Thursday 7 May 2015

Allan Fitzgerald: Conscience and Jesus Christ

Building on philosophical insights in Manfred Svensson’s work,[1]this paper examines the relation of Augustine’s appreciation of knowledge/ wisdom to conscience from a theological point of view, thus connecting the article I wrote on Jesus Christ as the wisdom and knowledge of God (Col 2:3)[2]to his understanding of conscience.
After discussing Augustine’s contribution to an understanding of conscience, I will use Augustine’s sermons to explore and explain his everyday articulation of conscience to his ordinary listeners and to compare that experience to the way he explains conscience in the works studied by Svensson.
I will pay attention to the relationships Augustine establishes between humility [3] and conscience (1 Tim 1:5: conscientia bona) and hope (doc. chr. 1, 40, 44, etc.) so that it is possible to see how Augustine makes connections between Jesus Christ and the Christian when speaking about conscience.
[1]Manfred Svensson, “Augustine on Moral Conscience,” The Heythrop Journal 54 (2013) 42-54.
[2]Allan Fitzgerald, “Jesus Christ, the knowledge and wisdom of God,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 108-122.
[3]Allan Fitzgerald, “Christ’s Humility and Christian Humility in the de civitate Dei,” unpublished paper presented at a conference on the City of God in Bogota, Colombia, August 2014.

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