Space God: Rejudging a Debate between More, Newton, and Einstein

By JD Lyonhart and Douglas Hedley

Henry More had an odd idea. Thinking about space, he realized it was invisible, for we see things in space but not space itself. It's also immaterial, for matter exists in space but space is not itself material--try to grab it and it slips through your fingers. Space was also infinite and transcendent yet nonetheless omnipresent, for we cannot go anywhere except in and through space. But this was exactly how More saw God; God is invisible, immaterial, infinite, and transcendent, yet also omnipresent above, beyond, and within us. If God was somehow linked to space, he could be truly present while remaining immaterial, upholding the creator-creature distinction. He'd be near to us but would not be identical with us, just as space is distinct from the objects occupying it while remaining intimately close to those objects. What if space was, in some sense, divine?
Odder still, Newton soon erected his new physics upon More's idea. Indeed, there's real evidence that the modern scientific world was unwittingly grounded upon this theistic metaphysic. Of course, modern physics shed these underpinnings in the nineteenth century, and was itself relativized by Einstein in the twentieth. Yet this book seeks to reappraise More's odd idea. Is divine space theologically orthodox? Can it provide a new argument for the existence of God? And does it have any philosophical merit for us post-Einstein--a Space God for a Space Age?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Oct 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666757064

JD Lyonhart

J D Lyonhart is an assistant professor of Theology and Philosophy at Lincoln Christian University and a Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism. jdlyonhart.com

Book preview

Introduction

Henry More had an odd idea. And I like to imagine him having it while strolling through seventeenth-century Cambridge (perhaps at dawn) with horse-drawn carriages plowing by and wind being channeled toward him through ancient, stone alley walls. Around him cooks, cobblers, carpenters, students, soldiers, prostitutes, professors, butchers, and fisherman all travel through time and space to get from A to B, and back again. Pushing past the colorful characters and ripe aromas of the town market, More suddenly finds himself drenched in shadow, with King’s Chapel blocking sunny rays that have sprinted through millions of empty miles to reach him. Perhaps it was on a morning such as this, while walking through Cambridge, that More began to think about the very space he was walking through.

More pondered the invisible nature of the space through which we all walk upon this earth, and through which the earth itself is rolling. He realized that we can see things in and through space but we cannot see space itself. We can see the knife with which the butcher chops up and down, but not the space in which he chops. We witness the horse buck its rider but no man has witnessed the space in and through which the rider is bucked. Space encompasses everywhere that is seen, and yet itself remains unseen, hidden, veiled. The visible is housed by the invisible.

Similarly, More also realized that space is immaterial. Matter exists in space but space is not itself material. Indeed, space slips through our fingers if we try to reach out and grasp it like a material object. Matter competes for location—one material atom displaces another; a horse carriage displaces an unlucky pedestrian. Yet because space is not material it does not compete with other material objects for room, and so can allow them to exist within it in the same location. The material is housed by the immaterial.

More also realized that space must be infinite. For (as Lucretius argued) if there is a wall at the end of space, what would happen if one threw a javelin over that wall? Must there not be space on the other side as well? And must not the wall itself exist within space, such that the thing it’s supposed to hedge in cannot be hedged at all? Thus, there can be no finite limit to the universe, and so space is seemingly infinite. It just keeps on going.

Space must also be absolute, More reasoned. For imagine that someone shoots an arrow straight up in the air. Does the arrow go straight, or does it curve along with the rotation of the earth? If you were the one who shot the arrow, and you looked directly up it would seem to go straight, of course. But what do you know! You’re foolish enough to stand directly under a soon-to-be falling arrow! While it may seem to go straight from your ground perspective, we know that the earth is actually spinning, and so the arrow should also be curving along with it. So which one is it—does the arrow curve or does it go straight? More argues that without an absolute space in which the arrow is objectively located, there is no real answer to this question, and we are left with only relative realities; one reality where the arrow curves, and one where it goes straight, with no underlying thing-in-itself that reconciles the two perspectives. Thus, for More, space must be absolute, or else all of reality is relative.

