Ran across the following as I prepped for Trinity Sunday. It is excerpted from a new biography on Newton by Mitch Stokes, published by Thomas Nelson and now available through Canon Press.
Newton’s study of theology and alchemy comes as a shock to people. But Newton was a great synthesizer; he didn’t merely want to master a few separate disciplines. A command of mathematics and natural philosophy was only a part of his goal. Newton endeavored to a great, comprehensive system of the world—from the solar system to the fundamental nature of matter to God’s work in redemptive history. Newton’s agenda was far more ambitious than it had a right to be, but inordinate ambition is common among geniuses.
We would now say that Newton sought a “worldview.” But we use “worldview” too lightly to identify it with Newton’s goal. Newton aimed very high indeed, and at the end of his life, he realized he had come nowhere near his ideal. (And what mortal could fault him for falling short?) Not long before he died, he said:
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Some of Newton’s biographers believe that Newton is simply expressing false humility. After all, Newton knew full well the enormity of his accomplishments. But this interpretation seems wrong. Given Newton’s true goal of piecing together a theory of everything, he is merely stating the facts. Most of the truth remained far outside his ken, and he knew it.
All men, Aristotle said, desire to know. But they aren’t all motivated to know for the same reasons. The ultimate goal of Newton’s studies was to know God and “give him honour and glory.” In fact, for Newton, natural philosophy’s main benefit was not the improvement of man’s earthly condition; that was the Baconian view. Newton believed that all knowledge—including knowledge of nature—was, in the end, knowledge of God. Knowing was worship.
Although Newton considered all his studies to be part of his worship, theology held pride of place, occupying far more of his time than anything else. His theological writings take up millions of words; none of his other writings come even close to matching that.
But theology and genuine piety can quickly come apart. Theological acumen is not a very reliable indicator of faith. Yet Newton’s religion was not an arid intellectual theory but a genuine relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Frank Manuel’s words, Newton’s Christianity “was charged with emotion” and he was constantly attacking belief in a mere “metaphysical” God, the God of the philosophers. Newton wrote:
To celebrate God for his eternity, immensity, omnisciency, and omnipotence is indeed very pious and the duty of every creature to do it according to capacity, but…the wisest of beings required of us to be celebrated not so much for his essence as for his actions, the creating, preserving, and governing of all things according to his good will and pleasure. The wisdom, power, goodness, and justice which he always exerts in his actions are his glory which he stands so much upon, and is so jealous of…even to the least tittle.
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