Conscience

“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law to themselves… they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”

— Romans 2:14-15

Conscience is the human faculty by which a person senses God’s own judgment on their actions: “a sense of the divine justice added as a witness which allows them not to conceal their sins, but drags them forward as culprits to the bar of God.”¹ It stands between God and the person, its testimony either accusing or excusing (Rom. 2:15). Liberty of conscience is the confessional doctrine that this faculty answers to God alone: “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” left free from “the doctrines and commandments of men” wherever these go beyond what Scripture itself requires.²

Confessional Witness

The doctrine belongs to the wider Reformed confessional family, not to the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession alone. The Westminster Confession (1646), the Savoy Declaration (1658), and the Philadelphia Confession (1742) each devote a chapter titled “Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience” to the same doctrine, and across their central paragraphs the wording is essentially identical.³

That shared chapter first states what the liberty Christ purchased actually consists in: freedom “from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the rigour and curse of the law,” deliverance “from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin,” and “free access to God” offered in “a child-like love and willing mind” rather than “slavish fear.”⁴ From this liberty follows the doctrine’s central claim, stated in the confession’s own words: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or not contained in it. So that to believe such doctrines, or obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.”² Westminster states the same point with only a minor difference of wording, binding the conscience against whatever is “contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.”⁵ Neither confession treats this liberty as license: “they who upon pretence of Christian liberty do practice any sin, or cherish any sinful lust… wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is, that being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him.”⁶

Westminster’s chapter carries a fourth paragraph, absent from the 1689 confession, on the civil magistrate’s power over publicly subversive opinions and practices, a church-state question distinct from the doctrine of conscience itself.⁷

Biblical Basis

Paul grounds the very existence of conscience in general revelation: Gentiles “who do not have the law” nonetheless “show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Rom. 2:14-15), a text read as conscience’s own definition, “that sense… which allows them not to conceal their sins, but drags them forward as culprits to the bar of God.”¹ Conscience answers to God rather than to other people: Paul calls it “a conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men” (Acts 24:16),⁸ and ties “a good conscience” so closely to persevering faith that he can say some “concerning faith have made shipwreck” precisely by “put[ting] away” a good conscience (1 Tim. 1:5, 19).⁸

Scripture regulates conscience’s own liberty in “things indifferent,” matters Scripture neither commands nor forbids. “I know,” Paul writes, “that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean” (Rom. 14:14), and he ties the use of such things to inward conviction rather than to the act itself: “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).⁹ Writing to Corinth about meat sacrificed to idols, Paul allows a believer to eat freely, “asking no question for conscience sake,” yet requires him to abstain once another has flagged the meat’s origin, “for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake: conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other” (1 Cor. 10:25-29).¹⁰ The believer’s own liberty is not thereby forfeited; what is owed is restraint in its use, “lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak” (1 Cor. 8:9), out of care for a brother “for whom Christ died” (Rom. 14:1, 13, 15).¹⁰ Titus 1:15 states the same liberty from the opposite direction: “unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.”⁹

Civil obedience raises a further question the doctrine has to answer. Paul commands submission to governing authorities “not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake” (Rom. 13:5), language that could seem to make civil law itself binding on the conscience the way God’s law is.¹¹

Historical Development

Westminster’s Presbyterian assembly (1646), the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration (1658), the Particular Baptists’ Second London Confession (1677), and the Philadelphia Confession that carried that Baptist line into colonial America (1742) all reproduce the same chapter, “Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience,” in nearly identical language, even while those same documents part ways sharply over church government and the subjects of baptism.³

Calvin’s own chapter on Christian liberty states the doctrine at length and draws the distinction the later confessions presuppose: between the “spiritual” government by which “the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship” and the “civil” government that regulates only “external conduct.”¹¹ He directed the doctrine specifically against binding the conscience to “the doctrines and commandments of men,” the very phrase the confessions later adopt, rather than against civil law itself, which he held binds outward conduct without reaching the conscience in the same way.¹¹ The doctrine’s continuing target was Rome’s practice of binding the conscience through the sacrament of penance, which Herman Bavinck later described as forcing “the church’s ministers into a casuistic and quantitative treatment of sin and punishment,” making “grace and one’s salvation at every moment uncertain and unsettled.”¹²

Opposing Views

Roman Catholicism binds the conscience to the church’s own sacramental system rather than to Scripture alone. The Council of Trent declared “this sacrament of penance” as “necessary to salvation” for those who sin after baptism “as baptism itself is to those not yet regenerate.”¹³ Trent further taught that full confession of every mortal sin to a priest is necessary by divine law, since Christ left his priests as judges to whom sins “are to be communicated” and who alone are authorized “to pronounce the sentence of remission or retention,” a power the Council held priests retain even while themselves in mortal sin.¹³ Reformed theology grants that confession itself has some good in it (James 5:16), but has answered that making it compulsory, with a priest’s own act of absolution as the ground of assurance, “forces the church’s ministers into a casuistic and quantitative treatment of sin and punishment,” in place of a conscience that answers to God directly.¹²

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t liberty of conscience simply license sin, since a person answers to no one’s judgment but their own? The confession denies this directly: “they who upon pretence of Christian liberty do practice any sin, or cherish any sinful lust… wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty,” which is freedom to “serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness.”⁶ Calvin makes the same point about the doctrine’s abuse: some “use it as a cloak for their lusts, that they may licentiously abuse the good gifts of God,” but “Christian liberty is in all its parts a spiritual matter, the whole force of which consists in giving peace to trembling consciences.”¹⁴ Liberty of conscience answers the question of what may bind a believer’s conscience before God; it does not touch whether that believer remains bound to obey God’s own moral law.

