Design Argument in Scientific Discourse: Historical-Theological Perspective From the Seventeenth Century, The

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 1998 by Hutchison, John C

Boyle was an extremely theological scientist and did not have serious weaknesses in his theology, as did his successor Isaac Newton. He continued to plant seeds, however, that bore fruit in the generation to follow him. The strong emphasis on rationalism that Boyle promoted, which was later reinforced by European rationalism and skepticism, ultimately placed science in judgment over the truth of Scripture. Though Boyle did not negate Biblical authority, the science he promoted ultimately led others to do so.

Boyle, like Bacon, saw the Christian experience as man's commitment to God's moral law. Although he did not write much in this area, he did not seem to embrace the orthodox doctrines of sin and salvation. Appealing rather to the more rational system of God's laws and moral duty, he believed it possible for any man, if he chose, to live a Christian life.

III. ISAAC NEWTON

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) followed the scientific leadership of Bacon and Boyle and brought the seventeenth-century scientific revolution to its climax. Their cumulative system of scientific thinking, which was grounded in the philosophical thought of Locke's natural religion, has since dominated western thought. Newton, who was born in England and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, was a mathematician and physicist. He was elected to a teaching fellowship at Trinity but ignored the established curriculum and pursued his own interests in mathematics and the sciences. Among his most notable accomplishments are the development of calculus in mathematics, the proof of the heterogeneity of light in optics, and in mechanics his three laws of motion, from which he derived the law of universal gravitation.

1. The relationship of science to religion. Greatly influenced by Bacon, Boyle and other scientists before him, Newton also saw natural philosophy as a tool to dominate and control nature. The main business of science was the deduction of causes from effects until one revealed the ultimate cause of creation. Bringing his own strengths to this endeavor, Newton combined the experimentation and empiricism of Bacon with mathematical theory. Like the other virtuosi he considered the study of science as a means of revealing truth about God and hence approached it with religious fervor:

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.... He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done.... We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; 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 everywhere, 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.32