Conscience

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CONSCIENCE.—The term occurs 30 times in the NT; it signifies joint knowledge. The two things known together may be two motives, two deeds, etc.; or the comparison instituted may be between a standard and a volition, etc. Self or others may be judged, and approval (Act_23:1; Act_24:16, Rom_9:1, 2Co_1:12, 1Ti_1:5; 1Ti_1:19; 1Ti_3:9, 2Ti_1:3, Heb_13:18, 1Pe_3:16; 1Pe_3:21) or disapproval (Joh_8:9, Heb_9:9; Heb_10:2; Heb_10:22) may be the issue. The conviction that a certain course of conduct is right is accompanied by a sense of obligation, whether that course receives (Rom_13:5) or fails to secure (1Pe_2:19, Act_4:19-20) legal confirmation. The belief on which the consciousness of duty depends is not necessarily wise (1Co_8:7; 1Co_8:10; 1Co_8:12, Act_26:9), though the holders of the belief should receive careful consideration on the part of more enlightened men (Rom_15:1, 1Co_8:1-13; 1Co_10:25; 1Co_10:29). Unfaithfulness to moral claims leads to fearful deterioration, resulting in confusion (Mat_6:22-23) and insensitiveness (1Ti_4:2, Tit_1:15).
1. Sphere.—The sphere of conscience is volition in all its manifestations. That which merely happens and offers to us no alternative movement lies outside morality. Let there be a possibility of choice, and conscience appears. Appetites, so far as they can be controlled; incentives of action admitting preference; purposes and desires,—all deeds and Institutions that embody and give effect to human choice; all relationships that allow variations in our attitude give scope for ethical investigation, and in them conscience is directly or indirectly implicated. Conscience makes a valuation. It is concerned with right, wrong; worthiness, unworthiness; good, bad; better, worse. This appraisement is ultimately occupied with the incentives that present themselves to the will, in regard to some of which (envy and malice, for instance) there is an Immediate verdict of badness, and in regard to others a verdict of better or worse. The dispositions that are commended by the Saviour’s conduct and teachings—purity of heart, meekness, mercifulness, desire for righteousness, etc.—are recognized as worthy of honour. The conscience censures the selfishness of the Unjust Judge (Luk_18:6), and assents to the injunction of considerateness and justice (Php_2:4). The rightness of many general statements is discerned intnitively, and is carried over to the deeds that agree therewith. Sidgwick considers that the statement ‘I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another’ is axiomatic, and that some such intnitively discerned principle is a necessary foundation of morals. We do not question the baseness of some pleasures; their curse is graven on their foreheads. Both mediately and immediately we arrive at ethical convictions. The appearance in one’s life of a person of distinguished excellence will cause many virtues to shine in our estimation. The mind surveying a course of conduct can judge it as bad or good on the whole. A precept to seek to raise the whole tone of one’s life (Mat_5:48, Col_4:12) is felt to be reasonable, and as the capacity for improvement is greater in man than in any other creature, better motives, deeds, habits, aims, characters may righteously be demanded.
2. Obligation.—‘In the recognition of any conduct as right there is involved an authoritative prescription to do it.’ This feeling of oughtness—which is the core of conscience—can be exhibited but not analyzed. It is an ultimate. It is unique. It is an evidence within the soul that we are under government. There is a ‘categorical imperative’ to aim at that which we have admitted to be right. From the duty discerned there issues a command which cannot be silenced so long as the duty is present to the mind. Likings or dislikings, hopes or fears, popularity or unpopularity—no matter what may be advanced,—the dictatorial mandate is unaltered:
‘’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.’
When Jesus Christ asserts His supremacy and demands deference to Himself at all costs, He does so as the incarnation of the moral law. To be His friend is to be under His orders (Joh_15:14), and one is bound to follow Him without regard to any claims that can be urged by self or kindred (Mat_10:37-38, Luk_14:33). Let it be ascertained that this is the way and the command is at once heard, ‘Walk ye in it.’ The peremptory claim made by conscience is eminently reasonable, because it rests upon what we have admitted to be right. It is a provision in our nature that links—or that would link if we were loyal—belief and practice, and would cause us to be builders as well as architects. ‘Had it strength as it has right; had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world’ (Butler, Serm. ii.).
