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5 - Conscience in the Early Church Fathers

from Part II - Conscience According to Major Figures and Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2021

By
Alexis Torrance
Edited by
Jeffrey B. Hammond  and
Helen M. Alvare
Jeffrey B. Hammond
Affiliation:
Faulkner University
Helen M. Alvare
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
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Summary

Alexis Torrance considers early Church Fathers’ many treatments of the origins and roles of conscience in patristic literature. Contemporary commentators are especially prone to speak of conscience to affirm private judgments about personal feelings. Early Church Fathers, however, stressed that conscience is a communal gift presupposing shared convictions. They also stressed that conscience may become impaired under a variety of influences. The idea of conscience existed in Greek and Roman culture. Christians’ reflections, especially St. Paul, were crucial to the deliberations of Church Fathers. New Testament letters speak of conscience as a human faculty. Though not God’s voice, conscience does bring God’s voice to bear in our lives. Christian innovation connected conscience with the idea of a divine law, and some patristic authors identify conscience with a natural law. Human knowledge of right and wrong will be clouded by sin, thus conscience needs cleansing, by baptism, by following the commandments, and by continual examination of conscience and confession. It continually requires the grace of the Holy Spirit to govern one’s moral action in a way that might lead to God.

Keywords

early church fathersfallibilityinfallibilityPatristicssynēidesis
Type
Chapter
Information
Christianity and the Laws of Conscience
An Introduction
 , pp. 93 - 111
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Recommended Reading

Chadwick, Henry. “Conscience in Ancient Thought.” In Studies on Ancient Christianity, ch. xx. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2006.Google Scholar
Chalmers, Stuart P. Conscience in Context: Historical and Existential Perspectives. Oxford: Peter Lang AG, 2013.Google Scholar
Clark, Mary. “Augustine on Conscience.” In Studia Patristica, vol. xxxiii. Papers presented at the Twelfth International Conference of Patristic Studies held in Oxford, 1995: Augustine and his Opponents, edited by Livingston, E. A., 63–67. Leuven: Peeters, 1997.Google Scholar
Dorotheus of Gaza. Discourses and Sayings. Translated by Wheeler, Eric. Kalamazoo, mi: Cistercian Publications, 1977.Google Scholar
Konvitz, Milton R. “Conscience and Civil Disobedience in Jewish, Christian, and Greek and Roman Thought.” Hastings Law Journal 29 (1978): 1619–40.Google Scholar
Kries, Douglas. “Origen, Plato, and Conscience (Synderesis) in Jerome’s Ezekiel Commentary.” Traditio 57 (2002): 67–83.Google Scholar
Nikodemus of the Holy Mountain and Makarios of Corinth (compilers). The Philokalia, 4 vols. Translated by Palmer, G. E. H., Sherrard, Philip, and Ware, Kallistos. London: Faber and Faber, 1983.Google Scholar
Pierce, Claude Anthony Conscience in the New Testament. Canterbury: SCM Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Sorabji, Richard. Moral Conscience through the Ages. Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Svensson, Manfred. “Augustine on Moral Conscience.” The Heythrop Journal 54 (2014): 42–54.Google Scholar
Thomas, Stephen. “Conscience in Orthodox Thought.” In Conscience in World Religions, ed. Hoose, Jayne, 99–128. Bodmin: Gracewing and University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Torrance, Alexis C. Repentance in Late Antiquity: Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian life c. 400–650. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Google Scholar

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