It is not easy to find a discussion of the conscience. Sermons in it are rare, and your church group. But it is a
vital part of what Scripture calls ‘the
heart’. It is seen in the make-up of men
and women, created in the image of God. Its awareness takes us into the depth
of a person, into what he or she is central and of the greatest values to that
person, and in other expressions not so centrally. Yet it is also capable of behaving
according to a person’s history.
‘Conscience’ is mentioned in Scripture about forty times. It presents an index of
the heart as strong, according to what that person understands at a time, and weaker, and weak and strong together about varied things. I shall illustrate this in a
number of different cases of the working conscience.
In the account of the creation of the human race in Genesis 2, the
pair is quickly seen to have a working of the conscience of each. The first
thing we learn from their Creator is 2.16, ‘ and the Lord God commanded the man,
saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’. (Gen.
2. 19) The creation of Eve, and of other divine laws, for example, that a man
shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they
shall become one flesh’,(This is
endorsed word for word by Jesus.( Mark
10.7 Matt 19.5, 6.) Gen. 3 can be taken as a first tussle over the
conscience of the pair.
Our consciences are fallen, affected by what is sinful as well as the
truth. You might say its character is affected not only by the will of God, but
by the influences of what we call the ‘culture’ and its significant outlook,
not the holy only issues , but by the unholy also. It is the positive or
negative about from the matters that are important, as well as in matters are
of little worth.
The business of conscience has to do with normative side of our minds. Our
minds through the senses, and the intellect, are mainly cognitive, having to do
with forming opinions, beliefs, knowledge, as particular, or general. The
conscience has to do with what be called the moral views, on which the
conscience forms, underlining their value, central and peripheral, depending on
the importance of the sources of various
kinds, giving rise to the judgments of the conscience. At any one time
the conscience may have scores of judgments, some important and some trivial,
contributing to that person’s moral self, changing as the person judges each of
these as he passes through phases as he is educated, matures, and so on. The
self, via its states of the conscience will be awareness of some central, others
changing, some peripheral. It takes on cultural in the widest sense, in a
culture that has been affected by
John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Critical Theory, some
current examples. Paul comments the process in Romans 2.15 of the growth by
idols by ‘Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of
the immortal God for images resembling
mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Echoes of early Genesis!
Besides the occurrence of the word ‘conscience’ in Scripture we see
the conscience operating in various places, as the ‘heart’ Heart p.110, and he
place of the law in it ( Jer 17.1
Nathan’s parable( l Sam 24.10). This is a vivid example as the change and aware
of the conscience, aroused by Nathan’s parable of the poor man with one sheep,
who was deprived of it by a the richer man,
leading to David’s reaction,
‘Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to
Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he
shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had
no pity’, and Nathan retorted, ‘You are the man’, highlighting his deprivation
of Bathsheba for himself, and thus
depriving from her husband Uriah the Hittite.
In the New Testament, 1 Corinth. 8.10, conscience is characterized by
Paul as ‘weak’. 8.12 when the food is
offered to an idol. When Paul ate at
lunch, there may have been present another person of different convictions. He
mentions a fellow eater who gave it to an idol. But Paul has another judgment,
as a Christian, the belief that the idols have ‘no real existence’ while ‘for
us ‘there there is one God , the Father,
from whom are all things and whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, through
whom all things and through whom we exist’.(8.6.). Now carefully note what Paul continues, ‘However, not all possess this knowledge’…. ‘But some, through former association with
idols, eat food to an idol, and their conscience is weak, is defiled’. (v.7).
Here is the evidence that Paul has working of consciences that are strong, and
some that are weak.
But it is not as simple as that, for Paul goes on ‘But take care that
this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For
if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating
in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged? If his conscience is
weak, to eat blood offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person
is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died?’
So we see Paul has the idea of a weak conscience, one that involves
false beliefs i.e. The conscience must be rid of such beliefs. Paul returns to
the problem again at l Corinthians 10. 25 – 30. Bavinck calls the modern view
the ‘empirical conscience’ . The conscience is fallen, too, subject to the
weakening and renewing by the help of God’s grace for every child of God.
In Hebrews, the conscience appears in connection with the writer’s
argument regarding worship of the Old Testament, the contrast between temple
sacrifice, to the final sacrifice of Jesus.
‘by this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way
into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still
standing (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this
arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the
conscience of the worshipper, but deal only with food and drink and various
washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation’. (Heb. 9.8-10)
This is part of the great argument of the writer, that the one work of
Christ is superior to the work of many priests and the services of the
tabernacle, (9.9) as is characteristic
of OT as the services the tabernacle, and the Temple. See other references to
the conscience in Heb. 10.2, 11.22. This
is of great interest because here the conscience is a conviction treated explicitly
on the understanding of the worth of Christ’s work According
to this arrangement. ‘Gifts and sacrifices cannot perfect the conscience of the
worshipper’ 9.9. but deal only with food and various washings, regulations for
the body imposed until the time of reformation’.`(9.10).As might be said, only
Christ in his person and offering has a whole conscience.
The Reformed theologians stress in their natural theology that the
human soul is a semen religionis, the seed of true religion. Conscience is a part
of that.
Bavinck says of such a passage,
‘That conscience is good and pure that is washed in
the blood of Christ, that is sanctified through faith, and in which the Holy
Spirit himself bears witness (I Tim
1.19; 1 Peter 2.19; Rom. 9.1). So only that Christian conscience is good that
feels bound solely and entirely and closely to the divine will known to us from
revelation. (118)
Reflection on one’s conscience takes one deeply into the self. Especially
so if it is measured by the revealed will. The conscience is at work of the call
to repent, as those who were called to repentance by John the Baptist (Matt.3)
and by his cousin Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 4.17).
*
* *
Readers will benefit from Herman Bavinck, ‘Conscience’, trans. Nelson D, Kloosterman, (Bavinck Review, 6)