3. The ethical feeling.—The perception of oughtness has its own emotional tone. There is, of course, a sense of relief when the mind has arrived at a decision; but is there not an additional element? Is there not an inclination—at least a faint one—in favour of the behest? And in men habitually conscientious, is not the inclination immediate and strong? All men are clearly aware that they are wrong in case of refusal to obey. Man is a born judge of himself, and the verdict that results from self-examination brings peace or uneasiness. Herod is ill at ease by reason of self-judgment (Mar_6:20), and so is Felix (Act_24:25). Peter sees himself as one who has broken the law, and the light hurts him (Luk_5:8). All the best men have had some experience like that of Isaiah (Isa_6:5) and that of Job (Job_42:6), for with them the moral susceptibility has been great. All the emotional accompaniments of penitence and remorse, as well as the glow incident to the hearing of noble deeds—all anticipations of the Lord’s ‘Well done!’ are instances of moral feeling. These pleasures and pains are a class by themselves. They are as distinct from those of sensation and intellect as colours are distinct from sound. That pleasures are qualitatively different was rightly maintained by J. S. Mill, though his general theory was not helped by the opinion. In consciousness we know that sorrow for sin is not of the same order as any physical distress, nor is it to be ranked with the feeling of disappointment when we are baffled in a scientific inquiry. The difference between the moral and the unmoral emotions is one of kind and not of quantity, of worth and not of amount: some pleasures low in the scale of value are very intense, while the moral satisfactions may have small intensity and yet are preferred by good men to any physical or intellectual delights. It should be noticed that the pleasure attendant upon a choice of conduct known to be right may be not unmixed; for the feelings, clinging for a while to that which has been discarded, interfere with the satisfaction due to the change that has been made. Converts are haunted by renounced beliefs, and their peace is disturbed; beside the main current of emotion there is a stream which comes from past associations and habits.
4. Education of conscience.—(1) No training can impart the idea of right: it is constitutional. (2) Malevolent feelings (as vindictiveness, the desire to give pain gratuitously) are known by all to be wrong; immediately they are perceived at work, they are unconditionally condemned. (3) The inward look makes no mistake as to our meaning, gets no wavering reply to such questions as, ‘Do you desire to have full light? to know all the facts? to be impartial? to act as a good man should act in this particular?’ For this accurate self-knowledge provision is made in our nature. (4) Some general moral principles are accepted as soon as the terms are understood. (5) When two competing incentives are to be judged, we know, and cannot be taught, which is the higher. (6) The imperative lodged in a moral conviction is intuitively discerned. ‘I do not know how to impart the notion of moral obligation to any one who is entirely devoid of it’ (Sidgwick). (7) The feeling of dishonour comes to us without tuition when we have refused compliance with known duty. Belonging to a moral order, we are made to react in certain definite ways to truths, social relations, etc. The touch of experience is enough to quicken into action certain moral states, just as the feelings of cold and heat are ours because of the physical environment, and because we are what we are. We can evoke while we cannot create the elementary moral qualities. ‘An erring conscience is a chimera’ (Kant). ‘Conscience intuitively recognizes moral law; it is supreme in its authority; it cannot be educated’ (Calderwood). These sentences are not intended to deny that in the application of principles there is difficulty. One may readily admit the axioms of geometry, and yet find much perplexity when asked to establish a geometrical theorem the truth of which directly or indirectly flows from the axioms. The Apostle Paul prayed that his friends might improve in moral discrimination (Php_1:10, Col_1:9). We have to learn what to do, and often the problems set by our domestic, civic, and church relationships are hard even for the best and wisest to solve. The scheme of things to which we belong has not been constructed with a view to saving us the trouble of patient, strenuous, and sometimes very painful investigation and thought.
