The World Written

This is a world written, do you understand? You, who were trained
To read worlds but never to write them have expunged your God’s Word
(As you clearly see it) from the surfaces of the northern wastes
And the pen marks will not last long in the mighty rains you have loosed.

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler; for God [Deus] is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no respect to servants. The word God [here marks a note] usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And 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 endures and is present. He endures for ever, and is every where present; and by existing always and every where, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and no where. Every soul that has perception is, though in different times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There are given successive parts in duration, co-existent puts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same God, always and every where. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always, and every where. 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 colours, 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, nor heard, or touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of any thing is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and colours, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells, and taste the savours; 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, and final cause: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. But, by way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from. the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy. ( Newton, General Scholium to Book III of Principia Mathematica , tr. Andrew Motte with some emendations of my own in brackets)

Marginal note: Our Pocock derives the name of deus from an Arabic word diz (and in oblique case di which signifies "lord." It in this sense that princes are called gods (Psalm 84:6 and John 10:45). And Moses is called god of his brother Aaron and the god of the king Pharaoh (Exodus 4:16 and 7:1). And in the same sense, the spirits of dead princes once were called gods by the Gentiles, but falsely because they lacked the knowledge of the Lord [lit. on account of the lack of lord]

I'll give you a chance to read the Newton. Anastasia recently (Dec 31 last) has posed to scientists some questions. Gaunilo has had some things to say about the Book of Nature, which he is convinced is out of print. So I thought I would give you some hints about how the professional and believing scientist might read the Book of Nature. The Newton passage is very interesting in that it may have been tremendously influential in mediating the relationship between science and Christianity among the English-speaking peoples. The key point is that the essence of the question of God, existence, is removed from inquiry by an appeal to immeasurability. God is infinite and eternal, spanning all space and time, and thus cannot be measured in finite times or finite spaces. From a couple of important perspectives, Newton's view is problematic.

1. It seems to be a restatement of the ontological argument. And it is to formulations like Newton's to which Kant may have responding a couple of generations after Newton's death.

2. Newton is an Arian. His account omits the fullness of the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation, in which God the Son, a full and equal participant in the immeasurable infinities, becomes measurable in the person of Jesus Christ.

Also noteworthy is Newton's discussion of the epistemological limits of the natural sciences. He effectively claims that we do not know "the inner substance" of bodies themselves but only their secondary characteristics. Admittedly, 21st century science is much closer to the inner substance of things than mere secondary characteristics. For instance, we understand color to a depth at which Newton would be astounded (and he understood color better than any scientist of his day). Although the influence of the Cambridge Platonists on Newton is debatable, the influence of alchemy remained. To some, alchemy concerns mutability and focuses on transmutation: the manipulation of secondary characteristics. But the true alchemist seeks not to manipulate but to bring order to substance: to match the secondary characteristics of bodies to their inmost order or to give the base metals of this sphere the aethereal grace of the celestial spheres to which they are related. Alchemy thus seeks not lead changed into gold but lead and gold made better. The world closes the immeasurable distance to the Form. And the natural philosopher-king stands above as servant of the God who is natural philosopher-king above all. The measure of it all is still the same: we cannot know anything fully but much in part.

Newton's discourse on God in the General Scholium often is considered the foundational text of Deism. This may be true. But in order to become such a text, it needed to be slightly misinterpreted. By implying the immeasurability of God and that our knowledge of Him was limited except through the investigation of His secondary characteristics, i.e. His works, Newton could be read as proposing a God of entirely natural religion. Such a great God surely would not need to reveal such twisted Scriptures as the ones we contemplate. But this is a leap Newton never makes. He is an Arian and so will not venerate the Son as God. There will be no crucifixes and no icons in Newton's laboratory. But his theological epistemology is tricky (as one would expect from a man who woke Locke in the night to correct his hermeneutical views.) He suggests God is known only from nature. But yet he says, "a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature." So wondrous is Creation to Newton that God at least must have a plan and likely a good one (and so be good). Thus, Newton can discard the Demiurge.

