When and how do science and scripture intersect? Are the realms of science and scripture entirely separate, or do they overlap in some way? And if they overlap, do they complement one another, or compete with one another?
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- Level: all audiences
Gregor Mendel, who served as the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, is recognized today as the founder of the modern science of genetics, on account of of his experiments with the breeding of plants. This is a brief portion of an Easter sermon by Mendel (from notes written in his own hand) that makes reference to gardening and plants.
[Click here to download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
A Critique to Astrology from “De Civitate Dei”
Book excerpt- 4500 words
- Level: high school and above
An excerpt from Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God concerning the topic of astrology. Augustine uses the issues of twins to criticize astrology from a practical standpoint, but he also attacks astrology from a theological standpoint. This excerpt has been selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti.
Click here for Augustine’s critique, from Inters.org.
A Quaker Astronomer Reflects
- Book
Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967
- 48 pages
- Level: all audiences
Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s A Quaker Astronomer Reflects: Can a Scientist also be Religious?, was published in 2013 by The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia. It is a short overview of what is known in astronomy, with comments relating to religious belief. This small book grew from a lecture she gave in Australia.
Click here for a PDF copy of A Quaker Astronomer Reflects, courtesy of Quakers Australia.
Click here for a preview, courtesy of Google Books.
Burnell is an accomplished astronomer, now retired, who has served as President of the Royal Society and President of the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom. She is perhaps best known for her role in the discovery of pulsars in 1967. She has also held leadership positions in the Quaker denomination, and in this book she touches on worship, Bible study, and St. Theresa of Avila as well as astronomy. Her theology is unorthodox, as she in some sense sees God as separate from the natural world, which in her view stands on its own. However, she claims no training or expertise in theology, and in A Quaker Astronomer Reflects she contrasts the wealth of opportunities that a scientist has to develop scientifically with the scarcity of opportunities to develop theologically:
My astronomy and my Quakerism have grown up together and are comfortable bedfellows. But note which bedfellow has done the accommodating! My scientific understanding emerges unscathed by contact with Quakerism. My Quaker bedfellow has bent to fit in with what I have learnt as an astronomer. I have wondered if this is because I am light on Quaker theology in this area, or indeed whether Quaker theology is light in this area. Whilst I have talked to scientists about science and the scientific method, there has been not much place to talk with Quaker theologians on these sorts of topic.
But Burnell notes that her faith is not all about matters of “the head”—not all about astronomy and Quaker theology. There is for her a very strong part of her faith that is all about matters of “the heart” that she experiences in worship. She writes:
I ‘know’ there is a God, a living, loving God who works through people, prompting, nudging. A God of inspiration, of creativity; a God we can sense in the silence of a gathered Quaker meeting. One who holds a mirror up to us so that we can see our behaviour, keep our standards. One before whom masks, poses and postures drop away; one who knows us as perhaps only our parents knew us; there we are most truly ourselves.
I know that in a good Meeting for Worship what is required of me is that I am present before God, that I am silent and still and let go of things that are not at that moment relevant. I have not words to worship with (sometimes I find myself using the word ‘creator,’ but know it is not meant in any literal sense!); I move beyond words.
So close is the sense of communion that breathing becomes prayer. I encounter a God who supports us, cares for us, grieves with us, empowers us and acts through us in the world, but particularly at such moments calms, heals, holds and sends us out again a little more sensitive, a little wiser, to make a better world.
I am aware that I have been several times prompted [spiritually] to minister in a Meeting for Worship, or to speak on a particular topic, without understanding why, but follow that leading and do so, subsequently to discover I was speaking to a need unknown to me….
There is a suggestion that religion is a human construct, that it is all in the brain, that neuroscience will, in a few years, explaining it all. Neuroscience is certainly riding high at the moment, has plenty of confidence and is making all sorts of claims. I doubt if they can all be true, but we will have to wait and see which are and which are not! Sometimes I have had promptings to speak which spoke to needs that I did not know existed, things that even my subconscious could not have been aware of, so I am not sure that religion is just a human construct. On balance I am inclined to believe in an external God.
Al-Ghazālī – from The Incoherence of the Philosophers
- Article (book excerpt)
- 630 words
- Level: all audiences
An excerpt on religion and science from the Tahāfut al-falāsifa (or The Incoherence of the Philosophers) of Abu Hāmid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tūsi al-Ghazālī. Al-Ghazālī, who lived in the eleventh century, is one of medieval Islam’s best-known religious intellectuals.
