A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- General 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.
[Download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
A Critique to Astrology from “De Civitate Dei”
Book excerpt- 4500 words
- High school level 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
- General 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
- General 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.
An Interview with Dr. Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J.
Article- 6000 words (two parts)
- High school level 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
- General 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
- University level
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
- General 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.
Teacher Inservice: How Would You Encourage Educators to Handle Faith and Science?
- Article (blog post)
- 3000 words
- General Audience
A post by Fr. James Kurzynski on The Catholic Astronomer blog, providing an outline of topics covered in a teacher in-service day for K-9 Catholic school teachers, but appropriate at many levels.
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- General 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.
[Download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
James Clerk Maxwell – Science and Faith
Article (two letter excerpts)- 350 words
- All audiences
James Clerk Maxwell is one of the most important figures in the history of science. Students in physics courses everywhere study “Maxwell’s Equations” that mathematically describe electromagnetic waves. These waves include light, radio, x-rays, etc. They are how astronomers learn about the universe and they are the basis of all wireless communication technology, including smart phones.
Maxwell was a devout Christian who spoke of his faith in many of his letters. Below are two excerpts from letters which contain direct references to both his scientific work and his faith.
The first is from a draft of a letter in 1875 regarding membership in “The Victoria Institute”:
I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society….
The second is from a letter of response to the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who had written to Maxwell wondering whether the creation of the sun after the creation of light in Genesis 1 can be explained through the newly-developed physics of light. Maxwell replies by noting, in part, that what is new physics now may be discarded wrong ideas later:
If it were necessary to provide an interpretation of the text in accordance with the science of 1876 (which may not agree with that of 1896), it would be very tempting to say that the light of the first day means the all-embracing aether… But I cannot suppose that this was the very idea meant to be conveyed by the original author to those for whom he was writing.
But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis … The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.
At the same time I think that each individual man should do all he can to impress his own mind with the extent, the order, and the unity of the universe, and should carry these ideas with him as he reads such passages as the 1st Chap. of the Ep. to Colossians (see Lightfoot on Colossians, p.182), just as enlarged conceptions of the extent and unity of the world of life may be of service to us in reading Psalm viii.; Heb. ii 6, etc.
Setting aside all authority: news from the history of astronomy
Book and blog post- 200 words (post)/288 pages (book)
- General audiences (post)/High school level and above (book)
A post by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory, on The Catholic Astronomer blog. The post announces a new book by Christopher Graney, Setting Aside All Authority – Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo. The book is about the 17th century work of Fr. Giovanni Battista Riccioli, S. J., who defended the geocentric system on scientific grounds.
Click here for information from the publisher, the University of Notre Dame Press.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
From the publisher:
Setting Aside All Authority is an important account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the Copernican system. Christopher M. Graney challenges the long-standing ideas that opponents of the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were primarily motivated by religion or devotion to an outdated intellectual tradition, and that they were in continual retreat in the face of telescopic discoveries.
Graney calls on newly translated works by anti-Copernican writers of the time to demonstrate that science, not religion, played an important, and arguably predominant, role in the opposition to the Copernican system. Anti-Copernicans, building on the work of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, were in fact able to build an increasingly strong scientific case against the heliocentric system at least through the middle of the seventeenth century, several decades after the advent of the telescope. The scientific case reached its apogee, Graney argues, in the 1651 New Almagest of the Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who used detailed telescopic observations of stars to construct a powerful scientific argument against Copernicus.
Setting Aside All Authority includes the first English translation of Monsignor Francesco Ingoli’s essay to Galileo (disputing the Copernican system on the eve of the Inquisition’s condemnation of it in 1616) and excerpts from Riccioli’s reports regarding his experiments with falling bodies.
St. Thomas Aquinas – The Knowledge of the Creatures is Useful to Avoid Errors Concerning God
- Book excerpt
- 1400 words
- University level
In this Summa contra Gentiles discussion on created things (that is, on the creatures or the works of God), Thomas Aquinas comments on the value for Faith inherent in understanding these things. 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. St. Thomas gives a number of reasons for studying the works of God:
First, because meditation on His works enables us in some measure to admire and reflect upon His wisdom…. Secondly, this consideration [of God’s works] leads to admiration of God’s sublime power, and consequently inspires in men’s hearts reverence for God…. Thirdly, this consideration incites the souls of men to the love of God’s goodness…. Fourthly, this consideration endows men with a certain likeness to God’s perfection…. It is therefore evident that the consideration of creatures has its part to play in building the Christian faith. And for this reason it is said: “I will remember the works of the Lord, and I will declare the things I have seen: by the words of the Lord are His works” (Ecc 42:15)
St. Thomas also argues that knowledge of the the works of God serves to destroy errors concerning God:
First, because through ignorance of the nature of creatures men are sometimes so far perverted as to set up as the first cause and as God that which can only receive its being from something else…. Secondly, because they attribute to certain creatures that which belongs only to God…. Thirdly, because through ignorance of the creature’s nature something is subtracted from God’s power in its working upon creatures…. Fourthly, through ignorance of the nature of things, and, consequently, of his own place in the order of the universe, this rational creature, man, who by faith is led to God as his last end, believes that he is subject to other creatures [such as the stars] to which he is in fact superior…. It is, therefore, evident that the opinion is false of those who asserted that it made no difference to the truth of the faith what anyone holds about creatures, so long as one thinks rightly about God, as Augustine tells us in his book On the Origin of the Soul [IV, 4]. For error concerning creatures, by subjecting them to causes other than God, spills over into false opinion about God, and takes men’s minds away from Him, to whom faith seeks to lead them.
Click here for Thomas’s discussion, from Inters.org.
Thomas Aquinas – On Creation and Time
- Book excerpt
- 1600 words
- University level
This discussion on creation and time, from the Summa contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas, contrasts and compares in interesting ways with the modern understanding of the origin of the universe as described in the “Big Bang” theory (in which neither matter, nor time, nor space exist prior to the “bang”). For example, St. Thomas argues that the act of creation is not a change of one thing that exists into another thing. Rather, appealing to both reason and to St. Basil, St. Thomas argues that both material things and time itself were formed when God created the universe, a process which St. Thomas argues was instantaneous. He says, “And so it is that holy Scripture proclaims the creation of things to have been effected in an indivisible instant; for it is written: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ (Gen. 1:1). And Basil explains that this beginning is ‘the beginning of time’.”
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 Thomas’s discussion, from Inters.org.
Al-Ghazālī – from The Incoherence of the Philosophers
- Article (book excerpt)
- 630 words
- General 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.
Physics Today: Thinking differently about science and religion
Article (Letter to Editor) and Responses- 9 pages (total)
- General 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.
Was There Really a Star of Bethlehem?
- Video
- 4 minutes
- General Audience
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 Quaker Astronomer Reflects
- Book
Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967
- 48 pages
- General 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
- General 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.
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- General 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.
[Download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
Isaac Newton – Two books relating to religion
Books (two)- 376 pages;
- University level
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
- Book
- 240 pages
- University level
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.
Priest of Nature – The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton
Book- 522 pages
- 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.
A Quaker Astronomer Reflects
- Book
Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967
- 48 pages
- General 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.