To what extent is the conscience the voice of God?

The vast majority of people understand the conscience to be an internal moral source which guides us in situations to the right thing to do. Some believe this is an innate drive we are born with, other believe it is a result of early environment and conditioning. However, whether the belief differs about how we acquire a conscience, many peoples conscience guide them in different moral directions, for example one person may feel that it is morally right to kill someone who is committing homicides themselves, while others feel that it morally wrong to kill in al situations, irrespective of the victims history, for example it would be morally wrong to kill Adolf Hitler regardless of all the people he killed and maimed.

The conscience can be argued to be the voice of god as god is believed to be benevolent, omniscient and omnipresent and made us in the image of him, giving us the conscience for us to stay on the moralistically correct side of the spectrum. In the Holy Scriptures the conscience is also called the heart. In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Jesus Christ likens the conscience to an adversary with whom a man must make peace before he appears before the Judge (who is God) (Matt. 5:25). The Lord also compares the conscience to the eye, by means of which a person sees his moral state (Matt. 6:22). The first comparison reveals the distinguishing characteristic of our conscience, its to oppose our bad actions and intentions.

In the story of Adam and Eve, told in Genesis, the bible says that in the process of creating man (and woman), God placed a moral guidance within his soul and made him in his His image. For this reason it is expected for Christians to call the conscience the voice of God present in all man regardless of age, race, upbringing and development. It is also argued that the presence of this conscience we have recived form God is what separates us from the animal kingdom.

Conscience, in Catholicism, is "a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1454). It is also greatly believed that prayer enhances and strengthens conscience, giving it the direction of “God's Word”.

St. Paul (5 - 67 AD) uses the term “συνειδησις” - often translated as 'conscience' and 'heart' - to describe the human ability to know and choose the good. He taught that all people, whether or not they are Christians, know what is right and wrong. He said it is written on our hearts; “When outsiders who have never heard of God's law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience.”
Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) is another who believed the conscience is greatly linked to God. He believed that the Conscience is innate, meaning we are bron with it. Aquinas taught that the conscience is made up of three parts. The Synderesis is the tendency that humans have to avoid evil and perform acts that are good. The second, Prudence, is a virtue developed by humans that helps us to define which actions are evil and which are good. The third, Conscientious is the carrying forward of this action, for example implementing our good actions in our everyday lives. However we can sometimes be mistaken and follow 'apparent goods' which are okay so long as we continue to inform our conscience. If we are ignorant and perform an apparent good then we are to blame. The conscience is "mind of man making moral decisions", according to Thomas Aquinas who agrees with St Paul although Aquinas stresses the importance of reason. He said "Reason in man is rather like God in the world." Most famously, Aquinas claimed “To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the command of God”. In a modern example, this would be to deliberate go against our conscience and perform an act which is obviously wrong, thus disobeying God in the process.

Although Joseph Butler (1692 – 1752), who was a Bishop, theologian, and philosopher, agreed with Aquinas that we have the innate ability to reason, Butler said that we shouldn’t reason with our conscience as it is the supreme authorative voice. He believed that we must listen to our conscience because it allows us to act as a moral judge. It is not an intuitive feeling about what is right; it is our ability to use reason to determine factors in a moral decision. His quote, “…had it power…it would absolutely govern the world”, puts forward the view that all moral decisions are under the guidance and authority of God and are not to be questioned or disobeyed.
On the other hand, the religious view of the conscience is not the only view which is acknowledged. The secular and psychoanalytic view emphasizes the importance of development and environment. Two scholars of the secular and psychoanalytic are called Erich Fromm and Sigmund Freud

Erich Fromm (1900– 1980) was an internationally renowned social psychologist and psychoanalyst. He believed in the authoritarian view of conscience. He said that our conscience is developed and influenced by external factors for example law and what society deems to be acceptable. These external factors become internalised within us and therefore we act in accordance and obey them. For example the reason why our conscience tells us not to steal is because it is a criminal offence and therefore punishable and because we face the risk of being rejected by our friends and family and society if we perform this act. Bad conscience is the term which implies we do not obey and thus we feel guilt. Good conscience is when we do obey our conscience and thus we feel we have an honourable place in society. Those who prefer to look at the conscience in a logical way, including atheists and agnostics would generally agree with this view.

Sigmund Freud (1856 –1939) was also a psychoanalyst. His theory of the conscience is completely different to any of the previously mentioned views in this essay. Freud saw the conscience as part of the unconscious mind, which is part of the “Iceberg theory” which shows the mind has three sections. The conscious mind is at the top of the iceberg, the subconscious mind, which is placed in the middle of the iceberg and the unconscious mind which is at the bottom of the iceberg submerged in water which is the biggest part of our mind, even though we are not directly in touch with it. Freud believed that the conscience came about as a result of bad experiences our childhood, combined with as disapproval from our family and society. With this acting as a negative influence on the human psyche, the conscience is part of and sometimes equal to the 'superego'. Freud taught that 'ego', our conscious personality, usually balanced the pull of the 'id' (our desires) and the 'superego' (our guilt). Because frued belive that the superego was (basically) our conscience, he would argue against allowing the conscience to have control over our decisions about how to act; “to be ruled by your superego would make you overly judgmental, inflexible and irrational.”

In conclusion, there are many arguments to show that the conscience is in fact the voice of God. However many of these views, excluding Thomas Aquinas’s view, are exclusively accessible to Christians or religious believers in general. Although these explanations do include the whole of mankind, it would be difficult for an atheist to accept these views which makes those arguments somewhat excluding. However, the secular and psychoanalytic views are more appealing to everyone because everyone is surrounded by an environment witch consciously or subconsciously, I believe, has an effect on our actions and an effect on what we identify as right or wrong. It is because of this that I agree with the views of Erich Fromm who says the conscience is a result of society restraint on us.