This article first appeared in Foundations
'What are conscience?' is Pinocchio' s question in the Walt Disney adaptation of Collodi's charming children's story. The grammar is wrong but the question is a good one. What is the conscience? Of course, we all have an idea of what conscience is. We all know we have one. We can think, perhaps, of the hard times it has given us. People say 'My conscience is playing on me' or 'My conscience pricked me'. We know what it is to have something 'on your conscience'. We know about a bad or guilty conscience and, hopefully, a good conscience too. However, as one writer points out, 'of the number that make use of the word nineteen in twenty perhaps may be ignorant of its true meaning.' (CA Pierce CONSCIENCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, SCM, London 1955 p 5)
He is not exaggerating. Other words found in the Bible are used quite loosely. People still talk about 'living in sin' and use phrases like 'as ugly as sin' or 'more sinned against then sinning'. But how often is the word understood in its Biblical sense, the transgression of God's law? It is the same with the word conscience. The word is seldom used with any precision. In every day use it can have a range of meanings. We are all familiar with the word but how many of us have a carefully defined biblical cocncept of what the conscience is?
A survey of biblical material relating to the conscience and an examination of the Greek word employed in the New Testament will enable us to attempt a biblical definition.
The Old Testament
There is no actual reference to the conscience in the Old Testament. (The LXX translation of Ecclesiastes 10:20 using the Greek word for conscience is a case of mistranslation.)The Hebrews did not seem to find it necessary to use such a term. This was probably because as God's chosen people they received direct revelation from God and so were not as immediately aware of conscience as the Gentiles. Old Testament believers spoke more readily of their hearts reflecting on revelation, as in the Psalms (see Psalms 16:7, 40:8 and 119:11).
Nevertheless, the idea of conscience is certainly present in a number of places and some modem translations introduce the word at certain points. In the opening chapters of Genesis we read that Adam and Eve, following their disobedience, were ashamed of their nakedness and hid in fear at the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8,10). What else is this but the earliest manifestation of man's conscience at worlc? There are other places where the word heart clearly stands for the conscience. Thus in Genesis 20:5,6 the Gentile Abimelech speaks with God. ' .. .I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands.' Then God speaks to him in a dream, 'Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me.' (NKJV). We also read Job's words, 'I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.' (Job 27:6 NIV).
On at least two occasions David' s conscience is seen to be at worlc. 'And it came about aftetwards that David's conscience bothered him because he had cut off the edge of Saul's robe.' (1 Samuel 24:5 NASB). Also 'David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men.' (2 Samuel 24:10 NIV), cf Samuel 25:31, 35. Similarly, in Psalms 32, 38 and 51 the conscience is active. Psalm 32:3,4 is descriptive of the pangs of a bad conscience, 'When I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.' Psalm 38:3-5 is similar and Psalm 51:10 speaks of David's desire for a good conscience ('Create in me a pure heart, O God, etc.') It was on the basis that every man has a conscience that the Law was given and that the prophets preached. A striking example is the way in which Nathan dealt with David following his adultery with Bathsheba (1 Samuel 12). In the story of Joseph and his brothers the conscience plays an important role (see Genesis 42:21). 1 Kings 8:38; Job 4:16,17; Proverbs 20:27 and 28:1 and Ecclesiastes 7:22 are other places where some have detected possible references to the conscience.
The New Testament
In the Gospels there is no direct reference to conscience (excepting the questionable instance of John 8:9 where the word appears in some manuscripts). However, there is reason to believe that there were occasions when the conscience was in view. For example, in Luke 12:57 Jesus asks the people, 'Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?'. This appeal is directed to .the conscience. Similarly, some writers suggest that in Matthew 6:22,23 where Jesus refers to having a 'single eye' he is talking about the conscience. A pure heart · must also be something similar to or allied with a clear conscience (Matthew 5:8). In Mark 3:5 Jesus rails at the 'stubborn hearts' or hardened consciences of the Pharisees. The meaning of John 1:9 is a matter of debate amongst Reformed and Evangelical writers but Calvin and others may well be right when they see conscience as at least partly the point of reference here.