5. Implications.—Of the many implications the following are specially noteworthy. The feeling of responsibility suggests the question, to Whom? Being under government, we feel after the Ruler if haply we may find Him. Jesus tells us of the ‘Righteous Father.’ The solemn voice of command is His. The preferences which we know to be right are His. The pain felt when righteous demands are resisted, and the joy accompanying obedience, are they not His frown and smile? Neither our higher self nor society can be the source of an authority so august as that of which we are conscious. To the best minds we look for guidance; but there are limits to their rights over us, and how ready they are to refer us to Him before whom they bow! We are made to be subjects of the Holy One. Admitting that we are in contact with Divine Authority, and that His behests are heard within, the encouraging persuasion is justified that He sympathizes with the soul in its battles and renders aid (Php_2:12-13). The inference that it is God with whom we have to do makes it fitting for us to say that conscience is man’s capacity to receive progressively a revelation of the righteousness of God. But is law the last word? May there not be mercy and an atonement? Cannot the accusing voices be hushed? May the man who admits the sentence of conscience be pardoned? Conscience is a John the Baptist preparing the way for the Saviour, who has a reply to the question ‘What must I do to be saved?’
W. J. Henderson.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909


is that principle, power, or faculty within us, which decides on the merit or demerit of our own actions, feelings, or affections, with reference to the rule of God's law. It has been called the moral sense by Lord Shaftsbury and Dr. Hutcheson. This appellation has been objected to by some, but has been adopted and defended by Dr. Reid, who says, “The testimony of our moral faculty, like that of the external senses, is the testimony of nature, and we have the same reason to rely upon it.” He therefore considers conscience as an original faculty of our nature, which decides clearly, authoritatively, and instantaneously, on every object that falls within its province. “As we rely,” says he, “upon the clear and distinct testimony of our eyes, concerning the colours and figures of the bodies about us, we have the same reason to rely, with security, upon the clear and unbiassed testimony of our conscience, with regard to what we ought and ought not to do.” But Dr. Reid is surely unfortunate in illustrating the power of conscience by the analogy of the external senses. With regard to the intimations received through the organs of sense, there can be no difference of opinion, and there can be no room for argument. They give us at once correct information, which reasoning can neither invalidate nor confirm. But it is surely impossible to say as much for the power of conscience, which sometimes gives the most opposite intimations with regard to the simplest moral facts, and which requires to be corrected by an accurate attention to the established order of nature, or to the known will of God, before we can rely with confidence on its decisions. It does not appear, that conscience can with propriety be considered as a principle distinct from that which enables us to pronounce on the general merit or demerit of moral actions. This principle, or faculty, is attended with peculiar feelings, when we ourselves are the agents; we are then too deeply interested to view the matter as a mere subject of reasoning; and pleasure or pain are excited, with a degree of intensity proportioned to the importance which we always assign to our own interests and feelings. In the case of others, our approbation or disapprobation is generally qualified, sometimes suspended, by our ignorance of the motives by which they have been influenced; but, in our own case, the motives and the actions are both before us, and when they do not correspond, we feel the same disgust with ourselves that we should feel toward another, whose motives we knew to be vicious, while his actions are specious and plausible. But in our own case, the uneasy feeling is heightened in a tenfold degree, because self- contempt and disgust are brought into competition with the warmest self- love, and the strongest desire of self-approbation. We have then something of the feelings of a parent, who knows the worthlessness of the child he loves, and contemplates with horror the shame and infamy which might arise from exposure to the world.
2. Conscience, then, cannot be considered as any thing else than the general principle of moral approbation or disapprobation applied to our own feelings or conduct, acting with increased energy from the knowledge which we have of our motives and actions, and from the deep interest which we take in whatever concerns ourselves; nor can we think that they have deserved well of morals or philosophy, who have attempted to deduce our notions of right and wrong from any one principle. Various powers both of the understanding and of the will are concerned in every moral conclusion; and conscience derives its chief and most salutary influence from the consideration of our being continually in the presence of God, and accountable to him for all our thoughts, words, and actions. A conscience well informed, and possessed of sensibility, is the best security for virtue, and the most awful avenger of wicked deeds; an ill-informed conscience is the most powerful instrument of mischief; a squeamish and ticklish conscience generally renders those who are under its influence ridiculous.