[Click here to download PDF]
Incoherence
An Interview with Dr. Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J.
Article- 6000 words (two parts)
- Level: high school and above
An in-depth interview with Vatican Observatory astronomer Paul Gabor, S. J., by Scott Douglas Jacobsen, published in 2016 by In-Sight.
Part One – An interview with Dr. Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J. He discusses: childhood and adolescence trajectory influence on him, pivotal moments in personal development towards an interest in science and theology, the gains from the research and professional experiences; motivation for interest in philosophy and theology; the way that the priesthood entered and benefits personal life, and the greatest intellectual stimulation from within the Jesuits; origin of interest in physics, the physics of the small scale, and the instrumental side of particle physics; PhD work and entailed work, explanation for the lay person, and the esoteric aspects of this research.
Part two – An interview with Dr. Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J. He discusses: description of research areas and the reason for personal interest in these areas; entering the ranks of the Vatican Observatory, and the main misconception about the purpose of the Vatican Observatory’s Research Group in Tucson, Arizona and the Vatican Observatory in general; source of ability to speak eight languages and the assistance in current work; convictions in Roman Catholicism, and arguments and evidences for the truth of Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular; and the current activities at the Vatican Observatory and the aim of the research in the future.
Click here for Part One of the interview.
Big Science, Hurrah!
Article (blog post)- 1200 words
- Level: all audiences
In this post on The Catholic Astronomer blog, Vatican Observatory astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., comments on the reactions people have to discoveries like the Higgs Boson, especially when those discoveries have sensational language attached to them, as was the case with the Higgs (i.e. the “God Particle”). Br. Consolmagno writes:
Scientists do, indeed, speak in metaphors. We have to. Even the word “particle” is a misnomer. A boson or fermion is nothing at all like a tiny speck of stuff that you could see in a microscope. It is an entity that can only be described in terms of the mathematics that it appears to follow; and even the maths are a metaphor for the reality they are trying to describe. People who look for “literal” truth in the Bible would be well advised to remember that materialistic science itself is not meant to be taken “literally.” You can’t do justice to any deep truth, be it love or beauty or subatomic particles or God, with mere human language. You can only invoke a meaning through images that, if well chosen, might shadow the shape of reality in your mind.
Why this lesson is so hard to grasp? Why is it that journalists and non-scientists latch on to the a nickname like the “God particle”? Why do so many people desperately seek to find a religious vindication in the latest incomprehensible advances in science, from the Higgs Boson to Dark Energy to The Big Bang?
Book: The Irrational Augustine
Book
- 240 pages
- Level: university
A book suggested by our research team. This description is from the publisher, Oxford University Press:
The Irrational Augustine takes the notion of St Augustine as rigid and dogmatic Father of the Church and turns it on its head. Catherine Conybeare reads Augustine’s earliest works to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine, who values changeability and human interconnectedness and deplores social exclusion. The novelty of her book lies in taking seriously the nature of these early works as performances, through which multiple questions can be raised and multiple options explored, both in words and through their dramatic framework. The theological consequences are considerable. A very human Augustine emerges, talking and playing with friends and family, including his mother – and a very sympathetic set of ideas is the result.
Click here for a preview, available from Google Books.
Copernicus and the “High Seas”
Article (blog post series)- 3600 words
- Level: all audiences
In this series of posts, written for The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney discusses “Two Spheres Theory” regarding the shape and composition of the Earth. The Two Spheres Theory was a medieval idea that came to be taken as scientific evidence for existence of, and direct action in the world of, God. However, the Two Spheres Theory was soundly disproven by, among other things, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the lands now known as the Americas.
Click here to read Part II of this series.
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- Level: all audiences
Gregor Mendel, who served as the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, is recognized today as the founder of the modern science of genetics, on account of of his experiments with the breeding of plants. This is a brief portion of an Easter sermon by Mendel (from notes written in his own hand) that makes reference to gardening and plants.
[Click here to download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
John Henry Newman – Christianity and Physical Science: A Lecture in the School of Medicine
Book chapter- 8500 words
- Level: university
This excerpt has been selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. John Henry Newman, who would eventually become Cardinal Newman, writes:
I observe, then, that there are many investigations in every subject-matter which only lead us a certain way towards truth, and not the whole way: either leading us, for instance, to a strong probability, not to a certainty, or again, proving only some things out of the whole number which are true. And it is plain that if such investigations as these are taken as the measure of the whole truth, and are erected into substantive sciences, instead of being understood to be, what they really are, inchoate and subordinate processes, they will, accidentally indeed, but seriously, mislead us.
