The Dilemma of Conscience: From Paul and Augustine to Mencius

Abstract

Krister Stendahl’s article, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, argues that Paul has a “robust conscience” both before and after his conversion. Martin Luther misinterprets this as a “plagued conscience” in accordance with his own religious experience, and this misinterpretation can be traced back even to Augustine. This paper examines the context for the ancient Greek and Hellenistic theory of conscience, in order to understand Augustine’s transformation of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith and the consequent discovery of the concept of introspective conscience in Western intellectual history. This paper also clarifies aspects of Augustine’s “plagued conscience”, which it analyses across two stages: the first after the descent of grace but before the conversion of a believer, and the second after conversion. In the first stage, Augustine implies a continuous spiritual conflict between good will and evil will within the inner self; however, in the second stage, the inner self experiences a deeper spiritual struggle, owing to its certainty of God’s predestined plan alongside its uncertainty over personal salvation. The concept of introspective conscience has shaped the deep consciousness of sin for many Western Christians. This paper compares Pauline and Augustinian conscience with the same concept in the Confucian author Mencius. For Mencius, conscience is self-sufficient even in the earliest stages of its development and does not require the support of God’s grace or the power of Heaven. The constant expansion of Mencius’s operative conscience is sufficient for self-cultivation and the correction of the distorted world.