Moreover, More understood that space is omnipresent. For we cannot go anywhere except in and through space. Where can we go to hide from space itself? Where can we flee from its presence? If we go up to the heavens, it is there. If we make our bed in the depths, it is there. If we rise on the wings of the dawn, or settle on the far side of the sea, even there space clutches and contains and permeates us. Space is the one thing that remains wherever we go, and the very thing that allows us to go anywhere at all. Space is omnipresent.

In this omnipresent sense, space is deeply immanent and near. Space is closer to us than we are to ourselves—it is equally present with and within every piece of us. Our blood pulses through the open and caverned spaces of our heart, and even the occupied bits of our body are themselves occupying space.

And yet, despite this deep immanence, space still remains transcendent. Space exists all around us, yet seems to transcend matter. Space is not physical or material in the way that other things are—it cannot be grasped or controlled or experimented upon. Space does not seem to be part of God’s material creation but is rather that in which material creation exists. Thus, space successfully balances immanence with transcendence. Space is omnipresent down here with us, and yet, unlike anything else in the created order, remains simultaneously invisible, immaterial, absolute, and infinite. Angels might meet one or two of those criteria, but only space and God meet them all.

Perhaps stopping with a gasp and blocking foot traffic on the newly built Clare Bridge, More realized that he was thinking about space in the exact same way he thought about God. God is invisible. God is immaterial. God is infinite, absolute, and transcendent, while remaining immanent and omnipresent. All in all, More came up with nearly twenty descriptions of space that also applied to the divine. So what if space is, in some sense, divine?

And if God is somehow linked to space, this would allow God to be truly present while remaining immaterial, thus upholding the Creator-creature distinction. God would be deeply related to us but would not be identical with us, just as space is distinct from the objects occupying it while remaining deeply present and related to those objects. Space is not part of creation but that which houses creation; it is metaphysical, not physical. This would allow God to be genuinely near, immanent, and omnipresent, while still avoiding the pantheism of Spinoza.

This was More’s odd idea. More came up with the modern version of what is called divine space (because Moronic space didn’t have quite the right tone). It is arguably the boldest, most original, and influential theory put forward by any of the Cambridge Platonists.

Yet divine space might have remained just an eccentric idea had it not taken the fancy of none other than fellow Cambridge don Isaac Newton. Newton baked this notion of absolute, divine space into the very foundations of modern science, quietly wedding physics and metaphysics. For Newton, the motions and locations of matter are real, objective, and primary (in a proto-Lockean sense) because they occur within the absolute and unchanging framework of divine space. Indeed, there is a real genealogical case to be made that the solidity of the modern scientific world picture may have been unwittingly grounded upon a theistic metaphysic.

However, these theological foundations for modern physics were shorn off during the nineteenth century, with modern physics itself soon relativized by Einstein in the twentieth. Divine space ceased to provide any constructive fodder for thought, becoming a closed matter—the interest of historians alone. The debate seemed judged and settled long ago, and while some mined it for historical precedent, no one considered overturning the precedent itself.

However, some recent philosophers—such as Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and John Lucas—have forcefully argued that an absolute, or at least metaphysical, space and time remain consistent with the observations of relativity.

¹

Yet while many have allowed this possible return of absolutes to reshape their theology and philosophy of time, few seem to have realized its potential for rethinking God’s relation to space.

²

A renewed defence of More’s theory of divine space would thus stand at the perfect juncture, between a radical new opening and few having noticed it is open. While Einstein might have seemed to drive the final nail in the coffin, it is possible that More and Newton might rise from the grave, demanding a fresh hearing in a literal democracy of the dead. This book thus seeks to rejudge this seemingly settled debate, asking if divine space might still have any philosophical or theological merit in the twenty-first century—a Space God for a space age?