Click here for Newman’s discussion, from Inters.org.
Click here for Newman’s discussion as published in 1859, courtesy of Google Books.
Copernicus and the “High Seas”
- Article (blog post series)
- 3600 words
- Level: all audiences
In this series of posts, written for The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney discusses “Two Spheres Theory” regarding the shape and composition of the Earth. The Two Spheres Theory was a medieval idea that came to be taken as scientific evidence for existence of, and direct action in the world of, God. However, the Two Spheres Theory was soundly disproven by, among other things, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the lands now known as the Americas.
Click here to read Part II of this series.
Creation Reveals God’s Glory – St. John Paul II
Article- 1000 words
- Level: all audiences
Pope John Paul II in a March 1986 General Audience discusses creation and scriptural references to how creation proclaims the glory of God :
A new dimension of God’s glory begins with the creation of the visible and invisible world. This glory is called “exterior” to distinguish it from the previous one. Sacred Scripture speaks of it in many passages and in different ways. Some examples will suffice.
Psalm 19 proclaims: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork…. There is no speech, nor are there words whose sound is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps 19:1, 2, 4). The Book of Sirach states: “The sun looks down on everything with its light, and the work of the Lord is full of his glory” (42:16). The Book of Baruch has a very singular and evocative expression: “The stars shone in their watches and were glad; he called them, and they said, ‘Here we are!’ They shone with gladness for him who made them” (3:34).
Elsewhere the biblical text sounds like an appeal addressed to creatures to proclaim the glory of God the Creator. For example, the Book of Daniel states: “O all you works of the Lord, bless the Lord, to him be highest glory and praise forever” (3:57). Or Psalm 66: “Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name: give to him glorious praise! Say to God, ‘How glorious are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you. All the earth worships you; they sing praises to you, sing praises to your name'” (1-4).
Sacred Scripture is full of similar expressions: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Ps 104:24). The whole created universe is a multiple, powerful and incessant appeal to proclaim the glory of the Creator. “All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Num 14:21); for “both riches and honor come from you” (1 Chr 29:12).
Click here for the full text of John Paul II’s discussion (Italian) from the Vatican’s web page.
Click here for an English translation of the full text of John Paul II’s discussion, from the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti.
Misplaced Obsessions: Understanding Why Christmas Is On December 25th.
Article (blog post)- 1500 words
- Level: all audiences
Fr. James Kurzynski writes on the subject of the date of Jesus’s birth in this post on The Catholic Astronomer blog. Know “the date” is complicated, as Fr. Kurzynski explains:
So, can we find December 25th referenced as the date of Jesus’ birth in the writings of the early Church Fathers? Yes, we can… with some presumptions that are VERY important to take into account. A basic Google search on when we find the first reference to December 25th as the date of Jesus’ birth will bring you to Hyppolytus of Rome (170AD – 235AD). Most online citations will boldly affirm that Hyppolytus wrote that Jesus was born on December 25th. The problem is, that’s not what Hyppolytus said. He actually said that Jesus was born on the 25th day of the ninth month. What Hyppolytus is referencing is the Jewish month of Kislev. Of particular interest, the 25th of Kislev in Jewish culture is the celebration of Hanukkah or the “Feast of Lights.” Might there be a connection being made between this Jewish feast and Jesus as the “light of the world?”
To get from the 25th of Kislev to December 25th, we first make a pit stop at the Julian Calendar, which was determined to be slipping each year through the work of the first Vatican Observatory in the Tower of the Winds, leading to the reformed Gregorian Calendar. The Christian West embraced the Gregorian reforms while the Christian East chose to remain on the Julian Calendar. This is why, to this day, there are two dates in the Christian world for the celebration of Jesus’ birth: December 25th in the Christian West and January 7th in the Christian East. Further, we see that the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar so the 25th of Kislev, Hanukkah, seldom coincides with December 25th. In short, the presumption of when Jesus was born is far more difficult to pin down than one would think.
