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Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace 1.22, Conscience

23 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in Abraham Kuyper

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Calvin, conscience, John Locke, Kuyper, Luther, Puritan

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CONSCIENCE AND THE COVENANT OF WORKS

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Gen. 2:16-17

Kuyper begins this chapter with a discussion of conscience. In this opening section he presents two very different concepts of conscience and attributes the modern conscience to be a function of the Enlightenment. 

This discussion of conscience begins with the observation that Adam had no conscience, as we know it. This leads to a discussion of two ways of understanding conscience. In one manner, the newer understanding, conscience is a self-executing faculty which can determine whether a course of conduct is morally appropriate. This faculty as an innate knowledge of what God requires and functions as an “oracle” to our mind.

Functioning in this manner, conscience has an authority independent and over God’s Word. Not raised by Kuyper, but proof of his thesis can be found in the many concessions and transformations of Christian moral behavior and opinion in the world after Kuyper. God’s Word is either rejected or nuanced in such a way as to be meaningless. Any number of examples could be given on the evolution of Christian morality in a number of instances. 

The previous Reformed understanding of conscience before “rationalism was busy trampling faith,”  did not understand conscience as an independent “capacity” but rather as a recurrent reflective mode of thinking. Kuyper identifies three elements of this reflective thought: 

First, it knows the external law of God; the knowledge of good and evil. Second, we have a knowledge of ourselves and our actions. Third, there is a reflexive comparison of our conduct with knowledge of God’s law. He refers to this as a “higher impulse” and pursuant to the impulse we continually reflect on our life in comparison to the law. 

In this respect it then differs from the latter concept of conscience as an independent source of knowledge. 

In this understanding, the conscience is dependent upon the content of the external law which informs and forms the conscience. In looking at some pre-Enlightenment sources, it is possible to see an understanding consistent with Kuyper’s model:

False Rule. 3. Conscience. It is, saith one, my conscience. This is no rule for an upright man; the conscience of a sinner is defiled, Tit. 1:15 conscience being defiled may err; an erring conscience cannot be a rule, Acts 26:9. ‘I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus;’ he who is an heretic may plead conscience; admit conscience to be a rule, and we open the door to all mutinies and massacres; if the devil get into a man’s conscience, whither will he not carry him?

Thomas Watson, “The Upright Man’s Character,” in Discourses on Important and Interesting Subjects, Being the Select Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; Glasgow: Blackie, Fullarton, & Co.; A. Fullarton & Co., 1829), 328. Here, he explicitly denies the conscience has any independent moral standard, but it is imported – at the very least one without salvation cannot have a properly functioning conscience. 

There are other uses which are ambiguous on this point, such as Manton’s “That true morality and good conscience cannot be had without the faith of the gospel; so that we are not only better provided, but indeed cannot perform such obedience as is acceptable to God without faith in Christ.” Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 17 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1874), 429. The trouble for the unbeliever is the inability to pacify the conscience because he cannot live right. This raises the question, why does the unbeliever have any pangs of conscience if he is ignorant of the law?

Thomas Boston goes further and writes: “This moral law is found, 1. In the hearts of all men, as to some remains thereof, Rom. 2:15. There are common notions thereof, such as, That there is a God, and that he is to be worshipped; that we should give every one his due, &c. Conscience has that law with which it accuses for the commission of great crimes, Rom. 1 ult. This internal law appears from those laws which are common in all countries for the preserving of human societies, the encouraging of virtue, and the discouraging of vice. What standard else can they have for these laws but common reason? The design of them is to keep men within the bounds of goodness for mutual commerce.”Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, Part 2, ed. Samuel M‘Millan, vol. 2 (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1848), 61.

And similarly by another, “but God hath given both light streaming forth from the word, and he hath given the eye of conscience, that by both these men might come assuredly to know that they are called out of darkness unto light.” James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 6 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 389.

In another place we see the conscience being deceived and thus judging wrongly: “Conscience is sometimes deceived through ignorance of what is right, by apprehending a false rule for a true, an error for the will of God: sometimes, through ignorance of the fact, by misapplying a right rule to a wrong action. Conscience, evil informed, takes human traditions and false doctrines, proposed under the show of Divine authority, to be the will of God.” James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 13.

Edwards occupies an interesting middle position, “Thus natural conscience, if the understanding be properly enlightened, and errors and blinding stupifying prejudices are removed, concurs with the law of God, and is of equal extent with it, and joins its voice with it in every article.” Jonathan Edwards, The Works of President Edwards (Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, Jun., 1808), 442–443. There is a natural conscience which would conform to the law of God, were it enlightened. 