Precisely because his successors (e.g., Newton, Clarke) were so influential, More’s own arguments for divine space have often been lost in the discussion. While numerous works have demonstrated the historical relevance of Morean space—such as Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (1923),

³

Jammer’s Concepts of Space (1954),

⁴

Koyre’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957),

⁵

or Grant’s Much Ado about Nothing (1981)

⁶

—these include it as only one chapter or section en route to a much broader end. This is indicative of a general trend of treating More like a historical stepping stone to someone else (e.g., Baker’s Henry More and Kant [1937], Copenhaver’s Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and Their Predecessors [1980], Power’s Henry More and Isaac Newton on Absolute Space [1970]). Indeed, intensive study of Morean space in and of itself is far less common, and certainly no recent work has given it consideration as an ongoing philosophical option.

⁷

Jasper Reid’s The Metaphysics of Henry More (2012)

⁸

would be the closest and most recent contender, yet it focuses on the history of More’s metaphysics in general, with divine space admittedly constituting a primary piece of that metaphysics while still not being the sole purpose of the study.

⁹

A logical runner up would be Roberto Bondi’s L’onnipresenza di Dio: Saggio su Henry More (2001), which is a systematic study on omnipresence in More. However, Bondi focuses on the divine presence in the spirit of nature, rather than in space. David Leech’s recent The Hammer of the Cartesians (2013)

¹⁰

could be a final contender, however, only one chapter is dedicated solely to space, and the broader narrative is focused more on the historical genealogy of atheism than on engaging philosophically with Morean space itself. Thus, a project that evaluates More qua More—not merely as a historical stepping-stone but as a philosopher of space in his own right—could be a valuable addition to the field.

As such, this project will provide a reappraisal of Henry More’s theory of divine space, concluding that it still has contemporary relevance in theology and philosophy of religion today. The first three chapters will exegete anew More’s writings on space, beginning with his early years and working our way up to his more mature tomes. This is necessary to give the reader a systematic grasp of More’s thoughts on space, while also adding a few fresh nuances to the traditional narrative.

The final four chapters will then build upon this historical foundation, pivoting from description to construction in order to provide a renewed philosophical and theological defence of divine space. I will here make a number of radical proposals. Chapter 4 will outline the ways in which the physical observations of relativity can be accepted without undermining the metaphysical possibility of divine space, suggesting that Einstein may not have settled the debate after all. Chapter 5 will buttress More’s argument against relative space and motion, crafting a win-win scenario in favor of a metaphysical space. Chapter 6 will then reappraise More’s argument for the spatiality of thought, expanding it by adding a sort of neo-ontological argument, wherein God is inherent in our notion of space, and space is inherent in thought itself. This will essentially constitute a new argument for the existence of God. Chapter 7 will then defend divine space from the charge of pantheism, arguing that divine space upholds the Creator-creature distinction while also allowing God’s omnipresence to be more literal, immanent, relational, and near than previous iterations of classical theism have allowed. The weight of these cumulative arguments will ultimately come together to provide a philosophically coherent and substantial case for the contemporary merit of divine space.

I do not know whether More is correct. His idea is odd indeed, and, depending on the day, I fluctuate between thinking it is enjoyably brilliant and enjoyably insane. While I attempt to argue in this book as passionately as I can on behalf of a long dead man and his long forgotten idea, I do so not necessarily in hopes of convincing others (for I am not even sure I am convinced myself) but in hopes of arousing greater minds than my own to the task of evaluating this wonderfully whacky idea. If a space is opened for such a discussion, I will consider this a success.

1

. Craig, Time and Eternity,

29

–

76

; God, Time, and Eternity,

143

–

236

; Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity. For Lucas, see Treatise on Time and Space; Space, Time, and Causality; The Future. For Lucas’ joint effort with physicist Peter Hodgson, see Spacetime and Electromagnetism. See also Swinburne, Space and Time; Tensed Facts,

117

–

30

; God and Time,

204

–

22

.

2

. Indeed, most of the works cited above focus primarily on time. In fact, Craig actively rejects the possibilities for divine space, for while the divine mind would have processed thoughts temporally prior to creation there would be no such equivalent for space until creation began. Craig, Metaphysics, 191

–

92

. Swinburne is also more open to absolute time than space, though his justification for this seems to be oddly circular, a fact that he himself points out. Swinburne, Space and Time,

58

–

59

. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Robert Oakes is open to a divine space, yet his article fails to capitalize on how this could be supported by recent work in the philosophy of science, except for one vague reference to a website that claims to provide an alternative to the big bang. Oakes, Divine Omnipresence and Maximal Immanence,

176

.

