Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood in One - the Holy Innocents

Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood in One - the Holy Innocents
feast day of the Holy Innocents

Not only that, but because they are the "Innocents" they had no sin from the moment of their conception. This is in exact accord with St. Irenaeus in 180 A.D. speaking for the Church in witnessing to the fact that young children have not sinned for they are too young to have any knowledge of sin. This is the base for the Immaculate Conception of Mary. When children reach an older age and are capable of knowing sin and by a volition of their own will actually sinning then they can sin and would be held accountable by God for that if they should do so. This came to be called the age of reason (the age at which individuals are responsible for their concupiscence of their flesh and what they choose to do by their wills). The entire early Church applied the word Immaculate to the Conception of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary for Our Lord Jesus Christ is sinless by His nature as God. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary at the first moment of her conception was proposed at the First Vatican Council, but because that Council was never formally closed (it was only suspended), it was never promulgated. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary at the first moment of her conception is the same as all children conceived - where it is special in how it is usually interpreted is the idea that God preserved her throughout her life from sin. That however is a matter of prevenient grace and something that God could easily do without violating His word about anything. I certainly won't accuse the Blessed Virgin of sin. There is a difference however, Christ is sinless by His very nature as God and He never could sin. Mary is sinless by grace which was given at the Cross of Christ, but this grace is offered to all and is timeless in its application throughout all of time beginning at the first moment of time unto the  eternal ages to come. The preservation of Mary throughout her life from sin is a matter of not just this grace which is offered to all but the prevenient grace given by God to Mary. Prevenient grace is given to all the elect but not necessarily to the same degree. Admitting a greater amount or degree given to Mary agrees perfectly with the entire Church in all locals from the first century until the present. In the East she is called the first of saints - but that is not to be confused with Christ being called the Saint of saints, the meaning there is different as it means that He is the Holy One (Saint is the literal word) whose Cross Redeems all the elect -  the saints.

All of the above is linked to one of the most profound truths of God where His creatures that are men (people) are concerned.

There are only two races created by God that have free will and have an eternity in one place or another given them by God.

Animals when they die are gone -  they are not going to heaven with you. They suffer no eternal punishment either. No pain after death - just gone.

The two races are angels and men that have free will and have an eternity in one place or another given them by God. Heaven or hell.

The elect angels, the holy angels, of God never sinned and chose to not sin and therefore will never sin.

The fallen angels sinned and left their place. Because their knowledge of the command of God and of what disobedience would mean, i.e. sin, was complete from the moment of their creation, when they sinned it was unforgivable and is forever - they are damned forever and without any possibility of repentance nor of forgiveness. Don't even think differently - universalism (all creatures saved - apocatastsis) is a condemned heresy.

One of the most profound truths of God where His creatures that are men (people) are concerned, mentioned above, is this (St. Jerome is a particular exegete of this): synteresis (or synderesis).

Synteresis (the earlier and preferred spelling/pronounciation) is the divine spark given by God to men at the moment of conception of every individual human soul -  it is the basis of the soul and is the place where the conscience resides and it is the gift of God that ensures that human souls are eternal as opposed to animal souls that are inferior to a man's soul and only temporary as well. It is because of this synteresis that conscience must be present in all people and does not lie to anyone -  all people know the real right from wrong, but not all admit it. Therefore all people are responsible for what they choose to do think and say. God will judge all. The elect angels and all men who respond to the grace of God properly and are saved by Christ will spend eternity in the heavenly kingdom of God. All the fallen angels and all men who are damned will spend eternity in hell.

Traditional Liturgy of the Holy Innocents

From Lauds of the Feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28 in the Traditional Roman Breviary

LITTLE CHAPTER

Apoc. 14, 1

I saw upon Mount Sion a
Lamb standing, and with
him a hundred and forty-four
thousand having his name and
the name of his Father written
on their foreheads.

HYMN

Hail, O flowers of the Martyrs,
who at the very dawn of life,
were destroyed by the
persecutor of Christ,
as a storm destroys the budding
roses.

First victims for Christ,
tender flock of immolated
lambs; in your simplicity, you
play with your crowns and
palms around the very altar.

O Jesus, born of the Virgin,
eternal glory be to thee, with
the Father and the Holy Spirit,
for all eternity.

Amen.

V. Herod, being angry, killed
many children.
R. In Bethlehem of Juda, the city
of David.

At the Bened. Ant. These are
they, * who were not defiled
with women: for they are
virgins, and these follow the
Lamb whithersoever he goeth.

PRAYER

O God, to whose glory, not
by the uttering of words,
but by the shedding of blood,
the Holy Innocents, thy Martyrs,
on this day bore witness;
mortify the evil passions of
our hearts that, to the faith
which our lips confess, we
may ever give testimony by
the holiness of our lives.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ
who lives and reigns with thee and
the Holy Spirit forever.

Amen.

Commemoration of the octave of Christmas:

Ant. Glory to God in
the highest, * and on earth
peace to men of good will,
alleluia, alleluia.

V. The Lord has made
known, alleluia.
R. His salvation, alleluia.



[url=http://bellesheures.wordpress.com/741-2/]HAYDOCK CATHOLIC BIBLE COMMENTARY[/url]


This Catholic commentary on the New Testament, following the Douay-Rheims Bible text, was originally compiled by Catholic priest and biblical scholar Rev. George Leo Haydock (1774-1849). This transcription is based on Haydock’s notes as they appear in the 1859 edition of Haydock’s Catholic Family Bible and Commentary printed by Edward Dunigan and Brother, New York, New York.


Mt. 2:16 Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry: and sending killed all the menchildren that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

Haydock Commentary

Mt. Chapter 2: Verse 16.  By this example, we learn how great credit we owe to the Church in canonizing saints, and celebrating their holydays: by whose only warrant, without any word of Scripture, these holy Innocents have been honoured as martyrs, and their holyday kept ever since the apostles’ time, although they died not voluntarily, nor all, perhaps, circumcised, and some even children of pagans.  Aug. ep. 28.  Orig. hom. iii. in diversos.  B.

__________________________________________________________________

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume XII: December.
The Lives of the Saints. 1866.

December 28

The Holy Innocents

Matthew, xi. 16.

Matthew Chapter 2

The offerings of the wise men: the flight into Egypt: the massacre of the Innocents.

2:1 When Jesus therefore was born in Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of king Herod, behold, there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem,
2:2 Saying: Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and are come to adore him.
2:3 And king Herod hearing this, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
2:4 And assembling together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where Christ should be born.
2:5 But they said to him: In Bethlehem of Juda. For so it is written by the prophet:
2:6 And thou Bethlehem the land of Juda art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come forth the captain that shall rule my people Israel.
2:7 Then Herod, privately calling the wise men learned diligently of them the time of the star which appeared to them;
2:8 And sending them into Bethlehem, said: Go and diligently inquire after the child, and when you have found him, bring me word again, that I also may come and adore him.
2:9 Who having heard the king, went their way; and behold the star which they had seen in the East, went before them, until it came and stood over where the child was.
2:10 And seeing the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.
2:11 And entering into the house, they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling down they adored him: and opening their treasures, they offered him gifts; gold, frankincense, and yrrh.
2:12 And having received an answer in sleep that they should not return to Herod, they went back another way into their country.
2:13 And after they were departed, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying: Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt: and be there until I shall tell hee. For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy him.
2:14 Who arose, and took the child and his mother by night, and retired into Egypt: and he was there until the death of Herod:
2:15 That it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying: Out of Egypt have I called my son.
2:16 Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry: and sending killed all the menchildren that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
2:17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying:
2:18 A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
2:19 But when Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph in Egypt,
2:20 Saying: Arise, and take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel. For they are dead that sought the life of the child.
2:21 Who arose, and took the child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
2:22 But hearing that Archclaus reigned in Judea in the room of Herod his father, he was afraid to go thither: and being warned in sleep retired into the quarters of Galilee.
2:23 And coming he dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was said by the prophets: That he shall be called a Nazarene.


