Duns Scotus: On Synderesis and Conscience

THE NOTION OF SYNDERESIS AS A SORT OF antechamber of conscience, the scintilla conscientiae or spark of conscience, has an interesting history. Some time ago, we had a posting on St. Jerome's contribution on the natural law, and, as part of it, we discussed his injection of the notion of synderesis. See St. Jerome on the Natural Law: The Scintilla of Conscience. In his discussion on Duns Scotus's understanding of synderesis and conscience, Allan Wolter has a good synopsis of this word's curious history:

St. Jerome, in the opening chapter of his Commentary on Ezechiel (PL 25, 22B), is credited with introducing the Greek term "synteresis" into Latin, referring to it as the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae) which even Cain's sin could not eradicate from his nature. Derived from the Greek verb "syntereo" (to watch closely, to preserve or keep safe) it seems to have been nothing more than a poetic way of describing conscience. According to De Blic (1949), it was a medieval scribe who made the error of writing "synteresis" (conservation) for "syneidesis" (conscience) in copying Jerome's work on Ezechiel. The error was incorporated into the popular Glossa ordinaria and, through Peter Lombard's Sentences, passed on to the scholastic theologians, who speculated as to its exact nature, usually giving it a special function distinct from conscience.

Wolter, 45. The Scholastics, then, disputed what exactly synderesis was: how it was different from, or how it was related to, conscience; what its role was in the moral life; what its relationship was with the human will, with the human intellect; what its role was with respect to moral habits; and so forth.

With respect to whether synderesis resided principally in the intellect or principally in the will, Wolter gives a quick, if undetailed, summary of the issue:

Peter Lombard cites various views as to what "weights human nature towards good." Referring to Jerome's commentary, he says: "Man is rightly said to will good naturally, because he was established with a good and right will. For the higher 'spark of reason,' which also, as Jerome says, 'could not be extinguished in Cain,' always wills good and hates evil." (Sent. II, dist. 39) This suggests that synderesis might be either in the intellect or in the will or simply in the soul as possessing both.

Wolter, 45.

Since Peter Lombard was rather vague on the location of synderesis--in the will, in the intellect, or somehow in both--commentators on his Sentences naturally took different positions:

In one of the first known commentaries on Peter's book, attributed to Udo (Lottin, 1948, pp. 107-8), synderesis is identified with Augustine's ratio superior.* One of the first Franciscan masters at Paris, John of La Rochelle, went along with this interpretation of Udo. St. Bonaventure, on the other hand, interprets conscience as a habit of practical intellect, which inclines a person to know both general principles of moral rectitude and the goodness or badness of particular actions, whereas he sees synderesis as the "weight of the will whose function is to incline it towards the good in itself" (II Sent., dist. 39, art 2, q. 1; Opera II, p. 910).

Wolter, 46.

Blessed Duns Scotus

Scotus does not follow St. Bonaventure in assigning synderesis to the will. Following Bonaventure, Scotus could have identified his affectio justitiae with synderesis.** But Scotus viewed synderesis as having a role in the intellect, in its formation, prior to any act of will and its inclination towards the good in any free, elicited act. Scotus sees synderesis as nothing other than the practical intellect viewed from the perspective of making judgments based upon general moral principles. Synderesis is distinguished from conscience, since the latter is concerned with particular, concrete actions. Conscience follows synderesis. So while synderesis is not for Scotus as it was for Bonaventure the "weight of the will" which inclines to the good, he did view it as being a component in the prior act of intellect which was a "stimulus to good," particular when the will operated under its superior affectio justitiae, in which the person sought the good in itself, and not the lower affectio commodi, where the person sought the good for himself.

Scotus discusses these issues in his Ordinatio II, dist. 39, qq. 1-2, where he address Peter Lombard's Sentences (II, dist. 39). He asks the question, "Is synderesis in the will?" and then fashions arguments for this position and against this position, ultimately deciding that synderesis is in the practical intellect, and not in the will.

The first argument that Scotus advances as suggestive that synderesis is in the will, and not in the intellect is that synderesis "always protests against evil," and since "protest pertains to the will," it follows that synderesis must be something found in the will and not the intellect. But against this position, Scotus notes that the protest of synderesis arises because "it shows what good ought to be willed," and it is this intellectual showing that is the "occasion for protesting against evil," so it is something intellectual in nature, prior to the exercise of the will.

The second argument that might suggest that synderesis is something in the will is the notion that synderesis is understood to be "that whereby man necessarily is inclined to justice." Since St. Anselm teaches that inclinations toward what is advantageous (affectio commodi) is something in the will and it is willed necessarily, it seems to follow that inclinations to what is just (affectio justitiae) would also be something in the will. But Scotus distinguishes between these inclinations. As we have seen, Scotus divides the human will into two wills: natural will and free will. Free will, which is the power to act freely, is free to chose course between something that is advantageous to it and something that may not be advantageous to it, but rather is something that is just and contrary to its advantage. St. Anselm's statement, then, that the will wills its advantage necessarily mus be understood to refer to the natural will, which necessarily wills its own advantage, and not to the free will which can chose justice. Synderesis relates not to the natural will, but to the elicited act, and so it is something that is unrelated to the natural will that seeks its own advantage.

Similarly, St. Augustine's understanding of the will as something which necessarily inclines towards its own happiness. (Scotus refers to St. Augustine's De Trinitae, XIII.5) It would seem that our inclination towards justice is something similar to the inclination we have towards happiness. Since synderesis is what inclines a man to justice, it would suggest to be something that resides in the will. Scotus counters this argument in the same manner that he counters the argument from St. Anselm. He distinguishes between the natural will (which necessarily wills happiness defined as one's advantage) from the free will (which does not necessarily will either its advantage or justice, but is free to choose one or the other). Synderesis, then, relates not to the natural will, but to the free will, to an elicited, and not a determined and necessary, act.

Finally, Scotus argues that synderesis could be thought to be something related in the will through an argument based upon analogy. Irrational natures tend necessarily to fulfill their natures. The will, then, ought to have some similarity to this, and the "will too will have a principle necessarily inclining it towards the justice it is suited by nature to have." But this is to confuse natures. The nature of irrational objects is not free, whereas it is the dignity of rational natures to be free. So it is improper to analogize from the necessary nature of irrational creation to the free nature of rational creation. Synderesis, then, cannot be part of determined nature.

Scotus takes the position that synderesis is not something of the will, but is something that pertains to the intellect. This, he argues, is the meaning of Peter Lombard's text: "synderesis represents the higher portion of reason," to Lombard, and so it follows that "synderesis is in the intellect which is concerned with contemplation or the theoretical." Ordinatio II, dist. 39 (Wolter, 162)

Scotus also discusses conscience in this distinction. There are some arguments that might be made that conscience is something that pertains to the will. For example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (13:18) mention is made of "good conscience." Since goodness pertains to the will (one speaks of a good will, not necessarily of a good intellect), this suggests that conscience pertains to the will. But against this, Scotus argues goodness is also attributed to habits of the practical intellect, and not only the will. Granted, goodness, when used of the practical intellect, refers to suitability to the will of what the practical intellect determines is right. So a good will pertains to a right practical intellect. Sometimes the notion of good is thus transferred from the will to the practical intellect. Such expressions sometimes go the other way, so we speak of a right will, though in reality it is the practical intellect that is right, the good will being right because it is in accord with the right as presented by the practical intellect.

Another argument that might be used to argue that conscience is something that is found in the will and not the intellect is that if conscience pertains to the intellect, then one would expect that the more one knew, the more conscientious that person would be. But this is not our experience, since we know that mere knowledge does not lead to conscientiousness. This would suggest that conscience then is not something pertaining to the intellect. Against this position, however, it also known that the will can act against what the practical reason presents to it as good. There are people, as Aristotle pointed out in his Ethics, that can recite the teachings of the philosopher Empedocles even while under the influence of passion. Failure to do what is right, then, may not be a defect of the intellect, but it could be a defect of the will. Therefore, the fact that someone with knowledge of the right may not do the right does not suggest that conscience is something in the will.

