SOURCE: "Predicates of Pure Existence: Newton on God's Space and Time," in Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science, edited by Phillip Bricker and R. 1. G. Hugues, MIT Press, 1990.

[In the following essay, McGuire examines the relation of time and space to divine existence, as discussed by Newton in his theological writings.]

Some years ago I argued that Newton's doctrine of absolute space and time is motivated by his view of the existence of a divine being.' In the course of this study I advance the opinion that Newton attempts "to distance" space and time from divine essence. In effect, I argue that Newton links the infinity of space and time to divine existence, which he then associates with the actuality of God and not directly with his essence. Here I wish to return to this view in the light of further thinking and in response to some of John Carriero's observations on my earlier views. Also, I want to reconsider my claim that Newton's conception of how space and time relate to God's existence is not an instance of causal dependence. I think now with Carriero that the dependence may be taken as causal, but, if this is so, the distinction between ontic (my earlier view) and causal dependence is extremely attenuated indeed. If I spell out my agreements and disagreements with Carriero's commentary, I do so not to have the last word but to advance the dialogue.

The first part of this study deals with the nature of Newton's religious sentiment and its associated theological framework. The second considers the metaphysical position that these views engender and its implication.

i. God and Worship: The Theology of a Living God

An obvious fact about Newton is the pious and biblical nature of his religious experience. To follow the Christian dispensation is to give unwavering obedience to the commandments of God. Moreover, it is our duty to seek knowledge of God from the evidence of his works: in this way we give him honor for the glory and design of creation. It is true, as Manuel claims, that Newton distrusts the conceits of abstract metaphysical theology.² It is wrong, however, to suppose that he avoids altogether the theological implications of his religious views. In a manuscript of the early 1690s, which I entitle "Tempus et Locus," this "theological turn" is made abundantly clear.³ The manuscript indicates Newton's particular theological approach to questions concerning the religious experience of God. It shows, moreover, that a close relationship obtains for Newton between his view of the existence of God and his conception of absolute space and time. Furthermore, the manuscript provides understanding of the motives that inform Newton's conception of God's existence. In turn, these motives help to clarify the implications of his conception of divine presence in relation to his views on the nature of space, time, and creation.

Even a casual reading of the manuscript indicates that Newton conceives God as a real person and not as an abstract metaphysical being. God is a living, intelligent, and powerful agent who always and everywhere exists. He is likened to an absolute king who freely decrees the law to all created things. To think of God as existing beyond space and time is an unduly abstract conception. It is not easily comprehended by the mind and fails to promote suitable attitudes of worship (pp. 121-123). In the first draft of the manuscript Newton in fact characterizes abstract conceptions of God as arising "ex Scholasticorum disputationibus." The reference is of course meant to be pejorative. And in fact the metaphysical views of God found in the writings of many Scholastics do indeed differ from Newton's. Newton's God is a biblical God of dominion whose immediate presence in nature purposively enacts the destiny of all created things. Thus providence is directly grounded in divineuniquity and omnipresence. And God, in virtue of his actual presence in space and time, is "able to act in all times & places for creating and governing the Universe."⁴

In developing the details of his theological position in "Tempus et Locus," Newton rhetorically juxtaposes eight contrasting opinions concerning divine nature. In each case it is the second opinion that he supports, and for which he urges acceptance. They constitute an interesting set and go beyond anything he had previously written.

First, Newton rejects the view that God's existence is "all at once," as expressed by the phrase totum simul. That is, he affirms that God's existence can be characterized by successiveness and the temporality of earlier and later. Indeed he calls God's life by the name "He that was and is and is to come" (p. 121). Thus in Newton's conception God's existence is sempiternal; for there is no time past, present, or future at which God does not exist. This view is also expressed in the Principia (1687): "Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and nowhere."⁵ Accordingly, God does not exist in a timeless present; he endures in unending time, his living existence devoid of beginning and end.

That Newton does not conceive God's existence as timeless is supported by two further passages. In a draft variant to the General Scholium he states: "His duration is not a nunc stans without duration, nor is his presence nowhere." He writes to Des Maizeaux in a similar vein in 1717: "The Schoolmen made a Nunc stans to be eternity & by consequence an attribute of God & eternal duration hath a better title to that name, though it be but a mode of his existence. For a nunc stans is a moment wch always is & yet never was nor will be; which is a contradiction in terms."⁶ Thus, for Newton, God's living existence is irreducibly durational. To think of him as existing in a nunc stans—a stationary and timeless now—is to deny that he exists. For Newton the actuality of anything that exists must be successive and involve time: "What is never and nowhere, it is not in rerum natura" ("Tempus et Locus," p. 117). Furthermore, the conception of a "stationary and timeless now" is for Newton contradictory. What would it be like, Newton seems to ask, to exist in a timeless moment? Can anything be said actually to exist in an unchanging and indivisible moment? Do we have a coherent conception of an unchanging "now" which always is? For Newton this sort of talk is parasitic on the tense structure of language. It has significance only if it is contrasted with what was and what will be. Thus, those who use the phrase nunc stans to refer to the mode of God's existence, are covertly employing tensed forms of is while pretending that tensed expressions are inappropriate to the manner of divine being. According to Newton, then, although the phrase is meant to capture a timeless mode of existence, it in fact implies temporal devices. For Newton it is best to conceive God's existence as sempitemal, since the mind can grasp this notion. Moreover, it is a coherent notion, and accords better with the biblical conception of divine existence, where divine presence is not unambiguously debarred from temporality. An apologist is hard-pressed (as Newton well knew) to find biblical passages that straightforwardly support a conception of God's existence in terms of the phrases totum simul and nunc stans.

