How Conscience Points to God

Creation points back to its Creator. Just as something of the composer is revealed in his symphony and something of the artist is revealed in his painting, so also is God, in an indirect but real way, revealed in his divine handiwork. The revelatory clues found in nature tell us more than just the fact of God’s existence; they tell us also what kind of God the Creator is. Some of these clues lie right before our noses in the world around us, while others lie deep inside of us. Among these interior signs is the conscience, which points not merely toward the existence of God but the existence of a personal God. In his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, St. John Henry Newman sets out to demonstrate how we come to assent to—or have faith in—the reality of God. Newman explores the evidential significance of the human conscience, suggesting how…