Sound thinking
Conscience seared with a red-hot iron
by Ken Myers
“The New Testament speaks of a ‘good conscience’ (Acts 23:1; 1 Tim. 1:5,19; Heb. 13:18; 1 Pet. 3:16, 21), and hardly at all of a ‘bad conscience’ (possibly Heb. 10:22). Yet it does speak of a conscience that is clearly not good, a conscience ‘seared with a red-hot iron’ (1 Tim. 4:2) or ‘kept at bay’ (1 Tim. 1:19), which is to say, insensible and non-functional. A conscience may be ‘good’ not by being comfortably ‘unaware of anything against me,’ which proves nothing at all (1 Cor. 4:4), not simply by not being ‘bad’ (as an unhelpful line of modern commentary maintains), but by being reflectively attentive, quick to grasp the significance of our works, including those in which we have unquestionably failed, within the context of God’s works. In seeing and naming failures the conscience opens them to the redemptive work of God who forgives sin and brings good out of the evil we have done. That is the sense in which the active conscience is ‘pure’ (1 Tim. 3:9; Heb. 9:14) and ‘free of offence’ (Acts 24:16) — not by the simple absence of anything to notice, but by taking notice of the cleansing and purification God has accomplished. Sins and moral offences, drawn into God’s purposes, give offence no longer.” [p. 85]
— from Oliver O’Donovan, Entering into Rest: Ethics as Theology 3 (Eerdmans, 2017)
Theologian Matthew Levering discusses the nature of conscience on Volume 158, in connection with his book, The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology (Eerdmans, 2021)
