My church has a copy of Murray’s Principles. Perhaps I’ll check it out again this Sunday for another read of that section.

As an aside, Dr. Gerstner spoke at our church some years ago on the Decalogue and created quite a stir with that commandment. He was very fair, though, stating that he was departing from some great thinkers, and admonishing the group to search it for themselves. I’m not so sure the ones who got flustered even searched it out at all!

There’s something about the beauty of Christian brotherhood when we can have disagreements within the context of charity and rigorous study. That is why I really enjoyed MRB’s last few paragraphs this post, and this site in general.

Thanks again.

In short, there are several ways in which Bahnsen was far too hasty (”they that skate on thin ice had better move quickly”) and as a result the refutation has to go back and do some of the diligence that he skipped, perhaps thinking it was “too obvious” to be worth mentioning. I’m not going to try to defeat his argument with just a couple slick one-liners.

I read 34 again, I still think you haven’t interacted with Bahsnen’s principle. That is why I didn’t interact with your comments. When you said in your third sentence, “To say that they lied, and that the lie is praised, is shaky,” you are asserting the debate. It is not shaky when one takes Bahsnen’s principle in view. But I think I know where we are missing each other.

I was unclear, and I’m sorry. By Bahnsen’s argument I’m not talking about whether the midwives passage is a case in which lies are praised, but the general approach to defending apparent exceptions to the 10 commandments. I don’t find this in MRB’s orignial post, or in any of the comments. Furthermore, MRB’s fifth paragraph of his original post is in effect an assertion to the contary of Bahsnen’s principle, rather than an interaction with it. That’s as close as this post comes to what I think is key to the issue.

Your readers may want to hear Bahsnen’s principle.

When God give the 10 Commandments there are apparent exceptions offered to them (in every commandment but one) because the Decalogue is a general summary. We must go into the case laws and the history of God’s people to see how those commandments are flushed out in life and how they are to be understood. In the case of lying, if God’s Word gives us the exception then it is right under such circumstances with no other alternative apparent to us, in the protection of innocent human life, to lie. (This near-verbatim from Abortion and General Questions and Answers, a two-dollar downloadable mp3.)

Also, I commend to all readers a careful study of the chapter “Sanctity of Truth” in John Murray’s Principles of Conduct. That is actually a sine qua non for any discussion of biblical ethics that would hope to advance the church’s understanding.

This text is not a strong one to prove the latter, but I fail to see the problem in making a distinction between lying to enemies in circumscribed situations and sinful lying. Sort of the murder/killing distinction, or the fornication/leverate law distinction. I’m with Bahsnen on this one. Why has no one interacted Bahsnen’s argument?

To say that they lied, and that the lie is praised, is shaky. Why would it be more praiseworthy to save the children and lie about it than to save them without lying? Because it would also save their own sorry skins? But that is far from the biblical ethic.

But moreover, it is entirely possible that they were telling the truth, although perhaps in a manner that concealed the full truth. (But concealment is not at issue ethically.)

There were approximately 600,000 battle-aged males (Ex 12:37). This would be roughly the same number of females in child-bearing years. However, say the number of married females in solid child-bearing years would be half that, or 300,000. Say a typical woman got pregnant every three years. Then that is 100,000 births per year or about 300 per day. Obviously, that is far too many for two midwives to assist with more than about 4% of the births (and even that would be pretty frantic), of which half on the average would be males, or 2% of the births in which these midwives even could have gotten to them and strangled them. So even if they had cooperated with Pharaoh, it would have been a drop in the bucket. Apparently Pharaoh was too blinded by his rage to “do the math” and so he didn’t realize this. So when Shifrah and Puah said the Hebrew women are “lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them” (Ex 1:19) this would have been even more true than the words seemed to denote. Perhaps at that moment the numbers sank in for the first time, and Pharaoh let them go.

In view of the numbers, I’m thinking, the “midwives” were actually something more like pre- and post-natal consultants on nutrition and other motherly issues; or perhaps they were summoned just for difficult cases.

Now, the objection might be: if it either was not a lie, or being a lie, the lie was not praised as part of the situation that is found praiseworthy about the midwives, then why does Scripture mention their statement to Pharaoh at all?

I don’t know. But here are a few possibilities. There are probably many more possibilities.

1. With regard to the specifics of this case, note that the lie (if it was one) took place after the actual defiance of Pharaoh’s order. Therefore, it won’t do to say that “the lie was necessary to the end of preserving life, so that the latter cannot be praised without implicitly allowing the lie necessary to its execution.” The lie (if it was one) was not necessary to its execution.

2. Scripture is full of anecdotal color to which you scratch your head and say, “why is this mentioned?” It is not possible to give a universal answer to that question. Part of the answer is undoubtedly to be found in wisdom, in which the contemplating of strange elements is itself part of the necessary process to be wise. Maybe the midwives’ statement to Pharaoh is meant to teach us that the wicked will often be satisfied with the truth: so try it; do not despair. Or maybe the point is to conclude, “despite the weakness of these women in not being able to look Pharaoh in the eye and say, ‘we will not do it,’ they were still approved by God for doing the right thing in the end.”

3. Part of the answer may be just narrative integrity. If every story were told stripped of all the color, keeping only those elements needed to make a moral point, then many of the stories would seem more like fiction, or legends. The odd detail confirms its historicity. (C S Lewis made this point in connection with the phrase “and it was night” [John 13:30]).

I’m interested in your take on Rahab and the midwives as well.

It seems clear that the midwives were praised for their disobedience to Pharaoh which required, at least in their minds, deceitfulness. And it seems clear that Rahab is praised for her actions which also required deceitfulness.

And it seems clear that neither Exodus, Joshua, James, nor Hebrews speaks a word of qualification concerning their actions.

So with that in mind, how would you argue that Rahab’s and the midwives’ actions would not constitute some kind of case-law exception to the 9th Commandment?

@ Ed Enochs (#13): “Situation Ethics” (given formal expression by Joseph Fletcher) is by no means the only ethical system to take into account the situation. One perfectly reasonable example of an ethical system that takes the situation into account is John Frame’s perspectivalism.

A more striking example is the case law in Exodus, in which killing another (”You shall not kill”) is permitted in certain situations.

“situation” != “situation ethics”

Jeff Cagle

The question however is whether there is a stability to God’s Will such that we can say that he has a nature (or manifests himself with a stable posture that could be called an analogy to nature).

To ask it is to answer it: God reveals himself as such stability. “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed,” Malachi 3:6.

Therefore, the question makes sense to ask, could it be that God lies, given that lying is contrary to His law (Will).

In addition, a particular objection goes deeper to the nature of truth’s foundation itself. See comment #2.

Try to state your thesis in one sentence.