Ultimately, Scotus teaches that both synderesis and conscience pertain to the intellect, and not to the will. For Scotus, the free will and the elicited act is never necessary. It neither necessarily tends towards good or necessarily resists evil. To suggest that the will is compelled to do good would mean that there could be no sin. If synderesis always proposes what is right, and always opposes what is wrong, then it is not something that pertains to the free will, and so must be something that relates to the practical intellect. It is something that is proposed to the free will, and the free will can either act in conformity with it or act against it. Likewise, conscience is something that pertains to the intellect. For Scotus, conscience "is produced deductively by way of a practical syllogism." Conscience is not something innate, nor is it some sort of power in the soul; rather, conscience "represents an evident conclusion inferred from first practical principles." Ordinatio II, dist. 39 (Wolter, 164) Clearly, for Scotus, the conscience does not pertain to any appetitive habit or will, but is something that pertains to the practical intellect.

If synderesis is assumed to be something having an elicited act that necessarily and at all times inclines one to act justly and resit sin, then since nothing of this sort is in the will, we cannot assume it to be there. Consequently, it is in the intellect, and it cannot be assumed to be anything other than the habitual knowledge of principles which is always right. For the intellect, in virtue of its own natural light, assents to these principles immediately on the strength of their terms. And then, insofar as it depends in part upon the intellect, the free will is apt by nature to choose in accord with these principles, though such a choice may fail to follow insofar as the other, the principal cause, freely chooses otherwise, because there is no necessitating cause involved here.

According to this line of reasoning, we can also assume that conscience is the habit of making proper practical conclusion, according to which a right choice of what is to be done is apt by nature to follow, and hence it can be called a stimulus to good, insofar as free choice, as a whole, has one partial cause [practical knowledge] disposing it correctly and a volition that is right and good will follow unless there is a defect in the other partial concurring cause needed for willing.

Ordinatio II, dist. 39 (Wolter, 164-65).

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*In Book XII of his De Trinitate, St. Augustine divides human reason into ratio inferior and ratio superior, which is analogous to the difference between knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia). Ratio inferior is concerned with inferior, temporal, contingent matters (quae intendit temporalibus), while the ratio superior is concerned with metaphysical or eternal matters, most notably, God (quae intendit aeternis conspiciendis aut consulendis). See also St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T. Ia, q. 79, a. 9.
**On Scotus's notion of affectio justitiae and affectio commodi, see Duns Scotus, Proto-Existentialist.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 21--Conscience and Error

THE POPE IN HIS ENCYCLICAL has just told us that the judgment of conscience is the proximate norm of personal morality (VS, 60), which all men are bound under penalty of sin to follow, but, "as the judgment of an act, [conscience] is not exempt from the possibility of error." VS,62. "Conscience is not an infallible judgment; it can make mistakes." VS, 62. The error may be as a result of invincible ignorance (in which case, though wrong, it imparts not moral blame upon the actor when followed), or it may be vincible (in which case their may be moral fault).

There is, however, an obligation to inform the conscience with moral truth, which would include truths of fact and truths of the moral law: "man must seek the truth and must make judgments in accordance with the same truth." VS, 62. Man is under a strict obligation of being honest with the faculty of conscience: he dare not "practice cunning and tamper with God's word," he must seek to have his conscience "confirmed by the Holy Spirit," and so he dare not inform his conscience with falsity. Rather, there is an obligation to have a "good conscience," to conform his conscience to truth so that the possibility of an erroneous conscience is minimized: "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."* VS, 62. "Thus, before feeling easily justified in the name of our conscience," the Pope admonishes, "we should reflect on the words of the Psalm: 'Who can discern his errors? Clear me from hidden faults.' (Ps 19:12) There are faults which we fail to see but which nevertheless remain faults, because we have refused to walk towards the light (cf. Jn 9:39-41)." VS, 63.

Yet withal the obligation to inform the conscience with the truth, it remains an unfortunate reality that conscience can be invincibly ignorant:

The [Second Vatican] Council reminds us that in cases where such invincible ignorance is not culpable, conscience does not lose its dignity, because even when it directs us to act in a way not in conformity with the objective moral order, it continues to speak in the name of the truth about the good which the subject is called to seek sincerely.

VS, 62.**

While insisting on the dignity of conscience even if invincibly erroneous, one must not think of this dignity of conscience as being independent of the truth. Indeed, the truth is the opposite: the dignity of conscience comes from its relationship to truth, and so the invincibly ignorant conscience retains its dignity not in making an erroneous decision, but despite of it, because it is fundamentally ordered to moral truth, even though in this particular instance it is in error and sees an objective wrong subjectively as a concretization of the good. The invincibly ignorant conscience is not a rejection of the good, of the natural moral law; rather, it is a misjudgment regarding the content of the law or the application of it to a concrete situation. It follows that there is no equivalency between an erroneous conscience and a right or correct conscience, even where moral fault may not exist in the former because the erroneous conscience is one that is invincible. In other words, in all times, all circumstances, all places, it is better to have a correct conscience than an invincibly ignorant conscience.

It is never acceptable to confuse a "subjective" error about moral good with the "objective" truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience. It is possible that the evil done as the result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error of judgment may not be imputable to the agent; but even in this case it does not cease to be an evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good. Furthermore, a good act which is not recognized as such does not contribute to the moral growth of the person who performs it; it does not perfect him and it does not help to dispose him for the supreme good.

VS, 63.***

There is a watershed of difference between an invincibly ignorant (inculpably erroneous) conscience an a conscience which is culpably erroneous. Here the difference is one between night and day:

Conscience, as the ultimate concrete judgment, compromises its dignity when it is culpably erroneous, that is to say, "when man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience gradually becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin". Jesus alludes to the danger of the conscience being deformed when he warns: "The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Mt 6:22-23)

VS, 63.†

"Christ the Teacher" in the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption,
Torcello, Italy (11th Century)

There is no warrant for resting comfortably in error: the human conscience thirsts for truth, and there is an overarching obligation to seek the truth as a thirsty deer seeks running water.

The words of Jesus just quoted also represent a call to form our conscience, to make it the object of a continuous conversion to what is true and to what is good. In the same vein, Saint Paul exhorts us not to be conformed to the mentality of this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind (cf. Rom 12:2). It is the "heart" converted to the Lord and to the love of what is good which is really the source of true judgments of conscience. Indeed, in order to "prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 12:2), knowledge of God's law in general is certainly necessary, but it is not sufficient: what is essential is a sort of "connaturality" between man and the true good. Such a connaturality is rooted in and develops through the virtuous attitudes of the individual himself: prudence and the other cardinal virtues, and even before these the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. This is the meaning of Jesus' saying: "He who does what is true comes to the light" (Jn 3:21).

VS, 64.

The notion of "'connaturality' between man and the true good" is a borrowing from St. Thomas, and his treatment of the gift of wisdom. The Pope cites to Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 45, a. 2, and it is worth quoting entire:

[W]isdom denotes a certain rectitude of judgment according to the Eternal Law. Now rectitude of judgment is twofold: first, on account of perfect use of reason, secondly, on account of a certain connaturality with the matter about which one has to judge. Thus,[for example,] about matters of chastity, a man after inquiring with his reason forms a right judgment, if he has learnt the science of morals, while he who has the habit of chastity judges of such matters by a kind of connaturality.

Accordingly it belongs to the wisdom that is an intellectual virtue to pronounce right judgment about Divine things after reason has made its inquiry, but it belongs to wisdom as a gift of the Holy Ghost to judge aright about them on account of connaturality with them: thus Dionysius says (Div. Nom. ii) that "Hierotheus is perfect in Divine things, for he not only learns, but is patient of, Divine things."

Now this sympathy or connaturality for Divine things is the result of charity, which unites us to God, according to 1 Corinthians 6:17: "He who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit." Consequently wisdom which is a gift, has its cause in the will, which cause is charity, but it has its essence in the intellect, whose act is to judge aright, as stated above (I-II, 14, 1).

Pope John Paul is thus insisting on the importance of formation and of the inculcation of virtue and the practice of religion as a fundamental part of the formation of conscience, of what Gabriel Marcel, in his book Creative Fidelity, identifies as the duty of the believer to become aware of the non-believer that is within him so that he can root the non-believing out. So also must man identify the immoral within him so that he can root any immorality out.

How is this growth in wisdom, in virtue, in the use of right reason to come about? How is the conscience to be formed, and where is any deformed or malinformed or erroneously formed conscience to go for enlightenment?

Ite ad ecclesiam!

Christians [and indeed all men of good will] have a great help for the formation of conscience in the Church and her Magisterium. As the Council affirms: "In forming their consciences the Christian faithful must give careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of the Church. For the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. Her charge is to announce and teach authentically that truth which is Christ, and at the same time with her authority to declare and confirm the principles of the moral order which derive from human nature itself."