OUR Divine Redeemer was persecuted by the world as soon as he made his appearance in it; for he was no sooner born than it declared war against him. We cannot expect to be better treated than our great Master was before us. He himself bids us remember that if it hated him first, it will likewise hate us, though we have more reason to fear its flatteries and smiles than its rage. The first make a much more dangerous and more violent assault upon our hearts. Herod, in persecuting Christ, was an emblem of Satan and of the world. That ambitious and jealous prince had already sacrificed to his fears and suspicions the most illustrious part of his council, his virtuous wife Mariamne, with her mother Alexandra, the two sons he had by her, and the heirs to his crown, and all his best friends. Hearing from the magians who were come from distant countries to find and adore Christ, that the Messias, or spiritual king of the Jews, foretold by the prophets, was born among them, he trembled lest he was come to take his temporal kingdom from him. So far are the thoughts of carnal and worldly men from the ways of God; and so strangely do violent passions blind and alarm them. The tyrant was disturbed beyond measure, and resolved to take away the life of this child, as if he could have defeated the decrees of heaven. He had recourse to his usual arts of policy and dissimulation, and hoped to receive intelligence of the child by feigning a desire himself to adore him; but God laughed at the folly of his short-sighted prudence, and admonished the magians not to return to him. St. Joseph was likewise ordered by an angel to take the child and his mother, and to fly into Egypt. Is our Blessed Redeemer, the Lord of the universe, to be banished as soon as born! What did not he suffer! What did not his pious parents suffer on his account in so tedious and long a journey, and during a long abode in Egypt, where they were entirely strangers, and destitute of all succour under the hardships of extreme poverty! It is an ancient tradition of the Greeks mentioned by Sozomen, 1 St. Athanasius, 2 and others, that at his entrance into Egypt all the idols of that kingdom fell to the ground, which literally verified the prediction of the prophet Isaiah. 3 Mary and Joseph were not informed by the angel how long their exile would be continued; by which we are taught to leave all to divine providence, acquiescing with confidence and simplicity in the adorable and ever holy will of Him who disposes all things in infinite goodness, sanctity, and wisdom.

Herod, finding that he had been deluded by the magians, was transported with rage and anxious fears. To execute his scheme of killing the Messias, the desired of all nations and the expectation of Israel, he formed the bloody resolution of murdering all the male children in Bethlehem and the neighbouring territory which were not above two years of age. In this example we admire how blind and how furious the passion of ambition is. Soldiers are forthwith sent to execute these cruel orders, who, on a sudden, surrounded the town of Bethlehem, and massacred all the male children in that and the adjacent towns and villages, who had been born in the two last years. This more than brutish barbarity, which would almost have surpassed belief, had not Herod been the contriver, and ambition the incentive, was accompanied with such shrieks of mothers and children, that St. Matthew applies to it a prophecy of Jeremiah, which may be understood in part to relate more immediately to the Babylonish captivity, but which certainly received the most eminent completion at this time. A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. Rama is a village not far from this town, and the sepulchre of Rachel was in a field belonging to it. The slaughter also was probably extended into the neighbouring tribe of Benjamin, which descended from Rachel. The Ethiopians in their liturgy, and the Greeks in their calendar, count fourteen thousand children massacred on this occasion; but that number exceeds all bounds, nor is it confirmed by any authority of weight. Innocent victims became the spotless Lamb of God; and how great a happiness was such a death to these glorious martyrs! They deserved to die for Christ, though they were not yet able to know or invoke his name. They were the flowers and the first fruits of his martyrs, and triumphed over the world, without having ever known it, or experienced its dangers. They just received the benefit of life, to make a sacrifice of it to God, and to purchase by it eternal life. Almost at the same time they began to live and to die; they received the fresh air of this mortal life forthwith to pass to immortality; and it was their peculiar glory not only to die for the sake of Christ, and for justice and virtue, but also in the place of Christ, or in his stead. How few perhaps of these children, if they had lived, would have escaped the dangers of the world, which, by its maxims and example, bear everything down before it like an impetuous torrent! What snares, what sins, what miseries were they preserved from by this grace! With what songs of praise and love do they not to all eternity thank their Saviour, and this his infinite mercy to them! Their ignorant foolish mothers did not know this, and therefore they wept without comfort. So we often lament as misfortunes many accidents which in the designs of heaven are the greatest mercies.

In Herod we see how blind and how cruel ambition is, which is ready to sacrifice every thing, even Jesus Christ, to its views. The tyrant lived not many days longer to enjoy the kingdom which he feared so much to lose. 4 About the time of our Lord’s nativity he fell sick, and as his distemper sensibly increased, despair and remorse followed him, and made him insupportable both to himself and others. The innumerable crimes which he had committed were the tortures of his mind, whilst a slow imposthume, inch by inch, gnawed and consumed his bowels, feeding principally upon one of the great guts, though it extended itself over all the rest, and, corroding the flesh, made a breach in the lower belly, and became a sordid ulcer, out of which worms issued in swarms, and lice were also bred in his flesh. A fever violently burnt him within, though outwardly it was scarcely perceptible; and he was tormented with a canine appetite, which no victuals could satisfy. Such an offensive smell exhaled from his body, as shocked his best friends; and uncommon twitchings and vellications upon the fibrous and membraneous parts of his body, like sharp razors, cut and wounded him within; and the pain thence arising overpowered him, at length, with cold sweats, tremblings, and convulsions. Antipater in his dungeon, hearing in what a lamentable condition Herod lay, strongly solicited his jailer to set him at liberty, hoping to obtain the crown; but the officer acquainted Herod with the whole affair. The tyrant groaning under the complication of his own distempers, upon this information, vented his spleen by raving and beating his own head, and calling one of his guards, commanded him to go that instant and cut off Antipater’s head. Not content with causing many to be put to barbarous deaths during the course of his malady, he commanded the Jews that were of the principal rank and quality to be shut up in a circus at Jericho, and gave orders to his sister Salome and her husband Alexas to have them all massacred as soon as he should have expired, saying, that as the Jews heartily hated him, they would rejoice at his departure; but he would make a general mourning of the whole nation at his death. 5 This circumstance is at least related by the Jewish historian Josephus. Herod died five days after he had put his son Antipater to death. Macrobius, a heathen writer of the fifth century, relates, 6 that Augustus, “when he heard that, among the children which Herod had commanded to be slain under two years old, his own son had been massacred, said: ‘It is better to be Herod’s hog than his son.’” By this he alluded to the Jewish law of not eating, and consequently not killing swine. Probably the historian imagined the son to have been slain amongst the children, because the news of both massacres reached Rome about the same time.

Parents, pastors, and tutors are bound to make it their principal care, that children, in their innocent age, be by piety and charity consecrated as pure holocausts to God. This is chiefly to be done by imprinting upon their minds the strongest sentiments of devotion, and by instructing them thoroughly in their catechism. We cannot entertain too high an idea of the merit and obligation of teaching God’s little ones to know him, and the great and necessary truths which he has revealed to us. Without knowing him no one can love him, or acquit himself of the most indispensable duties which he owes to his Creator. Children must be instructed in prayer and the principal articles of faith as soon as they attain to the use of reason, that they may be able to give him his first fruits by faith, hope, and love, as by the law of reason and religion they are bound to do. The understanding of little children is very weak, and is able only to discover small glimpses of light. Great art, experience, and earnestness are often required to manage and gradually increase these small rays, and to place therein whatever one would have the children comprehend. The lessons must be very short, and the truths which are taught made sensible when possible, by examples, images, and comparisons, adapted to the capacities of those that are to be instructed. The catechist, without demeaning himself, must become a little one with those that are little. This he must do with suitable gravity and seriousness; and it is only by his own earnestness and application that he can make them attentive and earnest. Were he at the same time to joke, or attend to, or be employed in any other thing, he would in vain recommend seriousness and attention to those that hear him. O how great ought to be the zeal of children and others to attend to that saving doctrine, without which man is a riddle to himself, and no one can attain to salvation and the love of God! That sublime science which the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, came from heaven 7 to declare to us. The queen of the South came from the bounds of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon: behold more than Solomon is here? 8 When the Athenians had forbidden any citizen of Megara to set foot in Athens under pain of death, one Euclides, an inhabitant of Megara, went disguised many miles in the night to assist at the lectures of Socrates the next morning, and returned the night following; and this he continued to do a long time with the hazard of his life. 9 If such was the earnestness of this heathen to learn a profane philosophy, with what zeal ought a Christian to study the true and sublime science of faith, which leads to eternal life! The most ardent desire of this instruction is the surest mark of true virtue, and of that vehement hunger and thirst of God’s just and holy love, which is the very soul of sincere piety. The solicitude and diligence of parents and pastors to instruct others in this sacred science, ought not to lessen; neither must any one regard the function as mean or contemptible. It is the very foundation of the Christian religion. By this function the seeds of piety and religion are planted in the hearts of the faithful, which produce their fruit according to the manner in which they are received. A good catechist contributes more towards maintaining public peace, than all the laws and magistrates; as inferior ties of duty are far more binding than coercive force. Hence Pope Paul III. in a bull in which he recommends this employment, declares that “nothing is more fruitful or more profitable for the salvation of souls.” No pastoral function is more indispensable, none more beneficial, and generally none more meritorious; we may add, or more sublime. For under a meaner exterior appearance, without pomp, ostentation, or show of learning or abilities, it joins the exercise of humility with the most zealous and most profitable function of the pastoral charge. Being painful and laborious, it is, moreover, an exercise of patience and penance. Neither can any one think it beneath his parts or dignity. The great St. Austin, St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril, and other most learned doctors, popes, and bishops, applied themselves with singular zeal and assiduity to this duty of catechising children and all ignorant persons; this they thought a high branch of their duty, and the most useful and glorious employment of their learning and talents. What did the apostles travel over the world to do else? St. Paul said: I am a debtor to the wise and to the unwise. 10 We became little ones in the midst of you, as if a nurse would cherish her children; so desirous of you, that we would gladly have imparted to you not only the gospel of God, but even our own souls. 11 Our Divine Lord himself made this the principal employment of his ministry. The spirit of the Lord is upon me: he hath sent me to preach the gospel to the poor. 12 He declared the pleasure he found in assisting that innocent age, when he said: Suffer little children to come unto me, for the kingdom of God is for such. And embracing them, and laying his hands upon them he blessed them. 13 John Gerson, the most pious and celebrated chancellor of Paris, esteemed an oracle for his learning, testified his zeal for this sacred function by his book entitled, On drawing Little Ones to Christ. All his life he employed a considerable part of his time in teaching little children their catechism. Upon his return from the general council of Constance, he retired to the city of Lyons, where he every day assembled the children in St. Paul’s church, and taught them the Christian doctrine, till he was confined to his bed by his last illness. When he drew near his death, he caused all the little children to be called together into the church, and there to repeat with one voice: “My God, my Creator, have mercy on thy poor servant, John Gerson.” 14

Note 1. Sozomen, l. 5, c. 21, p. 213, ed. Cantabar. per Reading.

Note 2. S. Athan. l. de Incarn. Verbi. Calmet, Vie de Jesus C. c. 7, p. 21.

Note 3. Isaiah xix. 1.

Note 4. Antipater, whom Herod had by his wife Doris, and who had, by wicked artifices, engaged his father to put to death his two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, (the two last princes of the Asmonean family by their mother Mariamne,) formed a conspiracy against the life of his father. Of this crime he was convicted before Quintilius Varus, who had succeeded Saturninus in the government of Syria, and whom Herod had entreated to preside in this trial at Jerusalem.

Note 5. Jos. Ant. l. 17, c. 7.

Note 6. Macrob. Saturn. l. 2, c. 4.

Note 7. John i. 18.

Note 8. Matt. xii. 42.

Note 9. Aul. Gell. Noct. Attic. l. 6, c. 10.

Note 10. Rom. i. 14.

Note 11. 1 Thess. ii. 7, 8.

Note 12. Luke iv. 18.

Note 13. Mark x. 14, 16.

Note 14. Vita Gerson. t. 1, op. p. 169.

The Catholic Creed: Synderesis

The Catholic Creed: Synderesis

Synderesis

Synderesis, or more correctly synteresis, is a term used by the Scholastic theologians to signify the habitual knowledge of the universal practical principles of moral action. The reasoning process in the field of speculative science presupposes certain fundamental axioms on which all science rests. Such are the principle of contradiction, "a thing cannot be and not be at the same time," and self-evident truths like "the whole is greater than its part". These are the first principles of the speculative intellect. In the field of moral conduct there are similar first principles of action, such as: "evil must be avoided, good done"; "Do not to others what you would not wish to be done to yourself"; "Parents should be honoured"; "We should live temperately and act justly". Such as these are self-evident truths in the field of moral conduct which any sane person will admit if he understands them. According to the Scholastics, the readiness with which such moral truths are apprehended by the practical intellect is due to the natural habit impressed on the cognitive faculty which they call synderesis. While conscience is a dictate of the practical reason deciding that any particular action is right or wrong, synderesis is a dictate of the same practical reason which has for its object the first general principles of moral action.

From:

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV. Published 1912. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

___________________________________________________________________

Synteresis was first used by the early Church Fathers to speak of the divine spark given by God to each individual human soul at the moment of conception of each individual soul. That divine spark is the basis for conscience of each human being. Everybody and that means everybody from Adam to the last human being every conceived knows right from wrong in that divine spark and conscience given them by God Himself by the Holy Spirit of God. No one has any excuse to sin and transgress the commandments of God and say they didn't know what they were doing. 

Gospel According to Saint John

Chapter 16

The conclusion of Christ's last discourse to his disciples.

1 These things have I spoken to you, that you may not be scandalized. 

2 They will put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God. 

3 And these things will they do to you; because they have not known the Father, nor me. 

4 But these things I have told you, that when the hour shall come, you may remember that I told you of them. 

5 But I told you not these things from the beginning, because I was with you. And now I go to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me: Whither goest thou?

6 But because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow hath filled your heart. 

7 But I tell you the truth: it is expedient to you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

8 And when he is come, he will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment. 

9 Of sin: because they believed not in me. 

10 And of justice: because I go to the Father; and you shall see me no longer.

8 He will convict the world of sin: The Holy Ghost, by his coming brought over many thousands, first, to a sense of their sin in not believing in Christ. Secondly, to a conviction of the justice of Christ, now sitting at the right hand of his Father. And thirdly, to a right apprehension of the judgment prepared for them that choose to follow Satan, who is already judged and condemned.

11 And of judgment: because the prince of this world is already judged.

Knowing by Oneself, Knowing with the Other - Oddbjørn Leirvik on Al-damîr, Human Conscience and Christian-Muslim Relations

Knowing by oneself,
knowing with the other

Some reflections on the theme of "conscience"
in modern Egyptian Islam
and in Christian-Muslim dialogue

Oddbjørn Leirvik,

Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo

In the article on "conscience" in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Michel Despland writes:

On the interreligious scene today, it is to be wished that dialogue and encounter shall proceed from conscience. And the notion of conscience may well be – or become – part of the account that each will give to the other of his or her own humanity. Such meeting of consciences cannot occur without the labor of consciousness: each trying to communicate over a period of time what he is aware of.[1]

Could "conscience" have any role to fulfil in a dialogue between religions? The notion of conscience is moulded in Christian tradition and European philosophy – beginning with the Greek syneídêsis and the Latin conscientia. Attempts have been made to identify a notion of conscience in other traditions as well. In James Hasting's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics from 1911, one will find articles on "conscience" in Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek-Roman, Jewish and Islamic religion. Such an approach, however, presupposes that some conceptual essence in the notion of conscience – like internalisation of morality or personal responsibility – is distilled in advance. Both in ancient Egyptian religion, in Jewish tradition and in Islam, the metaphor of the "heart" expresses the inner centre of man – capable of moral judgements and self-evaluation as well as of personal communication with God, and in need of purification.
However, the Greek-Roman, and later Christian notion of conscience, involves something more than moral and religious internalisation. What appears to be specific for the notion of conscience, is rather the tension between the turn inwards (towards the Self) and the orientation outwards (towards the Others) – between knowing by oneself and knowing with Others. The prefixes syn-, con- and sam- (in Norwegiansamvit) might indicate that etymologically, conscience is knowing with someone. It might be Oneself, but just as well the Other. And maybe the two cannot be separated.[2]

Some perspectives on the notion of conscience in European/Christian tradition

If one sets out to examine the rhetorical function of conscience-centred discourses in Christian tradition and in European philosophy, it becomes clear that conscience most often refers to intimate knowing by oneself, and with God as the transcendent other. The human other is not that visibly present. Having "a good conscience" for doing something, often implies an element of distancing from the others. One withdraws into oneself, in order to ascertain that one can stand for something from oneself, and if necessary, in contradiction to what the community might stand for. As expressed by the old Stoic Cicero: "there is no audience for virtue of higher authority than the approval of conscience".[3]
At the roots of the Christian tradition, however, Paul maintains the tension between knowing by oneself and knowing with others. When unfolding the notion of conscience in 1. Corinthians (ch. 8 and 10), he faces two groups in the Christian community. The one party know with themselves – from their gnôsis – that they may eat meat consecrated to the idols (in connection with Roman temple cult) with a good conscience. The others – those with a "weak conscience" – do not think they can do so, and get their conscience "polluted" when eating meat consecrated to idols. In this conflict, Paul argues that the gnôsis of the strong ones should give way to what could be known together in the community. What the strong (and rich?) know with themselves, must yield to that what Christians in Corinth may know together – in a practice of solidarity. In the influential (in terms of the history of ideas) passage in Romans (2.14-16), knowing together even transcends the Christian community. The conscience of the heathens testify to knowledge shared by Jews, Christians, Greeks and Romans, namely that the divine law is written in the heart of every human being.
In Early Modernity, parallel with the new emphasis on the moral autonomy of the individual, the inward direction of conscience acquires fresh importance. In Religion innerhalb der bloßen Vernunft (1793), Kant characterises "das Gewissen" as "die sich selbst richtende moralische Urteilskraft".[4] In Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), he writes that conscience is one of the moral faculties ("moralische Beschaffenheiten") that must be taken for granted in every human being, if the notion of moral obligation shall make any sense at all. Fichte gives Kant's rational-autonomous conscience a Romantic bend, and speaks of conscience as "das unmittelbare Bewußtsein unseres reinen ursrprunglichen Ich".[5]Hegel, on the other hand, returns to conscience its social character. He regards Kant's formal and individualised understanding of conscience as insufficient, and emphasises that conscience is first of all knowing with others:

