Science and Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture with Isaac Newton
Christians, especially in the Reformed tradition, have often been cautious toward and even suspicious of natural theology. This approach to theology derives knowledge about God not primarily from revelation, but reasoned reflection on nature [1]. Many theologians hasten to highlight the limits of where reasoning from nature can take us with respect to knowing God.
Many Christians after Darwin, Freud, and Einstein have felt deep insecurities about the relationship between what science says and Scripture teaches. Paradigm shifts in scientific thought are often seen to threaten biblical teachings, or even undermine the very foundation of belief itself. While growing evidence shows that the social sciences have not buried God [2], the perception that the natural sciences have still lingers.
We conclude our emphasis month with the controversial relationship between science and Scripture. Specifically we will consider the curious case of Isaac Newton and examine aspects of his approach to reconciling science and Scripture. Exploring the views of past interpreters of Scripture, including Newton, can better equip the church for the complex challenges involved in biblical interpretation [3].
Making the Modern World
Some have described the period of approximately 1500-1700 A.D. as the advent of the modern world. It was an age of discovery, early colonization, the rise of nation states, ecclesiastical turmoil, and scientific progress. It was also absent of many intellectual distinctions common today. Differences between the philosopher and scientist were artificial, if valid at all. Influential intellectuals simultaneously discussed philosophy, theology, science, and politics [4].
Common also in this period were theories that accounted for planetary motion. Many of these were perceived to be inconsistent with traditional theological beliefs about how celestial bodies corresponded to Divine design. It is why Copernicus’s placement of the sun (not the earth) at the center of the solar system is sometimes described as a revolution.
Enter Newton (1642-1727), who published the Principia in 1687 [5]. Though Newton is best known for his laws of gravitation, his addendum to the Principia, the General Scholium and other writings, disclose extensive reflection about how revealed theology (truth from Scripture) and natural philosophy (‘scientific’ truth) relate [6].
New scientific explanations filled the space formerly dominated by Aristotelian metaphysics. Physical or mechanical descriptions of nature were perceived to threaten traditional understandings of humanity and biblical interpretation. Nature began to appear to have its own independence and integrity. Though this did not create atheism, in many ways it altered how the relationship between the Creator and creation came to be understood.
Newton didn’t believe in the self-sufficiency of nature. His work often moves between natural and supernatural explanations with ease. Some have argued that this did a disservice to God, putting Him in competition with science so that wherever science was seen to advance, God receded. As Allen and Springsted put it, “God was pictured more and more as the God of the Sabbath rest” [7]. However, scientific and philosophical arguments for God’s existence also abounded in this period.
Planetary Motion and Scriptural Interpretation
Many natural philosophers (scientists) were interested in how planetary motion related to scriptural teaching. Those who belonged to the Catholic Church experienced great difficulty since many theories appeared to undermine the church’s doctrine and authority. Newton, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as encumbered as he was a member of the Church of England, which had some measure of theological diversity [8].
Newton was similar to others in that he also wrestled with the tensions between science and Scripture, and potential means to accommodating both. Newton took seriously both Scripture and nature. In essence, Newton explained that Scripture’s descriptions of natural phenomena (e.g., the creation of the universe, the sun standing still in Joshua 10) were dealing with appearances to the common observer. The Bible describes such things as they appeared to a person observing them [9]. Natural philosophers dealt with absolute or actual quantities. Newton thus affirmed the literal truth of Scripture, as well as the legitimacy of new scientific theories because they referred to the same reality, but in different ways (relative versus absolute quantities).
Consider the sun standing still in Joshua. In Newton’s day it was becoming clear that the sun was fixed as the center of the solar system, and thus did not move. However, Scripture’s description was true in that those observing the sun in Joshua’s day did in fact see the sun standing still and also the day seemed to last longer. Such biblical descriptions were to be read in the plain, ordinary sense of language (literally), recognizing that it provides relative quantities, not absolute ones. Scientists and philosophers deal with the latter.
Method Considered
Newton’s “hermeneutics” are difficult to untangle for several reasons. First, many of his writings have only been published recently and weren’t available to scrutinize and clarify in his lifetime. Second, while Newton was unorthodox in reference to certain doctrines like the Trinity, he sounds traditional and orthodox (even devout) on others such as the historicity of the creation account, the flood, and the world as a well-ordered display of divine beauty, power, and goodness [10]. Finally, his hermeneutical approach seems somewhat familiar to what biblical scholars often call “phenomenal” or “phenomological” language, though not entirely.
The distinction between appearance and reality (relative quantities versus absolute ones) can easily lead in several different philosophical directions [11]. For the biblical interpreter, the issue hinges on how we define ‘literal.’ Most take this to mean something should be understood in the normal or plain sense of language (“I am wearing a red coat”), as opposed to figurative (“The red coats [British] fought the Americans”). This distinction isn’t quite what Newton has in mind when he deals with Scripture and natural or celestial bodies. He contends that Scripture and nature have their own unique discourse to describe the same things, but to different degrees [12]. However, Newton doesn’t drive a wedge between the two in quite the same way that modern scientific thought does, nor does he characterize these distinctions as ‘literal’ versus ‘figurative.’