VS, 64.††

Conscience is inextricably bound to the truth: it is compelled, under a most sacred duty, to conform itself to truth. This means that conscience is intimately bound with God, the source of all truth, with Christ, the Way and the Truth and the Life, and with Christ's Church, the Church to which Christ gave all authority until his Second Coming. A man's conscience is therefore intimately tied to the Church, and to her authoritative teaching:

It follows that the authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom "from" the truth but always and only freedom "in" the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith. The Church puts herself always and only at the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit (cf. Eph 4:14), and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it.

VS, 64.

To pit conscience against the Magisterium is a grave error, as the human conscience, like the Church, is ordered to the truth, and while the conscience is not preserved from error and is fallible, the Church, when she teaches universally, is, by the grace of God, preserved from error and infallible in her teaching on faith and morals.

To suggest that conscience can go about its business without the guidance of the Church is to suggest that a blind and inexperienced mariner can go about the seas without a sextant, map, or any other navigational instrument, and make it to his destination by "feeling." It would be as imprudent as the ill-fated journey of Maurice Wilson, who thought he could climb Mount Everest without mountaineering experience, without proper training and preparation, and without the use of ice axe and crampons. That would be a fool's journey.
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*John Paul's teaching on conscience in this section is biblical and Pauline: he cites 1 Tim 1:1-15; 2 Tim. 1:3, 2 Cor.4:2, and Rom. 12:2.
**The Pope is apparently referring to a brief quotation from Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 16 cited earlier in the text: "[N]ot infrequently conscience can be mistaken as a result of invincible ignorance, although it does not on that account forfeit its dignity; but this cannot be said when a man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience gradually becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin."
***John Paul II cites to Saint Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 17, a. 4. "Therefore, [an erroneous] conscience is not said to bind in the sense that what one does according to such a [erroneous] conscience will be good, but in the sense that in not following it he will sin." He further observes that "a correct conscience and a false conscience bind in different ways. The correct conscience binds absolutely and for an intrinsic reason; the false binds in a qualified way and for an extrinsic reason."
†The quotation is from Gaudium et Spes, 16.
††The quotation is derived from Declaration on Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae, 14.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 20--Conscience as Judgment

CONSCIENCE IS NOT ONLY A WITNESS of God, a dialogue between man and God, but it also has the nature of judgment: a moral, practical, imperative, and normative judgment about the good. It is a judgment, one might add, subject to scrutiny, for at the end of time, the eschaton, God through Christ judges the secrets of men. It is an error to view judgment as a mere arbitrary, autonomous "decision," ultimately a whim, a caprice, a matter of choice. There is an inextricable link between the judgment of conscience and the good, and this necessarily links judgment to truth: truth about the good. And conscience's link to the truth about the good is its anchor. Hence man's freedom is inextricably linked with the truth about the good, and conscience is the intimate faculty by which the truth about the good is applied through a judgment by a man about a particular act.

John Paul II identifies the "precise nature of conscience" as a "moral judgment about man and his actions, a judgment either of acquittal or condemnation, according as human acts are in conformity or not with the law of God written on the heart." VS, 59. Since the judgment is moral it follows that it deals with a realm outside the mere utilitarian or expedient. It is a judgment about what is right, what is good, and not a judgment about what is efficient or of great utility. The efficiency, utility, or expediency of an act is measured by a calculative faculty different from the judgmental faculty of conscience.

The fact that conscience deals with the moral realm does not mean that conscience is something impractical. In fact, the opposite is the case. The moral judgment of conscience is a "practical judgment, a judgment which makes know what man must do or not do, or which assesses an act already performed by him." Conscience has both a "looking forward" aspect and a "looking backward" aspect, and so it judges both prospectively and retrospectively. Conscience is both epimetheal and prometheal.* Whether looking forward or looking backward, the same standards are applied by conscience, for it is a judgment about whether a concrete, specific act is consonant with the good. The judgment of conscience, then, is the application of law to a concrete situation.

[Conscience] is a judgment which applies to a concrete situation the rational conviction that one must love and do good and avoid evil. This first principle of practical reason [to love and do good and avoid evil] is part of the natural law; indeed it constitutes the very foundation of the natural law, inasmuch as it expresses that primordial insight about good and evil, that reflection of God's creative wisdom which, like an imperishable spark (scintilla animae [spark of the soul]), shines in the heart of every man.** But whereas the natural law discloses the objective and universal demands of the moral good, conscience is the application of the law to a particular case; this application of the law thus becomes an inner dictate for the individual, a summons to do what is good in this particular situation.

VS, 59. It is apparent that the concrete, specific, "here and now" practical judgment does not disdain the universal natural law, but confirms it in its specificity: "The universality of the [natural moral] law and its obligations are acknowledged," by a judgment of conscience, "not suppressed," in the judgment of conscience. VS,59.

"La Conscience" by Lionel Le Falher

Since the judgment of conscience is moral, practical, and based upon the application of law in a particular case, it follows that it has an "imperative character," so that "man must," in a moral sense, "act in accordance with it." VS, 60. Man is, of course, free to act against the judgment of conscience, but he is not free to escape the result of such act:

If man acts against this judgment or, in a case where he lacks certainty about the rightness and goodness of a determined act, still performs that act, he stands condemned by his own conscience, the proximate norm of personal morality.

VS, 60.

It is critical to be aware that the judgment of conscience is linked to an objective truth, one ultimately founded upon God. With conscience, we are dealing with a scintilla of God, a spark of God, as it were, which is markedly different from a will-o'-the-wisp, and ignis fatuus, or foolish fire.

The dignity of this rational forum and the authority of its voice and judgments derive from the truth about moral good and evil, which it is called to listen to and to express. This truth is indicated by the "divine law", the universal and objective norm of morality. The judgment of conscience does not establish the law; rather it bears witness to the authority of the natural law and of the practical reason with reference to the supreme good, whose attractiveness the human person perceives and whose commandments he accepts. "Conscience is not an independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil. Rather there is profoundly imprinted upon it a principle of obedience vis-à-vis the objective norm which establishes and conditions the correspondence of its decisions with the commands and prohibitions which are at the basis of human behavior."***

VS, 60.

The judgment of conscience can haunt: It can both excuse and accuse. The judgment of conscience sometimes rubs our insides raw: "Out, damned spot; out, I say," though the rubbing off of the blood guilt incurred by disobeying one's conscience is not so easily rubbed off without repentance and a turn to the only One with the keys of mercy. The furies of conscience, then, irritate: but they are not meant to lead us to neurosis, or, in grave matters, to despair. The furies of conscience are meant to drive us into the arms of the merciful God

The truth about moral good, as that truth is declared in the law of reason, is practically and concretely recognized by the judgment of conscience, which leads one to take responsibility for the good or the evil one has done. If man does evil, the just judgment of his conscience remains within him as a witness to the universal truth of the good, as well as to the malice of his particular choice. But the verdict of conscience remains in him also as a pledge of hope and mercy: while bearing witness to the evil he has done, it also reminds him of his need, with the help of God's grace, to ask forgiveness, to do good and to cultivate virtue constantly.

VS, 61.

And so it is that John Paul II concludes:

Consequently in the practical judgment of conscience, which imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act, the link between freedom and truth is made manifest. Precisely for this reason conscience expresses itself in acts of "judgment" which reflect the truth about the good, and not in arbitrary "decisions". The maturity and responsibility of these judgments — and, when all is said and done, of the individual who is their subject — are not measured by the liberation of the conscience from objective truth, in favor of an alleged autonomy in personal decisions, but, on the contrary, by an insistent search for truth and by allowing oneself to be guided by that truth in one's actions.

VS, 61.

