[1] Lewis' account is found in ch. 8, ‘Conscience and Conscious’, of his Studies in Words (2nd ed.; Cambridge: University Press, 1967).Google Scholar My chief sources among N.T. scholars are Pierce, C. A., Conscience in the New Testament (SBT/15; London: SCM Press, 1955)Google Scholar; Maurer, C., ‘σύνοιδℵ, συνειδησις TDNT 7 (1971), 898–919Google Scholar; Jewett, R., Paul's Anthropological Terms (Leiden: Brill, 1971)Google Scholar, ch. 10. To Jewett's helpful survey of the literature should now be added Horsley, R. A., ‘Conscious ness and Freedom among the Corinthians: I Corinthians 8–10’, CBQ (1978) 574–89Google Scholar; Spicq, C., ‘συνειδησις in Notes de lexigraphie néo-testamentaire (Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978) II.854–8Google Scholar; and Eckstein, H.-J., Der Begriff Syneidesis bei Paulus (WUNI' 2/10; Tübingen: Mohr, 1983).Google Scholar

[2] In summing up the history of συνειδησις in the pre-Christian Greek world, Maurer points out that ‘the idea of conscience may be taken so generally that it includes the question of self-consciousness’. He also finds that ‘in relation to one's own person self-consciousness or self-awareness is to the fore’ in the Latin conscientia (TDNT 7 (1971) 907Google Scholar, both quotations). C. S. Lewis ha a ‘weakened branch’ of the word ‘conscience’; but it means awareness itself, not my minimal sense of self-awareness.

[3] Studies in Words, 190.

[4] See the first four chapters of Conscience in the New Testament. Pierce concludes that the reference of συνειδησις is ‘o the specific past act or acts, in the senses defined, committed by the subject himself. There is however one other element of its reference which is vitally significant: normally the act, acts, condition or character are bad’ (45, his emphases).

I am not sure however that the conclusions of Pierce and Lewis should be regarded as independent. When Lewis says in Section IV of his chapter that ‘consciring is presumed to be of evil unless the reverse is explicitly stated’ (88) perhaps he is reflecting Pierce's research. That Lewis knew Pierce's study is clear: he refers to Conscience in the New Testament on p. 192. Furthermore, Lewis and Pierce were together in Cambridge, the former coming to Magdalene College in 1954 where the latter was Chaplain from 1951 to 1956; so it is entirely possible that they discussed together the meaning of συνειδησις. (I am grateful to the Rev. J. Sweet of Selwyn College, Cam bridge for his help on this matter.)

[5] See R. Jewett's report of Martin Kähler's summary of 19th c. scholarship: the ‘source of the N.T. συνειδησις concept is in Hellenistic popular usage which arose after the weakening of mores derived from the Greek city-state. It had the sense of knowledge of evil deeds done in the past’ (Paul's Anthropological Terms, 406–7). Maurer repeatedly comments on the customary sense of ovvei6i as bad or guilty (TDNT 7 (1971) 903Google Scholar, 904, 906, 917).

Related to this issue is Krister Stendahl's important essay, ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ (HTR (1963) 199–215Google Scholar; reprinted in his Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976) 78–96).Google Scholar Stendahl argues that the preoccupation with a guilty conscience is a feature of late medieval introspection rather than a theme in Paul himself. That I chose to isolate ‘bad feeling’ as a strand in συνειδησις in no way clashes with Stendahi's thesis. As the study goes on to show, in 1 Cor 8 and 10 Paul sees συνειδησις as the weak Christian's problem; and even then the problem is not one of guilt arising from an introspective moral assessment but instead one of polluted feelings arising from association with idols.

H.-J. Eckstein argues that the notion of bad feeling or pangs of conscience is inadequate to capture Paul's use of συνειδησις he means rather by the term a neutral faculty which may bear positive witness as well as judge negatively a person's conduct in accordance with preestablished norms (Der Begriff Syneidesis, 311–14). I argue below nevertheless that 1 Cor 8 and 10 may be read intelligibly using strands of meaning in συνειδησις which do not require Paul to have in mind a developed view of a psychological or moral faculty at all.

[6] Studies in Words, 199.

[7] Studies in Words, 196.

[8] Lewis is aware of something like this point about the subjective: he refers on p. 196 to the survival of the sense of ‘consciring’ in certain instances of ‘conscience’. However, his analysis of ‘consciring’ in terms of ‘witness’ does tend to blur the distinction between the objective and the subjective. He treats together the Prayer Book references to examining our consciences and to quieting our consciences. But these are different processes: while self-examination may be subjectively construed (it is the self, not the judge, who is scrutinized), what is listened to or quieted in the second case is more objectively conceived.

[9] Studies in Words, 192.

[10] Studies in Words, 193.

