Newton Vs. The Clockwork Universe

As Wolfhart Pannenberg observes in his Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith (1993), the present-day intellectual mind-set assumes that there is no relation or connection between the God of the Christian faith and the understanding of the world in the natural sciences.

Ironically this separation of God from the world is commonly credited to Sir Isaac Newton, the father of classical mechanics, whose ground-breaking work on the laws of motion and thermodynamics seemed to posit a purely mechanistic, deterministic, “clockwork universe” that was not dependent on God either for its creation or its maintenance.

The irony consists in the fact that this was not Newton’s view at all. In fact, the very reverse is the truth of the matter: Newton was a deeply religious man who regarded his scientific efforts as exploits in the discovery of the laws that God uses in the natural world. Moreover, Newton believed that his laws of motion implied the generation of conditions of increasing disorder in the world, such that God would have to intervene periodically to rectify it in order to save it and keep it going:

In his Opticks, Newton emphasized … that the order of nature becomes needful, in the course of time, of a renewal by God because as a result of the inertia of matter its irregularities increase.” [ibid., p. 63]

“Newton confronted with deep distrust the mechanical worldview of Descartes, which derived all change in the world alone from the mechanical mutual effects of the bodies. The Cartesian model of the world, in which the mutual play of mechanical powers was to explain the development from chaos to the ordered cosmos, seemed to him all too self-contained and self-sufficient so that it would not need any divine assistance or would even admit such.” [ibid., p. 60]

Newton rightly recognized that this tendency of the mechanical explanation of nature would inevitably lead to “a world independent from God.” For Newton, such a view would be an utter falsification of natural and divine reality both.

In his own time, Newton’s view that God continuously acts in the world was controversial. Certain leading philosophers, including Kant and Leibnitz, were offended by this view on the grounds that it implied God bungled the original creation. They argued that a perfect Creator cannot have failed to create a perfect creation. And if it’s “perfect,” then there’s no need for God to intervene. (The corollary being: For him to do so would be an acknowledgement or confession of his own imperfection.)

This despite the fact that God in Genesis speaks, not of having made a “perfect” creation, but only a “good” one. The worldview of Leibnitz reflects an early strain of Deism; that of Kant, the Calvinist theological view of God as utterly transcendent majesty.

But Newton didn’t see it either way. For Newton, God was both transcendent and immanent in the world. God created a universe in which he would be “God with his creatures” and Lord of Life forever. The supernatural and the natural had an on-going synergistic relation, and this is what maintained the natural world as a going concern, sustaining it in its evolution toward God’s eschatological goal for man and nature.

In other words, Newton believed God is constantly active in the history of salvation (of souls and world), and evolutionary process is one of his prime tools for accomplishing the divine purpose implicit in the creation event itself.

Yet by what means could God be “present with his creatures?” Newton gave his answer in the Scholium Generale, an addendum to the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, his chief work on the mathematical principles of the philosophy of nature. The addendum endeavors to clarify the relationship of his doctrines of physics and his religious and philosophical views. Here Newton states that “God constitutes space and time through his eternity and omnipresence: ‘existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit.’”

For Newton, God as immensitas constitutes absolute space – infinite and “empty” – and this absolute space is the sensorium Dei The great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz strenuously objected to this conception, arguing that Newton’s divine sensorium effectively turned God into a “world soul,” and thus led to pantheism. Yet Newton had “explicitly emphasized … that God does not rule the universe as a world soul, but as the Lord of all things.” [ibid.]

What are we to make of this term, sensorium Dei – God’s sensorium? We probably should avoid the conclusion drawn by Leibnitz, who interpreted the term as indicating an organ of perception.

Newton might reply: God being eternally omniscient, he has absolutely no need of an organ of sense perception.

So what, then, did Newton mean by this term? Pannenberg writes that, for Newton, sensorium Dei refers “to the medium of the creation of things: just as the sensorium in our perception creates the pictures of things, God through space creates the things themselves.”

Thus Newton acknowledges a doctrine of creation understood as an on-going process, not just as a single start-up event – let alone a periodically recurring cycle of universal “booms” and “busts” as implied by the “eternal universe” model.

Newton] designates space as the effect of the presence of God with his creatures…. The expression sensorium … even when it is understood as the place of the production of its contents and not as the organ of their reception, cannot itself be a product of the perceiving individual,” whereas with God, space is at once a property and effect of the divine immensitas.

For Newton, the conception of infinite space is implicit in the idea of the omnipresence of God. But, as Pannenberg notes, “it is implicit in it in the way that it has no divisions: infinite space is indeed divisible but not divided, and the conception of division always presupposes space.”

At this point, it might occur to a scientifically-inclined Christian that sensorium Dei could well refer to an infinite, universal creative field, “originally empty” of all content, designed to be the matrix and carrier of all possibilities for our universe, and thus the locus where the “supernatural” [i.e., transcendent] and the “natural” [i.e., immanent] constantly meet.