Das Gewissen hat die reine Pflicht oder das abstrakte Ansich nicht aufgegeben, sondern sie ist das wesentliche Moment, als Allgemeinheit sich zu andern zu verhalten. Es ist das gemeinschaftliche Element des Selbstbewusstsein ... das Moment des Anerkanntwerdens von den anderen.[6]

With Feuerbach, the orientation of conscience towards others becomes a critical insight: "Das Gewissen is das alter ego, das Andere Ich im Ich".[7] Feuerbach sees conscience basically as "bad conscience", expressing the wounded other: "Mein Gewissen ist nichts anderes, als mein an die Stelle des verletzten Du sich setzendes Ich".[8] Feuerbach unambiguously returns conscience to its etymological origin, as an expression of something known with others:

Gewissen ist Mitwissen. So sehr ist das Bild der Anderen in mein Selbstbewusstsein, mein Selbstbild eingewoben, dass selbst der Ausdruck des Allereigensten und Allerinnerlichsten, das Gewissen, ein Ausdruck des Socialismus, der Gemeinschaftlichkeit ist.[9]

In French Enlightenment and Romanticism, partly in English Enlightenment philosophy as well, the basic tension between conscience as self-consciousness and conscience as shared knowledge can easily be traced. In French, there is no parallel to the English distinction between "consciousness" and "conscience". The French "conscience" often has a strong inward orientation, towards moral self-consciousness. Nevertheless, it is in French Enlightenment and Romanticism one can find the strongest expressions of conscience as a social and political right. In his Commentaire Philosophique ou Traité de la Tolérance Universelle (1686), Pierre Bayle contends that conscience is the voice of God in every human being, and correspondingly, that going against conscience is equal to disobeying the law of God. Hence he can also speak of the rights of conscience ("les Droits de la Conscience") as something directly related to God himself.[10] With Rousseau, the notion of conscience figures prominently in that part of Émile (1762) which is called "The Creed of a Savoyard Priest". Here, conscience is referred to as "an innate principle of justice and virtue", as "divine instinct", "sure guide" and "infallible judge of good and evil". According to Rousseau and his Savoyard priest, it is to conscience everyone owes "the excellence of man's nature and the morality of his acts".[11]
Rousseau's notion of conscience is often referred to as the classical modern expression of individual "authenticity". It should be noted, however, that authenticity with Rousseau is not solipsistic, but inextricably linked to the idea of a binding social contract into which humans freely enter (cf.Du Contrat Social, published in the same year as Émile). In his book The Ethics of Authenticity[12], Charles Taylor characterises the idea of authenticity as a child of the Romantic period, which was utterly critical of a disengaged rationality that neglected the bonds of community.[13]The idea of authenticity gives birth to a new vision of community. Nevertheless, its origin lies in the notion of an inner voice:

Morality has, in a sense, a voice within. ... This is part of the massive subjective turn of modern culture, a new form of inwardness, where we come to think of ourselves as beings with inner depths.[14]

Conscience in Islam?

Is the discourse of conscience a specifically Western/Christian discourse, then, or can parallel ideas of conscience be traced in other traditions – making an intercultural or interreligious dialogue on conscience meaningful (cf. Despland)?
Classical Islam lacks a proper word for conscience. In modern standard Arabic, damîr has become the central word for conscience. From old,damîr stands for "the inner, hidden". In classical Sufî psychology (like with al-Hallâj, d. 922, and with Ibn ‘Arabi, d. 1240), damîr signifies "the inner conscious"; different from sirr, "the inner unconscious". In classical Arabic grammar, damîr is the name of the personal pronoun. Only from the latter part of the 19th century, the word can be found in the sense of "moral self-consciousness" or "conscience". New Arabic Bible translations from 1860 onwards seem to have influenced the process, by translating syneídêsis as damîr instead of niyya ("intention"), which had prevailed in Bible translations from the 9th century until then. At the beginning of the 20th century, damîr is found in this sense also in Arabic translations and Egyptian reception of European philosophy, as can be seen from a book on Rousseau from 1923 of the well-known literate Muhammad Husayn Haykal.
In the following, I will present three Egyptian authors from this century who have all put the notion of damîr at the centre of their works on religion, philosophy and ethics. They may also have prepared the ground for a possible Muslim-Christian dialogue on conscience. The authors are ‘Abbâs Mahmûd al- ‘Aqqâd (1889-1964), Muhammad Kâmil Husayn (1901-1977) and Khâlid Muhammad Khâlid (1920-1996). All of them are regarded as outstanding men of letters in their generation. They are prolific writers covering a wide field of topics, most of them dealt with in an essayist and popularised manner. The works of al-‘Aqqâd and Khâlid are widely read in Arabic, whereas Husayn (through translations into English by Kenneth Cragg) is better known internationally.
Common for them all is that they wrote books on Christ in the 50s. These books have rightly been regarded as landmarks in Muslim-Christian dialogue. Different from prevailing tendencies in Muslim apologetics, they base their reflections on Christ on the Christian sources, relying for the most part on the Biblical gospels. They also highlight the universal features in the message of Christ, making it relevant and challenging for a Muslim reader. They are, as both Western and Coptic Christians have seen it, dialogical in their approach to Christ, not merely apologetic. A second uniting feature between these authors is their strong focus on the notion of conscience (damîr) – both in their books on Christ and Christian tradition, and in their exposition of the Islamic faith and philosophical heritage.
By the interrelation of the themes mentioned, Christ appears a forerunner of conscience-based religion and ethics. But their philosophy of conscience turns out to be quite central also to their vision of Islam, their general anthropological outlook, and their view on the relation between individual and community in modernity. From one side, their conscience-based ethics may be seen as just another version of an internalised ethics, bent towards virtue ethics and ideals of personal formation. As such, their ethics of conscience may be said render to the individual more ethical autonomy than what has been the rule in Islamic ethics. On the other side, their ethics of conscience is also an ethics with obvious political implications – with obvious anti-authoritarian features, social radicalism (especially in Khâlid) and elements of a philosophy of non-violence (in Khâlid and Husayn).

As for the context of their writings, all the authors are well within the tradition of reformist Islam, and their works are heavily marked by modern Islam's departure from rigorous traditionalism. But at mid-century, reformist Islam or "modern Islam" in Egypt is not at all a uniform phenomenon. The tension between liberal Islam, Islamic socialism and Islamism as competing programs of modernisation in Egypt is part of their immediate context. Their writings also reflect an Egyptian context marked by a distinct "dia-practice" [15] between Muslims and Christians, namely their co-operation in the modern Egyptian nation building, and joint efforts from Muslim and Christians to establish social justice.

