Conscience in the New Testament

Professor Pierce presents a consistent and convincing thesis that the idea of conscience arose in the popular "folk wisdom" of the Greeks and came into the NT through Paul's Corinthian correspondence where the apostle picked it up as a catch-word of his readers and used it with very little real change in meaning. Throughout its long history in non-biblical and NT usage it refers to the pain (or agency of pain) suffered by an individual for specific wrong acts which he himself has committed in the past. Then as Pierce turns to the modern world he finds widespread misunderstanding and misuse of the NT meaning of the term, with a tendency to make it refer not only to one's own actions but to those of others, with a broadening of it to a collective function and, finally, with a tendency to make it the basis of judgment of future actions, thus extending its field until it becomes the infallible guide to all thought and action, a virtual "idol." In closing, the author offers some constructive suggestions to the Church for the proper training of Christians for both "choice" and "conscience." - Chalmer E. Faw, Journal of Biblical Literature, no. 1, p. 65.