Re: great creationists of the past

"Never At Rest:..." is a fascinating read, but it is to be sure no
weekend project! It is, however, an opportunity to look at the whole
landscape of Newton's life. Not only are his engagements with his
contemporaries and the practical issues of the world around him
chronicled (with extensive research notes), but you get a clearer
picture of how much intellectual ground this remarkable and somewhat
peculiar mind covered in dogged pursuit of questions of all sorts that
troubled or intrigued him.

For all his recognized contributions, another big part of his work, his
extensive foray into alchemy (what passed for chemistry in his time),
remains a mystery-clouded chapter because the coded and symbolic
language he used remains nearly entirely uninterpreted.

But he was also a theologian, and to the point, this author conveys
something about Newton's ability to focus all his energies and
intellectual power on a single troublesome gap in understanding, of
which the Trinity was evidently one. It is clear that he worked this on
especially hard, given the contrary and even risky conclusions he
eventually reached. In at least some ways, he seems to have arrived at a
conceptualization of Jesus that embodies somewhat less of the "both a
and not a" mystery that characterizes more orthodox Trinitarian views.
JimA

Robert Schneider wrote:

> These comments prompted me to do a little search: In his massive and
> majesterial study of Newton entitled Never At Rest: A Biography of
> Isaac Newton (884 pages), Sam Westfall presents an account of Newton's
> theological studies on the trinitarian controversy of the fourth
> century. The pertinent pages, 314-320, contain a wealth of detail
> that traces the process by which Newton came to his theology of
> Christ. The following assertion appears on p. 315:
>
> "Well before 1675, Newton had become an Arian in the original
> sense of the term. He recognized Christ as a divine mediator between
> God and man, who was subordinate to the Father Who created him. Christ
> had earned the right to be worshiped (though not with the worship
> suitable to the father) by humbling himself and being obedient unto
> death. The man Jesus was to Newton, not the hypostatical union of
> human nature with divinity in one person, but the created logos
> incarnate in a human body, so that he, and not man, might suffer in
> the flesh. For his obedience, God exalted him and raised him to sit at
> his right hand."
>
> Westfall goes on to record that Newton summarized his "Arian
> christology" in 12 points during the period 1672-1675 (too long
> to repeat here).
>
> That does sound to me like Arian theology. No wonder Newton kept his
> mouth shut while he was at Trinity.
>
> Just the few pages I've read are so fascinating, that I must finally
> get to this book. Sam was working on it when I read "Newtonian"
> eighteenth-century thought under him on a sabbatical in 1976-77. He
> first published it in 1980. But I don't think I'll read them on
> Easter Sunday!
>
> Happy Easter to all,
> Bob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jim Armstrong <mailto:jarmstro@qwest.net>
> To: asa@calvin.edu <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 9:33 PM
> Subject: Re: great creationists of the past
>
> I agree that it would be both a slight and inaccuracy to assign
> Newton to any such a specific pigeonhole. OK, I admit that I know
> only what I have read in his biographies, but from them I sure
> have a sense - even from them - that he came to his theological
> conclusions based on a great deal more thought and personal
> research than many of us (with some notable exceptions!) have
> engaged in, personally researching many of the available
> theology-related manuscripts in their languages of expression.
> And, it's clear that his beliefs as a body are going to be
> somewhat idiosyncratic. He was after all a keen observer and
> problem solver, and the internal wiring (observer, skeptic,
> critical thinker) that thus made him a good natural philosopher in
> his day undoubtedly was the driver as well for him to research and
> seek resolutions to theological discrepancies with more logic and
> determination than would be required by most of us today. It would
> not do him justice to simply label and thus all too easily dismiss
> this considerable aspect of his remarkable life. I expect that any
> similarity of his beliefs to those of Arius (or anyone else) were
> arrived at pretty independently, and perhaps even more competently
> from a western research-competency perspective. Newton was not
> known to be a particularly peer- or precedence-influenced kind of
> guy, other than his evident considerable respect for the early
> writings that brought definition to Christianity! He has some
> particular and pretty well-researched reasons for reaching his
> conclusions, hence my concurrence that this particular
> scientist/theologian not be dismissed too quickly by the expedient
> of classification. JimA
>
> SatTeacher@aol.com wrote:
>
>> I do have familiarity with Newton -- having read his MSS at
>> Cambridge, Oxford, Jerusalem, Boston, and Palo Alto. I would not
>> call him an Arian nor would I call him a Unitarian. As I read
>> his MSS, I tried repeatedly to fit him into some mold and I could
>> never do it. His views were more complex than any of the
>> categories that we commonly use today. He did believe in creation.
>>
>> The funny thing about this ASA discussion is a conversation which
>> I had with a high school science teacher about this very topic in
>> an elevator in Chicago in the 1980s. I had just given a
>> presentation on Newton and his unpublished MSS at the Annual NSTA
>> meeting. She asked if Newton believed in Darwin's theory of
>> evolution. The sad thing was that she had no idea that Newton
>> (1642-1727) predated Darwin (1809-1882).
>>
>> For what it is worth, those are my thoughts,
>> Helen Martin
>
Received on Sun Apr 16 01:11:55 2006