Physics Today: Thinking differently about science and religion
Article (Letter to Editor) and Responses- 9 pages (total)
- Level: all audiences
In February 2018 the journal Physics Today published a letter by Tom McLeish, Professor of Physics at Durham University, chair of the Royal Society’s education committee, and author of the book Faith and Wisdom in Science (Oxford University Press, 2014). The following June Physics Today published a number of responses to McLeish’s letter, along with additional remarks from McLeish. McLeish writes:
Driving an unhistorical and unrealistic wedge between science and religion has got to stop. It leads, in part, to the optionalism that we see in some public and political attitudes toward science, from climate change to vaccination. It damages the educational experience of our children, and it impoverishes our understanding of our own science’s historical context. Human beings live not only in a physical world but within historical narratives that give us values, purpose, and identity. Science sits on the branches and draws from the sap of many of those stories whose roots are anchored in the great themes of creation, redemption, and renewal that course through our religious traditions and endow us with humanity. We are still looking for answers to some of the questions God asks of the luckless Job:
Have you comprehended the vast
expanses of the Earth? . . .
What is the way to the place where
lightning is dispersed . . . ?
Can you bind the beautiful
Pleiades?
Click here to download McLeish’s February 2018 letter (PDF courtesy of Physics Today); click here to read from the Physics Today website.
Click here to download the June 2018 responses (PDF courtesy of Physics Today); click here to read from the Physics Today website.
On the prudence and openness in interpreting sacred Scripture, when biblical passages deal with our knowledge of nature
- Book excerpt
- 750 words
- Level: high school and above
An excerpt on the book of Genesis, from Augustine of Hippo’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis. This excerpt has been selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. From Inters.org:
These passages from St. Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram suggest how theologians should behave when different interpretations of sacred Scripture are possible in matter of our knowledge of nature. Prudence is recommended to avoid presenting specific readings, susceptible of further deepening, as if they were absolute and unquestionable. In so doing we keep away from the risk that scholars who are experts in natural knowledge deride Christians for their ingenuousness, and then underestimate the value of the whole Scripture. Galileo Galilei quoted these passages from Augustine in his famous Letter to Madame Christine of Lorraine (1615), he wrote to show that Bible should not be interpreted always in a literal and apodictic way, in order to back a specific cosmological system against another.
Click here for Augustine’s commentary, from Inters.org.
Do the Heavens Declare the Glory of God?
Article- 5 pages
- Level: high school and above
This article from the journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith is based on a sermon given by Owen Gingerich at the First United Methodist Church in Henderson, Kentucky, on April 21, 2013. Gingerich, an astronomer and historian of science at Harvard University, contrasts a modern understanding of the universe with that of Martin Luther or the Psalmist:
[The sky I saw] was the same sky the Psalmist saw, or Martin Luther saw, but in my twentieth-century understanding, the heavens were far vaster than either of them could have imagined. In both space and time in my mind’s eye, my universe was overwhelmingly different from the heavens they saw and envisioned.
To Gingerich, the heavens still declare the glory of God—in different ways than they might have to people in the past, thanks to our modern understanding—but they declare it nonetheless. However, he notes that not everyone sees this:
[A total solar eclipse] is one of the most breathtaking views from or on our planet. Yet I doubt that this is enough to sway a skeptic. And perhaps that is how it should be. There is a telling passage in First Kings:
And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
The message is in a still, small voice, God’s inspiration, literally the bringing in of the spirit. The glory of the heavens does not knock the skeptic from his perch. It is in the eye of the beholder. For me, the glory of the heavens inspires me to understand the handiwork of the Lord. However, it does not work for everyone.
Click here to access this article from Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.
Click here to access a version of this article from God and Nature Magazine.
Was There Really a Star of Bethlehem?
- Video
- 4 minutes
- Level: all audiences
In this video from Catholic News Service, Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J. of the Vatican Observatory talks about the possibility that the Star of Bethlehem was a real astronomical event.
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- Level: all audiences
Gregor Mendel, who served as the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, is recognized today as the founder of the modern science of genetics, on account of of his experiments with the breeding of plants. This is a brief portion of an Easter sermon by Mendel (from notes written in his own hand) that makes reference to gardening and plants.
[Click here to download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
A Quaker Astronomer Reflects
- Book
Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967
- 48 pages
- Level: all audiences
Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s A Quaker Astronomer Reflects: Can a Scientist also be Religious?, was published in 2013 by The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia. It is a short overview of what is known in astronomy, with comments relating to religious belief. This small book grew from a lecture she gave in Australia.
