THE GOSPEL: A CASE STUDY OF A JAPANESE CHURCH
C. The Work of the Holy Spirit through the Conscience
30The indicative mood in Greek is generally used to indicate a statement of fact, and the imperative mood is used for a command or exhortation. Paul bases his ethics upon his theology. Furnish states that Paul’s “ethic” is never formulated by Paul himself, but “it is still present in the dynamic of the indicative and imperative which lies at the center of his thought” (Theology and Ethics in Paul, 211;
see also 224-27; cf. William D. Dennison, “Indicative and Imperative: The Basic Structure of Pauline Ethics,” Calvin Theological Journal 14 [1979]: 55-78).
31Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification, 46.
32Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification, 46.
33Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, 6th ed., trans.
by T. K. Abbott (London: Longmans, Greek & Co, 1907).
by lifestyle (the imperative mood).30 By what means does the Holy Spirit communicate with our conscience? By grace, since all communication from the gracious God is, in some aspect, grace.
Prevenient grace holds a second function besides simply being the first step taken by God in initiating our salvation. For Wesley there is a relationship between conscience and prevenient grace. Lindstrom states,
“Prevenient grace confers some discernment on everyone although natural man as such lacks all knowledge.”31 Wesley uses Romans 1:19ff in support of his connection of conscience and prevenient grace. He maintains that no one is without some type of discernment. Lindstrom adds, “Yet he does not regard such discernment as something emanating from natural man’s own resources, a consequence of the survival after the Fall of a certain residue of the imago Dei, but instead as deriving from prevenient grace.”32
There is in everyone a sense of right and wrong. Wesley comes close to Immanuel Kant’s moral argument for the existence of God, which posits that each person has a sense of ought within called the categorical imperative. This imperative enlightens a person to that which is right and wrong.33 Wesley offers a premise logically prior to Kant’s and attributes all possibilities of discernment to God’s work through prevenient grace. Conscience, for Wesley, is “that faculty whereby we are at once conscious of our own thoughts, words, and actions; and of their merit or demerit, of their being good or bad; and,
34Wesley, Works, 7:187.
35Wesley, Works, 7:188.
36Wesley, Works, 6:512.
37Wesley, Works, 7:188.
consequently, deserving either praise or censure.”34 Conscience has a three-fold office. First, it is a witness to what we have done. Second, it is a judge, passing sentence on the good or evil we have done. Third, it executes the sentence, “by occasioning a degree of complacency in him that does well, and a degree of uneasiness in him that does evil.”35 In our natural condition we are spiritually and morally dead. Our “natural conscience,” strictly speaking, does not exist in reality but only in theory.
It is that conscience that would result (if a conscience could result at all) if God had not intervened and given a degree of restoration. Wesley states,
For allowing that all the souls of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that is in a state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God. No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called natural conscience. But this is not natural: It is more properly termed, preventing grace. Every man has a greater or less measure of this, which waiteth not for the call of man. . . . So that no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace he hath.36
As a form of grace, conscience is the work of God. Wesley states, No; it is not nature, but the Son of God, that is “the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world.” So that we may say to every human creature, “He,” not nature, “hath showed thee, O man, what is good.” And it is his Spirit who giveth thee an inward check, who causeth thee to feel uneasy, when thou walkest in any instance contrary to the light which he hath given thee.37
38H. Ray Dunning, Grace, Faith, and Holiness (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1988),433.
39Wesley, Works, 6:44.
One might ask the question, why does everyone not do good, but instead have a bad conscience? The answer lies in the nature of sin and the “natural” condition. In our sinfulness we choose not to obey our conscience. This begins at an early age during which the conscience develops enough to convict of wrong doing and one becomes account- able for one’s sin. Since sin is not taken into account where there is no law (Rom 5:13), and since the law functions as the norm for the conscience, the conscience is thus linked with accountability. H. Ray Dunning makes this distinction: “We may say that formally conscience is the work of the Spirit (prevenient grace), but that materially it is the result of background, experience, and education.”38 The conscience can be developed, and the Holy Spirit uses the resources (general revelation of God’s law written on the heart) of the person to convict that person of sin. A number of things contribute to the development of the conscience, including family, culture, and various environmental influences. Since the world is in a fallen state, it is not difficult to surmise that the external influences upon the conscience only contribute to the fallen state of the individual. Simply stated, sin mars our con- science. A person can suppress the light that God shines on the conscience. Wesley says,
If we take this in its utmost extent, it will include all that is wrought in the soul by what is frequently termed natural con- science, but more properly, preventing grace;–all the drawings of the Father; the desires after God, which, if we yield to them, increase more and more;–all that light wherewith the Son of God
“enlighteneth every one that cometh into the world”; showing every man “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God”;–all the convictions which his Spirit, from time to time, works in every child of man; although, it is true, the generality of men stifle them as soon as possible, and after a while forget, or at least deny, that they ever had them at all.39
40Wesley, Works, 7:190.
41Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification, 48.
By stifling the positive leading of our conscience we make room for more sin. Conviction and then repentance result when the conscience is heeded.
The answer lies in God and His grace. Wesley says, “In order to [have] the very existence of a good conscience, as well as to the continuance of it, the continued influence of the Spirit of God is absolutely needful.”40 Lindstrom adds, “Although everyone by nature is dead in sin, no one is in a purely natural state. No one is quite without God’s grace, unless he has stifled it.”41 By stifling our conscience we make void the power of prevenient grace. We are never totally out of the reach of God, but God has left the choice up to us to choose life or death.