One thinks of a primary universal vacuum field, whose characteristic associated particle is the photon – light -- which, having zero mass, is the “finest particle” yet known to man (noting that, on the Judeo-Christian view, God preeminently works with Light).

It has been speculated that, if an observer could stand outside of “normal” four-dimensional space-time and take a view from a fifth, “time-like” dimension, the singularity of the “big bang” would appear as a “shock wave” propagating in 4D space-time. If this were true, the shock wave would require a medium of propagation. Perhaps this medium is the universal vacuum field itself, the “ZPF” or zero-point field that extends throughout all of space, giving rise to all possibilities for our universe in every space direction and time dimension – which yet finds its source outside the space-time continuum that human beings commonly experience.

That is to say, the source is “extra-cosmic,” or transcendent. Its creative effect works within the empirical cosmos via the ZPF, which is hypothetically the sensorium Dei of the Immensitas….

Perhaps one day it will be shown that the intimate communication of divine and natural reality is facilitated by the primary universal vacuum field -- the intersection of time and the timeless, the creative source of our universe, the means of its sustenance and renewal over time, the source of the power of the human soul and mind to participate in divine reality, the paradigm of human genius, as well as the source of the continued physical existence of our planet and the universe.

It has been said that Life is the result of “successful communication.” Perhaps the ZPF, as suggested above, is the carrier of information (Logos, the singularity propagating in time); living creatures carry information also – DNA -- information that specifies what they are and how all their “parts” work together in synergy so as to give rise to and sustain their existence. It appears all living creatures have the capability of doing at least some kind of rudimentary information processing. That is, it seems they can “decode” and “read” instructions – perhaps via energy exchanges with the ZPF. When the creature is no longer able to access and process information, successful communication cannot take place, and so the creature dies.

By the way, I do not mean to suggest that information/energy exchanges with the primary universal vacuum field are necessarily consciously experienced events. Probably the reverse is the typical case. Yet we know that the human brain does most of its important work at unconscious levels: the governance of autonomic bodily functions, for instance, is a subconscious process.

Interestingly enough, it was Faraday who first articulated the field concept, and he apparently did so to refute Newton’s sensorium Dei. Apparently he wanted to get rid of the Immensitas altogether, and put Newton’s insight on a purely physical basis.

Yet in the end, it appears Faraday did not so much refute Newton, as lend credence to his basic insight.

Thank you for pinging me to your excellent reply to Diamond!

En Sof, however, does not seem to fall within the scope of any known human concept of "nothing" -- or of any demonstrated human ability to fully, consciously, finally understand a concept such as "Nothing." Plato called it Chora, "Space (Necessity)".

In the various authentic Jewish meditations I've read on the subject of En Sof - the meaning includes the infinite everything and the infinite nothing as well. IOW, En Sof exceeds all which can be ever be described as spatial, temporal or corporeal - and En Sof also exceeds all which can ever be described as non-spatial, non-temporal or non-corporeal. IMHO, most conceptualizations of God center on the former and ignore the latter.

In further meditations on En Sof, I have concluded that there was a beginning because God wanted to reveal Himself. Thus, everything in creation exists to that end - including spiritual beings, such as we are, some of whom will be of His family or in the community.

Even such things as good and evil serve the purpose of revealing God. For instance, how would one know courage if he never knew fear, or health without sickness - so how would he know that God is good without knowing what evil is? All of creation reveals some of God to us and prepares some of us for Him.

Everything in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation 20 builds to the arrival of the new heaven and earth described in Rev 21 and 22.

My two cents...

Thank you so much for pinging me to your excellent discussion with cornelis!

I think the point might be that human beings ought every once in a while to get their nose out of doctrine, and try on God-given reality for size. Doctrine is enormously helpful. But unless a person eventually can verify it spiritually -- that is, by means of the light and grace of the Holy Spirit -- then it cannot, and will not, change a human soul.

I cannot possibly agree with you more on this, betty boop!

Personally, I do not embrace the doctrine and tradition of mortals - whether Calvin, Arminius, Joseph Smith, the Pope, Billy Graham, etc. It simply doesn't matter at all to me whether the living Word of God (the indwelling Spirit and the Scriptures) has led me in a path which sounds like a bad intellectual pedigree to someone else.

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, [even] as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able [to bear it], neither yet now are ye able.

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas [there is] among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I [am] of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

Who then is Paul, and who [is] Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? - I Cor 3:1-5

Jeepers, I must have been fading fast last night - I truncated an important part of the passage. I Cor 3:1-5 continues at verse 6-7 as follows:

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

Taken altogether, the passage supports the view (which I believe you share) that it is the working of the Spirit and not the pedigree the doctrine that matters.

I also truncated my reply. I had intended to address this comment from post 112:

In short, truly it has been said: "The Word was made Flesh...." It seems to me this happened at the Creation (metaphorically speaking), just as it happened at the Incarnation, both events part of the historical world process. Or so it seems to me, FWIW.