Click here for a PDF copy of A Quaker Astronomer Reflects, courtesy of Quakers Australia.
Click here for a preview, courtesy of Google Books.
Burnell is an accomplished astronomer, now retired, who has served as President of the Royal Society and President of the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom. She is perhaps best known for her role in the discovery of pulsars in 1967. She has also held leadership positions in the Quaker denomination, and in this book she touches on worship, Bible study, and St. Theresa of Avila as well as astronomy. Her theology is unorthodox, as she in some sense sees God as separate from the natural world, which in her view stands on its own. However, she claims no training or expertise in theology, and in A Quaker Astronomer Reflects she contrasts the wealth of opportunities that a scientist has to develop scientifically with the scarcity of opportunities to develop theologically:
My astronomy and my Quakerism have grown up together and are comfortable bedfellows. But note which bedfellow has done the accommodating! My scientific understanding emerges unscathed by contact with Quakerism. My Quaker bedfellow has bent to fit in with what I have learnt as an astronomer. I have wondered if this is because I am light on Quaker theology in this area, or indeed whether Quaker theology is light in this area. Whilst I have talked to scientists about science and the scientific method, there has been not much place to talk with Quaker theologians on these sorts of topic.
But Burnell notes that her faith is not all about matters of “the head”—not all about astronomy and Quaker theology. There is for her a very strong part of her faith that is all about matters of “the heart” that she experiences in worship. She writes:
I ‘know’ there is a God, a living, loving God who works through people, prompting, nudging. A God of inspiration, of creativity; a God we can sense in the silence of a gathered Quaker meeting. One who holds a mirror up to us so that we can see our behaviour, keep our standards. One before whom masks, poses and postures drop away; one who knows us as perhaps only our parents knew us; there we are most truly ourselves.
I know that in a good Meeting for Worship what is required of me is that I am present before God, that I am silent and still and let go of things that are not at that moment relevant. I have not words to worship with (sometimes I find myself using the word ‘creator,’ but know it is not meant in any literal sense!); I move beyond words.
So close is the sense of communion that breathing becomes prayer. I encounter a God who supports us, cares for us, grieves with us, empowers us and acts through us in the world, but particularly at such moments calms, heals, holds and sends us out again a little more sensitive, a little wiser, to make a better world.
I am aware that I have been several times prompted [spiritually] to minister in a Meeting for Worship, or to speak on a particular topic, without understanding why, but follow that leading and do so, subsequently to discover I was speaking to a need unknown to me….
There is a suggestion that religion is a human construct, that it is all in the brain, that neuroscience will, in a few years, explaining it all. Neuroscience is certainly riding high at the moment, has plenty of confidence and is making all sorts of claims. I doubt if they can all be true, but we will have to wait and see which are and which are not! Sometimes I have had promptings to speak which spoke to needs that I did not know existed, things that even my subconscious could not have been aware of, so I am not sure that religion is just a human construct. On balance I am inclined to believe in an external God.
Al-Ghazālī – from The Incoherence of the Philosophers
- Article (book excerpt)
- 630 words
- Level: all audiences
An excerpt on religion and science from the Tahāfut al-falāsifa (or The Incoherence of the Philosophers) of Abu Hāmid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tūsi al-Ghazālī. Al-Ghazālī, who lived in the eleventh century, is one of medieval Islam’s best-known religious intellectuals.
[Click here to download PDF]
Incoherence
Priest of Nature – The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton
Book- 522 pages
- Level: university level
It is often said that Isaac Newton, arguably the most prominent scientist in human history, wrote more about the Bible and religion than about science and math. However, his religious writings were generally unpublished, and have always been relatively inaccessible and little studied. Robert Iliffe, the author of the 2017 book Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton, tells us that this is due to a number of reasons: in part due to Newton’s own views on publishing; in part due to the anti-Trinitarian nature of Newton’s own Christian faith; in part due to how Enlightenment-era thinkers who were perplexed by these writings explained them away as something Newton produced only later in life, when he had gone senile or even mad; in part due to modern scholars rejecting them as bizarre, irrelevant to his more significant work, and unbecoming of his genius. However, in the 21st century these writings have all becoming widely available—indeed, available in digital form, through the internet. Iliffe, an Oxford University Professor of History who directed the “Newton Project” that was responsible for making Newton’s religious writings so available, introduces his readers to Newton’s work and to his thought. Newton was anti-Trinitarian, anti-Catholic, and had a poor opinion of St. Athanasius (to put it mildly). He believed that much had been known to the Ancients, including scientific knowledge comparable to his own work such as the Principia—knowledge that the Ancients had received from the time of Noah but that was later corrupted and lost. He studied the book of Revelation assiduously. He sought to live a godly, almost monastic life (but he was also anti-monk). Iliffe shows Newton’s faith being central to all his work, throughout his life, whether that work was in physics, mathematics, or religion.