3

. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations,

127

–

43

.

4

. Jammer, Concepts of Space,

40

–

52

.

5

. Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe,

110

–

54

.

6

. Grant, Much Ado about Nothing,

221

–

58

.

7

. An anecdote illustrates the point: I mentioned to Jasper Reid that I was interested in More’s theory of divine space at the Vitalism in Early Modern Philosophy Conference (Emmanuel College, Cambridge, March

29

–

30

,

2019

). He replied that he was as well (indeed, he was arguably the leading scholar on the subject). I then asked if he was interested in it for historical reasons or as an ongoing philosophical prospect, to which he retorted: For historical reasons, of course!

8

. See also Reid’s article The Evolution of Henry More’s Theory of Divine Absolute Space,

79

–

102

.

9

. Nonetheless, the sheer breadth and depth of Reid’s work might make it reasonable for someone to consider it a possible challenger to the comprehensiveness of our study. Yet even if such a challenger were admitted, the upcoming sections will make clear the crucial way in which our work departs from Reid, thus avoiding any redundancy. More specifically, we will argue that Reid is wrong about the lateness of More’s position on divine space, suggesting that by the appendix of the Antidote—or even earlier—More is already beginning to lean towards this position. This is useful not only for establishing the uniqueness of our historical chronology, but for bolstering our later philosophical arguments, for we will contend in chapter

7

that divine space is not necessarily opposed to holenmerism per se. If More was leaning toward divine space earlier than Reid claims, then he may have held to it at the same time as he held to his earlier holenmerism, providing an interesting historical basis for our later philosophical argument in chapter

6

.

10

. Leech, Hammer of the Cartesians (pre-release edition),

100

–

118

.

Part I

Description

The next three chapters will describe the historical development and contours of More’s doctrine of divine space, providing one of the most sustained treatments of this subject to date.

¹¹

While the primary goal is to interpret More’s writings on the nature of God and space in order to lay the groundwork for our later philosophical and theological arguments, in the process I will also establish a unique chronology for More’s developments on space, a chronology that I have labelled a critical continuity. In the 1980s Alan Gabbey propounded a popular theory that More’s later works lacked creative philosophical enquiry or anything genuinely novel, merely building on his earlier insights.

¹²

More’s views on space—among other matters—are seen as essentially consistent throughout his linear career. However, Jasper Reid has recently attacked this position, arguing—rather brilliantly—that More could not begin to endorse or even formulate divine space until much later in his life, once he had rejected holenmerism¹³ and re-ontologized Hyle:

More did not endorse such a theory in his earlier works, . . . it was actually impossible for him to do so, on account of his commitment to a pair of principles which were wholly incompatible with any theory of divine absolute space. First, in his earlier works, More did not believe that space was real. Second, despite occasional appearances to the contrary, he did not believe that God was extended. . . . More did not—indeed, he could not—endorse any such doctrine in his earlier works. . . . More did not firmly give up holenmerianism, and decide that spirits could be ascribed the same kind of extension that was supposed to belong to space—understood in terms of penetrable and inseparable notional parts outside parts—until after

1655

. He did not firmly give up his identification between space and Hyle, and decide that the former could be ascribed a degree of reality comparable to that which belonged to God, until after

1662

. Only once he had changed his mind on both of these two points was it finally possible for More to formulate the theory of divine absolute space with which his name is so closely associated.

¹⁴

Thus, if Gabbey presents a view of More’s evolution that is one of naïve continuity between More’s earlier and later thought, then Reid presents a view of critical discontinuity, where More’s later view of space is qualitatively distinct from his earlier view. Now, while Reid is mostly correct in the particulars—and correct that More’s views on holenmerism and Hyle shifted—the relevance of Reid’s thesis for More’s evolution on space is overstated. More’s essential view of divine space was not impossible prior to his shift on holenmerism and Hyle, rather, hints of it were slipping into More’s writings from the very beginning. Hence, the position I will develop in our exegesis of More is somewhere between the two traditional approaches, in what I will refer to as a critical continuity. A continuity in which the critical shifts in More on holenmerism and other topics is appreciated (à la Reid), while also affirming the slowly germinating seeds of divine space that are foreshadowed even in More’s earliest works. Thus, if Gabbey presents a naïve continuity and Reid a critical discontinuity, I will here present a critical continuity.

