Again, your lack of understanding of my reasons is evident here, and hence your failure to address them. As I have argued on the current thread, ethics is situational, which is not relativistic (since the law of love is constant in my view) but is simply FLEXIBLE enough for each situation (as we shall see in a moment). What you overlook here is a very practical problem with which God is faced - human ignorance. Men cannot know all the factors affecting situational ethics and consequently cannot reliably determine right from wrong. For example, is it right to deny your kids their daily bread? Presumably not, so you feed them daily. Then one day you find out that the bread you've been feeding them is laced with arsenic, and that continued consumption will kill them. So the question is, how is God to judge you for the initial feedings? Were you "evil" for feeding your kids that poisoned bread? How should He judge you? He is not going to judge you on whether "feeding people poisoned bread is right or wrong" - because you couldn't have KNOWN that it is poisonous. Rather He will judge you on whether you were loyal to your conscience. I define conscience as a feeeling of certainty as to what is right, experienced at at a moment when a situation FORCES you to make a decision one way or the other (e.g to feed or not to feed the kids). This is precisely how Paul deals with the sabbatarian issue (e.g. the "sacred day" issue) in Romans 14. There he argues that the main issue is not whether the disputed day is sacred, but rather whether the Christian THINKS it is sacred. If he has a feeling of certainty that it is sacred (at the moment of forced decision), he is obligated. This is what I call "the conscience." It doesn't matter whether his conscience is deluded, he MUST do what it says. Why so? Because if I feel certain that Action A is what God wants (such as feeding my kids), and then I do the opposite, that means I am deliberately trying to oppose God. This is rebellion.
One classic example is when Abraham heard a voice commanding him to slaughter his own son. Did he feel certain about the voice? Yes, because if not, he acted immorally in trying to kill him. So we see, here, that even though murder was the WRONG thing (from a moralistic standpoint), it was the RIGHT thing for him to attempt (from a situational ethics standpoint). When we feel certain, we are obligated. But keep in mind that we are obligated to do what is MOST certain, at times when there are competing choices. Sometimes the thing MOST certain is to admit, "I don't have enough certainty yet - I better abstain from ALL the choices until I get more certainty."
Of course, had you read the other thread, as I twice admonished, you would have seen my reasoning, which you STILL have not addressed. You are still blowing hot air.
I'm not sure I'll continue responding.
Ahh see, but you blend together conscience, responsibility and morality.
Conscience, only comes into play whith knowledge. Thus it is wrong for me to feed my children poisoned bread, because it does them harm. Is it still wrong if I don't know about it? Yes. Why? Because it is still giving a bad gift. The action is not wrong because of lack of knowledge. Giving poisoned food to someone is inherently wrong, knowledge of the situation only provides light. Conscience gives the individual a method to weigh the knowledge and act morally or immorally. Thus when the person knows that they are giving poisoned bread to their children they may stop, because their conscience tells them it is wrong.
The act of giving poisoned food is not wrong because conscience says so, it is wrong because God has already deemed that giving poisoned food to someone is not loving.
Lack of knowledge of something does not provide a method by which we are entitled to freely walk in our ways without repercussions. If one never came into the knowledge that they were giving their children poisoned bread, the end result would be death. Thus conscience is powerless to the end result and has no authority over the outcome.
[bible]Hosea 4:6[/bible]
Now imputing sin with conscience is completely seperate from this. Thus the man who gives his child bread without knowing it is poisoned may or may not be in sin, I'm not going to say otherwise because it's God's place to judge.
What is considered sin is giving the bread knowingly, because knowledge has been given and we know that someone who acts against the Law is transgressing it.
As for Romans 14, it is talking of what one man considers sin, not necessarily of conscience, but because of lack of Faith.
[bible]Romans 14:1-2[/bible]
The Picture here is dealing with Faith, not with conscience. He who is of little Faith and he who that has more.. I see no indication of conscience until it begins to talk about changing your mind, but rather having faith in the things that God has said. The corellation is then having Faith that changes your mind about something, or possibly changes your conscience. So the issue is not dealing with conscience but rather dealing with the faith that one has put into God. Mind you Romans 14 begins after Paul has first laid the foundation of Romans 13:
[bible]Romans 13:1-5[/bible]
Paul speaks of conscience, not as a power, but as approving to it as a message by which God shows where we have erred. He builds this idea by showing us that if we go against what our rulers tell us to do our conscience will help show us that we are doing the wrong thing. But it is not conscience that we are submitting to when we follow it, it is the Power of God, as Paul states in verse 1 of Romans 13, for there is no power but of God, indicating that all power is given by God, so whatever power that conscience holds over an individual is granted by God, thus conscience is not the final authority over any matter, but God.
As far as the voice from God is concerned with Abraham, the conscience may have said both yes it is right and no it is wrong. Conscience pointing to the law did not produce obedience. Faith produced the obedience to follow through with the hearing of the Voice. This is a critical position when understanding the Voice and dealing with conscience. Because, conscience may say one thing, while the Voice may say another. The only way to understand this fully is by being in communion with God.
[bible]John 10:14[/bible]
[bible]John 10:27[/bible]
By this we can know that the voice is God's and thus it is by the Voice that we should direct our lives, not by Conscience. Because it is by Faith in the Voice that Abraham was called Righteous, not by conscience.
I also think there is quite a difference between the conscience of the believer and a conscience of the unbeliever, a distinction that is probably causing most of this debate.