John Paul II next addresses the issue of conscience and error, a matter we reserve for our next posting.
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*Epimetheus (from Greek, Ἐπιμηθεύς, which means "hindsight" or "afterthought") was brother to Prometheus (from Greek, Προμηθεύς, which means "foresight" or "fore-thought") were Titans, sons of Iapetus. One could only look forward, the other could only look backward.
**The choice of "scintilla animae" is interesting. As Michael Crowe points out in his book:

The term scintilla also has an interesting history. Literally it means a spark or particle of fire. In a transferred sense it can mean a fragment remaining of something that is compared to fire; or it can mean a germ. The transferred senses is of very respectable classical antiquity. Cicero, for example, speaks of the scintillae of virtue in children. . . . St. Jerome . . . had given the example in speaking of scintillae conscientiae [the spark of conscience]. But it was not until the thirteenth centurty that the uncertainties of terminology involved between synderesis, conscience, ratio superior and scintilla were resolved. For St. Thomas the scintilla conscientiae is synderesis; not alone because it is the purest part of conscience but because it files above the conscience as the spark does over the fire . . . . In parallel senses one also hears of a scintilla rationis (in Peter Lombard, for example) and even scintilla animae. It was because of abuse of this latter term by the German [pantheistic or near pantheistic] mystics Suso and Eckhard that the nomenclature finally fell out of favor."

Michael Crowe, The Changing Profile of Natural Law (The Hague: Martinus Nihoff, 1977), 129. It is obvious that John Paul II perceives an intimate link between human conscience and God.
***The encyclical quotes the Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem (May 18, 1986), 43: AAS 78 (1986), 859; It also references the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 16 and the Declaration on Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae, 3.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 19--Conscience as Witness

CONSCIENCE AND NATURAL LAW ARE INTIMATELY bound, and for this reason the same part of the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans that deals with the natural law--the law "written" on the Gentiles' hearts--"indicates the biblical understanding of conscience especially in its specific connection with the law." VS, 57.

The scriptural passage referred to by John Paul II (Rom 2:14-15) is well-known:

When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them.

What is the biblical teaching of conscience? It is, more than anything else, a witness: a personal, silent, unique, intimate witness. It is therefore in a way part of man (intrinsic), and in a way not part of man (extrinsic). It has a voice separate and apart from a man's identity, and for this reason, in the interior colloquy that man has with his conscience, the conscience "makes its witness known only to the person himself," and "only the person himself knows what his own response is to the voice of conscience." VS, 57. There is therefore an interior dialogue that occurs within man as a result of the existence of conscience.

But as John Paul II makes clear: the dialogue is not entirely one within man himself: it is a dialogue in which God plays part:

The importance of this interior dialogue of man with himself can never be adequately appreciated. But it is also a dialogue of man with God, the author of the law, the primordial image and final end of man.

VS, 58. It would seem, then, that the internal dialogue of conscience is, in one way of speaking, prayer ("dialogue of man with God"). When conscience responds after it has been queried, moreover, it speaks with authority. John Paul invokes St. Bonaventure:

[C]onscience is like God's herald and messenger; it does not command things on its own authority, but commands them as coming from God's authority, like a herald when he proclaims the edict of the king. This is why conscience has binding force.

Conscientia est sicut praeco Dei et nuntius, et quod dicit, non mandat ex se, sed mandat quasi ex Deo, sicut praeco, cum divulgat edictum regis. Et hinc est, quod conscientia habet virtutem ligandi.*

This quality of conscience is vitally important in man's life. If conscience is God's herald and messenger, God's "viceroy in me" (Donne), it is a means by which God communicates to man. It is a natural means by which God communicates to every man since it is present in every man. So it is that "conscience is the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man's soul, calling him fortiter et suaviter [forcefully and softly] to obedience." VS, 58.

Conscience is God's Herald and Messenger

Conscience, then, is something uniquely human, but one must not forget its intimate connection to God. It is not something upon which man solipsistically can rely--as if human conscience is its own authority, something which allows self-assertion, much less an assertion against the One who has sent this herald. Human conscience has an authority which comes from beyond man. Human conscience's authority comes--not from man, but from its role as God's voice in man. Human conscience, while man's own voice in man (intrinsic), is also God's voice in man (extrinsic). It is this dual, dialogical quality of conscience which makes the suggestion that the moral life requires man to be "autonomous" ultimately absurd. The moral life requires an active conscience, which means ipso facto that there is an Other's voice that is involved. There will always be a certain kind of autonomy in heteronomy, a heteronomy in autonomy involved in conscience.

Moral conscience does not close man within an insurmountable and impenetrable solitude, but opens him to the call, to the voice of God. In this, and not in anything else, lies the entire mystery and the dignity of the moral conscience: in being the place, the sacred place where God speaks to man.**

VS, 58.

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*In II Librum Sentent., dist. 39, a. 1, q. 3, conclusion; Ed. Ad Claras Aquas, II 907b.
**John Paul II quotes from his general audience of August 17, 1983. See Address (General Audience, August 17, 1983), 2: Insegnamenti, VI, 2 (1983), 256.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 18--Created Conscience or Creative Conscience?

IT WOULD SEEM THAT THE "law of the heart," the heart's yearning for freedom, and what Pope John Paul II calls the "'heart of the person," his moral conscience through which the natural moral speaks to man, would have an intimate relationship. And so they do. Unfortunately, it is an intimate relationship that is modernly misunderstood.

In fact, one's understanding of conscience is at the heart of one's understanding of the relationship of freedom and law: and this would suggest that errors in understanding conscience either stem from misunderstandings on the relationship of freedom or law, or that errors in misunderstanding the relationship between freedom and law stem from misunderstandings of the role of conscience. So pivotal is conscience in the moral life.

Modernly, errors between freedom and law, specifically errors which exalt freedom "almost to the point of idolatry," result in man usurping the role of creator, thus leading to a "'creative' understanding of moral conscience," VS, 54, an understanding which "diverges from the teaching of the Church's tradition and her Magisterium," which is to say, it departs from the Words of Christ Jesus, the Word of God. Modern definitions of conscience ascribe to it a creative role to the point where it becomes not so much conscience, but an anti-conscience, something which bedevils conscience, a devil in the mind.

Based upon what seems to be a legion of justifications seemingly pastoral and humane, some modern theologians--unidentified in name by the Pope--enlarge the role of human conscience at the expense of law, of norms, of precepts. In general, these theologians tend to deprecate the role of law, norms, or precepts, and tend to ascribe to conscience a "creative" role, as if conscience ought to be considered the source of norms, precepts, or law, and not the faculty in man by which he recognizes the law, norms, or precepts as extra-consciential. Conscience is thus creative and free from God's law expressed in norms and precepts, and not created and submissive to those norms and precepts. Conscience is accordingly not seen as playing an adjudicatory role (applying pre-existing law to existing exigencies), but rather as a sort of legislative role (creative law to fit existing exigencies). Understanding conscience as the faculty of decision rather than the faculty of judgment, conscience becomes for these theologians the tool by which man in his autonomy crafts for himself laws of his own making rather than a faculty by which man can assess his prior acts or his prospective acts in conformity with those precepts, norms, or laws which may be found already given man either in his created nature, or in Divine revelation.

Clearly, such a notion of "creative conscience" suggests that conscience creates moral norms, and implies an autonomy of conscience from any law. In fact, some of these theologians suggest that only by making moral decisions "'autonomously' would man be able to attain moral maturity," as if venturing on one's own apart from God and his law were in fact acting in accordance with God's desire for mankind.

It follows that these theologians take a dim view of the Church's role in teaching applicable moral norms. They view the Church's teaching role as stifling this individual creative conscience, in limiting authentic autonomy, and in causing conflicts of conscience which ought not exist.

All manner of means are used by these theologians to "soften" the Magisterial role or pronouncements short of rejecting them wholesale. Commonly, these theologians ascribe to the Church's teaching sort of general guiding value, with at best a pastoral but not dogmatic or commanding role, and always subject always to the exceptions of an individual conscience. The situation envisioned by these theologians would be analogous to a situation whereby the legislature passed a law whereby the executory or judicial official enforcing the law retains the absolute discretion to enforce or not enforce the law. It is doubtful in such a case whether that law would be law at all, since it is not ultimately binding upon the official. Thus the Magisterial role in guiding conscience is essentially demoted to an irrelevancy. Conscience's rights are absolute over and against the voice of the teaching Church and, ultimately, given the role willed by God for the Church, over the law of God itself, indeed over God himself (for in God there is no distinction between Him and His Eternal Law). "No one can fail to realize," the Pope states, "that these approaches pose a challenge to the very identity of the moral conscience in relation to human freedom and God's law." VS, 56.

This description of conscience, as the creator of values, as the faculty or source of complete human autonomy, as an internal legislator rather than internal judge, despite the velvety words used by these theologians, is not conscience, but is more like the devil in one's mind.

