Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

ethical, and its functions relate pre-eminently to the moral side of life-to action upon the will.

But while the mind impels the will to do its behests, it offers no judgment as to the moral content of the will, and does not of itself decide whether an action is good or evil. This function is reserved for the "law" regarded as the norm of will, not made by man, but written by God Himself on man's heart. It is this "law" which gives to conscience its content. And conscience as a divinely appointed innate faculty of man's being bears unmistakable witness to God. This word, which probably came to Paul from Stoic sources, bears more than almost any other word in the epistles the aspect of modernity. The apostle uses it frequently in his writings, and always in the meaning it has for modern thought. If we were to attempt to bring it into line with the other terms we have been considering, it might be reckoned as a function of the spirit or soul in so far as it signifies "selfconsciousness"; and as an expression of the heart or mind when regarded as moral approval or disapproval. In any case conscience is not a special or separate organ existing alongside of the mind and heart, but simply a function of man's soul by which he discerns the truth of God. It is broadly equivalent in Paul's usage to the "Daemon" of Socrates, to the "Light of Nature" of later philosophy, or to "the moral sense" of Shaftesbury, and is thus a point of contact between God and Among the heathen Paul says, "God did not

man.

leave Himself without a witness."

Again, in the course

of his argument in the first chapter of Romans, in order to show that the Jew as little as the Gentile can be justified by legal obedience, the apostle incidentally dwells upon the manifestation of God which is made.

1 Rom. ii. 15.

directly to the conscience of the heathen man "their conscience also bearing witness."

There is probably no subject which requires more thorough investigation, as there is none which involves greater difficulty, than that of conscience. Whatever theory we may hold as to its origin, whether the intuitional, which regards it as an innate and complete faculty in man, or the evolutional, which treats it historico-psychologically, and views it as a function gradually developed through the influences of custom, law, education and the complex action of the hereditary belief and wisdom of the race, there can be no doubt that it is the distinctively ethical element in man, and that Paul was right in presupposing in mankind a certain inherent and inalienable faculty or organ which recognizes the good and the true and responds to the divine. Conscience may be developed and educated, but it is there from the beginning in some rudimentary or at least potential form, and it gives to the whole consciousness or spiritual personality at each stage of life its moral worth.

It is not, however, with the origin of conscience, but with its capacities and functions in its developed state that ethics is primarily concerned. The tendency of modern physiological accounts of conscience is to undermine its authority and pave the way for a complete moral irresponsibility. But no theory of its origin must be permitted to invalidate the authority of its judgments, and we may be justly suspicious of any system which

1See P. Rée, Ursprung des Gewissens; Munsterberg, Ursprung der Sittlichkeit; Gass, Lehre vom Gewissen. Intuitionists: Shaftesbury, Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Butler, Kant, Fichte, Janet. Evolu. tionists: Darwin, Spencer, Stephen, Höffding. Cp. also for general treatment: Paulsen, System of Ethics, and Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics.

tends to depersonalize man.1 Conscience is the faculty of moral perception, and it needs, like other intellectual faculties, to be cultivated and developed. Paul dwells upon the necessity of growing in spiritual knowledge and perception. Thus the Gentiles became darkened in their understanding, and were given over to a reprobate mind. Conscience needs therefore to be constantly corrected, educated and invigorated, and this is in one aspect the supreme task of life. It has been maintained that, according to the teaching of the New Testament, conscience "bears witness not only to a better and worse in human action, but to the existence of a higher than myself, a Person to whom I am spiritually akin and who has rights over me-the right of control and command,"

"5

"God's most intimate presence in the Soul."

It is that through which God speaks to man in the successive strata of his development; that by which man recognizes God's will as his supreme law. The conscience becomes Christian as it is mastered by Christ. The effect of conversion is to raise the natural conscience to

a higher value. Under the transforming power of the spirit, the whole man, of whom conscience is the immediate organ, is confronted with a higher ideal, and is awakened to a larger sense of responsibility.

Summing up the psychical or spiritual side of man, we may say that, according to Paul, the "ego" or soul is one, and is constituted of three main elements-heart, reason and conscience-in virtue of which it is capable of apprehending, appropriating, and approving the world of good or of evil. The heart, as the emotional and

1Cp. Ottley, Christian Ideas and Ideals, p. 59.
2 Phil. i. 9.

41 Cor. viii. 7 ff.; x. 25 ff.

3 Rom. i. 21,

28.

'Ottley, ibid. p. 60.

impressionable part, receives impressions of objects; the reason enlightens, coordinates and assorts them; the conscience judges, approves or disapproves; and all together prompt the will to action.

2. So far the faculties which we have been considering represent the higher side of man's being. Let us turn now to the lower outer side-that part of man's nature which somehow easily lends itself to sin, and even in the regenerate state acts as a formidable foe of the Christian life. Nowhere does the apostle offer an abstract doctrine of the body, and when he speaks of it, it is usually as a fact of Christian experience with which every believer has to do in striving after holiness. The point of view is indicated in his exhortation to the Galatians, "Walk in the spirit and do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary to each other, so that ye may not do the things that ye would." 1 He also writes in a similar strain in the epistle to the Romans, "We are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh ye must die, but if by the spirit ye do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live." The opposition between the flesh and the spirit is thus strongly emphasized. It is for every earnest man a fight between two opposing elements —a matter of life and death. The struggle is one which belongs not to the Christian state alone. The opposition is already apparent in the natural man, as we may gather from the seventh chapter of Romans. But its strength and peculiarity lie in the fact that the struggle is not over when we enter on the Christian life. And Paul shows in a significant passage that he himself knows by experience the seriousness of this conflict and the need 1 Gal. v. 16, 17. 2 Rom. viii. 12, 13.

2

of constant watchfulness and effort. "I buffet my body," he says to the Corinthians, " and bring it into bondage, lest by any means, after having preached to others, I myself should become a castaway." Now in these passages both words "body" and "flesh" are used, and in so far as they are each regarded as obstructing holiness, they would seem to be for the apostle synonymous terms. He warns his readers against the flesh, while it is with the body that he himself wages a persistent warfare. This indiscriminate use of both words scarcely bears out the distinction which Holsten, Lüdemann and Pfleiderer seek to substantiate, that the word "flesh" indicates the material of which the "body" consists, while the word "body" is the form of the material organism. This distinction has been made, as has been pointed out,' in the interests of a theory that Paul shared the Greek view of all bodily matter as inherently evil. But this supposition falls to the ground when we find that Paul, contrary to the Greek view, regards both the owμa and the σápę as equally sanctifiable. Sometimes, indeed, it might seem as if the apostle did regard the body or the flesh as incurably bad. Thus he speaks of killing the deeds of the body, and of the body as dead on account of sin. But far more frequently the body is represented as the subject of sanctification not less than the soul or spirit. In the passage already quoted the apostle prays, “that the whole spirit, soul and body may be preserved blameless," σua being the word used. But in 2 Cor. iv. 10, 11, the two words are interchanged, and the thought is that the life-power of Christ revealing itself in the mortal body of the apostle may exercise itself upon

2

1 Prof. Dickson, Flesh and Spirit; and Prof. Bruce, St. Paul's Conception of Christianity.

21 Thess. v. 23.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »