Three Minutes with Newman
Conscience as the Voice of God
August 16, 2025
St. John Henry Newman wrote what is now considered his most profound work, the Grammar of Assent, to show that the belief in God and the claims of Christianity are rational, even without clear scientific or mathematical proof. Grammar of Assent is complex and covers many important theological areas. His penetrating insight comes in his description of the difference between “notional apprehension” and “real apprehension” of God. “Notional apprehension” of God is an abstract understanding that a higher being, or God, exists but this acceptance of the notion of God has “no warmth and no force.” In contrast is the “real apprehension” of God that makes belief in God personal and transformative. The real apprehension of God involves direct, personal, and experiential knowledge that engages our whole being, not just our intellect. In other words, it is heart belief not just head belief. According to Newman, the move from notional apprehension to real apprehension of God happens with the aid of conscience.
John Henry Newman wrote about the conscience in many other of his works, including the Idea of the University and the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Since conscience is a key element in moving from notional to real apprehension of God, Newman lays out methodically and clearly how we are to understand conscience in Grammar of Assent. In section 5, he describes how conscience is “the voice of God.” In so doing, he sets about describing how this “voice” is present in a person’s life, even before the connection has been made in the heart or mind that it is the voice of God.
We are all familiar with the definition we learned as children, that conscience is the “still small voice within” that tells us what is right and wrong. But that simple definition is not enough to satisfy critics who say that belief without demonstrative proof is irrational. Therefore St. John Henry, in his unique practical way, uses description to show how to recognize and then understand this voice.
Conscience, writes Newman, is natural, and something all created beings possess by virtue of being imbued with such by God. This conscience is present whether or not the person believes in a God or not. The New Testament discusses the concept of the law written on the heart in two main passages: Romans 2:15 and 2 Corinthians 3:3. These verses refer to God’s law being imprinted on people’s minds and hearts, rather than just on stone tablets. This conscience is there for the purpose of directing the soul of each person toward God, so that the soul may encounter the living God, who loves each of His children personally.
In one of his illustrations in Section 5 of Grammar of Assent, St. John Henry suggests “an ordinary child” who has in some way offended his parents. If this child is still “safe from influences destructive of his religious instincts,” then, after the child has committed the offence “ . . . he will all alone and without effort, as if it were the most natural of acts, place himself in the presence of God, and beg of Him to set him right with them.” Newman writes that this child-like impulse contains much to explain conscience.
“First, it involves the impression on his mind of an unseen Being” one who is familiar enough to the child that the child feels as though he can address this Being whenever he chooses.
Second, this Being is “of One whose goodwill towards him he is assured of, and can take for granted—nay, who loves him better, and is nearer to him, than his parents.”
Third, this Being is “of One who can hear him, wherever he happens to be, and who can read his thoughts, for his prayer need not be vocal.”
And lastly, “this child has in his mind the image of an Invisible Being, who exercises a particular providence among us, who is present every where, who is heart-reading, heart-changing, ever-accessible, open to impetration. What a strong and intimate vision of God must he have already attained, if, as I have supposed, an ordinary trouble of mind has the spontaneous effect of leading him for consolation and aid to an Invisible Personal Power!”
Newman concludes, “Such is the apprehension which even a child may have of his Sovereign Lawgiver and Judge . . . It is an image of the good God, good in Himself, good relatively to the child, with whatever incompleteness; an image, before it has been reflected on, and before it is recognized by him as a notion. Though he cannot explain or define the word ‘God,’ when told to use it, his acts show that to him it is far more than a word . . . he has a dim, shadowy sense of what he hears about persons and matters of this world; but he has that within him which actually vibrates, responds, and gives a deep meaning to the lessons of his first teachers about the will and the providence of God.”
Newman reminds us of the innocent and natural inclination toward God we possessed as children in order to show how this first apprehension can lead to the deeper or real apprehension of the unseen God. To apprehend or understand God as the personal, loving, all-powerful and all-caring Being does not happen without help. The consideration of this should move us to care for the religious instruction and piety of children. With aid from without along with the inner voice of conscience, a person will be brought to the real apprehension of God. The follow-up post will show how the progression continues from notional to real apprehension.