While historians and Cambridge Platonist scholars will likely find these next three historical and descriptive chapters to be of interest, those excited more about the constructive philosophical and theological project might wish to skim (or even skip) these chapters in order to more quickly arrive at chapters 4 through 7.

11

. I am deeply indebted to Christian Hengstermann for his guidance and edits on Part I, as well as his invaluable work in the field in general, including his recent volume, Origenism and Christian Platonism in Henry More.

12

. Gabbey, Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata,

231

.

13.

Holenmerism is a term for the traditional Christian belief that God is wholly present in all of space, rather than divided up into it piece by piece. This will be further defined and elaborated upon later on.

14

. Reid, Evolution,

80

,

102

.

chapter 1

The Early Years (1614–47)

The author of divine space was born into the particular place of Grantham, Lincolnshire, to a gentry family in the year 1614. His father was apparently a highly involved and present parent who instilled in Henry an early love of learning and divine morality.

¹⁵

However, More’s inherited love of learning was a double-edge sword for his family. At the age of fourteen, his Calvinist parents sent him to Eton for the perfecting of the Greek and Latin tongue,

¹⁶

but God had other plans. No sooner had Henry arrived than he began to wrestle with the Calvinist emphasis on divine will, struggling with a God who seemed to arbitrarily will some to heaven and others to hell.

¹⁷

More writes:

I immediately went to AEton School. . . . But neither there, nor yet any where else, could I ever swallow down that hard Doctrine concerning Fate. . . . I did . . . very stoutly, and earnestly for my Years, dispute against this Fate or Calvinistick Predestination, as it is usually call’d: And that my Uncle, when he came to know it, chid me severely; adding menaces withall of Correction, and a Rod for my immature Forwardness in Philosophizing concerning such Matters. . . .

¹⁸

More was thus punished in this life for asking about punishment in the next. At times, he would even walk around the school grounds debating God’s existence, quoting to himself the verses of Claudian:

Oft hath my anxious Mind divided stood;Whether the Gods did mind this lower World;Or whether no such Ruler (Wise and Good)We had; and all things here by Chance were hurl’d.

¹⁹

Yet while More intellectually questioned if this lower World had been abandoned by an absent God, he could not long sustain such atheism in practice, for he had an unusually overwhelming sense of the divine presence imposed upon him by Nature:

Yet that exceeding hail and entire Sense of GOD, which Nature her self had planted deeply in me, very easily silenced all such flight and Poetical Dubitations as these. Yea even in my first Childhood, an inward Sense of the Divine Presence was so strong upon my Mind; that I did then believe, there could no Deed, Word, or Thought be hidden from him: Nor was I by any others that were older than my self, to be otherwise persuaded.

²⁰

More’s engagement with the divine was thus couched in terms of presence from his earliest childhood, his sense of which was strong enough to redirect his doubts away from God himself and onto the Calvinist version of him. Of course, at the time this was not necessarily a spatial or even externalized presence,

²¹

yet it nonetheless shows the germ of More’s preoccupation with the divine presence as a key foundation and premise of his faith.

Arriving at Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1631, More quickly set about his studies with a lust for learning, later reflecting that a "mighty and almost immoderate Thirst after Knowledge possess’d me throughout. . . ."

²²

More’s tutor once asked why he was so studious, to which More responded:

I answered briefly, and that from my very Heart; That I may know. But, young Man, What is the Reason, saith he again, that you so earnestly desire to know Things? To which I instantly return’d: I desire, I say, so earnestly to know, That I may know.