Hic murus aheneus esto,
Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.
(Let a consciousness of innocence, and a fearlessness of any accusation, be thy brazen bulwark.)
3. The rule of conscience is the will of God, so far as it is made known to us, either by the light of nature, or by that of revelation. With respect to the knowledge of this rule, conscience is said to be rightly informed, or mistaken; firm, or wavering, or scrupulous, &c. With respect to the conformity of our actions to this rule when known, conscience is said to be good or evil. In a moral view, it is of the greatest importance that the understanding be well informed, in order to render the judgment or verdict of conscience a safe directory of conduct, and a proper source of satisfaction. Otherwise, the judgment of conscience may be pleaded, and it has actually been pleaded, as an apology for very unwarrantable conduct. Many atrocious acts of persecution have been perpetrated, and afterward justified, under the sanction of an erroneous conscience. It is also of no small importance, that the sensibility of conscience be duly maintained and cherished; for want of which men have often been betrayed into criminal conduct without self-reproach, and have deluded themselves with false notions of their character and state.
See MORAL OBLIGATION.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.


There is within the human mind something that acts as a moral judge. It tells people what is right and wrong, urges them to do right, and gives them feelings of either innocence or guilt, depending on whether they obey or disobey it. This moral judge we call conscience (Rom_2:15-16; 1Jn_3:19-21).
Although the Old Testament does not mention the word ‘conscience’, it certainly refers to the activity of conscience (Gen_3:7-8; 2Sa_24:10; Job_27:6; Psa_32:3; Psa_51:3-4). Conscience is not a perfect judge, because sin has affected the conscience as it has affected every other part of human nature (Luk_11:35; Eph_2:1-3). Therefore the conscience, like the rest of human nature, needs cleansing from the effects of sin, and this comes about only through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ (Heb_9:14; Heb_10:22).
The conscience also needs instruction, because it can only make judgments according to the knowledge it possesses (Rom_2:14-15; 1Co_8:7; 1Co_8:10). Christians must therefore train and discipline the conscience so that it is well instructed, pure, active and sensitive (Act_24:16; Eph_4:17; Eph_4:23; 1Ti_1:5; 1Ti_1:19; 2Ti_1:3). When people ignore conscience, it can easily become defiled, hardened or dead (1Ti_4:2; Tit_1:15).
A properly developed conscience will lead people to do what is right, whether a written law demands it or not (Rom_13:5; 1Pe_3:16). Christians must be careful to keep the conscience clear in all that they do (2Co_1:12; Heb_13:18). At the same time they must realize that a clear conscience does not necessarily mean they are faultless (1Co_4:4-5). Sometimes the conscience may be clear in relation to something they want to do, but they decide not to do it because of the bad effect it could have on others (Rom_14:22-23; 1Co_10:28-29). The conscience must be clear before God, not just clear according to standards people set for themselves (Act_23:1; Rom_9:1).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.


kon?shens (ἡ συνείδησις, hē suneı́dēsis):
I. Sequent Conscience
1. Judicial
2. Punitive
3. Predictive
4. Social
II. Antecedent Conscience
III. Intuitional and Associational Theories
IV. The Education of Conscience
V. History and Literature
1. Earlier Views
2. Reformation and After
I. Sequent Conscience
The aspect of conscience earliest noticed in literature and most frequently referred to at all times is what is called the Sequent Conscience - that is to say, it follows action.
1. Judicial
This is judicial. No sooner is a decision formed than there ensues a judgment favorable or adverse, a sentence of guilty or not guilty. Conscience has often been compared to a court of law, in which there are culprit, judge, witnesses and jury; but these are all in the subject's own breast, and are in fact himself.