If God alone is Lord of the conscience, how can Paul command obedience to civil government “for conscience sake” (Rom. 13:5)?¹¹ The confession’s own doctrine keeps two distinct jurisdictions in view: a “spiritual” government that trains the conscience toward God, and a “civil” government that regulates “external conduct” only.¹¹ Obeying the magistrate “for conscience sake” is itself an act of conscience toward God, who has himself ordained civil government; it does not mean civil law reaches into the conscience the way God’s own law does, since “civil laws also bind the conscience” only in the sense that God’s own law requires submission to them, not because the civil law is itself the rule conscience answers to.¹¹

Doesn’t yielding to a weak brother’s scruples about things indifferent put one believer’s conscience under another’s opinion? Calvin distinguishes offense given from offense merely taken: liberty must bend, in love, to a brother genuinely weak in faith, but not to a censorious “Pharisaical” spirit that only wants “to spy out our liberty.”¹⁰ Paul himself supplies the pattern, circumcising Timothy for the sake of Jewish scruples while refusing to circumcise Titus when false brethren demanded it as a matter of principle.¹⁰ The believer’s own liberty of conscience remains intact before God even where its use is voluntarily restrained for a brother’s sake; nothing about that restraint hands the strong believer’s conscience over to the weak brother’s own judgment.

Related Doctrines

References

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), bk. 3, chap. 19, sec. 15: “when they have a sense of the divine justice added as a witness which allows them not to conceal their sins, but drags them forward as culprits to the bar of God, that sense is called conscience… For it stands as it were between God and man.” ↩ ↩²
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 21, “Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience,” para. 2. ↩ ↩²
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 20, “Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience”; Savoy Declaration (1658), chap. 21, same title; Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742), chap. 21, same title. All three, together with the Second London Confession, state the doctrine in nearly identical paragraphs. ↩ ↩²
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 21, “Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience,” para. 1. ↩
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 20, “Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience,” para. 2. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 21, “Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience,” para. 3. ↩ ↩²
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 20, “Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience,” para. 4. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 3, chap. 19, sec. 16: “as works have respect to men, so conscience bears reference to God, a good conscience being nothing else than inward integrity of heart,” citing 1 Tim. 1:5, 1:19, and Acts 24:16. ↩ ↩²
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 3, chap. 19, secs. 7-8: “we are not bound before God to any observance of external things which are in themselves indifferent… but are now at full liberty either to use or omit them,” quoting Rom. 14:14, 22-23 and Titus 1:15. ↩ ↩²
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 3, chap. 19, secs. 10-12: distinguishing “the offense of the weak” from “the offense of Pharisees,” and citing Paul’s circumcision of Timothy against his refusal to circumcise Titus (Acts 16:3; Gal. 2:3-5) as the pattern for when liberty yields and when it must be defended. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 3, chap. 19, sec. 15: distinguishing “in man government is twofold: the one spiritual, by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship; the other civil, by which the individual is instructed in those duties which, as men and citizens, we are bound to perform,” and addressing Rom. 13:1, 5 directly: civil laws “bind the conscience” only because “God’s word… enjoins obedience,” not because civil law as such reaches the conscience the way his own law does. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “Compulsory confession violates the liberty of the human conscience, makes grace and one’s salvation at every moment uncertain and unsettled, and forces the church’s ministers into a casuistic and quantitative treatment of sin and punishment, thereby occasioning all sorts of immoral practices.” ↩ ↩²
Charles Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), quoting the Council of Trent: “Est hoc sacramentum poenitentiae lapsis post baptismum ad salutem necessarium, ut nondum regeneratis ipse baptismus” (this sacrament of penance is as necessary to salvation for those fallen after baptism as baptism itself is for those not yet regenerate), and summarizing Trent’s teaching that priests, as Christ’s own “presides et judices,” must be told every mortal sin and alone hold power to pronounce remission or retention, a power the Council held they retain even in a state of mortal sin themselves. ↩ ↩²
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 3, chap. 19, sec. 9: liberty is “perversely interpreted by those who use it as a cloak for their lusts, that they may licentiously abuse the good gifts of God”; rightly understood, “Christian liberty is in all its parts a spiritual matter, the whole force of which consists in giving peace to trembling consciences.” ↩