Conscience

Søren Kierkegaard once explained his attack on “Christendom” in this way: “There is something quite definite I have to say, and I have it so much upon my conscience that (as I feel) I dare not die without having uttered it” (Lowrie, p. viii). Conscience is not just evident at crucial turning points like this but is also a part of everyday life, though we seldom reflect on what we mean when we speak of it. We say things like “Let your conscience be your guide”; “My conscience is clear”; or “I was troubled in my conscience.” When children exasperate their parents with forbidden behavior followed by remorse, the parents sometimes comfort themselves with the fact that “at least they have a conscience.” Forensic psychiatrists sometimes deal with criminals who appear to have no conscience at all. What is our conscience? How does it work? Why does it sometimes deceive us? How is it possible to have a clear conscience?

Conscience in Contemporary Thought

Psychologists offer various theories to describe the almost universal experience of having an internal monitor of thought and behavior. Profoundly influential in this matter has been the thinking of Sigmund Freud, who proposed that the conscience is a subsystem of the superego. This subsystem produces feelings of guilt when society’s demands are not met and when the person does not conform to what he or she “should be.” Social learning psychologists link conscience development to the parenting process. Behavioristic psychologists view conscience as a result of conditioning by rewards and punishments so that patterns of self-criticism develop and persist even when the punishers are no longer present.

In contrast to these theoretical frameworks, theologians propose that conscience is not socially developed but “built in” as a God-designed capacity to put human beings in touch with the moral code of the universe. The Bible itself does not expound on the concept. Words for conscience are almost completely absent in the Old Testament, and are infrequently used in the New.

Conscience in the Bible

Conscience became a popular concept only in the first century b.c. in the Greek world to describe “the judge or witness within” or “knowing oneself,” both phrases translating Greek words for conscience. It was part of the Greek segmentation of the human person into sections, with the outer shell, the body, being the least valuable.

But the Hebrew view of the human person was different. Persons are integrated wholes. In the Old Testament there are only six instances of conscience in the English NIV, and in each case the word translates the general word for “soul” or “heart.”

The word conscience, for example, is not used in the text of Genesis 3:7 when Adam and Eve sinned because their whole persons were alienated from God and filled with shame. When Job declares, “My conscience [literally, heart] will not reproach me as long as I live” (Job 27:6), he is claiming his complete conviction that he is free from condemnation in relation to God; none of his sins can explain his suffering. It is not until the first Christians were called on to address the Greek world that biblical authors began to use a specific word for conscience. So in Acts and the New Testament letters we find references to “good” conscience (Acts 23:1), “weak” conscience (1 Cor. 8:7), “clear” conscience (1 Tim. 3:9), “seared” conscience (1 Tim. 4:2), “corrupted” conscience (Titus 1:15) and “cleansed” conscience (Hebrews 10:22). In Romans Paul says that the Gentiles are inexcusable for not reverencing God and that on the day of judgment they will find their consciences bearing witness to this by either “accusing” them or possibly “even defending them” (Romans 2:15).

Significantly Paul tells the Romans that his “conscience confirms . . . in the Holy Spirit” that he is speaking the truth (Romans 9:1). This last witness is especially insightful because the New Testament authors used conscience to describe the whole person in relation to God, not an independent witness built into human nature with or without God. The author of the letter to the Hebrews elaborates on this profoundly. Human beings have a guilty and polluted conscience which cannot be cleansed by sacrificial offerings in the temple, and even the ritual of the Day of Atonement offered only temporary relief (Hebrews 9:9-10). But the “once for all” sacrifice of Jesus results in a permanent cleansing that empowers us to enter the presence of God and serve all the time and every day.

Misguided Conscience

Not all condemnation is the result of the Spirit witnessing to our consciences that something is wrong. Satan “accuses” Christians day and night (Rev. 12:10). Sometimes we serve Satan’s purposes by doing our own accusing of ourselves. Worse still, we judge one another. Albert Camus once made the shrewd comment that he would wait for the final judgment by God resolutely because he had known something far worse: the judgment of human beings.

Sometimes our conscience is like a sundial operating under moonlight. It gives a reading, but the wrong one! Letting our conscience be our guide is usually bad advice. God is our guide, and conscience is only one dimension of witness to God’s guidance, but not a witness in isolation (see Guidance). Conscience gives us a false reading when we experience socially induced shame (despising our very persons) and false guilt (feeling bad for things that were not actually wrong or were not our fault). Paul deals with this in 1 Cor. 8:4, 7-8, addressing the problem of Christians who are inhibited from enjoying something for which they can truly thank God. In some cultures such shame is more pervasive than guilt. But it comes from people, not from God. Sometimes we feel no guilt for genuine sins of commission or omission. Or we condemn ourselves when God has already justified us. As John says, God is greater than our consciences. By dwelling in love “we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20).

A conspicuous blind spot of evangelical Christians has been our lack of social conscience. We have too easily been acculturated to a privatized religion that lacks the passion of the prophets and Jesus for social action and justice. This conspicuous omission shows how deeply our consciences are affected by social conditioning even in the church.

Once again Paul’s statement that his conscience confirms in the Holy Spirit that he is speaking the truth (Romans 9:1) is significant. Self-consciousness is an accurate witness when we are in the Spirit, in right relationship to God. Luther rightly said, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.” It should not be captive to culture, to peer groups, to advertising, to our judging brothers and sisters. Conscience is not a free-standing authority within us but rather dependent on and built up through capturing every thought and making it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), submitting to Word and Spirit, relying daily on the cleaning of Christ’s forgiveness and daily feeding our souls on the revelation of God’s Word.

We need the community of God’s people not only for this essential mutual nurture of our souls but also to gain perspective when we feel falsely accused or when we have actually sinned. James says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). When we have a guilty conscience we should turn to Scripture and seek prayerfully the mind and will of God in the company of God’s people. But in their company we can also rejoice that we are spiritually alive, that our consciences are not “seared” (1 Tim. 4:2) like scar tissue without any feeling and that we are wonderfully and gloriously forgiven.

» See also: Forgiveness

» See also: Soul

» See also: Spiritual Formation

» See also: Spiritual Growth

References and Resources

J. Coakley, “John Henry Livingston and the Liberty of the Conscience,” Reformed Review 46, no. 1 (Autumn 1992) 119-127; J. A. Davis, “The Interaction Between Individual Ethical Conscience and Community Ethical Conscience in 1 Cor,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 10 (December 1988) 1-18; W. Lowrie, trans., Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom” (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1944); C. A. Pierce, Conscience in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1955); C. Pinnock, “Conscience,” in Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973) 126-27; C. Words-worth, Bishop Sanderson’s Lectures on Conscience and Law (Oxford: James Williamson, 1877).

— R. Paul Stevens