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The conscience in Judeo-Christian history well-known patristic source that became key
Biblical for medieval considerations of conscience was
Judeo-Christian theological anthropology has Jerome’s commentary in which he identified
long considered the conscience an important Ezekiel’s fourth creature with the face of an
capacity in the human soul. The Old Testament eagle as representing the conscience (see Eze-
speaks of the heart as the inner locus of moral kiel 1). Jerome was likely drawing on Origen’s
guidance. “The Hebrew Bible has no word for view, as expressed here in his commentary on
‘conscience’: the phenomenon is seen as one Romans:
of the many promptings of the human heart”
(Hoose, 1999, p. 130). The Hebrew word used “In my opinion the conscience is identical with
for this whole sense of the inner life, which in- the spirit… The conscience functions like a pe-
cludes the features that we call the conscience, dagogue to the soul, a guide and companion, as
is lê, variously translated as understanding, it were, so that it might admonish it concerning
mind, and heart. I Sam 24:5 says that “David’s better things or correct and convict it of faults”
heart smote him,” and Proverbs 2:9-10 assures (from Origen’s Commentary on the Epistle to
that “wisdom entereth into thine heart” (KJV). the Romans 2.9.3-4; in the translation of Ru-
For an insightful exploration of how ancient Ju- finus, English translation by Sheck, quoted in
daism conceived of purity, righteousness, and Kries, 2002, p. 78).
ethical goodness, Hannah Harrington’s book
Holiness: Rabbinic Judaism and the Graeco- As we know is generally true of the Church
Roman World is a valuable resource (2001). Fathers, their understanding of conscience in-
teracted with the philosophical framework of
In the New Testament, Paul brings the word pagan thinkers such as Plato and the stoics.
syneidēsis into Christian vocabulary. Syneidēsis Augustine scholars find in his writings a rich
was a term used by both secular Greek and notion of the ethical capacity and functioning
Hellenistic Jewish writers as early as 500 B.C., of the soul, understanding conscience as “an act
translated by Roman writers as conscientia. The of judgment that integrates these faculties and
Greeks understood syneidēsis in terms of the activities [of reason, sense, and emotion] in the
pain one felt regarding past bad actions. Chal- search for a good life” (Svensson, 2013, p. 51).
mers notes that Paul’s conception of the consci-
ence goes beyond this secular Greek notion and Scholastic
outlines four features of the conscience in Paul’s Christian theologians of the Scholastic period
writings (Chalmers, 2013): a reliable capacity considered the concept of the conscience in
for critical self-reflection (2 Cor 1:12); ability to great detail, and their work then shaped seve-
consider and judge the actions of others (2 Cor. ral centuries of subsequent inquiry. Synderesis
5:10-11); a capacity with which every person is became a key concept through which the Scho-
endowed (2 Cor 4:2, Rom 13:15, Rom 2:14-15); lastics’ notion of the conscience combined “ac-
humanness so that it may be weak or in conflict cess to objective natural law with fallible mo-
with the conscience of another and is distinct ral choice,“ (Chalmers, 2013, p. 81). Biblical
from God’s judgment (2 Cor 4:2, I Cor 8:7). In anthropology in this era considered how syn-
I Corinthians 10 Paul illustrates how the cons- deresis was related to reason and the will and
cience engages in moral deliberation and judg- whether it was a separate faculty (such as will,
ment. Chalmers argues that “Paul’s writing pre- appetite, or reason) or a habitus (a voluntarily
sents a definitive step in the development of the acquired disposition).
notion of conscience, upon which later writers
would depend” (2013, p. 60). Chalmers explains the Scholastic understanding
of synderesis as “an innate non-deliberative in-
Patristic clination to the moral good; an essential basis
Christian writers of the Patristic period con- for our moral judgements,” and conscientia as
sidered the conscience an important topic. A “an act of judgment of practical reason, which is

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