Tag Archives: conscience

Why Should my Freedom be Judged by Another’s Consciousness?

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Divisive issues? Questions about eating meat tore apart the parish in Corinth!


If a nonbeliever invites you and you wish to go, eat everything placed before you…. For why should my freedom be judged by another’s consciousness? If, as of course I do, I partake with gratitude, why am I reviled because of what I give thanks for? (1 Cor. 10:27, 29-30)

There are two inscriptions from the time of Augustus which tell us that the market at Corinth was built by the city’s elite as a gift to the people. After major sports or civic events, meat was often sold in the market at cheaper prices than usual, making it available for the poorer people. (The meat came from sacrifices offered in the temples as part of the civic or sports event.) Many of the members of the Christian parish in Corinth had limited incomes and would have wanted to purchase this meat at the reduced rate.

The Christians did not live in a Christian neighborhood or ghetto. They lived all over the city and were friends with–or had social connections with–people who were not Christians. It must have been common that Christians would be invited to dinner at non-Christian homes. (The unbelievers might even be family members or in-laws of the Christians.) The members of the parish that had more income would also be invited to fancy dinners and events.

The advice of the apostle Paul in both situations is the same: eat whatever. Eat what you can purchase in the market. Eat what people serve you; if you are invited to dinner, follow the normal rules of good manners and eat what the host serves.

What St. Paul actually writes is, “If I partake with charis … why am I reviled/denounced for what I give thanks for?” Charis in other passages is often translated “grace” or even “beauty.” So we might read this passage as saying, “If I partake with grace…” or “If I behave beautifully and eat what I am served….” The rest of the sentence might then be translated, “Why am I criticized so loudly for behaving with good manners, as long as I have thanked God for what I eat?”

Some people in Corinth thought it was wrong to eat this meat. Should their scruples impact everyone else’s behavior? The question of how much someone else’s consciousness/awareness should impact my behavior is an important one. If someone else’s conscience insists that people of a certain race are not human in the same way as others, am I obligated to curtail my behavior because of this mistaken idea? There are some cases when the Gospel obliges us to act on the basis of our own consciousness and not let the mistaken scruples of others hold us back. There are other cases when the stakes are not so high and we might be able to take other people’s consciousness into account and modify our behavior so as to not offend others. One ancient author said,

The conscience that St. Paul refers to is not the conscience of the one who knows idols do not exist but the conscience of one who still thinks the gods depicted in the idols are real.

Severian of Gabala (a popular preacher in Constantinople, AD 398-404)

The importance of having an informed, educated conscience is paramount. We must be reading the Gospel and the Church fathers-mothers to have “the mind of Christ” shaped in our own minds as well. Ignorance is not bliss; ignorant consciences are in for a rude awakening on Judgement Day.

Fighting the War Within Myself

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The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel depicted in 12th-13th century mosaic
(Cathedral of the Assumption, Monreale, Sicily). The text portrayed is Genesis 4:3-5. The flame before the altar represents the idea of sacrifice, but God’s acceptance of Abel’s specific sacrifice is signified by the tongue of fire that has descended onto the lamb from God’s hand. For Cain, there is no hand, no divine fire. Jealous of his brother, Cain lures him into the wilderness and murders him.

Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but you do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. (James 4:1-2)

War. Conflict. The collapse of the natural order began with the Fall, when our first parents deliberately chose to do something they knew was wrong and their expulsion from the Garden into “this world,” this fallen state where everything is falling apart—brother kills brother from the beginning. Cain murders Abel (see a 12th century mosaic here) and many early theologians identified that as the definitive human sin rather than Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Conflict and death have defined human existence since the Fall, however we choose to understand what that “fall” was. (Listen here to what St. Cyprian of Carthage thought about Cain killing Abel.)

The human race was created with a will which was naturally inclined toward God. We naturally want to be with God and want to live in harmony with God’s desires, God’s choices. This natural will is inherent in each of us. Some people call this natural will our conscience. But since the fall, our wills have unraveled and disintegrated. Now, in addition to our conscience, we each also have a personal will—the fancy jargon is “gnomic will”—that is in conflict with our conscience, in conflict with that natural will which is naturally inclined toward God. Our personal will is always in conflict with God, debating, struggling, taking time to think and argue with ourselves before choosing whether to follow our natural inclination, our conscience, or not.

To be truly and authentically human, we must bring our personal will into harmony with our natural will. To act based on our conscience. Our personality—each and every one of us—has to be knit back together again. That restoration of harmony between our conscience and our personal will, that knitting back together, can be aided and abetted—fostered—in a way most people never think of.

We can heed the warnings, the guidance and suggestions of our guardian angels. All too often we want to think angels are make-believe or fat babies with wings, roly-poly kids with curls and diapers and harps—new age-y figures in books about “angel healing,” more likely to appear as porcelain figurines on a shelf or on a Christmas card than in real life. But we each have a guardian angel, yoked to us as Michael is yoked to Israel in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. We each have an angel who is assigned to look after us, to prod us to make the right choices—to whisper in our ears what we ought to choose.

We can heed our angels at all times, whether we are facing particular tribulations or not. We can add a line to our daily routine: “Guardian angel, help me to hear your voice, help me to pay attention to your guidance. Help me to make choices that align with my conscience, with the choices and desires of God.”