CONSCIENCE — literally 'knowing together with' (syn + oida), a mind's awareness of itself measured against a standard. ⚠ Romans 2:15 gives its most consequential single appearance: Gentiles who never received the law still have the law's work 'written on their hearts,' with conscience as the witness testifying to it, and their own thoughts 'accusing or even excusing' them — a courtroom running inside a single person, verdict withheld until judgment day. Paul uses the word thirty times across his letters, more than any other New Testament writer, and it becomes one of his standing categories for how a person not under Torah can still be held to a moral standard. → first discussed at Rom 2:15