These theologians, like Milton depicted Satan and his mind, see human conscience as:

. . . [H]e who now is Sovran [Sovereign] [and] can dispose and bind
What shall be right . . .
. . . .
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
. . . .
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.*

This sort of false depiction of conscience tells God and His Church what Manfred said in Lord Byron's poem by that name:

Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know;
What I have done is done . . .
. . . .
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time; its innate sense,
When stripp’d of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorb’d in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.**

What is involved here is a re-definition of man, and a re-definition of God. In fact, it is a revolt. It is a replay of what occurred in the Garden of Eden, where man seeks, shrouded in words like "creative," "pastoral," "feeling," "psychological complexity" and so on, to shrug off the law of God as relevant to his day-to-day activities.

In fine, it is non-serviam redux.

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*John Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book 1.246, 254-55, 261-63.
**Byron, "Manfred," III.iv.146 ff.

De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Conscientia Profunda

IN EVERY HUMAN SCIENCE THERE must be some first principles, else we could never know anything. Knowledge builds upon knowledge, not upon nothing. As the pursuit of any knowledge requires some knowledge, else we would have no basis for starting. In the moral sciences, we have self-evident principles, the foundational principles upon which all thinking is based, and the the acceptance of which is not an article of faith, but a presupposition of reason, of rationality itself. To reject the first principles is to reject the life of reason entirely; it is to condemn oneself to absurdity, to unreality. It is, in fact, a form of insanity, not to mention a basal viciousness, to reject the reality of these first principles.

How is it that we know these first principles? In Budziszewski's presentation, he denominates the sources of these first principles as "witnesses," and he identifies four of them: the "witness of deep conscience," the "witness of design as such," the "witness of our own design," and the "witness of natural consequences." See Budziszewski (2003), 78-106.

We shall address each witness in the next four postings, beginning with the first such witness in this posting, namely the witness of "deep conscience."

Budzeszewski distinguishes between conscience in general and conscience as an"interior witness to the foundational principles of moral law." The latter is what St. Thomas called synderesis, although it also included "everyday moral rules which are both known to everyone, but which, strictly speaking, are derived." Budziszewski (2003), 79. The "deep conscience" therefore includes the most fundamental of all principles (synderesis, strictly so called) and those principles immediately derived from the foundational principles (the "belt of synderesis"). It consequently includes such self-evident principles as good ought to be done and evil avoided, gratuitous harm ought to be avoided, one ought to be fair, one ought to do unto others as one would want done to oneself (the "Golden Rule"), and so forth. It includes basic values recognized as good: friendship, life, reason, knowledge, etc. But it also includes those immediately derived principles based upon those foundational principles such as one should not murder, one should not lie, and one should not commit adultery. In Budziszewski's nomenclature, "Deep conscience, then, includes both synderesis and the belt of synderesis." Budzeszewski (2003), 79.

The other part of conscience, which Budzeszewski calls "surface conscience," is conscious moral belief, derived from syllogistic reasoning, and one which reaches into the"upper stories of moral law," that is, it is several steps removed from the self-evident principles found in "Deep Conscience." Surface Conscience is distinguishable from Deep Conscience because it can be erroneous, it can be warped, it can be squelched, it can be perverted. It includes what St. Thomas would have called the determinations or determinationes of the natural moral law. The Deep Conscience, on the other hand, is unerasable. It is that which we cannot not know. "[D]eep conscience cannot be erased, cannot be mistaken, and is the same in every human being." Budzeszewski (2003), 80. It can, unfortunately, be suppressed. "The only way to tamper with it is self-deception."

Budziszewski identifies nine ways in which Surface Conscience can be foiled.

1. insufficient experience
2. insufficient skill
3. slot
4. corrupt custom
5. passion
6. fear
   
7. wishful thinking
8. depraved ideology
9. malice

Deep conscience is the "tell-tale heart" of man. It is what feeds the furies of conscience,who will not be tamed. It is the "hound of heaven" that chased Raskolinikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment following his murder of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, though he insisted that as a great man he was free from the ties of the moral law that bound his lessers. Above all, Deep Conscience is not feelings, it is "knowledge," a rational part of man, an intellectual feltness, as it were, which "darkly asserts itself," if one has the temerity to disclaim its existence, "regardless of the state of feelings."

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Conscience

THE EIGHTH REQUIREMENT OF PRACTICAL reasonableness is the result of the fact that man is a social animal. The eight requirement, which will be discussed in detail later, is the requirement of favoring and fostering the common good of the communities of which one is part. In an age of overemphasized individualism, the role of the common good is often neglected.

The ninth requirement takes us into the internal forum of man.

[The ninth requirement of practical reasonableness] is the requirement that one should not do what one judges or thinks or 'feels'-all-in-all should not be done. That is to say one must act 'in accordance with one's conscience.'

NLNR, 125.*

Conscience is--for better or worse--malleable. It can be formed, but it can also be deformed. One's natural inclinations, education, training, culture, one's experiences, one's prior moral decisions, one's prior acts or omissions . . . all serve to have an effect upon the tender faculty of conscience.

If one were by inclination generous, open, fair, and steady in one's love of the human good, or if one's milieu happened to have settled on reasonable mores, then one would be able, without solemnity, rigmarole, abstract reasoning, or casuistry, to make the particular practical judgments (i.e. judgment of conscience) that reason requires. If one is not so fortunate in one's inclinations or upbringing, then one's conscience will mislead one, unless one strives to be reasonable and is blessed with a pertinacious intelligence alert to the forms of human good yet undeflected by the sophistries which intelligence so readily generates to rationalize indulgence, time-serving, and self-love.

NLNR, 125.

On the Threshold of Eternity by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh referred to conscience in a letter to his brother Theo dated April 3, 1878, which merits quotation:

One must never let the fire in one's soul die, for the time will inevitably come when it will be needed. And he who chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure and will hear the voice of his conscience address him every more clearly. He who hears that voice, which is God's greatest gift, in his innermost being and follows it, finds in it a friend at last, and he is never alone! . . . That is what all great men have acknowledged in their works, all those who have thought a little more deeply and searched and worked and loved a little more than the rest, who have plumbed the depths of the sea of life.

Ronald de Leeuw, ed., The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Pomerans, Arnold, trans.) (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 54.

The faculty of human conscience is subjectively infallible in the sense that its promptings (which should be distinguished from the promptings of feelings, something entirely different) are mandatory upon us. This is true even if the conscience's promptings as a result of deformation or error are objectively wrong. To follow the promptings of one's conscience--even if those are objectively wrong--makes one faultless so long as the deformation or error is not one of our own making (i.e., so long as we are invincibly ignorant of the deformation or error).

[I]f one chooses to do what one judges to be in the last analysis unreasonable, or if one chooses not to do what one judges to be in the last analysis required by reason, then one's choice is unreasonable (wrongful), however erroneous one's judgments of conscience may happen to be. (A logically necessary feature of such a situation, is, of course, that one is ignorant of one's mistake.)

NLNR, 125-26. Most of us, of course, would phrase the choice not as one involving reasonable/unreasonable (although it is not inaccurate if reason is understood broadly enough) but the choice as involving what is right and what is wrong (which includes reason in all its breadth, including the inclinations--that intellectual feltness--which is part of our reasoning nature).

_______________________________
*One should observe the scare quotes around the words "feel" and the words in "accordance with one's conscience. The word "feel" makes it clear that what is involved with conscience is not some sort of emotional feeling, but an intellectual feltness, a faculty of reason, not a faculty of emotion or primeval urge, a faculty that is wed or linked to objective moral truth. Additionally, as Finnis clarifies in his notes: "It scarcely needs to be added that (i) if my conscience is erroneous, what I do will be unreasonable [thought it may be faultless], and (ii) if my conscience is erroneous because of my negligence and indifference in forming it, in doing what I do I will be acting culpably (notwithstanding that I am required by the ninth requirement of reasonableness to do it) . . . and (iii) that if I am aware that I have formed my practical judgment inadequately it will be reasonable of me to bow to contrary advice or instructions or norms." NLNR, 133. Importantly, "it by no means follows . . . that if . . . . I have an obligation to φ, others have no liberty to prevent me from doing φ, or to punish me from doing φ [or for doing φ]; indeed, often enough they have not only the liberty but also the obligation to do so." NLNR, 133. Others cannot force you to act against your conscience, but they can, under certain limited circumstances, prevent you, or discourage you, from acting in accordance with it. There is a distinction, not always noted or observed, between forcing someone to act against his conscience and forcing someone not to act in accordance with conscience. This seems obvious in extreme situations: I should not be able to force a man to kill another if he objects to it in conscience; however, I should be able to prevent a man from killing another man even though his (erroneous) conscience prompts him to kill the other man. It follows that I may also punish the latter for having killed a man even if he does it in invincible ignorance. A Muslim terrorist, regardless of his sincerity and invincible ignorance, may be convinced in conscience that he needs to blow up a public building. He may forcibly be stopped from acting in accordance with his conscience, even, if the circumstances require it, with deadly force.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 13: Conscience

CONSCIENCE IS ADDRESSED by Cardinal Mercier as the last topic of his discussion on general ethics. He adopts the classical scholastic distinction between synteresis and conscience. Synteresis is, as it were, the foundation of conscience. Synteresis is the "habitual disposition" within man that provides the general premise to the judgment of conscience.