2. Punitive
It is punitive. In the individual's own breast are not only the figures of justice already mentioned, but the executioner as well; for, on the back of a sentence of condemnation or acquittal, there immediately follows the pain of a wounded or the satisfaction of an approving conscience; and of all human miseries or blisses this is the most poignant. Especially has the remorse of an evil conscience impressed the human imagination, in such instances as Cain and Judas, Saul and Herod; and the poets, those knowers of human nature, have found their most moving themes in the delineation of this aspect of human experience. The ancient poets represented the terrors of conscience under the guise of the Erinyes or Furies, who, with swift, silent, unswerving footstep, tracked the criminal and pulled him down, while Shakespeare, in such dramas as Macbeth and Richard the Third, has burned the same lessons into the imagination of all readers of his works. The satisfaction of a good conscience may stamp itself on the habitual serenity of one face, and the accusations of an evil conscience may impart a hunted and sinister expression to another (compare The Wisdom of Solomon 17:11).
3. Predictive
It is predictive. There is no instinct in the soul of man more august than the anticipation of something after death - of a tribunal at which the whole of life will be revised and retribution awarded with perfect justice according to the deeds done in the body. It is this which imparts to death its solemnity; we instinctively know that we are going to our account. And such great natural instincts cannot be false.
4. Social
It is social. Not only does a man's own conscience pass sentence on his conduct, but the consciences of others pass sentence on it too; and to this may be due a great intensification of the consequent sensations. Thus, a crime may lie hidden in the memory, and the pain of its guilt may be assuaged by the action of time, when suddenly and unexpectedly it is found out and exposed to the knowledge of all; and, only when the force of the public conscience breaks forth on the culprit, driving him from society, does he feel his guilt in all its magnitude. The ?Day of Judgment? (which see), as it is represented in Scripture, is an application of this principle on a vast scale; for there the character and conduct of everyone will be submitted to the conscience of all. On the other hand, a friend may be to a man a second conscience, by which his own conscience is kept alive and alert; and this approval from without may, in some cases, be, even more than the judgment within, an encouragement to everything that is good or a protection against temptation.
II. Antecedent Conscience
From the Sequent is distinguished the Antecedent Conscience, which designates a function of this faculty preceding moral decision or action. When the will stands at the parting of the ways, seeing clearly before it the right course and the wrong, conscience commands to strike into the one and forbids to choose the other. This is its imperative; and - to employ the language of Kant - it is a categorical imperative. What conscience commands may be apparently against our interests, and it may be completely contrary to our inclinations; it may be opposed to the advice of friends or to the solicitations of companions; it may contradict the decrees of principalities and powers or the voices of the multitude; yet conscience in no way withdraws or modifies its claim. We may fail to obey, giving way to passion or being overborne by the allurements of temptation; but we know that we ought to obey; it is our duty; and this is a sublime and sacred word. The great crises of life arise when conscience is issuing one command and self-interest or passion or authority another, and the question has to be decided which of the two is to be obeyed. The interpreters of human life have known how to make use of such moments, and many of the most memorable scenes in literature are of this nature; but the actual history of mankind has also been dignified with numerous instances in which confessors and martyrs, standing on the same ground, have faced death rather than contravene the dictates of the authority within; and there never passes an hour in which the eye of the All-seeing does not behold someone on earth putting aside the bribes or self-interest or the menaces of authority and paying tribute to conscience by doing the right and taking the consequences.