The conception of eternity that Newton rejects has its first systematic articulation in Plotinus' Ennead III.7.⁷ In the West, the doctrine of eternity as the eternal "now," which derives from Plotinus' treatise on eternity and time, appears in the writings of Augustine and Boethius, and through themthe nunc stans and totum simul of eternity pass into medieval and subsequent thought. To any thinker of Plotinus' sensibility the notion of an eternal life apart from duration and change is neither self-contradictory nor incoherent, nor does the use of temporal language imply any duration or temporalization of eternity. Plotinus himself makes use of Aristotle's conception of ενεργεία̂ in articulating his notion of the durationess and eternal life of uou5. At Metaphysics 0. 1048b. 21-23, Aristotle distinguishes between two sorts of actuality (which he calls κívνoις and πραςις) the first sort has an end or τ∈λoς, while the second sort is an end. Seeing, for example, is an activity of the latter sort. As such, it cannot be analyzed into stages leading to its actualization, since it is by its nature complete at every point. Hence, in a complete activity like seeing, which is itself an end, there is no distinction between coming to activate a potential for seeing and the completion of this activation. Hence no duration need be involved in such an activity: its actualization is instantaneous. This Aristotelian notion of ενεργεία̂ is clearly the model for Plotinus' conception of the eternal life of ζωή, and he seems right to suggest that there need be nothing intrinsically durational or temporal about it.

This Plotinian view of the eternal 5wn is deeply antithetical to Newton's anthropomorphic conception of divine nature. In Newton's view a deity worthy of human worship must exist in the world actually, substantially, and intimately. God must therefore be able to exist at all times and in all places and possess an intelligent life that literally exists through unending duration. For Newton this view cannot be captured by the atemporal notion of duration implied by the nunc stans doctrine, nor, of course, by the view that God exists supratemporally. In Newton's eyes his conception alone provides proper motivation for Christian belief and worship, and coheres with the biblical view of God as an individual person who is able to act intentionally and purposively in nature, and providentially through history. In the second section I return to Newton's anthropomorphic account of God, in particular to his attempt to envision God according to the same composition of essence and existence that holds of finite things. There is a clear connection between this view and Newton's conception of how space and time relate to divine existence.

Newton also believes that God exists literally in infinite space. This means two things. Considered from the perspective of his living existence, God is said to exist necessarily in every place at all times whatsoever: but considered by virtue of his individual nature, God's immensity and omnipresence have reference to space itself. Of God's existence in all places whatsoever, Newton says in his Twelve Articles of faith: "The Father is immovable, no place being capable of becoming emptier or fuller of him than it is by the eternal necessity of nature. All other beings are movable from place to place."⁸ Essentially the same is said in the Yahuda manuscript: "For God is alike in all places, He is substantially omnipresent, and as much present in the lowest Hell as in the highest heaven."⁹ God's existence is thus without limitation in every place of space, for space itself is in fact infinite.

But God does not merely exist sempiternally in infinite space. According to Newton, it is appropriate to his supreme perfections that he is always active. Thus, God can and does act in space and through time. In a draft fragment to the first version of the "Tempus et Locus" manuscript Newton asks approvingly "whether the Prophets more correctly say that God is present absolutely in all places, and constantly sets in motion the bodies contained in them acording to mathematical laws, except where it is to the good to violate those laws."¹⁰ A related view appears in a late draft version of the scholium on space and time of the Principia (1687). After remarking (in a passage that later appearsin print) on the difficulty of distinguishing true from apparent motions with respect to the parts of absolute space, Newton begins but does not finish the following sentence: "Solus enim Deus, qui singulis immobiliter et insensibiliter." Following Cohen's interpretation, and the context of the passage, the sentence may reasonably be completed as follows: "For God alone, who [gives motion to] individual [bodies] without moving and without being perceived, [can truly distinguish true motions from apparent]."¹¹ Thus, not only does God exist in infinite space, and not only is he immediately present in all created things, but he can act directly on things that exist in the vast receptacle of space; for "all spaces are and always have been equally capacious of containing things" ("Tempus et Locus," p. 121). In Newton's view, God's creative power is clearly unrestricted in scope. He is not limited to creating the present world, so long as logical impossibilities are not in question. For God cannot do what is impossible (undo what is done), any more than he can do anything that implies an imperfection (for example, lie or deceive).

