He says: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, to win the Jews. To those who were under the law I became as one under the law, though I myself was not under the law, to win those who were under the law. To those who were without the law I became as one without the law, though I was not without the law of God but under the law of Christ, to win those who were without the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I became all things to all people, to save all.” What does this show, except that he always lowered himself to the weakness and the capacity of those he was teaching, and relaxed something of the full vigor of perfection? He did not cling to what his own strict life might seem to demand, but preferred what the good of the weak required.

To trace these matters out more carefully, and to recount one by one the glories of the Apostles’ good deeds, someone may ask how the blessed apostle can be shown to have fitted himself to all people in all things. When did he become as a Jew to the Jews? Certainly when he circumcised Timothy, and so took on a kind of shadow of Jewish superstition, even though in his inmost heart he still held the view he had stated to the Galatians: “Look: I, Paul, tell you that if you are circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” And again, where did he become as one under the law to those under the law? Certainly there, where James and all the elders of the church came to his help in his difficulty with counsel and advice. They were afraid he might be attacked by the crowd of Jewish believers, or rather of Judaizing Christians, who had received the faith of Christ in such a way that they were still bound by the rites of the law’s ceremonies. They said: “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law. But they have heard about you that you teach the Jews who live among the Gentiles to abandon Moses, saying that they should not circumcise their children.” And a little further on: “So do what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Take them, purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads. Then everyone will know that what they have heard about you is false, and that you yourself also live in keeping with the law.” And so, for the good of those who were under the law, he trampled for a while on the strict view he had expressed: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I may live to God.” He was driven to shave his head, to be purified as the law required, and to pay his vows in the temple by the rites of Moses.

Do you also ask where, for the good of those who knew nothing at all of God’s law, he himself became as one without the law? Read the opening of his sermon at Athens, where pagan wickedness was flourishing. “As I passed by,” he says, “I saw your idols, and an altar on which was written: To the unknown God.” Having started in this way from their superstition, as if he himself had been without the law, he brought in the faith of Christ under cover of that unholy inscription, saying: “What you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.” A little later, as if he had known nothing whatever of God’s law, he chose to bring forward a line of a pagan poet rather than a saying of Moses or of Christ: “As some of your own poets have also said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’” Having approached them in this way with their own authorities, which they could not reject, and so confirming the truth by things that were false, he went on to say: “Since, then, we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone carved by human art and skill.” But he became weak to the weak when, by way of permission and not of command, he allowed those who could not control themselves to come together again; or when he fed the Corinthians with milk and not with solid food, and says that he was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling. And he became all things to all people, so as to save all, when he says: “Let the one who eats not despise the one who does not eat, and let the one who does not eat not judge the one who eats.” And: “The one who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and the one who does not give her in marriage does better.” And elsewhere: “Who is weak,” he says, “and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” In this way he fulfilled what he had told the Corinthians to do: “Give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of Christ, just as I also please everyone in everything, not seeking my own advantage but that of the many, so that they may be saved.”

It would certainly have been to his own advantage not to circumcise Timothy, not to shave his head, not to undergo Jewish purification, not to practice going barefoot, and not to pay vows under the law. But he did all these things because he did not seek his own advantage but that of the many. And although this was done with full consideration of God, it was still not free from pretense. For a man who through the law of Christ had died to the law so that he might live to God, and who had counted as dung the righteousness of the law in which he had lived blameless, so that he might gain Christ, could not offer what belonged to the law with true fervor of heart. Nor is it right to believe that the man who had said, “For if I build up again what I have torn down, I make myself a transgressor,” would himself fall into what he had condemned.

So much account is taken, not so much of the actual thing done as of the intention of the one who does it, that, on the other hand, the truth is sometimes found to have harmed some people and a lie to have done them good. When Saul was grumbling to his servants about David’s flight, he said: “Will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make all of you tribunes and centurions, that all of you have conspired against me, and there is no one to tell me?” Did Doeg the Edomite say anything but the truth when he told him: “I saw the son of Jesse in Nob, with Abimelech the son of Ahitub the priest, who consulted the Lord for him, gave him provisions, and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine as well”? For that true report he deserved to be rooted out of the land of the living, and the prophet says of him: “That is why God will destroy you forever, and pluck you up and tear you out of your tent, and your root from the land of the living.” So he, for showing the truth, is plucked up and rooted out forever from the land in which Rahab the prostitute is planted with her family for her lie. In the same way we remember that Samson, to his own great harm, betrayed to his wicked wife the truth he had long hidden by a lie. And so the truth he disclosed so thoughtlessly brought about his own deception, because he had neglected to keep the prophet’s command: “Guard the doors of your mouth from her who sleeps in your bosom.”