Religious ideas: Aquinas

• What does Aquinas believe about conscience?

  It is the God-given faculty of reason
• What does faculty of reason mean?

  A natural substance that allows us to reason
• What does Aquinas use in his argument for conscience?

  The synderesis rule: 'Good should be done and evil avoided
• Two reasons why conscience makes mistakes

  - if it is ignorant of the moral law

  - not informed about the facts of a case
• Why should the conscience always be followed?

  Where one does an act that is in accordance with one's conscience, even if the conscience is in error and the act leads to terrible misdeeds, what the conscience dictates is true to the individual concerned, and truth must be followed. Truth comes from God, so to go against what you think your conscience is telling you to do is to go against God