Confusion
We have noted already that people are fairly familiar with the idea of conscience. They say “my conscience is bothering me”; “my conscience pricked me” or claim to have acted “in good conscience”. They know what it is to have something “on their conscience”. They know about a bad or a guilty conscience and, hopefully, a good one too.
Pierce has pointed out, however, that “of the number that make use of the word 19 in 20 perhaps may be ignorant of its true meaning”. This is no exaggeration. Think how other Bible words are employed in everyday language. People still speak, for example, of a thing being “as ugly as sin” or of being “more sinned against than sinning” but how often is the word understood in its biblical sense? It is similar with the word conscience.
Confusion over what exactly conscience may be is not something new. A number of Puritans comment on this. Westminster Divines John Jackson and Robert Harris speak of it having “a thousand definitions and descriptions” it being “a word of infinite latitude and great dispute” and “much talked of, but little known”. Other Puritans similarly observe the difficulty of definition.
There is evidence to suggest that in many ages the word has been given such a wide range of meaning in everyday language that, though people are familiar with it, they rarely gave it an accurate biblical definition.
Writers on conscience disagree, for example, on whether to think of it primarily as a human faculty or power, an act or habit or a created quality. If it is found in the human soul, where is it found? The understanding, the will? Surely, it is something we can speak of as distinct from these. Not only do we tend to distinguish it from them but so does the New Testament. 1 Timothy 1:5 distinguishes conscience from heart and Titus 1:15 distinguishes it from the mind. In experience too, conscience demonstrates an independence not observed in those other faculties.
Clarification - Etymology
The New Testament Greek word is syneidesis, which appears to be made up of two parts.
1. syn/sun suggests with/together. Synchronised swimmers co-ordinate their movements with each other, a symphony is performed by a number of instruments playing together at the same time.
2. The second part, eidesis, is from one of the Greek words for to know.
Conscience enables a certain knowledge – not the usual sort found in the understanding but a reflective knowledge over and above mere head knowledge.
Richard Bernard defines it as “a certain, particular, applicatory knowledge in man’s soul, reflecting upon himself, concerning matters between God and him.”
The root meaning, then, seems to be to know together, joint knowledge or knowledge shared (with another). The Anglo-Saxon word for conscience inwit suggests inward knowledge but the Latin based word that superseded it, as in the romance languages, is from con-scientia and is made up in exactly the same way as the Greek. Other European languages, though not all, are similar. Eg Swedish samvete, Russian sovest. (The Swahili word dhamira appears to be from an Arabic word simply meaning hidden. Kikuyu thamiri also).
This does not bring us directly to a biblical definition as there has been much debate over who shares the joint knowledge. Obviously, on one side is the person himself, but who is on the other? Many assume it must be God.
The only biblical arguments advanced for this view are dubious references to Elijah's still small voice and appeals to 1 Pet 2:19, “it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God”. However, Peter clearly has in mind only Christians.
Some suggest that the word's etymology proves conscience must reveal a knowledge shared with God. Thus we have definitions such as that first given in 1933 by Ole Hallesby “that knowledge or consciousness by which man knows he is conforming to the moral law or will of God”. While not without merit, such definitions are premature and potentially misleading.
Clarification - Usage
It is unwise to define a word in light only of etymology. The way a word is used is far more important.
There is some disagreement about the usage of the word synedeisis and related words. It is clear, nevertheless, that when the Greeks used this and related terms, it was not always in the context of moral judgements.
Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the NT Christian Maurer points out a famous example where Socrates' young disciple Alcibiades speaks of being conscious that he could put up no resistance to the power of his teacher’s arguments. There is no moral element involved. Least of all, in Greek thought, is there any necessary connection between conscience and God.
Even in the NT we find a related word being used in a context where conscience is clearly not intended. Acts 5:2 tells us Ananias with his wife’s full knowledge kept back money from the Apostles, while claiming it had been handed over. The word is synoida, “to know with another”. Ananias knew what he was doing and his wife knew too.
Then Acts 12:12, 14:6 (ESV) Peter “realised” and Paul and Barnabas “learned” a thing. Words from the same family are again used. At their most basic, then, such words can simply mean “to become conscious of”, “to realise”.
Hebrews 10:2 is very interesting. The ASV speaks of worshippers who “would have had no more consciousness of sins”. The word used is the same as that found in 10:22, having our hearts sprinkled to save us from a guilty conscience (NIV. TCNT … purified by the sprinkled blood from all consciousness of wrong). It is really only the words “for their sins” that brings in the moral element.
Concise Definitions
Several Puritans, tending to lean to a greater or lesser extent on the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas, attempted to define conscience concisely. For example
A man’s judgement of himself, according to the judgement of God of him. William Ames
A part of the understanding in all reasonable creatures determining of their particular actions either with them or against them. Samuel Ward, following William Perkins
The judgement of man upon himself as he is subject to God’s judgement. William Fenner
Like Ames, Fenner refers to 1 Corinthians 11:31, which he uses more simply to say, harking back to Perkins, that conscience is “a man’s true judgement of himself”.
Jim Packer sums up, conscience is “a rational faculty, a power of moral self-knowledge and judgement, dealing with questions of right and wrong, duty and desert, and dealing with them authoritatively, as God’s voice.”
From what we have already said, however, it is clear that we must not think of the conscience as a department of man’s personality or a faculty of his soul. It can be useful to speak in such terms for the purpose of study but it is important to realise that, in reality, conscience is simply one aspect of man’s personality, one function of his soul.
We have also seen that the “joint knowledge” is not necessarily shared with God himself. In fact, put simply, the conscience is man’s power of self-reflection and, particularly, self-criticism. Rehwinkel noted that the English word consciousness is made up in the same way as the word conscience. Consciousness is “awareness of”; conscience is narrower in meaning and refers to “a moral or ethical awareness”. “Conscience” he suggests “is a moral consciousness accompanied by a feeling of obligation and duty.”