Damir in al-‘Aqqâd: a key term in apologetics as well as dialogue

In a book from 1961, on "Thinking – an Islamic duty" (Al-tafkîr – farîda islâmiyya), ‘Abbâs Mahmûd al-‘ Aqqâd maintains that Islam is the only religion that fully authorises a free and independent relation between the creatures and their Creator, so that humans may approach God by means of their conscience – their damîr.[16] Already in his book from 1947 on "The Qur’ânic philosophy" (Al-falsafa al-qur’âniyya), he claims that the philosophy of the Qur’ân contains the only doctrine that can really vitalise conscience, and disperse the clouds that otherwise stand in the light of reason.[17]
Much of what al-‘Aqqâd writes on conscience, is flavoured by an outspoken apologetic interest. But also in his books on Christ and Christian tradition, the notion of conscience is strikingly central. His biography of Christ from 1953 ("The Genius of Christ") appeared in the wake of corresponding biographies on Muhammad and Islamic heroes, most of them under the heading 'Abqariyyat, "the genius".
In a book from 1947 on the development of the notion of God ("Allâh"), al-‘Aqqâd presents Christianity as the first religion to base the service of God on human conscience.[18] In his Christ-biography from 1953, al-‘Aqqâd focuses on the universalism, the law of love and the pre-eminence of conscience in Christ's message. When summarising Christ message in one expression, he speaks of "the law of love and conscience" (shari‘at al-hubb aw/wa-sharî‘at al-damîr).[19]
Another central motive in al-‘Aqqâd is the Sufî-based distinction between the outer and the inner. The law of love and conscience is contrasted by what al-‘Aqqâd terms "the law of outward forms and appearances" (sharî‘at al-ashkâl wa-l-zawâhir). Conscience is the warrant that actions are based on right intentions (niyyât) and ideals. The important thing is the reform of souls, and the change of motives and incentives (islâh al-nafsi, taghyîr al-bawâ’ith).[20]
One sometimes gets the expression that al-‘Aqqâd should primarily be read in the Romantic tradition of equalising religion with innermost emotion – cf. expressions like "in the secrets of conscience"[21] an "the innermost thoughts of his conscience"[22], and his frequent paralleling of "conscience" with "soul" and "heart".[23] Still, it is obvious that his use of damîr is related to some kind of social vision. "Freedom of conscience" is a central term for al-‘Aqqâd. Although he gives it a peculiar Romantic or Mystical flavour in expressions like "the freedom of conscience is the secret of all secrets in the life of man"[24], the concept of freedom of conscience has – of course – obvious ethical and political implications.
The project of Christ – apparently identical with that of al-‘Aqqâd – is aimed at refinement of the human character (tahdhîb al-âdâb al-insâniyya). Al-‘Aqqâd's virtue ethics approach to moral questions rests upon a long tradition of philosophical ethics in Islam.[25] According to al-‘Aqqâd, it is only through character formation that the conscience of the individual, and the conscience of the community (damîr al-umma), can be safeguarded. As al-‘Aqqâd sees it, such formation can only happen through a reform of consciences (bi-islâh al-damâ’ir). He has far less confidence in reform or reinterpretation of outward laws and regulations. His focal point is ethics (akhlâq) and the formation of a moral character.

Al-‘Aqqâd's interest in Christ is apparently not restricted to a historical presentation of Christ as a law reformer in Judaism, neither to a sympathetic exposition of basic Christian tenets. There are many indications that his writings about Christ should also be read as a critique of rigorous attitudes and outwardness in parts of contemporary Islam – cf. his employment of traditional Islamic offices like fuqahâ’[26], ‘ulamâ’and huffâz[27] when denoting the adversaries of Christ.

Damir in Kâmil Husayn: at the heart of a universal, human drama

Kâmil Husayn is known in the West for two books translated by Kenneth Cragg. His most famous book is Qarya zâlima from 1954 (in English:City of Wrong), that was awarded with the Egyptian State Prize of Literature in 1957, and has attracted much attention in the international dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Kenneth Cragg has also translated a meditative work on philosophy (or psychology) of religion from 1968, entitled Al-wâdi al-muqaddas (in English: The Hallowed Valley).[28]
In The Hallowed Valley, Husayn speaks of the voice of conscience as the very voice of God, with rather strong Sûfî connotations:

The hallowed valley is the place on earth, the point in time, the state of mind, where you reach upward beyond the form of external things, beyond your own nature and the necessities of life, and even beyond the bounds of your intellect ... In the hallowed valley you hear the voice of conscience, clear and plain, enjoining upon you unconfusedly the obligations of the good, and leading you undeviatingly towards the truth – conscience as the very voice of God.[29]

As a prerequisite of abiding in the hallowed valley, Husayn speaks of the necessity of to fight against evil of all kinds, and its seductive power. This can only be done through exercise of "the hidden and passive virtues of resistance".[30] Correspondingly, in an appendix to his novel of conscience, he emphasises that the main function of conscience is that of curbing and warning (râdi‘an wa-nadhîran):

Although it is possible to be positively guided by conscience, the main power for conscience being inhibitive and prohibitive, it is mainly a guide to us in avoiding wrong.[31]

Husayn relates his concept of damîr to general insights derived from psychology and the natural sciences. But he unfolds it in a literary fiction, in a drama of conscience based on the events of Good Friday as recorded in the New Testament Gospels. The book presents itself as a moral philosophical dramatisation of the events of Good Friday, which is indeed a controversial issue to approach for Muslim author. Instead of directly challenging the classical Islamic claim that Christ was in fact not crucified, Husayn enters the drama of crucifixion from the perspective of the intentions of those involved. As the Qur’ân confirms, the adversaries of Christ intended to crucify him (although, according to a conventional Muslim interpretation, their plans were thwarted). The intention of Husayn is to expose the universal importance of the drama of Good Friday, the central themes of which is the crucifixion of human conscience:

When they resolved to crucify him it was a decision to crucify the human conscience and extinguish its light. They considered that reason and religion alike laid upon them obligations that transcended the dictates of conscience.[32]

In his book, Husayn dramatises the inner conflicts that can be traced or surmised among Jewish leaders and the representatives of the Roman occupation force. Out of different motives, they all denied their voice within, when they resolved to have Christ crucified. Husayn also unfolds the moral drama of the disciples. For the disciples, being true to conscience was a question of being faithful towards the obligation of non-violence, as expressed by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
According to Husayn, the drama of Good Friday has a universal relevance. In Husayn – as in al-‘Aqqâd – conscience is clearly interrelated with personal virtue. Even more than al-‘Aqqâd, he stresses that religion (anchored in conscience) can only influence society indirectly. In Husayn, there is also more emphasis on the right of resistance than in al-‘Aqqâd's more romantically flavoured project of renewal. It is all about the will and ability of the individual to obey his inner voice, and on this foundation, to venture non-violent resistance to the religious and political collective when necessary.

What would have been the contemporary impetus for making the crucifixion of conscience his crucial theme? According to Harold Vogelaar,City of Wrong should first of all be read in the light of the shattering experience of World War II, as "an emotional, literary reaction to that catastrophic event", movingly depicting "the utter failure of traditional religion to prevent it".[33] Kenneth Cragg, on the other hand[34], focuses on the fact that Husayn relates his concept of conscience to central teachings of the Qur’ân, and to a contemporary context which is just as much Muslim as Christian. In City of Wrong, he names the head of lawyers among the Jews – the one responsible for issuing religious fatwas – amuftî. He alludes to controversial issues related to the interpretation of sharî‘a; like imposing lashes for drunkenness[35] and the question of death penalty for adultery or alleged blasphemy/apostasy.[36] Likewise, he displays the ambiguity of the concept ijmâ‘ (consensus of the religio-political community) when it comes to the question of the individual being true to conscience.[37] He frequently alludes to Qur’ânic expressions (like the concept of zulm – "wrong, iniquity" – underlying the title of the book). Sometimes his allusions are made in astonishing ways, displaying a profound will of self-criticism as to how Qur’ânic concepts may be misused for suppression in the name of religion or society.[38]

Damir in Khâlid Muhammad Khâlid:
conscience unites the history of religions, but is best safeguarded by Islam

In a contextual perspective, the personal development of Khâlid Muhammad Khâlid is of special interest, particularly with regard to the tension between liberal Islam and Islamism. In his book Min hunâ nabda’ (in English: From here we start) from 1950, he advocated the separation of religion and state, vehemently attacking the political ambitions of the Islamic "priesthood" (traditional ‘ulamâ’ as well as secretly organised Muslims Brothers). During the 50s, Khâlid produced a whole series of books propounding democratic values combined with a vision of Islamic socialism, and simultaneously, a commitment to Christian-Muslim dialogue. From the 60s, however, he turns more and more to the Islamic heritage, publishing several books on Muhammad and the men around him. At the end of the 70s, he seemed to have "converted" to a moderate Islamism. In contrast to his positions from the 50s, he now emphasises the Islamic foundation of the state. His book from 1981 on "The State in Islam" (Al-dawla fî-l-islâm) sets out with a critical reassessment of the secularist ideas he had been voicing in the 50s. Nevertheless, the book testifies to the fact that also in the latter part of his authorship, he strongly maintains his advocacy of the democratic rights of freedom – as a "good Islamic democrat".
In this way, Khâlid embodies a general trend among several Egyptian intellectuals: From a social democratic commitment in the 50s, he becomes an advocate of "Islamic democracy" in the 70s and 80s. In a parallel development, he also moves from a general discourse of values (like social justice and democracy) towards a more specifically Islamic discourse – which deals with Islamic authenticity more than the authentic human being in general.
Khâlid's best known contribution to inter-religious dialogue would be his book from 1958 entitled "Together on the road – Muhammad and Christ" (Ma‘an ‘alâ-l-tariq – Muhammad wa-l-Masîh).[39] In this books, he searches for what might be termed common ethical values between Christ and Muhammad. Both Christ and Muhammad are presented at human beings with an honest conscience (mustaqîm /istiqâmat al-damîr). Although they are merely humans, both of them embody very special "energies" (tâqât), and their spiritual nobility is linked with a shared commitment for "ordinary people" (al-rajul al-‘âdî). Both defend the fundamental human rights of subsistence, as well as the right to freedom of conscience. Christ liberated human conscience from its captivity of outwards laws and oppressing regulations. The same did Muhammad: By preaching social responsibility and challenging suppressive power, by spiritually subverting all institutions of religious mediation and defending the integrity of the individual person, he set human conscience free.
As Khâlid sees it, this prophetic mission rooted in the inner authority of Muhammad's conscience. On the first page of his book on the human qualities of Muhammad (Insâniyyât Muhammad, from 1960), Khâlid claims that