²³

Immersing himself Head and Ears in the Study of Philosophy, More read Aristotle, Cardan, and Scaliger, among others. Yet their conclusions seemed to him either false, uncertain, or trivial, so much so that he felt he had plainly lost my time in the Reading of such Authors. Those four long years of education left him with nothing but confusion, longing, and mere scepticism,

²⁴

reflected in a poem he wrote in 1635,

²⁵

fittingly titled Aporia:

Nor whence, nor who I am, poor Wretch! know I:

Nor yet, O Madness! Whither I must goe:But in Grief’s crooked Claws fast held I lie;And live, I think, by force tugg’d to and fro.

Asleep or wake all one. O Father Jove,

‘Tis brave, we Mortals live in Clouds like thee.

Lies, Night-dreams, empty Toys, Fear, fatal Love,

This is my Life: I nothing else do see.

²⁶

Having learned nothing about whence he came, nor who he was, or where he was destined to goe, More is left in a true aporia and confusion regarding the fundamental questions of himself in relation to the God he believed in. One can see a Luther-like spirit in the young More, struggling with his training and his demons. But while Luther turned to the book of Romans, More turned to the books of Plato.

²⁷

Disillusioned by the disappointment of his studies, More

seriously at last begin to think with my self; whether the Knowledge of things was really that Supreme Felicity of Man; or something Greater and more Divine was. Or, supposing it to be so, whether it was to be acquired by such an eagerness and intentnest in the reading of authors, and contemplating of things—or by the purgation of the mind from all sorts of vices whatsoever.

²⁸

This awakening was grounded in and goaded on by More’s readings, which are listed in the biography of More by his contemporary Robert Ward. They include the

Theologia Germanica, . . . Platonick Writers, Marsilius Ficinus, Plotinus himself, Mercurius Trismegistus; and the Mystical Divines; among whom there was frequent mention made of the Purification of the Soul, and of the Purgative Course that is previous to the Illuminative; as if the Person that expected to have his Mind illuminated of God, was to endeavour after the Highest Purity.

²⁹

In contrast to a Calvinist God whom one is passive before, More encountered in the Platonick writers a chain of being that one can actively rise up through purification and holiness, culminating in "Union with this Divine and Celestial Principle. . . ."

³⁰

Yet this was not a moralistic Pelagianism

³¹

but rather a deeply mystical union with God, involving not the absolutizing of the human will but rather the negation of it in surrender to the divine will. More began to utter "the most fervent Prayers breathing often unto God, that he would be pleas’d throughly to set me free from the dark Chains, and this so sordid Captivity of my own Will."

³²

That former insatiable Desire and Thirst after "Knowledge from his school days was soon wholly almost extinguish’d within him, replaced by a longing to ascend to union with the divine, and—perhaps in contrast to his anxiety over whether he’d been chosen to be in God’s elect—a greater Assurance than ever I could have expected. . . ."

³³

What’s more, his former melancholy soon turned to joy, an episode inspiring another stanza titled Euporia (i.e., the good path) in 1639

³⁴

in response to his earlier poem Aporia (i.e., no path):

I come from Heav’n; am an immortal Ray Of God;

O

Joy! and back to God shall goe.And here sweet Love on’s Wings me up doth stay.

I Live, I’m sure; and joy this Life to know.Night and vain Dreams be gone: Father of Lights,

We live, as Thou, clad with Eternal Day.Faith, Wisdom, Love fix’d Joy, free winged Might,

This is true Life: All else Death and Decay.

³⁵

In the former poem, Aporia, he did not know where he came from, who he was, or where he was destined to end up. But now he knows he came from Heav’n, he is an immortal Ray, and back to God he "shall goe. Whereas before he thinks he is tugged to and fro, now he is sure of the joy of Life. Each joyful line in Euporia exactly mirrors and fulfills the sorrow of the adjacent line in Aporia," showing that More composed the former with the latter sitting in front of him.

³⁶

The second poem reflects this shift in his life from 1635 to 1639, while showing how deeply indebted this shift was to his newfound Neoplatonism: he comes from heaven, reflecting the pre-existence of souls; the emphasis on the Platonic imagery of Wings and winged; the divine light emanating out (Father of Lights, Eternal Day, we are a Ray of God). His reading of the Platonists thus helped reinvigorate him with this picture of a