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2 - Conscience and Natural Law in Scripture

from Part I - Themes in Understandings of Conscience in Christianity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2021

Jeffrey B. Hammond
Affiliation:
Faulkner University
Helen M. Alvare
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
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Summary

David VanDrunen ties the natural law concepts found in both the Old and New Testaments to a sense of conscience. The notion of natural law appears early in the Old Testament, in God’s covenant with Noah. God instructs Noah that, for example, the killing of an innocent must be recompensed (thereby indicating that innocent people must not be wantonly killed). While there is not one Hebrew word for conscience in the OT, it does identify the “heart” (leb) and “kidneys” (kelayot) as the mechanisms by which the wise and discerning person applies what he knows to be true about the way the world works. In the New Testament, conscience is the “subjective human faculty that recognizes right and wrong and thus bears witness to a person’s standing before the law.” The Apostle Paul’s discussion of natural law in Romans chapters 2 and 3 reveals that although not all receive God’s express law (as did God’s people on Mt. Sinai), all people everywhere have an innate sense of moral rectitude to which their consciences testify. All persons everywhere therefore are subject to God’s righteous judgment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Christianity and the Laws of Conscience
An Introduction
, pp. 39 - 56
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Recommended Reading

Barton, John. Understanding Old Testament Ethics: Approaches and Explorations. Louisville, ky: Westminster John Knox, 2003.Google Scholar
Berkman, John, and Mattison, William C. III, eds. Searching for a Universal Ethic: Multidisciplinary, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Responses to the Catholic Natural Law Tradition. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 2014.Google Scholar
Bockmuehl, Markus. Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics. Grand Rapids, mi: Baker Academic, 2003.Google Scholar
Bosman, Philip. Conscience in Philo and Paul. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.Google Scholar
Budziszewski, J. The Line through the Heart: Natural Law As Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction. Wilmington, de: ISI, 2009.Google Scholar
Burnside, Jonathan. God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Charles, J. Daryl. Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 2008.Google Scholar
Hittinger, Russell. The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World. Wilmington, de: ISI, 2003.Google Scholar
Levering, Matthew. Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novak, David. Natural Law in Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Pierce, C. A. Conscience in the New Testament. London: SCM, 1955.Google Scholar
VanDrunen, David. Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law. Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 2014.Google Scholar

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