Isaac Newton & Theology - Bibledex

by no means was he just into science Isaac Newton's a fascinating character because he's famous for writing the Principia Mathematica which certainly changed the face of physics but Newton wrote more about theology and prophecy and alchemy than he ever did about science and mathematics and that's extraordinary thing and Newton had some very very eccentric theological views views about Christianity although he did have some sympathizers at the time the philosopher john locke who worked in oxford for example but some of the key aspects of newton's theological views are that he was what we call an Arian so an Arian is someone who follows the ideas of a priest in the fourth century called arias and arias denied the divinity of Jesus Christ so whereas the church professed that Christ is fully human and fully divine area said that Christ was created and that he was an intermediary between God and creation bit more than just a good man but nevertheless he was created and wasn't the incarnation of God and Newton followed areas and he believed that God was a supreme ruler a pantocrator' as he called him who governed the universe according to the laws of mathematics and that he Newton could decode the mind of God by using mathematics he believed he could decode the mind of God using a new mathematics called calculus that's the real power behind his physics is this new mathematics and and he thought that this gave him a window into how God designed the universe that we see and therefore he thought that his physics was in a sense of theological project as well and he added what's called a general scoliamo kind of very short commentary to the second and later editions of the Principia where he explains what the theological significance of the Principia is that it's telling us how God did it basically and he but he had some rather odd views according to standard Christian orthodoxy so Christ is not divine God is a Pantocrator a ruler who intervenes in the universe to make sure that it follows the set paths of the mind of God but Newton also rejected the traditional Christian view that God is not just an individual but God is a community of Father Son and Holy Spirit that in God there is a relationship of love and we call that the Trinity three persons in one God and Newton rejected the the view of the church that God is Trinity it's ironic because Newton was a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge so in his very working environment the institution that he worked for was dedicated to a doctrine a teaching in which he himself did not believe but Newton wrote down an awful lot of his views about Christianity about theology about books of the Bible he wrote commentaries on the book of Daniel for example he was very interested in prophecy but he wrote them all down in his own hand without publishing them because if he had have published them he would have been immediately viewed as a heretic and he would have lost his fellowship at Trinity College Cambridge and at the time he was working in the late 17th early 18th century there was an expectation that fellows of Oxford and Cambridge colleges would be ordained they would take Holy Orders in the Church of England and that was the expectation of Newton in the end he was given an exemption from that by the king and so he was allowed to keep his job without renouncing his heretical theological views but always this was kept secret what people will often say is that well you've got Newton's science here and you've got his theology over here and you can simply get rid of the theology forget about it and concentrate on the science and of course if you're going to understand Newton the man you can't do that it simply historically naive and philosophically naive as well that the science and the theology apart and part of a single intellectual Enterprise and Newton's texts tell us that now scientists may say well okay we'll just forget the history then in that case we modern scientists can take Newtonian physics and we can carve it out and we can use it and that's that's fine they can do that but the point is that that then blinds us to the fact that science emerges out of theological questions it and it also blinds us to the fact that the early modern scientists were all also theologians most of them were clergymen the founders of the Royal Society and they believed that the motivation for investigating the truths and the beauty of nature was to try and find out if that can tell us anything about the creator of the universe that we try and study and they did believe that the universe was created in some sense but of course what that means is a very profound theological and philosophical question and there are many different answers to that and mostly illusions today would say that the answers that the 17th and 18th century theologian scientists gave to that question about creation was really quite theologically naive and quite different from the much more sophisticated answer theological answer and philosophical answer that was given in in earlier periods of the tradition but why should we really care that much about what a scientist or a mathematicians motivation is I mean these days some scientists might be doing it for the Paycheck they might be doing it for the glory they might be doing it because of some innate interest they might be doing at the theological reasons it doesn't really matter because they're all doing the same thing why should we care why Newton was doing we look at what these results were well to a certain extent our intentions do matter because our intentions will steer the kinds of things that we investigate so what we look at and why we why we look so for example you know if our intentions are power orientated or political we're going to use our signs to make bombs if if huh if our concerns and our intentions are more humanitarian and more orientated towards the good and human flourishing we're going to invest in medicine so the kinds of research projects that scientists engage in are not neutral they do express our intention or desires what we find valuable so the uncovering of the facts of nature is not divorced from how we value nature and what we think it is and what we think we're for and what we think the human intellectual enterprise is for and and also you see what science will do is it will uncover all kinds of information for us about about nature but what it also has to do is it has to interpret that what does it mean what does it all add up to and in the end you can drive that question on and on and on and on and on until you get to one final ultimate question does the whole mean anything does it all add up to anything and that is a theological question and that's where the two begin begin to intersect I think they intersect at other points as well but that that's why you know we shouldn't be naive and think that science is is indifferent or is not driven by intention desire or value it is all human activity all human intellectual activity is driven by what we think is important and what really fascinates us you

Channel: bibledex

Views: 29,121

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Keywords: Newton, theology

Id: ii2ljTqKxR0

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2010