We have a special natural facility disposing us to know the means which lead us to our end, a facility or 'habit' which the Scholasatics called 'habitus prinipiorum rationis practicae' or, more briefly, 'synteresis'

[239(44)] That general premise is then applied to the contingent circumstance which provides the minor premise and the resulting judgment or conclusion is that aspect of the practical reasoning we call conscience. "Conscience is that "act by which the reason applies a universal principle of morality to some particular case . . . [C]onscientia nihil aliud est quam applicatio scientiae ad aliquem actum." [259(68)] (quoting St. Thomas, S. T., Ia-IIae, q. 19, a. 5).

The principles of morality are immutable and generally known by men, "so they are without excuse" (Rom. 1:20), but the "application of these principles to the conduct of actual life varies with particular cases and allows a measure of ignorance and error." [259(69)] Since, in practice, no man can act except in the concrete, conscience is involved in each human act. If so, that presents the problem of how the judgment of conscience, being non-infallible and subject, indeed (if not properly informed) even prone, to error can be relied upon by man. How can man rely on a potentially unreliable guide?

First, Mercier disabuses us of any expectation that the human conscience involves decision-making where one should expect the precision of mathematics. Because of the subject matter, it would be unreasonable to expect the clarity that is attached to mathematical judgment to be the standard in moral judgment. Moral certainty is thus different than arithmetical certainty. [259-60(69)]

Man cannot act on a doubtful conscience. "To do an act when in doubt whether it is good or bad would be to will good or evil indifferently; and to hold the will indifferent to good or evil is to do evil, since the will must choose good alone and must eschew evil." [260(69)] Therefore, when confronting a doubtful conscience, man must do what he can to overcome any doubts. If, after have expended requisite efforts, someone is unable to come to a resolution and he concludes that the matter before him is simply invincibly doubtful then what is he to do?

Even when confronting a situation where what is good and what is evil is invincibly doubtful, man has to act reasonably. In doubt that cannot be overcome through reasonable efforts, man must take the most reasonable course of action. Is he stymied by the fact that he confronts a situation that is invincibly doubtful?

The answer is no. Man can have recourse, in a case of invincible doubt, to an indirect form of reasoning, a reflex principle, that allows him a reasonable and certain conscience and so allows him to act even in cases of invincible doubt. The reflex principle acts upon the rule that if man is not able to be convinced, after serious effort, that an act is unlawful he can prudently regard it as lawful. When is prudence able to kick in? When can a man prudently regard something that cannot be determined to be unlawful as lawful?

Here we get into different solutions, and these bring us to different schools of moral thought: rigorism, probabiliorism, equiprobabilism, probablism, and laxism. Rigorism, the strictest of all schools of thought on the issue of the application of the reflex principle when confronting invincible doubt, would require that, to act prudently when confronting an act where there is some doubt about what is lawful and what is unlawful, we ought to hold that an act is unlawful unless the reason suggesting that an act is unlawful is apparent only or futile. Laxism, which is at the opposite of the spectrum and is the least strict in applying the reflex principle in cases of invincible doubt, allows us to choose an act as lawful unless the reasons supporting that act as unlawful have a high degree of probability. Put shortly, in cases of invincible doubt, rigorism places high bias against the lawfulness of an act, whereas laxism places a high bias against the unlawfulness of an act. These two positions--rigorism and laxism--are "controvertible," [261(69)] meaning that they are not reasonable and ought to be rejected. [In fact, though not mentioned by Mercier, these two extremes have been rejected by the Church.]

In between rigorism and laxism are probabiliorists, equiprobabilists, and probabilists. The probabilist would hold that an act is, through the reflex principle, formally lawful when the lawfulness of an act is supported by a seriously probable reason, even though there is probable reason that the act is unlawful, even if these reasons are equal to or higher than those supporting the lawfulness of an act. In other words, as long as there is some serious probability that an act is lawful, even if there is probability than act act is unlawful, the actor may prudently determine, in cases if invincible ignorance, that the act is lawful. Equiprobabilists would require that, before an agent can regard as lawful a certain act, the probable reasons supporting the lawfulness of the act must be at least as probable as those supporting the unlawfulness of the act. Probabiliorists would require that, before an agent can regard an act as lawful under the reflex principle, the probable reasons supporting the lawfulness of the act must be more probable than the probable reasons supporting the unlawfulness of the act.

Whether a probabiliorist, an equiprobabilist, or a probabilist, we are confronted with the possibility of erroneous conscience. Can an erroneous conscience bind? More extreme, can a conscience that has a probability of being erroneous, and made formally certain only by the prudential application of a reflex principle, bind? Yes, Mercier concludes, but not simply and in all cases (as a conscience that is certain and not erroneous), a conscience that is erroneous binds, but only while its erroneous state lasts. If the error is ever discovered, it ceases to bind. Mercier quotes St. Thomas Aquinas's De veritate:

Although an erroneous conscience may dictate something not in accordance with the law of God, the person in error nevertheless accepts it as the real law of God; and so, strictly speaking, if he depart from this he will depart from the law of God. . . . The erroneous conscience does not bind simply and in all cases, but it binds only whilst it lasts.

[262(69)] (quoting De veritate, q.17, a. 4)

St. Jerome on the Natural Law: The Scintilla of Conscience

SAINT JEROME IS NOT TO BE NEGLECTED in considering the teachings of the natural law as found in the Church Fathers. St. Jerome, or Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (ca. 347 – 420 A.D.), was the son of Eusebius of Stridon, a town on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. St. Jerome is therefore sometimes referred to as “the Dalmation.” St. Jerome was born into a Christian family, and one that valued a classical education highly. He pursued rhetorical and philosophical studies under Aelius Donatus at Rome, and became accomplished in both Latin and Greek. Though born into a Christian family, he does not appear to have taken his faith seriously until sometime during his student years, and then through a series of stages of increasing fervor. On a journey through Thrace and Asia Minor in 373, Jerome became ill, and, during his illness, experienced a vision that made him disdain his secular studies and devote himself to the study of Scripture, and to an ascetic life.

The Ascetic Jerome: Detail of Unfinished Work by da Vinci

After this transformational experience, St. Jerome spent some time in the desert of Chalcis, southwest of the city of Antioch, and there, in the company of hermits, tried to learn Hebrew and advance in the study of the Scriptures. He returned to Antioch to be ordained, and then traveled to Constantinople to study Scripture under the famous St. Gregory Nazianzen. After two years in Constantinople, St. Jerome returned to Rome, and became a confidant of Pope Damasus I.

St. Jerome was forced to leave Rome after the death of Pope Damasus I, as his criticism of the secular clergy in that city had earned him many enemies and the death of the Pope left him without a protector. Therefore, in 385, St. Jerome returned to Antioch, and then, with a group of pilgrims, traveled to the Holy Land. He then spent some time at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, and thereafter returned to Palestine in 388, where he remained the rest of his life in a hermit’s cell near the town of Bethlehem. For more than thirty years, writing from his cell in Bethlehem, St. Jerome led a tremendously productive life.

St. Jerome in his Cell by Domenico Ghirlandaio

St. Jerome’s accomplishments are legion. He is known as having translated the Scriptures into Latin (the Vulgate), using the original Greek and Hebrew texts as the basis of his translation. His writings are vast and accomplished, and include commentaries on Scripture, letters, historical, biographical, and hagiographical works, as well as numerous polemical and theological works. His literary corpus is extensive and monumental, perhaps only outdone by St. Augustine’s even vaster literary output. St. Jerome is considered both a Father of the Church and a Doctor of the Church.

