Is there, as the medieval mystics taught, a "spark" at the core of the Soul, which never consents to evil, a Divine nucleus in the heart of the personality, which can take no stain? ~Dean Inge
The word sinderesis has haunted me since I first found in an early edition Black's Law Dictionary so many years ago:
SINDERESIS. "A natural power of the soul, set in the highest part thereof, moving and stirring it to good, and adhorring evil. And therefore sinderesis our Lord put in man, to the intent that the order of things should be observed. And therefore sinderesis is called by some men the ‘law of reason,’ for it ministereth the principles of the law of reason, the which be in every man by nature, in that he is a reasonable creature." Doct. & Stud. 39.
Source: Black's Law Dictionary, 2nd Edition (1910)
That sounds much like what we commonly refer to as our conscious today, but there is still speculation as to whether or not Saint Jerome meant to define a distinction between the two:
"which the Greeks call synteresis: that spark of conscience which was not even extinguished in the breast of Cain after he was turned out of paradise, and by which we discern that we sin, when we are overcome by pleasures or frenzy and meanwhile are misled by an imitation of reason (St. Jerome, Commentarium in Ezechielem, I, 1, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 25, col. 22, mentioned in Fagothey, here)."
You may have noticed the variation in spelling. Sinderesis is also spelled synderesis, but the most proper spelling derives from its Greek origins synteresis. Some scholars believe that it is a corruption of suneidhsis or suneidesis, the normal Greek word for "conscience."
Maybe that is all it is, but perhaps there is this essence of God in each person that is above the conscience, that is above one's desire to preserve his own life, that yearns to have a relationship with the Creator. Philosophers may argue the meaning of word until the end of time, but I like to think of it as the essence left in each created being of the Creator, place of juncture with my Lord, free of sin, where He can abide in me and I in Him.
~ My Lord, if there is such a thing as my idea of synteresis, then it is my ultimate "happy place," because that is where we are together. ~