And Luther held to a view that conscience can know of sin but not condemn the man as a sinner, “Zachman writes of Luther’s negative view of conscience: “The conscience can recognize sins (acts), but it cannot of itself, even under the external revelation of the law, acknowledge the person as sinner (nature). The subjective ability to feel oneself a sinner and to sense the wrath of God on sinners is thus a gift of God, and not an ability of conscience.” Justification is solely God’s work ex nihilo, not out of any preexistent salvific matters including human accretions, the murmuring of conscience, etc.” Dennis Ngien, Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 155–156.

And Calvin, “In like manner, when men have an awareness of divine judgment adjoined to them as a witness which does not let them hide their sins but arraigns them as guilty before the judgment seat—this awareness is called “conscience.” It is a certain mean between God and man, for it does not allow man to suppress within himself what he knows, but pursues him to the point of making him acknowledge his guilt. This is what Paul means when he teaches that conscience testifies to men, while their thoughts accuse or excuse them in God’s judgment [Rom. 2:15–16]. A simple awareness could repose in man, bottled up, as it were. Therefore, this feeling, which draws men to God’s judgment, is like a keeper assigned to man, that watches and observes all his secrets so that nothing may remain buried in darkness. Hence that ancient proverb: conscience is a thousand witnesses.11 By like reasoning, Peter also put “the response11a of a good conscience to God” [1 Peter 3:21] as equivalent to peace of mind, when, convinced of Christ’s grace, we fearlessly present ourselves before God. And when the author of The Letter to the Hebrews states that we “no longer have any consciousness of sin” [Heb. 10:2], he means that we are freed or absolved so that sin can no longer accuse us.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1181–1182.

This brings us on both sides of the Enlightenment. While none of these examples hold the conscience an infallible witness, there is at least a general sense of God’s law.

Oddly, Kuyper’s position in some way is closer to John Locke,  Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Book 1, Chapter 2:

“7. Men’s actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their internal principle. For, if we will not in civility allow too much sincerity to the professions of most men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of their thoughts, we shall find that they have no such internal veneration for these rules, nor so full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation. The great principle of morality, “To do as one would be done to,” is more commended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater vice, than to teach others, that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it themselves. Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establishment of the rule be preserved.

“8. Conscience no proof of any innate moral rule. To which I answer, that I doubt not but, without being written on their hearts, many men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things, come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set conscience on work; which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions; and if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid.

“9. Instances of enormities practised without remorse. But I cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their children, and leaving them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts has been the practice; as little condemned or scrupled as the begetting them? Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with their mothers, if they die in childbirth; or despatch them, if a pretended astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars? And are there not places where, at a certain age, they kill or expose their parents, without any remorse at all?”

This is a very preliminary exercise and I have never really thought the issue through before. I without question concur that the conscience can be informed and deformed, and it is certainly no infallible rule. But I don’t think the issue can settled as easily as before and after the Enlightenment. 

Freedom of Conscience is an insufficient ground to protect freedom of religion

14 Friday Aug 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Politics

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Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Religion, Leeman, Luther

In his book Political Church, Jonathan Leeman consider the “freedom of conscience” argument as a basis for political freedom. I must admit that I found this argument, compelling and was confirmed in Luther’s words, “To go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” And while I affirm that a well-informed conscience is to be heeded, I also understand that conscience is an insufficient ground to protect the exercise of religion. In Leeman’s words

In short, the traditional liberal formulation simply demands too much for the conscience and too little by way of foundations. Christians will like what it produces only when the vast majority of citizens inhabit a broadly Christian value system. It’s true from a biblical perspective that true worship cannot be coerced, and a biblical perspective on religious tolerance insists on carving out an area for the conscience to freely respond to God, as we will see in subsequent chapters. But this free conscience must remain hemmed in by a concept of right and not just rights. To argue that “the conscience is entitled to remain free” is an overstatement. It invests too much authority in the individual. It presumes too much about the rightness of the conscience’s claim. And in the end it will cave in on itself and undermine true religion because it’s accountable to nothing but the whims of whatever ideologies rule the day. All this is the result of asking the publicly accessible “conscience” to stand in for “religion.” This trade works just fine in a nation of believers and relatively biblically virtuous people. But in a nation of believers and unbelievers, the unattached, unaccountable conscience will be employed to legitimize the freedom of various religions (institutionally defined) only as long as the consciences of a nation’s decision makers value them. When a nation’s decision makers decide that the traditional (substantivist) institutional religions are a threat to liberty or equality or tolerance, they will banish them, first from the public square, then from the marketplace, and perhaps, in partial ways, from the home (“No, you may not indoctrinate your children”).

Leeman, Jonathan. Political Church: The Local Assembly as Embassy of Christ’s Rule (Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture) (pp. 90-91). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

27 Saturday May 2017

Posted by memoirandremains in Martin Luther

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Affective Sufficency, Fear, humility, Luther, Pride

All the more are human works mortal sins when they are done without fear and in unadulterated, evil self-security.

The inevitable deduction from the preceding thesis is clear. For where there is no fear there is no humility. Where there is no humility there is pride, and where there is pride there are the wrath and judgment of God, for God opposes the haughty. Indeed, if pride would cease there would be no sin anywhere. 

