Chapter 5 - Thomas More

Summary

Among these prophets, Thomas More alone never claimed that God spoke to him directly. More insisted that the voice of conscience was the voice of God and that by obeying our conscience, we obey God. But, said More, we have a right to obey our conscience only because we also have a duty to inform our conscience. Today, when we read about prophets hearing the voice of God, we often assume this actually means the voice of conscience. If a prophet is someone who chooses to obey God rather than human leaders, then More chose to obey his conscience rather than his king. Like the biblical Nathan, More confronted his king over the crime of adultery; but whereas King David sought repentance, King Henry sought revenge. Like the Hebrew prophets, More excoriated the priests and monks of his own church for trusting in rites more than in righteousness – until the threat of Lutheranism turned More into a champion of the virtues of his Roman Catholic Church. More’s prophetic vision led him to write the first literary utopia, and indeed, to coin the word. Most prophets are rather grimly earnest but Thomas More, like Socrates, combined prophetic urgency with ironic wit.