The conscience and its problems (Kenneth E Kirk 1933) has a similar reminder that though we may write of conscience as a distinct entity, we must not forget that in fact “conscience is myself so far as I am a moral man”.
Milton L Rudnick, similarly calls conscience “the self in the process of ethical deliberation and evaluation .... It is not someone or something else working in or upon man, but he moral self at work, involving all of a man’s rational and emotional faculties.”
Conscience in Romans 2:14, 15 again
Given the threefold division that we saw in Rom 2:14, 15, it is clear that when we use the word conscience, we should really restrict it to the second aspect of making moral decisions, the making of judgements on the basis of what is in the moral record.
Some would suppose that this conscience only acts in a negative, condemning way.
Emil Brunner Divine Imperative speaks of it as a “sinister thing” that “attacks man like an alien, dark, hostile power”. Russian poet Pushkin, in his play Miserly Knight, called conscience “a sharp clawed animal, which scrapes the heart … an uninvited guest, annoying discourser, a rude creditor; and a witch, which dims the moon and graves.”
This may have been the Greek view but Paul points out that there are times when even the Gentile conscience can provoke thoughts that excuse as well as accuse. The Pagan can have a bad or a good conscience. Strictly speaking, of course, it is not conscience that is good or bad. We do not say a barometer is bad if it correctly predicts stormy weather; we merely say it is accurate.
Certainly the Christian can have a good conscience, as is clear from eg 2 Cor 1:12, 1 Tim 1:19. Rom 2:14, 15 teaches the moral responsibility of all men.
Walter Chantry “Conscience alone has witnessed sufficiently to the moral law, so that everyone is without excuse. Since the fall man’s heart has become a moral battleground.
Complexity
It is important not to think of conscience simplistically.
Perkins talks of mind and memory assisting it, one being the storehouse and the keeper of rules and principles and the other the recaller of omissions and commissions.
John Bunyan (The Holy War) is quite elaborate.
Bernard calls it a Director or Judge in the understanding and a Register and Secret Witness in the memory. It also works in the will, heart and affections. All the other faculties work with this one “as it commands the whole man in the execution of its offices”.
Many Puritans pictured it as a court where the roles of registrar, witnesses, prosecutor, judge and executioner are all carried out by conscience.
Such pictures are fine, provided that we remember the mysteries involved. The workings of conscience include the whole process of perceiving the requirements of God’s Law, assessing them, then deciding how to proceed or what judgement to give. The over-riding impression is one of “ought” or “ought not” but includes a whole host of mental perceptions and emotional feelings - comprehension of right and wrong; use of memory, mind and will; complacency or disquiet; shame or pride; delight or pain; anticipation of reward or punishment.
The sheer breadth of mental and emotional interplay involved can be gauged from the array of legitimate illustrations employed by different writers trying to bring out the varied character of conscience. Eg spy, watchdog, bloodhound, window, mirror, sundial, compass, barometer, plumbline, sail, lash, sword, alarm bell, GPS system, flight recorder or black box, sense of taste.
Characteristics
Christopher Ash (Pure Joy) has helpfully singled out five features of conscience. The list will help us to draw things together.
1. Conscience speaks with a voice that is independent of us. We are able to stand outside of ourselves and look at ourselves objectively. Hallesby speaks of “a sort of doubling of our personality”. We are, in a sense, able to stand outside ourselves and pronounce judgement on ourselves. We are able to some extent to offer an objective and unbiased judgement of ourselves.
2. Conscience speaks with a voice that looks backward and forward. Indeed, the judgements of conscience can concern past, present or future. In this latter role conscience acts more like a guide than a judge. Hallesby observes how it is generally at its weakest during sin, in the present, but at its strongest after the event is past.
3. Other people can appeal to my conscience, as Paul does Romans 13:5 when he tells believers that they must submit to the powers that be, not only because they may be punished but also “for the sake of conscience”.
4. God can appeal to my conscience. Luke 12:57 and Isaiah 5:3, 4 are examples. God, referring to Israel as a vineyard, says “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”
5. One does not need a Bible to hear the voice of conscience. Ash notes how Joseph rejected the invitations to her bed extended by Potiphar's wife in Egypt (Genesis 39). Even before the law was given, Joseph knew that adultery was wrong. Another example is the opening chapters of Amos where the surrounding nations are declared guilty not on the basis of the law but accepted morality.
Conclusion
Richard Sibbes says what is conscience, but the soul itself reflecting upon itself? He says it is “the property of the reasonable soul and the excellency of it, that it can return upon itself.” Samuel Rutherford has a catechism that similarly speaks of conscience as “the principal part of the soul”. When we speak of the workings of conscience, then, we are speaking, clearly, of the moral workings of the soul itself.
Despite what rationalists may have us believe, the conscience is not the result of evolution or a mere interiorisation of cultural norms or social mores. The conscience undoubtedly bears witness to the culture and morality around about us but this in no way explains its origin or function.
It is not “the voice of God” as such. Spurgeon once warned that there is no more atrocious mistake made by divines than to tell people conscience is God's representative in the soul.
Having said this, we must say that it is important to listen to its voice for it is what Raymond Opperwall correctly called “the internalised voice of those whose judgement of a person counts with him. It is the inner voice that testifies for the moral authorities that we recognise.”
Conscience is not the voice of God but what A M Rehwinkel calls “man himself speaking as a moral being to himself”. It is God given and cannot be removed. God himself has ordained and fixed it as a monitor within. We do not always like the witness conscience bears. Sometimes we disagree with it. It is important to see, however, that the voice of conscience must not be ignored. We must learn to listen to our soul within.
