Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Thu, 23 Jul 1992 18:41:59 EDT
From:         JEK@NIHCU.BITNET
Subject:      Oaths and the Bible

CHRISTIA

Lora Harris asks (I paraphrase):

 > What does promising in court that you will tell the truth have
 > to do with swearing BY something?

I don't know the Canadian law, but....

In the United Kingdom, the oath taken by a witness is (or at any
rate used to be): "I swear by Almighty God that the testimony I am
about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help me God."

In the United States, it is: "I swear to tell the truth...so help me
God."

(A US witness is permitted to "affirm" instead of swearing, and to
omit the last four words. The Consitution provides an oath which the
President must take before taking office. It provides for affirming
instead of swearing, and omits the last four words altogether, but
every President to date -- including the Quakers -- has appended
them to the oath, even though they are not even suggested by the
Constitution.)

The last four words ("so help me God") are probably understood by
most witnesses to mean, "may God help me to tell the truth."
However, I understand their original meaning to be, "may God prosper
me, or afflict me, in proportion as I keep or break this oath." You
will see this meaning spelled out explicitly in the Hippocratic
Oath, if you can find a copy handy (since it includes a promise not
to assist an abortion, it is not administered to doctors as widely
as it used to be). The point of an oath is to call on God (or a god,
as the case may be) to witness your statement, and avenge the insult
to his honor that follows if you name him as a witness and then
swear falsely.

Thus, saying, "so help me God" makes the statement an oath. On the
other hand, raising your right hand has no religious significance.
In former times, convicted felons were branded on the right hand. By
raising your hand, you show the court that you are not a convicted
felon, and that therefore there is a good chance that you are a
reliable witness.

      *****     *****     *****     *****     *****

A listmember writes:

 > It's pretty odd that anyone is ever asked to swear on a book that
 > explicitly tells them not to.

We have a problem here. On the one hand, we have the injunction,
"Swear not at all, but answer simply 'yes' or 'no'; anything more
comes from evil" (Mt 5:34, echoed in James 5:12). On the other
hand....

We have the command to the Jews, "You shall worship the LORD, and by
His name you shall swear" (Dt 6:13 ; 10:20)
     Now, this can be taken to mean only that all oaths by Baal,
Molech, and the like are strictly forbidden, and that IF an
Israelite insists on taking an oath, at least it must be an oath
that recognizes the LORD, and no other, as the upholder of truth and
of the keeping of promises. But see next item.

We have the Mosaic Law, requiring testimony under oath in some
circumstances (Ex 22:10f, Nu 5:19-24).
     Now, this can be taken as a provision of the Old Covenant,
superseded by the New. But one can see good reasons why (for
example) the Levitical Sacrifices were commanded once and have since
been abolished. It is worth asking why oathtaking should be wrong
now if it was right then.

In similar passages in Daniel 12:7 and Revelation 10:5f, an angel
swears by the Eternal One that the end of the present age is
imminent.

Paul, on two occasions (Gal 1:20, 2 Cor 1:23) assures his readers
with an oath that he is speaking the truth.

Isaiah (65:16) predicts a time when men will swear "by the God of
Amen" (also translated "the God of Truth").  It is accordingly
arguable that the repeated "Amen, I say to you" (also translated,
"verily" or "truly") found in Mark 14:9,18,25,30 and John 6:26,32,47
and repeatedly throughout the Four Gospels, would in fact have been
understood by the immediate hearers as an oath by the God of Truth.

As is pointed out in Hebrews 6:13-18, God on several occasions made
a promise to Abraham or his descendants and, that it might be the
more firmly believed, took an oath, swearing by Himself that He
would fulfil His promise. (See Gen 22:16f; Ex 6:8; 13:5,11; 32:13;
33:1; Dt 1:8; Ps 89:3,35; 110:4; 132:11; Isa 45:23; Jer 22:5; 32:22;
Amos 4:2, etc.)

What are we to make of this?

Augustine of Hippo (Commentary on Matthew 5) understands the
injunction against swearing to mean something like this: In a
perfect world, or in a community of Christians who always acted as
they ought, a simple "yes" or "no" would be sufficient to assure the
hearers. However, at present, where speakers are not always
trustworthy, and, more to the point, where hearers do not always
give full trust even where it is deserved, it may be necessary to
reassure someone who would otherwise doubt a simple declaration, by
confirming the declaration with an oath. But anything beyond a
simple declaration "comes from evil." That is to say, when God took
an oath that He would bless the posterity of Abraham, He did so
because Abraham and more particularly his descendants lacked the
complete trust in God that would have made them absolutely convinced
by a simple declaration on His part without the need for an oath.
Thus His taking of an oath "came from evil." That is, it was a
consequence of a defect, not in God, but in the trustfulness of His
hearers. And for the same reason, Our Lord affirmed with special
solemnity certain of His assertions which His hearers would be
especially disposed to doubt. Likewise Paul, although his readers
were persons who had, humanly speaking, good reason to trust him, on
certain crucial occasions made a concession to their doubtfulness
and wavering by confirming his statements with an oath.

Augustine concludes that, in this present world, if a Christian is
called to testify in court, and required to swear to his testimony,
he may lawfully do so. If this were a world where the word of avery
Christian was absolutely reliable, even without an oath, and where
everyone knew this, and therefore gave to every statement from the
mouth of any Christian the full credence that it deserved (and where
no non-Christian ever falsely claimed to be a Christian), then no
Christian would ever be asked to take an oath.  Our present duty is
to conduct ourselves in such a way as to bring that state of affairs
closer.

 Yours,
 James Kiefer
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