The King’s Good Servant and Conscience

I traveled to England this summer to speak at the Oxford Patristics Conference. While I was there, I had time to make two long-desired pilgrimages.

The first pilgrimage came in a rush, immediately after the plane landed at Heathrow Airport. My flight had been delayed two hours, and I narrowly made my appointment at the Tower of London, where I had scheduled months in advance a private viewing of the prison cell that once held St. Thomas More.

I lugged my way, baggage and all, through the Tower and was able to spend some time in prayer in the very cell where Thomas More prepared for his trial and eventual martyrdom.

In the prison cell, there hangs the classic portrait of More by Hans Holbein the Younger. Above it, a plaque said “Sir Thomas More at the Tower of London,” with, as subtext, a variation of More’s famous words, turned into a title: “The King’s good servant, but God’s first.”

However, the famous phrase – “I die his majesty’s good servant, but God’s first” – is not what St. Thomas More said. Those are Robert Bolt’s words, which he placed into the mouth of More in his play A Man for All Seasons. The play is excellent and communicates More’s basic character, but Bolt’s preoccupation with individual liberty and conscience led him to skew the words of the saint.

But the real St. Thomas More said, “I die the King’s good servant and God’s first.” That simple “and” makes a world of difference.

“But” suggests a conflict; it implies tension between serving the king and serving God.

“And” suggests a harmony between being the king’s and God’s good servant. “And” implies that More viewed his duties to the king as a part of his duties to God, placing them in a relationship of complementarity rather than conflict.

“And” also reflects the Catholic understanding of an ordered hierarchy. It underscores the Catholic belief in a natural order where loyalty to earthly rulers does not inherently conflict with loyalty to divine law.

In fact, if Thomas More had acted in a way contrary to the true and genuine interests of the king, he would have been neither the king’s nor God’s good servant. Instead, by serving God above all things, and by keeping divine ends at the forefront of one’s mind, one cannot help but be the good servant of both God and king – or of a prime minister, or a president, or your neighbor.

My second pilgrimage was to Littlemore, Oxford, where John Henry Newman wrote his Development of Doctrine and converted to Catholicism on October 9, 1845. While Newman is well known for his theology of development, he is also a teacher on conscience.

Bolt makes More’s conscience a virtual existentialist self-assertion (“What matters to me is not whether it is true or not but that I believe it to be true, or rather not that I believe it, but that I believe it”).  The Catholic tradition, with Newman, sees conscience as “the aboriginal vicar of Christ.” And that, again, makes all the difference.

For Newman, conscience is not merely a personal sense of right and wrong. In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman emphasizes the primacy of conscience, arguing that it must be formed and informed by divine law rather than by subjective preference. Newman’s view resists the modern tendency to elevate conscience as an autonomous authority divorced from objective truth.

For him, conscience is not an independent voice but one that speaks in accord with God’s truth. It is an organ of discernment that must be tuned to the eternal moral law, not to fleeting societal trends or personal whims.

Following Thomas More, John Henry Newman might have said, “I follow the voice of my conscience, and God’s first.” We know that the voice of God echoes throughout his Creation and through revelation. As his creatures, we are inclined by nature (that is, by the Image of God in which we are created) to do what is clearly revealed in the Law.

As St. Paul says in Romans 2:14, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.”  St. John Chrysostom explains this verse as meaning that the Gentiles have the activity of the law engraved on their minds, instead of on stones.

Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration tomorrow presents us with an opportune moment to reflect on the themes of conscience, duty, and the harmony that is intended to exist between temporal and divine authority. More’s martyrdom and Newman’s conversion remind us that authentic service to God is not a negation of earthly duties, but their proper fulfillment.

The lives of Sts. Thomas More and John Henry Newman demonstrate that Catholics in political life are not called to a false dichotomy between faith and public duty but to a unity, where service to God sanctifies their service to society.

A president or king, like any citizen of the polis, is called to recognize that their authority is not self-derived but entrusted by God for the common good. Man is made in the image of God and he is by nature a social animal.

The twofold command from Jesus Christ in all four Gospels (Mark 12:29-31, Matthew 22:37-40, Luke 10:27, John 13:34-35, and 1 John 4:16–21) to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and second, to love your neighbor as yourself – is conjoined with an and. Not a but.

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