III. Intuitional and Associational Theories
Up to this point there is little difficulty or difference of opinion; but now we come to a point at which very differing views emerge. It was remarked above, that when anyone stands at the parting of the ways, seeing clearly the right course and the wrong, conscience imperatively commands him which to choose and which to avoid; but how does anyone know which of the two alternatives is the right and which the wrong? Does conscience still suffice here, or is he dependent on another faculty? Here the Intuitional and the Associational, or - speaking broadly - the Scotch and the English, the German and the French schools of ethics diverge, those on the one side holding that conscience has still essential guidance to give, while those on the other maintain that the guidance must now be undertaken by other faculties. The Sensational or Experimental school holds that we are dependent on the authority of society or on our own estimate of the consequences of actions, while the opposite school teaches that in the conscience there is a clear revelation of certain moral laws, approving certain principles of action and disapproving others. The strong point of the former view is the diversity which has existed among human beings in different ages and in different latitudes as to what is right and what is wrong. What was virtuous in Athens might be sinful in Jerusalem; what is admired as heroism in Japan may be despised as fool-hardiness in Britain. To this it may be replied, first, that the diversity has been greatly exaggerated; the unanimity of the human conscience under all skies being greater than is allowed by philosophers of this school. ?Let any plain, honest man,? says Butler, ?before he engages in any course of action, ask himself, Is this I am going about right, or is it wrong? Is it good, or is it evil? and I do not in the least doubt but that this question will be answered agreeably to truth and virtue by almost any fair man in almost any circumstances.? Then, there are many moral judgments supposed to be immediate verdicts of conscience which are really logical inferences from the utterances of this faculty and are liable to all the fallacies by which reasoning in any department of human affairs is beset. It is only for the major premise, not for the conclusion, that conscience is responsible. The strong point of the Intuitional school, on the other hand, is the power and right of the individual to break away from the habits of society, and, in defiance of the commands of authority or the voices of the multitude, to follow a course of his own. When he does so, is it a logical conclusion as to the consequences of action he is obeying, or a higher intuition? When, for example, Christianity announced the sinfulness of fornication in opposition to the laxity of Greece and Rome, was it an argument about consequences with which she operated successfully, or an instinct of purity which she divined at the back of the actions and opinions of heathendom? The lettering of the moral law may have to be picked out and cleansed from the accumulations of time, but the inscription is there all the same.
IV. The Education of Conscience
It may be, however, that a more exact analysis of the antecedent conscience is requisite. Between the categorical imperative, which commands to choose the right path and avoid the wrong, and the indicative, which declares that this is the right way and that the wrong, there ought perhaps to be assumed a certainty that one of the alternative ways is right and must be pursued at all hazards, while the other is wrong and must be abandoned at whatever cost. This perception, that moral distinctions exist, separate from each other as heaven and hell, is the peculiarity of conscience; but it does not exclude the necessity for taking time to ascertain, in every instance, which of the alternatives has the one character and which the other, or for employing a great variety of knowledge to make this sure. Those who would limit conscience to the faculty which utters the major premises of moral reasoning are wont to hold that it can never err and does not admit of being educated; but such a use of the term is too remote from common usage, and there must be room left for the conscience to enlighten itself by making acquaintance with such objective standards as the character of God, the example of Christ, and the teaching of Scripture, as well as with the maxims of the wise and the experience of the good.
Another question of great interest about the conscience is, whether it involves an intuition of God. When it is suffering the pain of remorse, who is it that inflicts the punishment? Is it only the conscience itself? Or is man, in such experiences aware of the existence of a Being outside of and above himself? When the will is about to act, it receives the command to choose the right and refuse the wrong; but who issues this command? Is it only itself, or does the imperative come with a sanction and solemnity betokening a higher origin? Conscience is an intuition of moral law - the reading, so to speak, of a luminous writing, which hangs out there, on the bosom of Nature - but who penned that writing? It used to be thought that the word Conscience implied, in its very structure, a reference to God, meaning literally, ?knowledge along with another,? the other being God. Though this derivation be uncertain, many think that it exactly expresses the truth. There are few people with an ethical experience of any depth who have not sometimes been overwhelmingly conscious of the approval or disapproval of an unseen Being; and, if there be any trustworthy argument for the existence of a Deity, prior to supernatural revelation, this is where it is to be found.
V. History and Literature
Only a few indications of history can be given here.
