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ISAAC NEWTON: ATHEIST OR BELIEVER IN GOD? Not only was Newton a Christian believer, he was also a Bible scholar whose understanding of Bible prophecies was of the highest caliber. His greatest passion, in fact, was not Science but Bible prophecies.
"For there is no other
way (without revelation), to know God but by the manifestations in nature." (Christianson, 257)
"He is the God of organization not of disarray. (Ibid., 261)
“For the Bible is not chained in
every expression to conditions as strict as those that govern all physical
effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than
in the sacred testaments of the Bible.” (Ibid., 252)
“The supreme God exists
necessarily, and by the same necessity He exists always and
everywhere. Whence also He is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain,
all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner
not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly
unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of
the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.
He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can, therefore neither
be seen or heard or touched; nor ought He to be worshiped under the
representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of His attributes but
what the real substance of anything is we know not. In bodies we see only
their figures and colors, we hear only the sound, we touch only their
outward surfaces, we smell only the smells and taste the savors, but their
inward substances are not to be known either by our senses or by any reflex
act of our minds; much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God.
We know Him only by His most wise and excellent contrivances of things
(Thayer, 1953, 45)
“From His true dominion it
follows that the true God is a living, intelligent and powerful being; and
from His other perfections, that He is supreme, or most perfect. He is
eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, His duration
reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity;
He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is
not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; He is not duration or
space, but He endureth and is present. He endureth forever, and is
everywhere present; and by existing always and everywhere, He constitutes
duration and space . . . In Him are all things contained and moved.”
(Burtt, 1951, 257)
“I must profess I know no
sufficient natural cause of the earth diurnal motion. Where natural causes
are at hand God uses them as instruments in His works, but I do not think
them alone sufficient for His creation and therefore may be allowed to
suppose that amongst other things God gave the earth its motion by such
degrees and at such times as was most suitable to His creatures.”
Turnbull, 1960, 334) Christianson, G., In the Presence of the Creator- Newton and His Times. London: The Free Press, 1984. Thayer, H. S. Newton=s Philosophy of Nature. New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1953. Burtt, E. A. The Methaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. New York: The Humanities Press Inc., 1951. Turnbull, H. W. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: University Press, 1960.
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