St. Jerome’s doctrine of the natural law falls within the general scope of the other fathers we have reviewed over the last several weeks. Like the other Church Fathers, St. Jerome judiciously and critically borrowed from Stoic, Platonic, and Ciceronian sources to fill in, as it were, the Pauline notion of the natural law as found in his Epistle to the Romans 2:14-16. St. Jerome also used biblical imagery and his understanding of salvation history in deriving his concept of the natural moral law. What he offers to his reader, is a robust, expansive, and universal notion of the natural law. He insisted that the natural law remained part of the divine plan in man even after the Fall, and that the natural law served the purpose of providing foundational principles of moral action, a rule and guide of directing one to the good, and one able to inform man where and how he has erred and where, therefore, he was in need of repentance and God’s mercy. St. Jerome stressed the role of conscience as a handmaid of the natural moral law, and brought forth the notion of synderesis as a scintilla conscientiae, the spark of conscience which made man unique among God’s creation in terms of being self-guided by an internalized natural law. He insisted that the natural law was not abrogated by the Gospel, and it was error to suggest that the natural law did not retain its validity or dignity. However, consistent with his Christocentric and Scriptural emphasis (as St. Jerome famously stated in his Commentary on Isaiah, "ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ," ignoratio Scripturarum, ignoratio Christi est. Comm. in Isaiam libri xviii prol.: PL 24, 17B), the natural law he advanced was not to be considered as a parallel means of salvation, but had to be supplemented, lifted, given sight by faith in Christ, and in Christ it was transformed into the twofold love of God and neighbor.

For the Church Fathers, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 2:14-16 offered only the foundation for theological elaborations on the matter of the natural moral law. The Sacred Scriptures did not contain a profound theological elaboration of the concept of the natural law, much less a philosophically robust one. And so, in elaborating upon the Pauline concept, the Church Fathers were compelled to borrow from contemporary philosophical schools whose thought could be appropriately adapted to the teachings of Scripture and the traditions of the Church. The Stoic philosophy was clearly the most adaptable, and most consistent with the Biblical view of man and law. Severino Visintainer, La dottrina del peccato in San Girolamo (Rome: Libreria Editrice Dell'Universitá Gregoriana, 1962), 3-4.

St. Jerome by El Greco

Inasmuch as nature was created by God, it participated in a distant sense in God itself, and was manifestly good. The Church Fathers, and one must include here even the severely ascetic St. Jerome, insisted—against the heretical and dualistic Gnostic sects—that creation, and hence human nature, was good. This was true even in the area of marriage and the conjugal act. “One ought not to be ashamed of nature, but it is to be venerated,” natura non erubescenda, sed veneranda est, St. Jerome observed in his Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. Because nature was to be venerated, and was not to be something of which one should be ashamed, one ought not to regard nature as affording the false scruples of prudishness any purchase. Marriage and procreation, like all things pertaining to the nature of man, far from being evil and the work of the devil, are created by God and therefore fundamentally good. Com. ad Gal. 4.19; PL 26:211. St. Jerome is no advocate of a Lutheran or Calvinistic "total depravity" notion of man. He would have been intemperately disdainful of it as an enormity, a falsehood, a heresy.

This generally optimistic concept of nature, even after the Fall, is central to St. Jerome’s teaching on the natural moral law. Such an optimistic view of post-lapsarian natural man is not to be considered as contradictory to the Gospel and the need for the supernatural life, the product of faith and grace. One must not forget that St. Jerome was one of the staunch adversaries of Pelagius, and authored both his Letter to Ctesiphon and his Dialogue against the Pelagians against any concept that man could be virtuous without the need of supernatural grace, the fruit of faith in Jesus Christ, or the sacramental life of the Church he founded.

But the need for Christ and for faith and grace did not for all that nullify the importance of the natural law. After the Fall of mankind, the natural law retained sufficient vitality so as to govern the moral decisions of man. The natural law walked out with man when he was barred from Garden of Eden. It remained even in the greatest of sinners, the spark of conscience and the natural moral law remaining even in the breast of the first murderer, Cain. In his letter to a certain woman named Algasia, St. Jerome writes that the natural law is written in the heart, as St. Paul teaches, and that:

[T]his law, which is written in the heart, encompasses all nations, and no man is there, who is ignorant of the law, inasmuch as the whole world is under sin and all men are violators of the law (praevaricatores legis), and on that account the heart of all men is written the just judgment of God (iustum iudicium Dei est scribentis in corde generis humani): what you do not wish done to you, do not do unto others (quod tibi fieri nolueris, alteris ne feceris). Who is ignorant of the fact that homicide, adultery, theft, and all concupiscence are evil of themselves, and do not wish these evils done to them? If they did not recognize them as evil, they would not want them done to them. And it is through this natural law that Cain recognized his sin, saying “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” (Maior cause mea quam ut dimittar). And Adam and Eve recognized their sin and for that reason hid under the tree of life. Pharaoh also, before the law was given by Moses, prompted by the natural law, confessed his crimes . . . this law children do not know, and so infants are ignorant of sin, inasmuch as without commandment there is no law of sin. . . .

Ep. 121. Adam and Eve, Cain, Pharaoh are all examples, before the Law of Moses was revealed, of the natural law working in man to urge him to good, to inform him of the good, and to bring him towards repentance for his failure to achieve the good. "La legge di natura si identifica quindi, per metonimia, con la conscienza stessa: forse non solo nella individualità, ma anche estensione e comprensione." Visintainer, 10 (The natural law is identified, therefore, by metonomy with conscience itself, but not only in its individuality, but also its expansion and comprehension). As we shall see, St. Jerome advances a significant role of conscience, or synderesis, in the application of the natural law.

St. Jerome insists that the natural law remains pleasing to God, part of his plan, a law the compliance of which he finds pleasing. The pagan Gentile who follows the natural law is more pleasing than the Jew who violates the written law:

We understand that the Lord accepts the good life even of the Gentiles and philosophers. He regards those who behave justly one way, and those who behave unjustly in another way. Those who neglect the written law will be condemned in comparison with the one who serves the natural law.

Intelligimus etiam gentilium et philosophorum bonam vitam recipere Dominum, et aliter habere eos qui iuste, aliter qui iniuste agant, et ad comparationem eius qui naturali legi serviat, condemnari eos qui scriptam legem negligent.

Com. in Mt. 25.26-29; PL 26:208 (Scheck, trans.); Visintainer, 5. Because the natural law retains validity even after the Mosaic law has been revealed, the just pagan may be preferred to the unjust Jew. St. Jerome has the following to say in reference to Christ's words in the Gospel of Matthew 11:21-22: "Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida; for if in Tyre and Sidon had been done the miracles which were done in you, they would have done penance long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you: It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment that for you."

To them [Chorazin and Bethsaida] he prefers Tyre and Sidon, cities that were surrendered to idolatry and vice. Now the reason they are preferred is because Tyre and Sidon only trampled upon natural law, but these, after transgressing natural and written law, even slighted the signs that were done among them.

Praeferuntum quod Tyrus et Sidon naturalem tantum legem calcaverint, istae vero post transgressionem naturalis legis et scriptae, etitam signa quae apud eos facta sunt, parvi, duxerint.

Com. in Mat. 11:21-22) (Scheck, trans.). Christ can prefer the pagan Phoenecian cities of Tyrus and Sidon over the Jewish Galilean cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida because the latter violated the natural law, the Mosaic law, and ignored the signs that were intended to move them to repentance. Implied is the supposition that Tyrus and Sidon would realize they had violated the natural law were they confronted by the same signs.

Though Christ abrogated the ceremonial and ritual laws of the Mosaic law, he did not abrogate the entirety of that law, at least not that part that is consistent with the natural law. Christ's coming and the announcement of the Gospel did not supplant the natural moral law. "Essere liberi dall Legge non significa affatto che la natura abbia cessato di porre le sue esigenze morali." Visintainer, 14 (To be free of the Law did not signify by that fact that nature had ceased to be the source of moral requirements). St. Jerome refuses to countenance the possibility that the natural law has been abrogated by Christ, that Christ had somehow ushered in a time of libertinism or lawless grace. Grace and the natural law coexist in Christ’s dispensation. One ought not to get the idea that the need to be beneath the law has ceased, that man has been freed entirely of the law. Though there has been a dispensation or abrogation of the ceremonial and ritual obligations of the Mosaic law, the obligation to follow the natural moral law has been strengthened all the more. "Le altre 'opere della legge' quelle evidentemente che si fondano sulla natura, non sono invece abolite: solo si devono ora rivestire della fede." Visintainer, 15 (The other works of the law which are evidently founded upon nature, are thereby abolished: they ought to be now dressed anew by the faith). These would include the Ten Commandments. Visintainer, 16. The natural moral law rules imperatively so long as man has a nature, and it coexists with the law of grace. “Et ita fit, ut non ideo quia sub servitute Legis esse cessatis, putetis esse vos liberos: sed sciatis magis naturae vos Lege retinere, quia non statim si lex non imperat, et natura cessavit.” Com. ad Gal. 5.17, PL 26:502; Visintainer, 4-5.