1. Earlier Views
The conscience, at least the sequent conscience, was identified in the ancient world, and the rise of a doctrine on the subject belongs to the period when the human mind, being shut out from public activity through political changes, was thrown back upon itself and began to watch closely its own symptoms. The word has a specially prominent place in the philosophical writings of Cicero. Strange to say, it does not occur in the Old Testament; but, though not the name, the thing appears there frequently enough. On the very first page of revelation, the voice of God is heard calling among the trees of the garden (Gen_3:8); and, in the very next incident, the blood of Abel cries out to heaven from the ground (Gen_4:10). In the New Testament the word occurs with tolerable frequency, especially in the speeches (Act_24:16, etc.) and writings of Paul (Rom_2:15; Rom_9:1; Rom_13:5; 1Co_6:7-12, etc.); and this might have been expected to secure for it a prominent place in the doctrine of the church. But this did not immediately take effect, although Chrysostom already speaks of Conscience and Nature as two books in which the human mind can read of God, previous to supernatural revelation. In the Middle Ages the conscience received from two sources so much stimulation that both thing and name were certain to come into greater prominence in the speculations of the schools. The one of these influences was the rise of Monasticism, which, driving human beings into solitude, made the movements of their own minds the objects of everlasting study to themselves; and the other was the practice of auricular confession, which became, especially to many of the inmates of the houses of religion, the most interesting business of life; because, in order to meet the confessor, they scanned every thought and weighed every scruple, becoming adepts at introspection and self-discipline. Thus it came to pass that ethics took the form of Cases of Conscience, the priest having to train himself, or to be trained by professors and through books, to be able to answer every query submitted to him in the confessional. The ripest fruit of this method appears in the Summa of Aquinas, who discusses elaborately the doctrine of conscience, dividing it into two parts - synderesis (from συντήρησις, suntḗrēsis) and conscientia - the one of which supplies the major premises and cannot err, while the other draws the inferences therefrom and is liable to make mistakes. The Mystics identified the synderesis as the point in the spirit of man at which it can be brought into contact and connection with the Spirit of God.
2. Reformation and After
At the Reformation the conscience was much in the mouths of men, both because the terrors of conscience formed a preparation for comprehending justification by faith and because, in appearing before principalities and powers in vindication of their action, the Reformers took their stand on conscience, as Luther did so memorably at the Diet of Worms; and the assertion of the rights of conscience has ever since been a conspicuous testimony of Protestantism; whereas Romanists, especially as represented by the Jesuits, have treated the conscience as a feeble and ignorant thing, requiring to be led by authority - that is, by themselves. The forms of medievalism long clung even to Protestant literature on this subject. It may not be surprising to find a High Churchman like Jeremy Taylor, in his Ductor Dubitantium, discussing ethics as a system of cases of conscience, but it is curious to find a Puritan like Baxter (in his Christian Directory), and a Scottish Presbyterian like David Dickson (in his Therapeutica Sacra) doing the same. Deism in England and the Enlightenment in Germany magnified the conscience, to which they ascribed such a power of revealing God as made any further revelation unnecessary; but the practical effect was a secularization and vulgarization of the general mind; and it was against these rather than the system which had produced them that Butler in England and Kant in Germany had to raise the standard of a spiritual view of life. The former said of the conscience that, if it had power as it had right, it would absolutely govern the world; and Kant's sublime saying is well known, at the close of his great work on Ethics: ?Two things fill the soul with ever new and growing wonder and reverence, the oftener and the longer reflection continues to occupy itself with them - the starry heavens above and the moral law within.? The rise of an Associational and Developmental Philosophy in England, represented by such powerful thinkers as the Mills, father and son, Professor Bain and Herbert Spencer, tended to dissipate the halo surrounding the conscience, by representing it as merely an emotional equivalent for the authority of law and the claims of custom, so stamped on the mind by the experience of generations that, its earthly source forgotten, it came to be attributed to supernatural powers. But this school was antagonized with success by such thinkers as Martineau and T. H. Green. R. Rothe regarded conscience as a term too popular and of too variable signification to be of much use in philosophical speculation; but most of the great succession of writers on Christian ethics who followed him have treated it seriously; Dorner especially recognizing its importance, and Newman Smyth bestowing on it a thoroughly modern treatment. Among German works on the subject that of Gass, which contains an appendix on the history of the term synderesis, is deserving of special attention; that by K?hler is unfinished, as is also the work in English by Robertson; The Christian Conscience by Davison is slight and popular. Weighty discussions will be found in two books on Moral Philosophy - the Handbook of Calderwood, and the Ethics of Mezes. But there is abundance of room for a great monograph on the subject, which would treat conscience in a comprehensive manner as the subjective standard of conduct, formed by progressive familiarity with the objective standards as well as by practice in accordance with its own authority and with the will of God.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.


Conscience
SEE ETHICS; SEE MORAL PHILOSOPHY,

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.





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