240
COl^SCIEKCE
CONSCIENCE
scientia, ffvveldrja-i^, shows that it is entirely fanciful to suppose on etymological grounds that the prefixes con and a-w point to the subject's joint knowledge along with God Himself. The joint knowledge de- noted is knowledge with oneself, a self-knowledge or self-consciousness in which the inner ' I ' comes forward as a witness. This does not, of course, exclude the further view that, as man is made in the image of God, and as his individual personality is rooted in that of the absolute moral Ruler, the testimony of conscience actually is the voice of God bearing witness in the soul to the reality and authority of moral truth.
It is a significant fact that the word ' conscience ' is nowhere found in the OT text, though in Ec 10-" both AV and RV give it in the margin as an alter- native for ' thought,' to represent the Heb. v^d, which LXX here renders by (Tvv€L8r](ns. In ancient Israel it was an external law, not an inward law- giver, that held the seat of authority ; and though the prophets addressed their appeals to the moral sense of their hearers (cf. Mic 6^), they furnished no doctrine of conscience. Nor does the word occur either in the Synoptics or the Fourth Gospel ; for the clause of Jn 8^ where it is found does not belong to the correct text (see RV). Jesus in His teaching constantly addresses Himself to the conscience, and clearly refers to it when He speaks of ' the light that is in thee' (Mt 6-^ Lk ips), but His mission was to illumine and quicken the moral faculty by the revelation He brought, not to analyze it, or define it, or lay down a doctrine on the subject. In the Acts and Epistles, however, the eflects of the revelation in Christ become apparent. We have the word ' conscience ' 31 times in AV and 30 times in RV — the latter reading (rvvndeLq, for (rwei- d-ncrei. in 1 Co 8''. Heb. has it 5 times and 1 Pet. thrice ; with these exceptions it is a Pauline word. There are anticipations of the NT use of it in the Apocrypha (Wis 17", Sir 14^, 2 Mac 6"), and sug- gestions for St. Paul's treatment of it in contem- porary Greek teaching, and especially in the moral philosophy of the Stoics. But it was Christian faith that raised it out of the region of ethical ab- straction and set it on a throne of living power.
2. The NT doctrine. — (1) The nature of con- science.— According to its etymology, conscience is a strictly cognitive power — the power of appre- hending moral truth ; and writers of the intui- tional school frequently restrict the use of the term to this one meaning (cf. Calderwood, Hand- book of Moral Philosophy, p. 78). Popularly, however, conscience has a much wider connotation, including moral judgments and moral feelings as well as immediate intuitions of riglit and wrong; and it is evident that in the NT the word is employed in this larger sense so as to include the whole of the moral nature. When conscience is said to ' bear witness' (Ro2'^9') or to give 'testimony' (2 Co 1^-), it is the clear and direct shining of the inner light that is referred to. When it is described as ' weak ' or over-scrupulous (1 Co 8''* '"• ^^), and is contrasted by implication with a conscience that is strong and walks at liberty, the reference is to those diversities of opinion on moral subjects which are due to variations of judgment in the application of mutually acknowledged first prin- ciples. Wlien it is spoken of on the one hand as 'good' (I Ti l6-'9. He 13'». 1 P 3i«- ^i) or 'void of oil'ence toward God and men ' (Ac 24^'), and on tlie other as ' defiled' (1 Co 8''), ' wounded ' (v.^^)^ ' evil ' (He 10'^), 'seared (or branded) with a hot iron' (1 Ti 4*), the writers are thinking of those pleasant or painful moral feelings which follow upon obedi- ence or disobedience to moral law, or of that dead- ness to all feeling which falls upon those who have persistently shut their ears te the inward voice and turned the light that is in them into darkness.
The fundamental passage for the Pauline doc- trine is Ro 2''*- 1^ The Apostle here seems to lay down as unquestionable, (a) that there is a Divine law written by Nature on the heart of every man, whether Jew or Gentile ; (b) that conscience is the moral faculty which bears witness to that law ; (c) that in the light of that witness there is an exercise of the thoughts or reasonings {XoyKT/xoi), in other words, of the moral judgment ; (d) that, as the result of this judgment before the inward bar, men are subject to the feelings of moral self- approval or self-reproach. Covering in this pas- sage the whole ground of the moral nature of man, St. Paul appears to distinguish conscience as the witness-bearing faculty from the moral judgments and moral feelings that accompany its testimony. But elsewhere, as has been already shown, he fre- quently speaks of conscience in that larger sense which makes it correspond not only with the immediate apprehension of moral truth, but with the judgments based upon the truth thus revealed, and the sentiments of satisfaction or dissatisfaction to which these judgments give rise.