Credo Izaaka Newtona: chrześcijaństwo ireniczne

Abstract

The place of God in. Newton’s mechanics, in the Philosophiae na turalis principia mathematica has been widely discussed in recent literature. God was to Newton the One who caused gravitation and the One who improved – whenever it was necassary – the „machina coelestis”. However, there is no agreement between the scholars as far as Newton’s belief. Some of them, like D. Breiwster held that he had been an Anglican, others like H. McLachflan held that he had been English Arian who had denied te Deity of Christ, the dogma of the Trinity and some like F. E. Manueil in his The Religion of Issac Newton held that he had been an anti-Trinitarian who had criticized Arians, Socinians and Unitarians and then in his latest A Portrait of Isaac Newton he regarded him a Unitarian, and others, like R. S. Westfall in has Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England held that he had been an anti-Trinitarian and nearly a Deist and in his lateat Never at Resit. A Biography of Isaac Newton he stated that Newton had been an Arian who had denied the Deity of Christ and the dogma of the Trinity. The Authoress of this article disagrees with scholars mentioned above and she endeavours to prove that most probably Newton was in agreement with orthodoxy as far as the Deity of Christ and the Trinity was concerned. In Newton's opinion – it is very likely – Christ was God and as God He was identical with God the Father, but as Person: God and Man simultaneously He was different than God the Father (the same was with the Holy Spirit). There was the „monarchy” of God the Father, Who was the source of their (i.e. Christ’s and Holy Ghost’s) beings as Persons and their unity. Newton was not original in that, for he probably followed the doctrine of the Trinity as it had been expressed by the Fathers of the Church from Cappadoccia including Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus. The main purpose of Newton’s criticism of the Comma Joanne um was not to deny the dogma of the Trinity (like was in Fausto Sozaini’s case), but to distinguish God the Father from Christ as Persons and to expurgate the text of the Scripture, like Father Simon, the best biblical scholar of that time, did. Newton’s idea of irenism, his fundamental religious idea, included the dogma of the Trinity, but the choice between the Greek doctrine of the Trinity as it had been expressed by St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzus and others and the Latin one as it had been expressed by St. Augusitine was (according to Newton) to be made by Christians themselves, not by Churches.