The Annotated Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Reform, Heidleberg Disputation 1518, no. 8
https://ref.ly/o/annotlutv1/462431?length=418

Luther on Idolatry

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Martin Luther, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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idolatry, idols, Idols of the Heart, Luther, Martin Luther

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Idolatry does not consist merely of erecting an image and praying to it, but it is primarily a matter of the heart, which fixes its gaze upon other things and seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils. It neither cares for God nor expects good things from God sufficiently to trust that God wants to help, nor does it believe that whatever good it encounters comes from God.

Kirsi I. Stjerna, “The Large Catechism of Dr. Martin Luther,” in Word and Faith, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert, vol. 2, The Annotated Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 302–303.

There is sheer sweetness, joy

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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christology, Galatians, joy, Luther, Sheer Sweetness

This is why I am so earnest in my plea to you to learn the true and correct definition of Christ on the basis of these words of Paul: “who gave Himself for our sins.” If He gave Himself into death for our sins, then undoubtedly He is not a tormentor. He is not One who will cast down the troubled, but One who will raise up the fallen and bring propitiation and consolation to the terrified. Otherwise Paul would be lying when he says “who gave Himself for our sins.” If I define Christ this way, I define Him correctly, grasp the authentic Christ, and truly make Him my own. I avoid all speculations about the Divine Majesty and take my stand in the humanity of Christ. There is no fear here; there is sheer sweetness, joy, and the like. This kindles a light that shows me the true knowledge of God, of myself, of all creatures, and of all the wickedness of the kingdom of the devil.

Luther, Commentary on Galatians 1:3

An Antitode to Evangelical Church’s Obsession with the Spectacular

03 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Carl Trueman, Luther

This points to a further implication of Luther’s sacramentalism: the nature of the ministry. We saw in the last chapter that the ministry is a ministry of the Word, that God acts through the Word read and proclaimed in the church. To this we must now add that the ministry is also one of sacraments. As the minister preaches each week, so he also administers baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is important to understand that in all this, Luther regards God as the agent. The popular phrase of “doing church” is thus entirely inappropriate within a Lutheran framework: Christians do not “do” church in any ultimate or definitive way. God “does” church. The minister— preaching, baptizing, and officiating at communion— is merely an instrument by which God achieves what he intends.

This is surely an antidote to the evangelical church’s perennial obsession with the big, the spectacular, the extraordinary, and the impressive. The quest for the next big thing that allows the church to ride the cultural wave, or the technical silver bullet that makes outreach and discipleship so much more effective, would be entirely alien to Luther’s way of thinking. Preach the Word and administer the sacraments: that is the minister’s calling; these are the tools of his trade and the means by which he is to address pastoral problems. That they seem weak and ineffective from a technical perspective is irrelevant: their power and effectiveness come from the agent, God himself.

Trueman, Carl R. (2015-02-28). Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom (Theologians on the Christian Life) (p. 158). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

His task is far too serious

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Luther, Preaching

Further, the preacher is not simply to convey information; still less is he there to entertain. His task is far too serious for either of these: he is exposing a current reality (the human tendency to seek to be right with God through self-righteousness) and creating a new reality (where we are clothed with the crucified Christ’s righteousness). Thus, he is to show people that all their righteousness is as filthy rags and as reliable a leaning post as a spider’s web; and that, counterintuitive and countercultural as it may be, true righteousness, mercy, and grace are to be found in the filthy and broken corpse of a man condemned as a criminal to hang on a cross. This is the preaching of law and gospel, and it carries with it transformative power.

Because God’s Word addresses human beings in this way, it can never be a morally indifferent force. It challenges us at the most basic level of our being, in terms of our very identity.

Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life

That provided a too limited horizon

18 Monday May 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling

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Biblical Counseling, Luther

In spite of the multiplication of academic disciplines in the twentieth century that focus on the biological, social, psychological, and evolutionary understanding of the human creature, these modern approaches provide a very limited perspective from which the human person can understand the human condition. The sixteenth-century Reformers recognized that it was not enough for human beings to study themselves. That provided too limited a horizon. They could not stand outside themselves to gain the necessary perspective from which they could comprehend the totality of their being and existence. Because we are creatures, what it means to be fully human simply lies beyond the grasp of the human mind. Creatures cannot, by the very definition of what it means to be a creature, comprehend and understand everything about their Creator, and because their relationship with their Creator stands at the heart of their existence, they cannot grasp everything about themselves. Lacking the ability to step outside of themselves, human beings take on a sense of self-exalted importance or find themselves struggling with a sense of insignificance and helplessness within the universe.

Kolb, Robert; Arand, Charles P. (2008-02-01). Genius of Luther’s Theology, The: A Wittenberg Way of Thinking for the Contemporary Church (p. 24). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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