If Muhammad had not been a messenger of God he would surely have been a human being on the same level as a messenger of God! And if he had not received the command from his Lord: 'Oh messenger, proclaim what is revealed to you' he would surely have received it from his very nature (min dhât nafsihi): 'Oh human being, proclaim what is at work in your conscience.'[40]

Khâlid is utterly critical of all religiosity marked by blind compliance with tradition, and of a religious ethics based on formalistic rules "devoid of spirit". As brothers in prophethood, Christ and Muhammad both focus on the inner meaning of the laws, and both of them are anchoring religion as well as ethics in human conscience.
In Khâlid, the notion of conscience apparently refers to something more than morality and ethics. In "Together on the road", he defines conscience as "the human being in its true existence" (al-insân fî wujûdihi al-haqîqî).[41] By this repeated expression, he seems to link his ethics of conscience to the more general question of human authenticity: it is all about – as he puts it – opening up for the energies and potentials of the human being. Concretely, this can be expressed both through resistance to everything than binds conscience, and in creative, constructive work for a world of freedom. His aim is always the agreement between out outward conduct and our hidden inner (bayna zâhirinâ wa-bâtininâ) – a classical Sufî distinction that Khâlid links up with, but also transcends.
Five years after his book on Muhammad and Christ, Khâlid publishes a book that is entirely dedicated to the theme of human conscience – "on its journey towards its destiny" (Ma‘a l-damîr al-insânî fî masîrihi wa-masîrihi). In this book, he presents the history of religion and philosophy from the perspective of "development of human conscience". He traces human conscience, on its journey from old Egypt via Chinese religion, the Old Testament scriptures, Christ, Muhammad and the Islamic revelation, all the way up to Mahatma Gandhi as the most prominent spokesman of conscience in our time. Khâlid highlights the interaction between conscience and reflective reason (‘aql), but also underlines that conscience cannot dispense of divine guidance through the prophets.
His reading of the history of philosophy reveals (among other things) interest in Rousseau's coupling of a Romantic ethics of authenticity with the idea of a social contract based on the common will. By his endorsement of wide-ranging human rights of freedom, Khâlid draws a demarcation line against authoritarian version of the idea of a social contract. Among the rights of freedom, the right of "enlightened doubt" (al-shakk al-mustanîr) appears to be the most central of them all.[42] Khâlid presents the right of doubt as an integral part of the legacy of European philosophy, but also endeavours to link the idea of doubt as a positive human faculty to words of Muhammad.
As for the relation between individual and society, Khâlid claims that Muhammad's ethics of conscience is more political than that of Christ. Whereas Christ persistently focused on intention (niyya), Muhammad recognised the need to reinforce intentions with social laws. Intentions must be implanted "in the depths of human nature and in the nature of society likewise".[43] Christ focused on individual conduct, and according to Khâlid, he gave no directions for the social order (nizâm) that can never be dispensed of if human rights shall be effectively safeguarded.

These formulations from the early 60s could perhaps be taken as an indication of Khâlid's later attraction to a moderate Islamism. In his book "The State in Islam" (1981), he maintains his advocacy of democracy and freedom rights, but unfolds his commitment within a purely Islamic discourse, and with no references to conscience or shared ethical values between Muslims and Christians. Has he moved from calling on the authentic human being, towards the proclamation of a specifically Islamic authenticity?

Conscience in the dialogue between religions:
knowing by oneself and with others

The turn to the other

In the formation of an integral human personality, self-consciousness and "knowing with others" must clearly be regarded as two sides of the same coin.[44] Also in a communal perspective, knowing by oneself (one's own religious community) is always interrelated with knowing together with (or against) distinctive others. Those who belong to a different religious community, might either be regarded as adversaries, as companions on the road, as members of an extended spiritual family, or simply neighbours with whom you will have to cope in one way or another. How can the interrelation of self-consciousness and other-directedness be conceived of in a dialogue between religions? Perhaps even more important: How can the twin experiences on the communal level, of a possibly shared commitment and the still ineradicable pain of difference, be conceptualised and lived with?
In recent philosophies of dialogue, "the turn towards the Other" has emerged as a central topic among prominent representatives of the Abrahamic family. Much of the inspiration has come from the Jewish philosophers Martin Buber ("I and Thou") and Emmanuel Lévinas, who bases his ethics of proximity on the notion of "the Other's face".[45]
The recognition of the constitutive role of "the Other" in the formation of a religious self-consciousness is a most central theme with thinkers like Paul Ricoeur and David Tracy on the Christian side[46], and with Muslim writers like Hasan Askari (India) and Farid Esack (South Africa).[47]
The background of the new discourse on the inviolability of the Other is dramatic: the entire philosophy of Lévinas may be read as a reflection on the extinction of the Other in holocaust – resulting in an entirely ethical philosophy centred around the human face's silent call for respected difference. For Lévinas, the Other can never be simply more of the same, from the point of view of the Self. The Other is essentially difference. The encounter with the Other's face subverts subjectivity, as subjectivity has been conceived of in idealist or existentialist philosophy: It places the subject in the accusative, "by substituting me for the Other as a hostage".[48]
Similarly, when David Tracy reflects upon the "the Divine Other of Liberation" as "the Hidden God", he focuses on the disturbing difference of the marginalised Other:

Rather history will now be seen as the focus of God's self-disclosure in the survival, struggle, conflict of oppressed and forgotten people, living and dead: in otherness, difference, marginality.[49]

Others (like Ricoeur) treat the question of selfhood and otherness in a more general perspective, investigating the conditions of moral character formation. Traumas as well as ordinary everyday experience give impetus to reflections on the how we define self and other, sameness and difference – at the personal as well as at the communal level.

Selfhood and otherness in conscience:
Ricoeur, Heidegger and Lévinas

Is the notion of conscience capable of containing selfhood as well as otherness, analogical likeness as well as radical difference? Paul Ricoeur concludes his reflections on Oneself as Another with a discussion of the notion of conscience.[50] He is critical of purely existentialist notions of conscience, that tend to blur the constitutive role of others in the formation of human conscience. The same point is repeatedly made by Charles Taylor in the exposure of his "ethics of authenticity", when he underlines the fundamentally dialogical character of human life, and the "inescapable horizons" of significant others in any search for human authenticity.[51]
As for Ricoeur, he takes Martin Heidegger's notion of conscience to task. Heidegger's philosophy may be read as a search for "eigentliches Selbstsein" – a human existence that is truly authentic. In this search, conscience ("Gewissen") has a role to fulfil: "An authentic potentiality-for-Being is attested by conscience".[52] Heidegger sees conscience essentially as a call to the individual from the depths of human existence ("Dasein"); a call to realise "its ownmost potentiality for Being-its-Self".[53] For Heidegger, inauthentic being is loosing one's Self in the multitude of "they" ("das Man"). Although becoming authentic includes the possibility of seeing others with new eyes, as individual beings with potentials for authentic existence, the other has no constitutive role to play in the formation of conscience . According to Heidegger, listening to conscience implies an element of radical distancing from others: too much identification with others leads to the danger of loosing oneself.
Against Heidegger, Ricoeur recalls the insight of Hegel "that conscience is the voice of the Other in the sense of others ...".[54] Ricoeur agrees with the contention forcefully put forward by Lévinas, that the call of Other is constitutive of the formation of self-consciousness and conscience.[55] But he is discontent with Lévinas' insistence on the pure externality of the Other. Ricoeur looks for a notion of the Self and the Other that integrates Selfhood and Otherness. By use of the notion of conscience, Ricoeur sets out to reconcile Selfhood and Otherness in one final move.