Janiak explains that Newton’s contribution to his discipline was how to reconcile natural knowledge with scriptural exegesis, which was by showing that ordinary “people think of space, time, and motion differently than astronomers and philosophers do” [13]. Of course, such a concession raises questions as to which parts of Scripture one considers as ordinary appearance versus real description.
How would this method apply to descriptions of God as an incorporeal being, though He is said to have hands, eyes, and ears? And what of miracles like the resurrection? Resurrections aren’t natural phenomena, but Jesus was said to be bodily resurrected. Where would a Newtonian hermeneutic, fully applied, take us?
Insight for Evangelical, Biblical Interpretation
Newton deserves attention due to his serious attempts to tackle the thorny questions surrounding the contemporary intersection of philosophy, theology, science, and biblical exegesis. His perspective points to two key issues that must be considered in biblical interpretation.
Inerrancy and Interpretation: For conservative evangelicals, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) is the touchstone for reflection on the doctrine of revelation and Scripture. CSBI comments on some of the issues in Newton’s thought, noting that infallibility and inerrancy aren’t limited to spiritual or salvific themes, but have import for historical and scientific truth (Article XIII). Additionally, sound biblical interpretation must be sensitive to the unique features of various literary forms or genre (Article XVIII).
Evangelical interpretation cannot drive a strict wedge between spiritual truth and historical event. CBSI also notes that Scriptural inerrancy does not imply that it is “absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good it claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.” Though I don’t think it’s useful (or even accurate) to count Newton as an inerrantist in modern evangelical terms, CBSI’s language about modern standards and authorial intent seems to overlap with his concerns about the way scriptural language is intended to describe certain natural phenomena.
The Limits of Accomodationist Frameworks: There has been a long tradition of attempts to accommodate scriptural truth and scientific theory. Even more fundamentally, influential figures such as Augustine and Calvin both discussed God’s accommodation of Himself to human categories and language so that we might be able to understand Him, much as a parent lisps words to a small infant. But this doesn’t imply that every passage which seems to conflict with modern scientific thought can be automatically seen as imbued with figurative language, mere “ordinary appearances,” or other modes of accommodation.
Anyone who would attempt to interpret Scripture must acknowledge their presuppositions about the nature and limits of knowledge, language, and the influence of human motives. On this latter point, we observe in Newton’s day and even today that awareness of the ecclesial community in which one operates has a powerful influence on the range of views that an interpreter is likely to accept. So we understand that the presuppositions and motivations of interpreters are just as important as any other factor in understanding Scripture.
Though Newtonian physics would dominate for over two centuries, Einstein’s theory of relativity was seen to expose a flaw in his theory. However, Newton’s views still characterize and undergird much of how we understand and engage our world. Still, his religious views provide an interesting case study for how scientific discourse and scriptural truth may relate, even if his work is found wanting.
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[1] Proofs for God’s existence, especially the cosmological argument and teleological arguments, fit in this lane.
[2] See Berger and Stark for different, though overlapping conclusions about the vibrancy of religious faith even in late modernity.
[3] Instrumental to my reading of Newton and thus period has been Andrew Janiak, an historian and philosopher of science, who has recently published Newton (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2015). Janiak holds an endowed chair in this field at Duke University. His book appears in the Blackwell Great Minds Series. Special thanks to Dr. Janiak for the complimentary review copy of his erudite book.
[4] Even Descartes, who is most often associated with epistemology (“I think, therefore I am”), wrote significantly about planetary motion.
[5] The full title of the Principia is Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica.
[6] Just as significant to these discussions is the letter that Newton wrote in reply to Thomas Burnet’s 1681 work The Sacred Theory of the Earth.
[7] Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 125.
[8] Some notable Anglicans, Newton included, were anti-Trinitarian in their views.
[9] Andrew Janiak, “The Book of Nature, the book of Scripture,” The New Atlantis (Winter 2015): 95-103.
[10] Leroy Forlines briefly discusses Newton’s views and their import for Christian thought in The Quest for Truth, and also in his forthcoming secularism book.
[11] Here I am chiefly thinking about phenomenology, or the philosophical study of the structures of consciousness and experience, which would have a bearing on what we mean by appearances.
[12] Here Newton’s ideas are reminiscent of the late Stephen Jay Gould, famous for his article in which he advanced the concept of “Nonoverlapping magisteria” (NOMA). NOMA is essentially a way of conveying how science and religion have their own unique discourse because they represent different types of inquiry. For science it is the realm of fact, and religion the domain of values. This view was originally advanced in a magazine article, and later in his book Rocks of Ages (2002).
[13] Janiak, Newton, 160.
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