Descartes died when
Newton was eight years old, but his philosophies were becoming
immensely fashionable as Newton entered university and extended his
reading beyond the curriculum. Because it contained material
referring to his disputed theories of divine function in a
mechanical universe, Descartes's most famous book, Discourse on the
Method (published in 1637), was unpopular with the ecclesiastical
authorities, but his theories were discussed openly in the more
liberal universities of Europe and began to spread.
As Descartes's
theories of dualism became known, three other philosophers were
helping to create the intellectual scene to which Newton would add
his own unique ideas. So, by the middle of the seventeenth
century, as Newton was preparing to enter the academic world,
natural philosophy was in a state of flux. The old notions of
Aristotle still provided the traditional backbone of university
study in the areas of logic, astronomy and natural philosophy, but
this was primarily because of an old school of influential
academics. Gradually, radical ideas from the Continent were eroding
the Greek philosopher's supreme position. According to one
historian of science, 'From being a realm of substances in
qualitative and teleological relations, the world of nature had
definitely become a realm of bodies moving mechanically in space
and time.'
It was within this
climate of change that Newton entered university in 1661 and took
the first steps towards finding his own path through the shifting
philosophies of the time and establishing his own views. His
religious beliefs were immersed in Arianism. This was the
doctine of Arius which was pronounced heretical at the Council of
Nicea. Arius asserted that Christ was not of one substance,
but a creature raised by God to the dignity of Son of
God.
By the early years
of the eighteenth century Newton began to formulate a link between
aspects of Arianism and the means by which gravity operates. During
the early 1700s he had begun a fragmentary passage in which he
explored the nature of Christ's body and form before and after his
earthly incarnation.
He had after his
resurrection such a body as he had before his incarnation. And
therefore as his [natural] mortal body by the resurrection became
an immortal body, so his immortal body by the incarnation became a
mortal one. And it is easy to believe the one as the
other.
According to Arian
doctrine, Christ stood somewhere between God and man in the
universal hierarchy. Jesus was immortal and 'the first created',
but theological notions were hazy when it came to Christ's form.
Was he a spiritual being who could take on the mantle of physical
existence, or was he material? As Newton entered the final years of
his life, he began to accept the idea that Christ possessed a
'spiritual body'. Writing sometime during the late 1710s to early
1720s, he declared:
And he who by his
resurrection has changed his mortal flesh into immortal spiritual
body might by his incarnation change his immortal spiritual body
into a body of flesh. For whereas the Father is the invisible God
whom no eye hath seen nor can see and therefore is totally
incorporeal, the Son before his incarnation and the Holy Spirit
have appeared in visible shapes upon several occasions and
therefore have spiritual bodies.
Elsewhere he stated
repeatedly that 'God does nothing by himself which he can do by
another.' So, he had concluded, God does not himself control
directly the gravitational forces that keep the planets in motion,
nor does he provide directly the medium via which universal
gravitation operates. Instead, the incorporeal ether which
facilitates the phenomenon of gravitation (and perhaps other
forces) is actually the body or spiritual form of Jesus
Christ.
Of course Newton had
no means of proving this hypothesis - it was principally a faith-
based concept: a notion derived from his Arian convictions - but it
described neatly the way in which God could preside over his
creation without dirtying his hands by direct contact with the
physical world. Christ was a mediator for all action in the
universe, the intermediary via which the system of the universe was
maintained, God's 'commander- in-chief', his viceroy.
To clarify his
thoughts on the subject, sometime around 1720 Newton wrote what he
perceived as a personal credo, a form of amalgamation of science
and religion - a guide, perhaps, for future explorers. This
included a clear picture of the role he saw for Christ in the
universal scheme of things - not least the function of the
spiritual body of Jesus as the medium by which celestial mechanics
was maintained. 'Jesus was beloved of God before the foundation of
the world,' he wrote, 'and had glory with the father before the
world began and was the principle of the creation . . . the
agent by whom God created all things in this
world.''
To summarise, the
spiritual body of Jesus, the first created, was the facilitator for
the creation of the physical universe, provided the means via which
the cosmos continued to function mechanically, and acted as a
medium via which forces acted at a distance without any visible,
tangible, measurable mechanism.
This was a concept
that Newton refined and distilled during his final years. Although
no means of proof could be elucidated, and even he had doubts at
times about the details of this system, it was the fullest
explanation of gravitation he could arrive at. If it did nothing
else, it acted as a prop - it was a comforting model that could be
neither proved or disproved but could serve to fill one of
the gaps in a model of the universe that had been so successful in
every practical and empirical sense.