To these alternatives – either Heidegger's strange(r)ness or Lévinas' externality – I shall stubbornly oppose the original and originary character of what appears to me to constitute the third modality of otherness, namely being enjoined as the structure of selfhood ... if the injunction coming from the other is not part and parcel of self-attestation, it loses its character of injunction ... If one eliminates this dimension of auto-affection, one ultimately renders the metacategory of conscience superfluous; the category of the other suffices.[56]

Existentialism and visions of community:
Muslim perspectives on sameness and otherness

In the perspective of Ricoeur, self-affection implies the ability of being touched and obliged by others, and results in a sensitive conscience. With our Egyptian authors, both being touched and being obliged appears to be central for their notion of conscience. In al-‘Aqqâd, the affective notion of love (hubb) and the moral notion of divine injunction (taklîf) both appear to be firmly within the conceptual field of conscience(damîr).[57]
What about the question of our Egyptian authors and the possible shortcomings of an existentialist notion of conscience? Should their notion of conscience be regarded as predominantly existentialist, in the sense of individual self-injunction and personal authenticity? Or is it rather sociable, in the sense of recognising and welcoming others as integral to the constitution of authentic selfhood? A consecutive question is just as crucial: if conscience is recognised as sociable, how should the others included in conscience be conceived of? Only as more of the same, like me and my community? Or as others with a potentially painful difference? Could it be that an existentialist quest for individual authenticity, coupled with a predominantly idealist and univeralist interpretation of Islam, obscures differences that will anyhow return with a revenge at some stage or other?
Khâlid comes close to existentialist notions of conscience when defining damîr as "the human being in its true existence", and he combines his quest for authenticity with a universalist reading of Islamic fundamentals. Al-‘Aqqâd addresses existentialism in his book "Thinking – an Islamic duty".[58] He apparently admires existentialism (which he calls madhâhib al-wujûdiyya, without specifying his references) for its emphasis on the irreducible responsibility of the individual, and its stress on the unlimited authority of conscience. Nevertheless, he is wary of what he sees as its potential anti-social consequences. He seems to equate modern Western existentialism with the monasticism of ancient times:

In old times, the man with a vigilant conscience (al-damîr al-yaqzân) used to become tired with his society, and emigrated from it to the hermitage of religion. In present times, in the West, likewise tired with his societies, man clings to the ideologies of existentialism to which the individual resorts whenever the yoke of social convention (‘urf) becomes unbearable for him. He is released of his shackles – sometimes to licentiousness, and sometimes [taking resort in] the privacy of his emotional perception (al-wijdân).[59]

According to al-‘Aqqâd, Islam does offer a hermitage to which the conscience of the individual may resort – in the depth of his soul. But al-‘Aqqâd is emphatic that Islam does not allow any seclusion of conscience from its communal duties: "individual consciences must not separate their work from participation in social life".[60]
However, in the constitution of the moral Self, man clearly sits in the hermitage of his soul, being enjoined only by God. Coming out of his hermitage, he seeks another kind of religious community, beyond that of blind adherence to traditions. In al-‘Aqqâd, this is clearly conceived of as a reformed society imbued with the essential (and universally valid) Islamic values. For all his interest in Christ and Christian tradition, one may ask whether Christians at any point are allowed to play the role as distinctive or even disturbing others, or whether Christ (with his appeal to individual consciences) is only brought to the front as an ally in al-‘Aqqâd's project of establishing Islamic values in the depth of human conscience. Is Christ ever allowed to be distinctively "Christian", or is he only seen as "more of the same" in al-‘Aqqâd's reformed vision of Islam?
In Husayn, the encounter with the traditions of the Other is apparently a more shattering experience. The Christian gospels reveal the depths of human folly, and man's ineradicable tendency to crucify his conscience. The drama of Good Friday leave Christians and Muslims alike naked and bare.
In Khâlid, like in al-‘Aqqâd, the discourse of conscience strikes a more optimistic note. The phenomenon of human conscience as seen by Khâlid clearly points to experiences and values shared by Christians and Muslims. He recognises Christian tradition as a religious resource in its own right, just as much capable of inspiring Muslims as the contemporary witness of love and non-violent resistance to evil offered by Gandhi. Like Husayn, he may use the symbolism of the crucifixion of Christ to express the repeated crucifixion of love and peace in this world. He may even speak of the return of Christ as the final victory of peace, love, truth, goodness and beauty.[61] But his outlook is unitary: he wants to present Christians and Muslims (and other people guided by conscience) as brothers "together on the road". His meditations on "Muhammad and Christ – together on the road" could probably be read as a celebration of a shared practice between Muslims in Christians in modernity: their co-operation in the struggle for national independence and social justice in modern Egypt. He does not really address the wounded experiences in Christian-Muslim coexistence. When differences are addressed, also Khâlid turns out to be apologetic on behalf of his own Islamic faith – of which he can hardly be blamed. But to what extent does his outlook allow for differences with a permanent challenge?

Two Muslim voices with a difference

Similar to Khâlid, the South African Muslim Farid Esack (1997) reflects theologically on the shared experience between Christians and Muslims in confronting apartheid. But he adds two important dimensions: first, the recognition that confronting apartheid not only united Muslims and Christians. Muslims and Christians were also divided, within their own camps – between those who benefited from apartheid or silently complied with it (like the majority of white Christians, and many "coloured" Muslims), and those who decided to fight it. Secondly, and even more important: Esack realises that the experience that the real dividing lines did not coincide with those of the religious communities, but rather cut painfully across them, necessitates a critical reassessment of the Qur’ânic notion of the Other. What was true of some Jewish and Christian groups then (on the Arabic peninsula of the 7th century), in a historical conflict with specific social and political characteristics, is not necessarily true in a different context. Instead, one should look for the deeper content of the Qur’ânic message, which calls for faithful confrontation of any injustice and oppression. According to Esack, faith (imân) and islâm in the Qur’ânic sense, can never be entrenched within the confines of a specific religious community carrying its name. It cuts deeper.[62]
It might be argued that only when the encounter with the Other is recognised as a painful experience that shatters one's own identity, otherness can make a real difference in the (re)formation of the religious Self. With the Indian-British Shi‘ite Muslim Hassan Askari, pain is clearly a part of "the dialogical relationship between Christianity and Islam".[63] Askari displays considerable optimism on behalf of what he sees as a divinely intended dialogical relationship between the two religions, and he even speaks of Christ as a common sign for Christians and Muslims. Nevertheless, he concludes his meditations with the recognition that if differences are taken seriously, true dialogue will always be painful:

The discovery of the other, of our own being, is both soothing and painful, more the latter. The other is pain, a sting, a bite, but a pain in our very being, of it. It is right in the middle of this pain that a Divine sign is known.[64]

Knowing together is vulnerable experience

Knowing with others is a vulnerable experience. What has been positively known and lived as shared values and commitments, cannot easily be maintained in a changed context. In Egypt, the 50s and early 60s were still marked by the shared Egyptian identity felt by Muslims and Christians alike. From then, the event have taken a different turn. Muslim as well as Christian revivalism has shifted the emphasis from knowing together towards knowing by oneself – as Christians and Muslims, without being inspired or disturbed by foreign voices.[65] In Arabic, the modern term for authenticity – asâla – is not oriented towards any shared humanness, but rather towards the specific features of the Arab-Islamic heritage.[66]
Those who still endeavour to know something obliging together with others, and who are ready to share the pain of the distinctive other, are on the defensive in many places, not only in Egypt. Because of this rather disturbing fact, the voices who testify to a close past of more inclusive discourses, are worthy of listening to.
In late modernity, however, particularism and distinctive identities seem to have come to stay, and there might be no return to the universalistic discourses of the typically modern projects of reform. If dialogue shall be able to carry the weight of difference, knowing together must imply the readiness to live well with potentially painful otherness at close hand.

Only a conscience capable of containing pain and respecting difference, can furnish Christians and Muslims with a hope of becoming oneself as another – without violating either of the two.

Postscript:
What about conscience and "the reproaching soul"?

In Christian discourses of human conscience, the capability of self-reproach (and its emotional equivalent: remorse) is much focused upon – cf. Paul's classical formulation in Romans 2.15:

Their conscience is called as witness, and their own thoughts argue the case on either side, against them or even for them, on the day that God judges the secrets of human hearts through Christ Jesus.