From Iliffe’s closing paragraphs of Priest of Nature:
Newton’s use of his intellect, and the moral and religious values he attributed to it, were central to his life and work. Like the imagination and the will, the understanding had been forged in the image of God, and one had a duty to use it….
The claims that the Principia had revealed the language and blueprint of the divine creation, and that (in Halley’s famous words) no mortal could approach the gods more closely, should not be read as mere hyperbole. If Newton’s achievements said a great deal about the human intellect, so they said much about the mind of God. God had the capacity to calculate and effect all the infinite motions and their causes that constituted the universe from one moment to the next, but armed with the Principia, humans created in the Image of God had the equipment to do something similar….
The will was most free the where the understanding was most perfect, and so its sincere and painstaking cultivation was the highest Christian duty…. Newton’s hymn to the will reached its zenith in his early text “De Gravitatione” and, in particular, in the General Scholium, where the intelligent designs of God were held to be the result of his supreme will.
Ultimately, Newton’s early life (to say nothing of his last three decades) was suffused with an overriding religious purpose. Convinced that he had been created in the Image of God, his scholarly life was in part an exercise in examining how he measured up to his maker. As such, it focused both on perfecting himself and on understanding the works of God. Accordingly, he strove to make his life that of a godly man, avoiding the temptations of the imagination and its chief effects, idolatry, idleness, and lust. He condemned the imaginary products of human artifice and instead nurtured his understanding so that he could dedicate himself to studying the divine truths of Scripture and Nature. The relentless cultivation of his own intellect was the precondition for gaining a mature wisdom, along with a purified will that could make the correct choice between good and evil, and between true and false religion. It was also this heroic intellectual labor that produced the monumental works in theology, natural philosophy, and mathematics that survive today.
From the publisher, Oxford University Press:
After Sir Isaac Newton revealed his discovery that white light was compounded of more basic colored rays, he was hailed as a genius and became an instant international celebrity. An interdisciplinary enthusiast and intellectual giant in a number of disciplines, Newton published revolutionary, field-defining works that reached across the scientific spectrum, including the Principia Mathematica and Opticks. His renown opened doors for him throughout his career, ushering him into prestigious positions at Cambridge, the Royal Mint, and the Royal Society. And yet, alongside his public success, Newton harbored religious beliefs that set him at odds with law and society, and, if revealed, threatened not just his livelihood but his life.
Religion and faith dominated much of Newton’s life and work. His papers, never made available to the public, were filled with biblical speculation and timelines along with passages that excoriated the early Church fathers. Indeed, his radical theological leanings rendered him a heretic, according to the doctrines of the Anglican Church. Newton believed that the central concept of the Trinity was a diabolical fraud and loathed the idolatry, cruelty, and persecution that had come to define religion in his time. Instead, he proposed a “simple Christianity”—a faith that would center on a few core beliefs and celebrate diversity in religious thinking and practice. An utterly original but obsessively private religious thinker, Newton composed several of the most daring works of any writer of the early modern period, works which he and his inheritors suppressed and which have been largely inaccessible for centuries.
In Priest of Nature, historian Rob Iliffe introduces readers to Newton the religious animal, deepening our understanding of the relationship between faith and science at a formative moment in history and thought. Previous scholars and biographers have generally underestimated the range and complexity of Newton’s religious writings, but Iliffe shows how wide-ranging his observations and interests were, spanning the entirety of Christian history from Creation to the Apocalypse. Iliffe’s book allows readers to fully engage in the theological discussion that dominated Newton’s age. A vibrant biography of one of history’s towering scientific figures, Priest of Nature is the definitive work on the spiritual views of the man who fundamentally changed how we look at the universe.
Click here for a preview, courtesy of Google Books.
Click here for the Newton Project website.