[11] For a survey of the scholarship see Jewett, , Paul's Anthropological Terms, 402–21.Google Scholar The differences in approach have continued: compare Spicq συνειδησις and in 1978. For Spicq, uvvei6s1a in Paul means ‘la faculté de discernernent personnel du bien et du mal, la règle de La conduite pratique et le mobile de l'action’ (‘συνειδησις’, 857); but for Horsley the ‘unshifted’ sense pre vails: ‘syneidesis clearly means one's inner consciousness or awareness, and not ‘conscience’ in the modern sense of the English word’ (CBQ (1978) 581).Google Scholar

In general, the stronger a commentator's interest in developing a theology of conscience in Paul, the greater will be the tendency to read συνειδησις in Lewis' ‘shifted ’ sense. Eckstein, though denying that Paul's notion ofσυνειδησις is a theological one, like the later vox dei view, treats it as an anthropological faculty in man (Der Begriff Syneidesis, 313–17).

[12] See Brunt, J. C., ‘Rejected, Ignored or Misunderstood? The Fate of Paul's Approach to the Problem of Food Offered to Idols in Early Christianity’, NTS (1985) 113–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which concludes that Paul's approach was indeed unique.

[13] I discuss these points further in ch. 5, ‘The Burden of the Weak: 1 Corinthians 8 and 10’, of Partial Knowledge: Philosophical Studies in Paul (Notre Dame, Imd: University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

[14] This means I disagree with Jewett, who thinks that Paul does distinguish two things in the verse. ‘Paul wishes thereby to insist that the conscience is an autonomous phenomenon which cannot be treated as merely identical with the person as the Gnostics supposed’ (428). One could see this in v. 28, however, only if one has already seen it elsewhere. Since I find no reason to sup pose that avvei6naLc is anything but the weak person's problem in 1 Cor 8 and 10, I cannot appre ciate how, on the basis of Paul's language here, adjectives such as ‘autonomous’ can be predicated of it.

[15] For discussion of problems in v. 29 see Jewett, 429–30; and Hurd, John, The Origins of 1 Corinthians (London: S.P.C.K., 1965) 130 n. 2.Google Scholar

[16] This is how the RSV translation quoted above would normally be understood. The NEB's ‘without raising questions of conscience’ likewise assumes that Paul has in mind the moral con science of the free.

[17] As commentators point out, on any reading of συνειδησις the identity of the discloser of v. 28 is a problem. From v. 27 we expect him to be a non-believer: but it makes no sense to regard such a person as having any kind of moral, theological or emotional difficulty over the idol food. It is better then to make the discloser a weak Christian. Is he too at the non-believer's dinner party? Perhaps that question arises when we read v. 28 as part of the story of v. 27; but Paul may have intended by v. 28 to qualify both v. 25 and v. 27.

[18] Studies in Words, 193.

[19] Pace Jewett, who thinks that v. 12 connotes ‘a disabling of the function of the conscience’ (425). This makes sense only if one comes to the text already believing that συνειδησις is an auto nomous moral faculty distinguishable from the person: and then, as I have noted, one would have to agree that the weak person's ‘conscience’ was already malfunctioning before it was ‘disabled’.

[20] Margaret Thrall notes some difficulties in v. 10 in her paper ‘The Meaning of οικοδομέω in Relation to the Concept of συνειδησις (1 Cor 8, 10)’ in Cross, F. L. (ed.), Studia Evangelica 4 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968) 468–72.Google Scholar Her own proposal, that Paul refers in v. 10 to the ‘strengthening of a man's capacity for experiencing legalistic scruples’, will not help us translate συνειδησις in vv. 7 and 12. It is unfortunate that she links the suggestion of irony in οικοδομηθήσεται to the view that Paul quotes the Corinthians in v. 10; by rejecting the latter she misses the possibility that Paul picks up the notion of ‘edifying’ from v. 1 in an ironic fashion in v. 10.

[21] TDNT 7 (1971) 914.Google Scholar See also Eckstein: ‘weak’ applies to the whole person (Der Begriff Syneidesis, 243). It is true that ch. 8 points to possible objective consequences for the weak as well as to their subjective feelings (as Eckstein stresses in his analysis of the passage, 233–56); but it does not follow that συνειδησις needs to be read as anything more than the weak's awareness of the self as suffering such consequences.

[22] These points are developed at greater length in section V of ch. 5, Partial Knowledge.

[23] This point is appreciated by Horsley, , CBQ (1978) 587 n. 34.Google Scholar Eckstein does not read vv. 25–29 as dealing only with the other person's συνειδησις, since he wishes to keep the term's meaning uniform for both strong and weak, and since he wants to discover in ch. 10 references to the συνειδησις of the strong (Der Begriff Syneidesis, 271). But the fact that Paul says in v. 29a that the strong should not eat for the sake of the other's συνειδησις –not their own – does not necessarily mean that the strong have a faculty called ‘conscience’; rather their bad feelings do not enter the picture just because they of course have none.

[24] This reading is, l think, preferable to that given by Pierce (Conscience in the New Testament, 76) and others, that Paul means ‘What you don't know won't hurt you’ with respect to the eater himself. For Paul claims it is the weak person's recognition, not the free person's knowledge, which is important; and the harm is done not to the eater but the observer.

[25] An abbreviated form of this paper was read to the Canadian Society for Biblical Studies, Guelph, Ontario, on 29 May 1984. I am grateful for some helpful comments from those present.