St. Jerome's insistence that the natural law was not abrogated by Christ, but was reconfirmed, does not lessen man's need for faith in Christ. “Sed ideo non justificari operatores eius (Legis, sia naturale che mosaica), quia absque fide Christi fiant.” Com. ad Gal. 2.16. The words of the law, whether the Mosaic law or the natural law, do not justify the doers of the law absent faith in Christ. In the context of interpreting Jesus' words to St. John the Baptist in regarding to the former's baptism and the latter's hesitation in administering it: "For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all justice," Matt. 3:15, Jerome states as follows: “Non addidit: iustitiam legis, sive naturae, ut nos utrumque intelligamus.” “He did not add justice ‘of the Law’ or ‘of nature,’ so that we might understand both [forms of justice]” were fulfilled by Christ's willing baptism. Com. in Mat. 3.16 (Scheck, trans.). That is to say, Christ was the fulfillment of both the Mosaic and the natural law, and we must look to him as their end and their paradigm.

Not only can the Mosaic law or the natural law not save by themselves, they do not fully enlighten. "Non solo non salva, ma nemmeno illumina; ambedue i popoli, l'ebraico e il gentile, 'alter scriptam Legem, alter naturalem sequens, sine Christo coecus erat.'" Visintainer, 6 (quoting Com. in Mt. 3:16; 26 PL 158). Absent the law of Christ, our moral knowledge is substantially reduced. Visintainer, 6. Accordingly, both Jew and Gentile were in need of the light of Christ. Neither the natural moral law, nor the Mosaic law, was complete without faith in Christ. St. Jerome refuses to apply the natural law in a wholly naturalistic way, and here he clearly departs from the Stoic thought. "Qui ci troviamo in opposizione con le categorie stoiche; ci troviamo in opposizione al naturalismo: le 'virtù naturali', senza la fede non sono virtù." Visintainer, 17 (Here we confront an opposition with the stoic categories; we encounter an opposition to naturalism: the 'natural virtue' without faith is not virtue). It is manifest, albeit implicit, that virtue is supernatural. "E' implicito, ci sembra, il concetto di 'soprannaturale' per le virtù dei credenti." Visintainer, 17 (It is implicit, it seems, the concept of the 'supernatural' in the virtue of the believer). This supernatural life is a gift that follows from the recognition of Christ.

Therefore, with reference to the two blind men that cried out “Lord have mercy on us, son of David,” as Jesus and the Apostles, followed by crowds, left Jericho, as related in Matthew 20:29-31, St. Jerome had the following observations. These two blind men are by the wayside, they do not see light, and they may stand for those who have the Law, but not the Way, that is, Christ. Or they may stand for two peoples, the Jew and the Gentile. "For both were blind, the one by following written law, the other by following natural law without Christ." Com. in Mat. 20:29-31 (Scheck, trans.)

Without the light of Christ, St. Jerome insists the natural light of the natural law is dim. The natural law, St. Jerome concedes, is fed by reason, and thus gives proper directives. For example, it allows us to see the fundamental principle of the natural law that we ought to do good, and avoid evil. “naturali lege, quae loquitur in cordibus nostris, bona quaeque facienda, et vitanda mala.” Com. ad Gal. 3, 2. It functions, even in the sinner, to whom it gives precious directives, “sed cogitatio; mea, et ratio naturalis, quam etiam peccatoribus Deus auctor inservit, retraxerunt me et deduxerunt ad sapientiam.” In Eccle. 2.33; CC 72, 253, 44 (quoted in Visintainer, at 6, n. 15). Some fundamental wrongs the natural law acting through conscience is able to see, even without the light of Christ. These include: homicide, adultery, rape, the obligation to honor one’s parents, theft. See Visintainer, at 7 n. 17. (and citations therein).

St. Jerome thus recognizes that there are two states of knowledge of the natural moral law, "due stadi di consoscenza, corrispondenti alla mente senza la fede e con la fede," as Visintainer puts it, one state of conscience corresponding to a mind without faith and another state corresponding to the mind with faith. Visintainer, 7 (citing Comm ad Gal. 1, 5; 5, 19-21; 26 PL 391, 505).

St. Jerome identifies the natural law with the recognition of sin, and thereby understands it to be part of the tools of conscience, indeed, it is at the very heart of conscience.

Ezechiel's Vision by Raphael

One of the more fascinating contributions of St. Jerome to the concept of the natural law and conscience is the matter of synderesis or synteresis. Because of his teaching on this concept, the Scholastics referred to St. Jerome as the Father of the Church that was most distinguished in the area of synderesis or conscience. Visintainer, 11. "The word synderesis," Crowe states in his The Changing Profile of the Natural Law, "is hardly found in present-day moral theology." But that was not always so. The term synderesis was adopted by the Scholastics (see, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T. I, q. 79, art. 12) to mean the natural capacity, disposition, or habit (habitus) of practical reason that apprehends intuitively the universal first principles of human action. The first such principle that is apprehended is the “good,” just as the first such principle apprehended by the speculative reason is “being.” Synderesis also includes the capacity to judge one’s actions, either prospectively or retrospectively, in light of those first principles. "It made a sudden appearance in the thirteenth century, enjoyed its crowded hour of glorious life and faded away before the end of the century." Crowe, at 123. The term synderesis is found in St. Jerome’s Commentary on Ezechiel, where it lay fallow for centuries until apparently revived in the Sentences of a certain Master Udo written in 1160-65, and then had a sporadic life until the thirteenth century, where it enjoyed its ephemeral life in the treatment of the moral life in the Scholastic theologians. Crowe, 124-25 ff. Interestingly, the use of synderesis or synteresis is probably a scrivener’s error, as it is likely that St. Jerome would have used the Greek word syneidesis, συνείδησης, the common Greek term for conscience or conscientia. The term was probably inaccurately transcribed as συντηρησις, from whence the term synderesis was born.

In his Commentary on Ezekiel’s vision found in Ezekiel 1:4-10 (of the four winged creatures, with four faces, being the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle), St. Jerome interprets the vision as follows. He sees the man as symbolizing the rational faculties in man, that part which is reason, and understanding, and thought of internal counsel, even virtue and wisdom (rationem et cognitionem, et mentem, et consilium, eademque virtutem atque sapientiam in cerebrice arece ponenentes). The lion is that which is of ferocity in us (feritatem vero et iracundiam atque violentiam in leone, qui consistat in felle). The ox is libidinousness, luxury, an all kinds of voluptuousness and cupidity (porro libidinem, luxuriam, et omnium voluptatum cupidinem in jecora, id est, in vitulo qui terrae operibus haereat). The man is thus considered to be symbol of the rational in man, (rationale animae, τὸ λογικόν, to logikon), and the lion is considered the irascible part of man (irascitivum, or τὸ θυμικόν, to thymikon), the ox the concupiscible in man (concupiscitivum, or τὸ ἐπιθυμετικόν, to epithymetikon). The eagle is understood, St. Jerome states, as what the Greeks have called synderisis, the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae) a fourth power which is above the other three (supra haec et extra haec tria). Com. i n Hiezech. 1, 7 (PL 25:10); see also Visintainer, at 11-12.

Thus, in a splendid image redolent of St. Justin Martyr's adoption of Plato's charioteer, and conceptually similar to his notion of the spermatikos logos (σπερματικός λόγος) or zotikon pneuma (ζωτικόν πνεύμα), St. Jerome places the spark of conscience, the eagle of man, at the zenith of man's faculties. All our other faculties, rational, irascible, concupiscible are to be ordered, ruled, and judged by the natural law (lex naturalis) under the guidance of the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae). It is the vice-regent of God in man, the still, silent, but imperious voice of the natural moral law.

St. Jerome in his Study by van Eyck