FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND ITS LIMITATIONS

A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This paper argues that conscience is a moral faculty which helps humanity to achieve sustainable development. To arrive at individual or communal good, everyone ought to act in good freedom of conscience. Freedom of conscience presupposes an understanding gleaned from one’s own tradition of scholarship or practice. The present research derives its theme from a Christian perspective. Every person in the society has a conscience and it ought to have been formed by domestic or external communities such as families, schools and churches. The extent to which one’s conscience is adjudged good depends on good intention and right action. Everyone has an obligation to follow one’s conscience and the same duty applies to the consequence of such an action. Nonetheless, freedom of conscience has its limitations and this has posed an ethical and theological problem. The research depends on strict logical syllogism rather than statistical formulae in data collection, analysis and discussion. In other words, the study is also carried within the broad framework of phenomenology. At the end, the paper concludes that freedom of conscience ought to be exercised within the ambience of reason aimed at the good of the society.