efenders of the "lie of exigency," which may be "either uttered from
love to men, or as defense against men--a defense in which either a
justifiable self-love or sympathy with others is operative," Martensen
proceeds to show that every such falsehood is abnormal and immoral.
"When we thus maintain," he says, "that in certain difficult cases an
'untruth from necessity' may occur, which is to be allowed for the
sake of human weakness, and under the given relations may be said to
be justified and dutiful, we cannot but allow, on the other hand, that
in every such untruth there is something of sin, nay something that
needs excuse and forgiveness.... Certainly even the truth of the
letter, the external, actual truth, even the formally correct, finds
its right, the ground of its validity, in God's holy order of the
world. But by every lie of exigency the command is broken, 'Thou shalt
not bear false witness.'"

Martensen protests against the claim of Rothe that a falsehood spoken
in love "is not at all to be called a lie, but can be absolutely
defended as morally _normal_, and so in no respect needs pardon."
"However sharply we may distinguish between lie and untruth
(_mendacium_ and _falsilo-quium_), the untruth in question can never
be resolved into the morally normal." And he suggests that if one had
more of wisdom and courage and faith, he might be true to the truth in
an emergency without fear of the consequences.

"Let us suppose, for instance," he says, "the ... case, where the
husband deceives his sick spouse from fear that she could not survive
the news of the death of her child; who dare maintain that if the man
had been able in the right way, that is in the power of the gospel,
with the wisdom and the comfort of faith, to announce the death of the
child, a religious crisis might not have arisen in her soul, which
might have a healing and quickening effect upon her bodily state? And
supposing that it had even led to her death, who dare maintain that
that death, if it was a Christian death, were an evil, whether for the
mother herself, or for the survivors?

"Or, let us take the woman who, to save her chastity, applies the
defense of an untruth: who dare maintain that if she said the truth to
her persecutors, but uttered it in womanly heroism, with a believing
look to God, with the courage, the elevation of soul springing from
a pure conscience, exhibiting to her persecutors the badness and
unworthiness of their o