32. Perjury
Introduction 32. Perjury The present question discusses a special kind of lie, one in which God is invoked asa witness to the truth. It is a good example of how certain specific sins involving social aspects of our behavior which normally pertain to the natural law only in the secondary sense, can be invested with an absolute malice, namely, insofar as they are reducible to what pertains to the natural law in a primary sense.
Scotus divides the question into three articles: (I) the first deals with the nature of an oath; (2) from this Scotus derives the reason for the second point he wishes to make, why perjury-where the act is done deliberately and knowingly-is always a serious or mortal sin;
(3) the third article goes on to deal with special kinds of oaths and the types of sin involved if one takes them carelessly, or uses them to guarantee the truth of a deliberate lie.
The first article defines an oath in terms of St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews:
I say that an oath is an assertion that some human statement is true, and this in a final or ultimate sense, according to that text from the Epistle to the Hebrews [6:16): "An oath confirms a statement and ends all argument." And the reason is this. Man knows he cannot trust completely his mendacious and ignorant fellowman, since he can be deceived and can deceive. Therefore, he turns to a witness who is truthful and knows the facts, one who can neither deceive nor be deceived, and he does this by taking an oath; for there he asks
God, who knows the truth and cannot lie, to bear witness to what he is saying.
From this description of an oath, Scotus sets up his main thesis, namely, that perjury is a mortal sin because it violates the second commandment of the first table of the natural law in what it forbids absolutely, viz., that God be shown any irreverence. This obligation binds at all times and under all conditions, and God can never dispense from it.
From this our thesis on perjury follows. For it is an act of irreverence to call upon God as witness to the truth of a false statement; or to treat him as if he were ignorant of the truth, and hence not omniscient; or to deal with him as though he would gladly bolster a lie, and thus were not entirely truthful. All of these, however, manifest an irreverence towards God that is immediately opposed to that commandment of the first table: "You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain" [Exodus 20:7). Hence, any deliberate instance of this would be a mortal sin.
Scotus then raises two doubtful points: First, does lack of deliberation excuse one from serious sin? Second, may one sin mortally by
Sin III calling upon God to bear witness in the aforesaid way to something that is only an opinion one believes to be true, or to something which only has some plausibility, but which one is more inclined to believe false? In other words, how certain must one be of what one confirms with an oath?
In reply to the first doubt, he points out that moral theologians commonly admit that one such indeliberate instance of swearing to the truth, where the truth in question is not anything serious or anything that would cause injury to anyone, would not be seriously sinful, since to commit a grave sin one must avert to its gravity and deliberately choose to do it. However, many would claim that habitual or continued behavior of this sort, where no attempt to correct it is made, could eventually become something grave. The assumption here is that the acquired habit is a more serious matter than an individual act. Scotus disagrees with this view on the ground that if one instance is not a serious sin, neither is a second, or a third, etc. Furthermore, the gravity-in terms of sinfulness-of a habit depends not on how strong it is, but on the gravity of the individual acts from which it stems. If the acts which generate the habit are venial, then so too is the habit generated. He calls attention to another common moral principle, namely, that if by repeated acts one has acquired a formidable habit of sin-for instance, impurity, drunkenness, violent anger-and seriously repents of such, and hence is restored to grace, this does not immediately destroy the force of the acquired habit. One has to set up an equally strong counterhabit by repeated acts of virtue before the vice that has become a second nature is eventually eliminated. Hence, a sin of backsliding may actually be less grievous in such a repentant sinner than it would be in one who deliberately indulged in such.
Hence, Scotus concludes that the strength of the habit is only contingently connected with the gravity of a particular act. One must judge the act on its own merits, that is, in terms not only of its object, but of the specific circumstances that surround it. If one takes God's name in vain without due deliberation, the sin is always venial; if one knowingly and deliberately does so, then it is a mortally sinful act of irreverence against the second commandment. In regard to the necessary deliberation, however, he adds this caveat. Deliberation is not necessarily a lengthy matter. Just as one skilled in how to act in a particular instance can act prudently without a belabored reasoning process, so too one accustomed to acting imprudently could easily and instantaneously recognize that the action one is about to commit is gravely sinful, and hence the necessary deliberation for sin would be present.
Introduction Scotus' second doubt concerns taking an oath where there is no cer~ tain knowledge, but only probability. What occasioned this doubt seems to have been the custom of requiring witnesses to swear to the worthiness of candidates for certain ecclesiastical or educational offices, such as the prelacy or the office of chancellor, rector, or master, ac~ cording to certain university regulations. By way of solving the prob~ lem by dispelling this doubt, Scotus appeals to how positive law or custom regards the nature of such an oath. He writes:
As for the second doubt, I say that according to positive law or custom a person swearing regards the oath in one of two ways. Either [a] it represents an unqualified assertion of the matter sworn to, or [b] it does not, but rather expresses something the person swearing regards as a probable assumption one ought to believe.
The first sort of oath would represent the type taken in a court trial where punishment (either imprisonment or the death penalty) could be meted out according to the truth or falsity of the witness's testi~ mony. Here Scotus says that "a person sins mortally in calling on God to confirm as simply true and certain what is not simply such."
The second sort of oath is quite different, inasmuch as the witness is not called upon to testify to something unfavorable to the person whose worthiness is under consideration for some sort of favorable pro~ motion. It suffices, says Scotus, to favor the candidate, unless one is absolutely certain of his or her unworthiness for the position. Here, the qualification "so far as human frailty permits" is either tacitly as~ sumed or expressly stated by the witness in giving testimony about the candidate.
This distinction between the two sorts of oaths is in accord with the general principle of canon and civil law that in unfavorable matters one is presumed to be innocent of crime until proven guilty, whereas in favorable matters one is presumed to be worthy unless proven otherwise.
He concludes this second article, however, with a reiteration of the truth of his basic thesis:
Generally speaking, however, whether it be in favorable or in odious matters, a person sins mortally who swears to the opposite of what he more strongly believes to be so, or swears to something simply dubious where he has no more reason to believe in his heart that this is true rather than that. For he calls God to witness something he ought to be certain about which is in nei~ ther way certain to him.
He goes on to deal with the other aspect of his thesis, namely, that perjury is essentially a sin against a precept belonging to the first table of the law.