Isaac Newton – Two books relating to religion
Books (two)- 376 pages;
- Level: university
Isaac Newton, one of the most prominent scientific figures in history, is often said to have written more about theology than about mathematics and physics. However, his views on the nature of God were unorthodox, and much of what he wrote regarding matters relating to religion was never published. However, his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms was published in 1728. It contains material such as Newton’s diagram of the Temple of Solomon, shown here. Newton’s Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, was published posthumously in 1733 and is another example of Newton’s writing on matters relating to religion.
Click here for Chronology, courtesy of Erara.
Click here for Observations, courtesy of Archive.org
Book: The Irrational Augustine
- 240 pages
- Level: university
A book suggested by our research team. This description is from the publisher, Oxford University Press:
The Irrational Augustine takes the notion of St Augustine as rigid and dogmatic Father of the Church and turns it on its head. Catherine Conybeare reads Augustine’s earliest works to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine, who values changeability and human interconnectedness and deplores social exclusion. The novelty of her book lies in taking seriously the nature of these early works as performances, through which multiple questions can be raised and multiple options explored, both in words and through their dramatic framework. The theological consequences are considerable. A very human Augustine emerges, talking and playing with friends and family, including his mother – and a very sympathetic set of ideas is the result.
Click here for a preview, available from Google Books.
A Quaker Astronomer Reflects
- Book
Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967
- 48 pages
- Level: all audiences
Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s A Quaker Astronomer Reflects: Can a Scientist also be Religious?, was published in 2013 by The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia. It is a short overview of what is known in astronomy, with comments relating to religious belief. This small book grew from a lecture she gave in Australia.
Click here for a PDF copy of A Quaker Astronomer Reflects, courtesy of Quakers Australia.
Click here for a preview, courtesy of Google Books.
Burnell is an accomplished astronomer, now retired, who has served as President of the Royal Society and President of the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom. She is perhaps best known for her role in the discovery of pulsars in 1967. She has also held leadership positions in the Quaker denomination, and in this book she touches on worship, Bible study, and St. Theresa of Avila as well as astronomy. Her theology is unorthodox, as she in some sense sees God as separate from the natural world, which in her view stands on its own. However, she claims no training or expertise in theology, and in A Quaker Astronomer Reflects she contrasts the wealth of opportunities that a scientist has to develop scientifically with the scarcity of opportunities to develop theologically:
My astronomy and my Quakerism have grown up together and are comfortable bedfellows. But note which bedfellow has done the accommodating! My scientific understanding emerges unscathed by contact with Quakerism. My Quaker bedfellow has bent to fit in with what I have learnt as an astronomer. I have wondered if this is because I am light on Quaker theology in this area, or indeed whether Quaker theology is light in this area. Whilst I have talked to scientists about science and the scientific method, there has been not much place to talk with Quaker theologians on these sorts of topic.
But Burnell notes that her faith is not all about matters of “the head”—not all about astronomy and Quaker theology. There is for her a very strong part of her faith that is all about matters of “the heart” that she experiences in worship. She writes:
I ‘know’ there is a God, a living, loving God who works through people, prompting, nudging. A God of inspiration, of creativity; a God we can sense in the silence of a gathered Quaker meeting. One who holds a mirror up to us so that we can see our behaviour, keep our standards. One before whom masks, poses and postures drop away; one who knows us as perhaps only our parents knew us; there we are most truly ourselves.
I know that in a good Meeting for Worship what is required of me is that I am present before God, that I am silent and still and let go of things that are not at that moment relevant. I have not words to worship with (sometimes I find myself using the word ‘creator,’ but know it is not meant in any literal sense!); I move beyond words.
So close is the sense of communion that breathing becomes prayer. I encounter a God who supports us, cares for us, grieves with us, empowers us and acts through us in the world, but particularly at such moments calms, heals, holds and sends us out again a little more sensitive, a little wiser, to make a better world.
I am aware that I have been several times prompted [spiritually] to minister in a Meeting for Worship, or to speak on a particular topic, without understanding why, but follow that leading and do so, subsequently to discover I was speaking to a need unknown to me….
There is a suggestion that religion is a human construct, that it is all in the brain, that neuroscience will, in a few years, explaining it all. Neuroscience is certainly riding high at the moment, has plenty of confidence and is making all sorts of claims. I doubt if they can all be true, but we will have to wait and see which are and which are not! Sometimes I have had promptings to speak which spoke to needs that I did not know existed, things that even my subconscious could not have been aware of, so I am not sure that religion is just a human construct. On balance I am inclined to believe in an external God.