The bulk of direct New Testament references to conscience are found in Paul's letters. In fact, of the thirty or so uses of the word twenty are in his writings. Two others are found in speeches by him recorded in Acts and five are in the letter to the Hebrews which if not by Paul is certainly characteristic of him. The only other New Testament writer to use the word is Peter, in his first letter. It is, therefore, very much a Pauline word. But where did Paul get it from? At one time it was widely thought to be a specialist word taken from Stoic philosophy but it has now been demonstrated to have been an every day word going back, in one form or another, to at least the sixth century BC. It has been suggested that it was a 'catchword' amongst the Corinthian believers taken up by Paul and used not just in writing to them but, consequently, as part of his own Christian vocabulary. (See Pierce's book)
Certainly Paul and other New Testament writers were happy to take up words and fill them with Christian meaning. Peter does this in his letters more than once and Paul, for example, takes up the word Saviour (soter) in this way. Like the Old Testament and the Gospels, the rest of the New Testament is perfectly able to speak about the conscience without using the word. For example, in 1 John 3:19-21 the apostle uses the word heart where the word conscience would fit equally well. 'This then is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts (consciences) at rest in his presence whenever ow hearts (consciences) condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts (consciences), and he knows everything.' However, in the writings of Peter and especially of Paul the word conscience itself is used.
Etymology
The Greek word is suneidesis. It is universally agreed that the word is made up of two parts. The first part (sun) means 'with' or 'together' (Cf the English words, synchronised or symphony). The second part (eidesis) is from one of the Greek words meaning 'to know'. The root meaning, therefore, is 'to know together' or 'joint knowledge' or 'knowledge shared (with another)'. The English word is from Latin and is made up in exactly the same way, CON-SCIENTIA. Some other modem European languages are similar. So in Welsh you have CYD-WYBOD, in Swedish SAM-VETE, etc.
This does not bring us immediately to a biblical definition. There has been much debate as to who shares this 'joint knowledge'. Obviously there is, on the one side, the person himself, but who is the other? Many have maintained that the other must be God. Conscience has been spoken of as 'The voice or oracle of God', 'The vicar of Christ' or even 'God's intimate presence in the soul' . (Phrases of Lord Byron,
of John H Newman and of William Worlsworth respectively. Cf the
definition 'Privity of the soul with the omnipresent, omniscient God' von Schubert).
Such phrases are often used on the basis that the etymology proves that what conscience reveals to a man's mind must be knowledge shared with· God. Thus we have definitions like that of Aquinas and approved by the Puritan William Ames, 'a man's judgement ofhimself, according to the judgement of God of him'. Ames' tutor William Perkins is similar. He sees God and man as 'partners in the knowledge of one and the same secret'.
Conscience is undoubtedly part of God's general revelation but to speak of it simply as God's voice agreeing with ours is potentially confusing.
Usage
It is unwise to base a definition of a word on etymology alone. The way a word is used matters much more. (September is not our seventh month. There is surely nothing sinister about left-handed people.) Scholars are not in total agreement about the usage of the word suneidesis and its family of related words. It is clear, nevertheless, that when the Greeks used this and related terms it was not always in the context of moral judgments. There is an example where Socrates' young disciple Alcibiades speaks of being conscious he could put up no resistance to the power of his teacher's arguments. (5 C Maurer, THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, ed G Kittel (trans G Bromiley), p 900), There is no moral element here. Least of all, in Greek thought, is there any necessary connection between conscience and God.
In the New Testament we find a related word being used in a context where God is clearly not the one who shares the knowledge. In Acts 5:2 we read that 'with his wife's full knowledge' Ananias kept back money from the apostles while claiming it was being given over. The word used is sunoida, 'to know with another'. Ananias knew what he was doing and so did his wife. He knew with her. Then in Acts 12:12 and 14:6 the NIV speaks of something 'dawning' on Peter and of Paul and Bamabas 'finding out about' a thing. Words from the same family are again used. Thus, at their most basic, these words can simply mean 'to become conscious or, 'to realise'.
Most interesting in this connection is Hebrews 10:2. There the ASV speaks of worshippers who 'would have had no more consciousness of sins'. The word used is the same as that found in Hebrews 10:22, 'having our hearts sprinkled to save us from a guilty conscience' (NIV. Cf TCNT: ' ... purified by the sprinkled blood from all consciousness of wrong.') In Hebrews 10:2 it is really only the addition of the words 'for their sins' that brings in a moral element. At root the Greek word does not necessarily imply anything more than 'knowing'.
(Continued)
