Thus Conscience: Synderesis and the Destructuring of Conscience in Reformation England

Shakespeare regularly puts conscience on stage, exemplifying a tendency in early modern England to present the faculty as a dynamic experience unfolding in real time. Shakespeare has a theological counterpart in William Perkins, who theorizes conscience as an inward process of self-reflection, and as an important but deeply inchoate faculty. This essay shows how this self-reflective conscience emerges in theology through a process of destructuring. Beginning with the highly structured conceptions of the scholastics, particularly Aquinas, it moves to the innovations of Luther, and then Perkins. Tracing the disappearance of the scholastic notion of synderesis, it reveals a Protestant conscience shaped by an ongoing impetus to turn away from structure, toward more imperfect forms.