It is not just a metaphor. One of the often overlooked testimonies of Scripture is that everything that was made, was made through Jesus:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. - John 1:1-3

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. - John 1:14

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by [his] Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of [his] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; - Hebrews 1:1-3

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. - 1 John 4:9

A believer can miss the diety of Christ if they are under the impression that His life began inside of Mary. To the contrary, Jesus was with the Father from the beginning and will be, to the end. (Revelation, John 6).

Thus the similarity you see between the creation and Christ's entering the world in the form of a man is quite real.

Thus the similarity you see between the creation and Christ's entering the world in the form of a man is quite real.

I have no doubt of this, Alamo-Girl! Both times -- the creation and the incarnation -- the Word -- the Logos, the Alpha and Omega -- was made flesh. My use of the word "metaphor" does not refer to the "process," but to the word "flesh." For it seems people do not think of that word as applying to such things as photons, electrons, and quarks -- which may be, if the QED theorists are correct, the "stuff" that God used to make a Universe -- IF indeed He did so by means of a primary universal vacuum field, through its "instrumental agency"(for lack of a better term), the ZPF.

All of this is highly speculative, of course. Yet to me, it seems an elegant "solution" to the problem of how everything in the created universe came forth out of an original, absolute nothing. The primary universal vacuum perhaps really was "nothing," or "empty," until it generated the zero point field, ZPF. (In the language of En Sof, God's "descent by chariot" into the "Heavenly Man.")

For the info of interested Lurkers, to the best of my understanding, quantum electrodynamics suggests that the ZPF, via its characteristic particle, the photon -- light in its particle form -- is a universal field that mediates the activity of photons interacting with the matter of the universe [by means of virtual particles that seemingly "pop in" out of nowhere, and then just as suddenly "pop out"]. Photons constantly, universally interact with two types of particles: electrons and quarks. From quarks we have all the baryons -- the constituents of the atomic nucleus. The atomic nucleus (strongly bound protons and neutrons [except in the case of hydrogen, which doesn't have a neutron] plus one or more electrons, gives rise to all the elements of the periodic table. The atom, of course, is the basic constituent of all matter, living and non-living. But only living matter is called "flesh."

Which suggests that evolution, therefore, is fundamental to the expression of God's purposeful design in 4D space-time. For the living beings were the last of God's creatures to appear on earth. But this idea of evolution is not the Darwinist conception of natural evolution, which basically states that creatures evolve based on the need to adapt to changes in the "outside," environmental conditions in order to survive and successfully reproduce.

There is another concept of evolution that is often called "emergence." Emergence essentially means a successive disclosure of what is implicit in (or "designed into") a natural system, living or non-living. Thus it is not a response to an "outside pull," but to an "inside push." Very crude analogies for emergence are the seed becoming flower, or the acorn becoming oak tree.

The point is: God wants flowers and oak trees. There is Purpose in the divine design....

Anyhoot, it appears that emergence depends on the successful communication of information. Indeed, for creatures displaying sufficient "complexity" (degrees of freedom), successful communication is what gives rise to life itself.

But this is a whole 'nother bear of a topic! So I'll leave off.... This will conclude my fevered speculation in regard to cosmic origins for now!!! FWIW

Thank you so much, Alamo-Girl, for your beautiful posts -- and for the valuable links to sources.

Thank you for your reply!

There's an analogy there, but contemplation of the world-process doesn't lead anyone to the incarnation because the world process is itself not a member of the trinity.

Indeed. I don't believe that was Pannenberg's objective, though. In reading his book, I am of the understanding that he is seeking a theology of nature and not a gospel via nature.

By my reading, he suggests that a new doctrine of the Trinity which emphasizes the role of The Word in creation (and continuance) would be helpful.

"Perhaps a renewed doctrine of the Trinity would combine the Logos doctrine of the ancient church with contemporary information theory and recognize the activity of the divine spirit in the self-transcendence of life and its evolution [or to borrow a term from science, its "emergence"]. Only a Trinitarian theology is able to meet effectively the emancipation of the concept of the world that Newton had in mind -- that is, the mechanical description of nature that is not only a theoretical construction but takes place in the actual processes of the world itself. A Christian theology of creation will be able to develop a description that does justice to this emancipation of the world process and at the same time removes its disassociation from its divine origin only by way of the theology of the Trinity, in a perspective of the history of salvation. In this way it will also cope with the critique of Leibnitz insofar as as Newton's idea of God was not commensurate with this task. However, a theology of nature must not go back behind Newton's thought on the presence of God with his creatures through space and time, if theology is to avoid the spell of a powerless dualism of spirit and matter."

The Word in creation is recorded in Scripture. Not surprisingly, science seems to agree with those passages: harmonics as the least common denominator of resonance in the universe, the zero point field. And also the sound waves in the cosmic background radiation at the moment photons decoupled and light went its way.

Or, if one prefers to emphasize Logos extended to "logic" - the unreasonable effectiveness of math, dimensionality, physical constants, etc.

None of these observations of nature constitute a Gospel message, but rather could be seen as physical evidence of the Scriptural message of the Trinity.

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Newton vs. The Clockwork Universe