Also with Paul's contemporary Jewish-Stoic philosopher Philo, who influenced later Christian developments as well, conscience is defined by its reproaching (elenchos) function:

there are some who ... proved to be guilty of highly reprehensible conduct, convicted, if not by any other judge, at any rate by their conscience.[67]

Commenting on Romans 2, Martin Luther radicalises this judging aspect of conscience, and makes it the foundation of his speech of a conscience truly liberated by grace:

For conscience is not the power to do works, but to judge them. The proper work of conscience (as Paul says in Romans 2), is to accuse or excuse, to make guilty or guiltless, uncertain or certain. Its purpose is not to do, but to pass judgment on what has been done and what should be done, and this judgment makes us stand accused or saved in God's sight. Christ has freed this conscience from works through the gospel and teaches this conscience not to trust in works, but to rely on his mercy.[68]

As we have noted, also Kant focused on the judging aspect of conscience, defining Gewissen primarily as man's inner court in which the actions of man are either acquitted or convicted. In Protestant theology as well as in Idealist philosophy, the reproaching function of conscience might appear as a solitary affair of each and one individual – surveyed by God according to classical positions, expressing human autonomy according to modern reinterpretations. In his critique of theology as well as of Idealist philosophy, Feuerbach returns to judging conscience its inescapable social dimensions. As we have seen, he insists that the phenomenon of "good" or "bad" conscience gives no sense without the recognition of "oneself as another": bad conscience is essentially the internalised pain of the wounded Other.
In Christian tradition, the judging function of conscience is conceptually linked with the exercise of self-reproach and the emotion of remorse. Among our Egyptian authors, the reproaching function of conscience is apparently not at the centre of their interest when employing the termdamîr. Their deliberations on conscience do not reflect common usage in the modern Arabic (Standard and Egyptian colloquial) lexicon liketabkît al-damîr ("remorse") or ta’nîb al-damîr ("pangs of conscience"). When Khâlid defines conscience as "the human being in his true existence", he makes it clear that his definition of conscience is different from definitions that see in conscience primarily "the spiritual function which makes the human being regret the evil he has committed".[69]
As for al-‘Aqqâd, he touches upon the faculty of self-reproach when exposing the Qur’ânic psychology of the soul in his book "The human being in Islam" (Al-insân fî-l-Qur’ân, 1961). He cites notions of the soul that can be found in the Qur’ân, and especially the triadic image of the soul to which Sufism has paid so much attention: the soul that commands evil, the soul that reproaches itself, and the soul that has eventually achieved peace and confidence.[70] Al-‘Aqqâd does in fact relate the image of the self-reproaching soul (an-nafs al-lawwâma, Qur’ân 75.2) to the power of conscience. But only in passing, and his main point is that conscience reflects the human condition of being enjoined and accountable.[71]
In general, it might be argued that both in Khâlid and al-‘Aqqâd, conscience is primarily conceived of in terms of its creative potentials – as the seat of human responsibility; as the anchoring ground of moral judgements; as the faculty of formulating new moral insights in the light of divine revelation; and as the warrant of human authenticity. Their discourse of conscience aims at freeing humans from the shackles of tradition and releasing human potentials.
In Husayn, there is clearly more negativity and pain in his discourse of conscience. Conscience is not only subject to suppression by external tyrants, but often enough liable to crucifixion and extinction by its own bearer. Also Husayn, however, finds the typical Christian sense of self-reproach a little obsessive, as shown by his ironic remark in the annexes to his novel of conscience: "The best Christian in his or her most sublime moments is a sad person".[72]
In a dialogical perspective, the question arises whether conscience can only be the anchor of some shared ideals positively known together by Christians and Muslims, or whether it may also integrate negativity and pain. Is it possible that a Christian-Muslim discourse of conscience might even integrate a sense of remorse – resulting from the recognition that the integrity and anxiety of the Other has been neglected?

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Notes:

[1] Despland 1987, p. 51.
[2] Cf. Ricoeur 1992: Oneself as Another.
[3] "Nullum theatrum virtuti conscientia maius est"; Tusculan Disputations II, 26.64.
[4] Kant: Werke, band 7, p. 860.
[5] fichte: System der Sittenlehre (1798), 1963, p. 170.
[6] Hegel: Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), cited from Sämtliche Werke band 5, p. 450.
[7] Feuerbach: Theogonie (1851-57), cited from Sämliche Werke, band IX, p. 135.
[8] Feuerbach: Der Eudämonismus, cited from Sämtliche Werke, band X, p. 279f.
[9] Feuerbach: Theogonie, cited from Sämtliche Werke, band IX, p. 282.
[10] Bayle 1948, p. 138. Cf. Theologische Realenzyclopädie, band 13 (1984), p. 203.
[11] Cited from Rousseau 1974, p. 252 and 254.
[12] Taylor 1991. Cf. the references to Rousseau in Taylor 1989.
[13] Taylor 1991, p. 25.
[14] Ibid., p. 26. Cf. Allesandro Ferrara 1993.
[15] As for the notion of "dia-practice", see Rasmussen 1997.
[16] al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1961], p. 111.
[17] al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1947], p. 167.
[18] al-‘Aqqâd 1994 [1947], p. 109.
[18] al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1953], p. 101, 102, 105, 106, 107.
[20] Ibid., p. 95.
[21] Ibid., p. 122: fî sarâ’ir al-damîr.
[22] Ibid., p. 159: fî tawiyat damîrihi.
[23] Nafs (ibid,. p. 78), sudûr (p. 98), qalb (p. 106).
[24] al-damîr hiyya sirr al-asrâr, ibid. p. 171.
[25] Cf. the classical book of Miskawayh (d. 1030) Tahdhîb al-akhlâq ("Refinement of the character").
[26] al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1953], p. 142.
[27] ibid., p. 113-114.
[28] al-wâdi al-muqaddas is a qur’ânic metaphor for the place where Moses encountered the burning bush, cf. Qur’ân 20.10-16.
[29] Husain 1977, p. 12.
[30] Husain 1977, p. 89.
[31] Hussein 1994, p. 231.
[32] Hussein 1994, p. 21f.
[33] Vogelaar 1995, p. 414.
[34] In his Introduction to City of Wrong (Hussein 1994).
[35] Ibid., p. 150.
[36] Ibid., p. 107 and 125.
[37] Ibid., p. 186 and 227.
[38] See ibid., p. 226f., and Kenneth Cragg's "Introduction", p. 17-19.
[39] Khâlid n.d. [1958].
[40] Khâlid 1994, p. 9 (my translation).
[41] Khâlid n.d. [1958], p. 96, 98 and 99.
[42] Khâlid 1971, p. 170-172.
[43] Ibid., p. 123, cf. pp. 135 and 137.
[44] Cf. Ricoeur 1992.
[45] Lévinas 1991 (Totality and Infinity, especially the chapter "Ethics and the face").
[46] Ricoeur 1992, and Tracy 1990 and 1996.
[47] Askari 1972 and Esack 1997.
[48] Lévinas 1981, p. 111.
[49] Tracy 1996, p. 14.
[50] Ricoeur 1992, p. 341-356.
[51] Cf. Taylor 1991, pp. 31-42.
[52] Ibid., p. 277.
[53] Heidegger 1973, p. 314.
[54] Ricoeur 1992, p. 353.
[55] Cf. Lévinas 1981 (Otherwise than Being), that may be read as a critique of Heidegger's notion of selfhood and being.
[56] Ibid., p. 354f.
[57] For the interrelation of conscience and love, see especially al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1953]. For conscience and taklif, see al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1961b].
[58] al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1961], pp. 119-120 and 138-139.
Ibid., pp. 119-120 (my translation).
[60] Ibid., p. 130.
[61] Khâlid n.d. [1958], pp. 187-189.
[62] See the chapters "Redefining Self and Other", and "The Qur’ân and the Other" (in Esack 1997).
[63] Askari 1972.
[64] Ibid., p. 486.
[65] For Coptic developments, see van Doors-Harder and Kari Vogt (eds.) 1997.
[66] Jf. al-Azmeh 1993.
[67] On the virtues 206 (cited from Loeb Classical Library).
[68] De votis monasticis, WA 8,60630-39. Cited from Luther's works vol. 44, p. 298.
[69] Khâlid n.d. [1958], p. 96.
[70] al-nafs la-ammâra bi-s-sû’ (Qur’ân 12.53), al-nafs al-lawwâma (Qur’ân 75.2) and al-nafs al-mutma’inna (Qur’ân 89.27).
[71] al-‘Aqqâd n.d. [1961 b], p. 30.

[72] Hussein 1994, p. 233.