But Newton also tells us of how God is similar to man by way of allegory. We seek God in ourselves. While this was highly unorthodox in his own day and a view of Scripture I would reject, Newton is clear that the Scriptures are not silly. By referring to the usage of "god" as Lord God of Israel and Eternal, Newton recognizes the Scriptures as attempts to seek God. They are readings in themselves of the Book of Nature. They are Tradition in the sense of the scientific literature. They are to be built upon. And this is where Deism lost its weak moorings. Western notions of the God at the root of being are grounded in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The most fundamental opinions of the Holy Scriptures cannot be so easily replaced by private judgment. Newton's convictions about providence, dominion, and final causes assume something. It assumes that order does not arise of itself. (And by the way, entropy does not necessarily imply decrease in order as we understand it, only the increase in the diversity of ordering. So order just might arise of itself as time advances.)

Reading Earth History Providentially

And thus the scientist always postulates God (or no God) while reading the Book of Nature. One of the key consequences of postulating God (especially a reasonably traditional Christian view of God) is to see Earth history in terms of anthropocentric providentialism. The latest in the series is the Discovery Institute's The Privileged Planet . There are a couple of problems with this reading from a scientific perspective:

1. Our ancestors pretty much suffered during the Mesozoic. A few different turns and dinosaurs might have become sentient.

2. We have no way of knowing whether "privilege" is exclusive to this planet.

Also recall that nature doesn't act providentially on the microscale:

Darwin’s discoveries, however, were a threat to both schools of American moral philosophy. Daniel Walker Howe’s short treatment of Harvard’s problems with it says that the Unitarians thought that it meant reason no longer was in harmony with revelation. However, the Harvard moral philosophers were clever enough Biblical readers to deal with the apparent chronological problems at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. Their problem indeed stemmed from their belief in harmony, but the harmony in question was that of the world itself. For the Harvard Unitarians, nature was in balance, God had made perfect provision for every creature, and predation was a natural part of existence. They could open their Bibles and from the very beginning they could see, “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.” Darwin’s views increased the possibility of an unharmonious world that had neither enough food nor enough other resources for the creatures of the Earth. It suggested an imperfection in God’s moral government and that was more disturbing than a few rewordings in the Book of Genesis. (Caelius, "The Rejection, Subversion, and Replacement of Calvin and Hobbes: Moral Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the United States during the 19th century.")

Thus, let me warn those who read the Book of Nature that they must proceed from sacred history to natural history but not vice versa . It is sacred history that tells us we are special. Natural history is still ambiguous on the question. However, we still must allow nature to challenge our readings of sacred history. That is the role of the Book of Nature. Such a view allows me to read Genesis in the light of evolution in new and fascinating ways. But let me give you another example:

My Barber and SETI

Recently, I flew to the other side of the country to visit the rest of my immediate family. I also decided to get a haircut, because I prefer the barbers on that side of the country. Let me tell you that I really like my present haircut. My usual barber is a retired Army barber (my former barber was USMC) and a member of a local nondenominational church, which I think was founded by the late Carl McIntire. So we were engaging in the usual banter about what I did for a living, and he asked whether I wanted to work for SETI. I said that I wasn't really interested in looking for aliens that way. He said, "Well, aliens are unBiblical anyway. I know some people say they find aliens in the bible, "wheels within wheels." I replied, "Elijah" and let discourse die down to something else. Now I always wonder what would happen if aliens came to Earth. It's one thing to say the Earth was created in 4004 BC. It's another thing to deal with something clearly not of this world (or in the Scriptures). Would the aliens be deemed nephilim? Would the aliens be evangelized? Baptized? Such an encounter might affect our reading of the Creation, the Fall, and the Incarnation radically. Our current struggles with the Book of Nature only differ in degree. Sacred history is strongest when it brings the universe into its own reference frame. There is often a difficult transformation in that process, but sacred history without natural history (i.e., sacred history that rejects natural history) loses the force of sacred history ("The heavens declare the glory of God.") And likewise with sacred doctrine.

Until the next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may seek the mind of Him who became like us, little less than the angels; that you may adore Him with the all of the angels of God, the shepherds, and the Kings of the East; that you may experience the refulgent glory of His Grace that shines on everything with a radiance of which the stars are but shadows; and that your reading of the Book of Nature may incline you to give thanksgiving to God in all things.