Given these commitments, it is not surprising that Newton claims God "is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially; for power cannot subsist without substance. In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God."¹² This is a characteristic expression of Newton's conception of divine omnipresence. In "Tempus et Locus" he states unambiguously that the infinity of God's space is the expression of his "eternal omnipresence" (p. 121). Because he actually and substantially exists in infinite space, God can act in and at every place. The Cartesian conception of a God who is everywhere according to power, but nowhere as to essence and substance, is for Newton a nonbiblical God who is beyond nature (p. 121). To Newton's mind this view implies that God is present in his creation only as its ultimate and remote causal ground. But for Newton, God's power, substance, and essence are inseparable, and he acts where he is, namely, everywhere.

Newton also conceives God's immensity in a literal sense. In "De Gravitatione" he speaks of God's "quantity of existence" as infinite with respect to absolute space. This is clearly a conception of divine immensity.¹³ By virtue of this notion Newton conceives the immensity of divine existence as unlimited, for it implies that if God should fail (per impossibile) to exist in any particular place, his quantity of existence would be diminished, and his individual presence thus limited. Newton attempts to preclude this consequence by denying the possibility "that a dwarf-god should fill only a tiny part of infinite space with this visible world created by him" (p. 121). In Newton's mind there is a close conceptual link between divine omnipresence and the conception of spiritual immensity. God is actually everywhere by virtue of his existence in infinite space, and in every place he wills everything that he thinks fit to choose. The immensity of God's omnipresence is manifested through his real presence in this created world and in the fact that he exists beyond it.

To distinguish God from space, Newton uses the Hebrew term makom in "Tempus et Locus" in speaking of divine omnipresence. The tern is also used in the same context and for the same purpose in Newton's Advertissement au lecteur, which he sent to Des Maizeaux: "So when the Hebrews called God MAKOM place, the place in wch we live & move & have our being [they] did not mean that space is God in a literal sense."¹⁴ Newton's use of makom is meant to convey the point that God dwells in space, not that space itself is a property of God's nature. This view is also conveyed in another passage. In the "classical scholia" intended for the unimplemented edition of the Principia (which was in preparation in the early 1690s—the same period as the present manuscript), Newton copies from Macrobius the sentence "The entire universe was rightly designated the Temple of God." He comments: "This one God they [the ancients] would have it dwelt in all bodies whatsoever as in his own temple, and hence they shaped ancient temples in the manner of the heavens."¹⁵ It is clear that these figures are meant to invoke a sense of God's direct omnipresence throughout the created world. In Newton's use, makom is to some extent detached from its contexts in Jewish mystical and Cabalistic thinking. Moreover, his manner of using it differs in certain respects from that of Henry Moore, Samual Clarke, and Joseph Raphson.¹⁶

Newton's conception of God as an in-dwelling spirit omnipresent in the world is not pantheistic. That this is his view is clear in a manuscript intended for an unimplemented second edition of the Principia in the 1690s. Newton writes: "Those ancients who more rightly held unimpaired the mystical philosophy as Thales and the Stoics, taught that a certain infinite spirit pervades all space into infinity, and contains and vivifies the entire world. And this spirit was their supreme divinity, according to the Poet cited by the Apostle. In him we live and move and have our being."¹⁷ Also a footnote in the General Scholium to the phrase "in him are all things contained and moved" refers to Cicero, Virgil, Philo, Aratus, and to "the sacred writers" from both the New and the Old Testaments.¹⁸ The citations to their writings that Newton gives in each case reveal commitment to the notion of a divine mind, spirit, or life permeating and interpenetrating the cosmos, but in no way identified with space, time, or creation.

I have covered this material in detail to give as clear a picture as possible of Newton's theological conception of the nature and existence of God. "Tempus et Locus" also deals with the traditional attributes of divinity. God is said to be a necessary being, necessarily existing in all times and places. Moreover, Newton mentions three central attributes: eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence. It is not these characteristics that he is concerned to stress, however. God's nature is, of course, simple and indivisible. But more important in Newton's mind is the conception of God as an agent who is preeminently free to act in accordance with the perfections of his nature; he is truly alive, the maker and sustainer of life; he is an intelligent being who brings about "all things that are best and accord most with reason"; he has an immediate understanding and control of all things "just as the cognitive part of man perceives the form of things brought into the brain"; he is directly in contact with things that exist together with him in omnipresent space. It is these characteristics that make God a "most perfect being," and an agent best able to produce the great variety and design of creation (p. 123). In other words, it is God's actions in the real world that command our respect and demand true worship. This is the powerful Lord and God of the General Scholium, who exercises direct dominion over the constitution and governance of his creation. For a being "however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God."¹⁹ Only a being that in fact has dominion over heaven and earth and all its creatures can signify the title of Lord or King, and thus command attitudes of obedience analogous to those of servants toward their earthly master, though in a much higher degree.

This conception of God's nature is further clarified by the Yahuda manuscript:

To celebrate God for his eternity, immensity, omnisciency, and omnipotence is indeed very pious and the duty of every creature to do it according to his capacity, but yet this part of God's gloryas it almost transcends the comprehension of man so it springs not from the freedom of God's will but the necessity of his nature—the wisest of beings required of us to be celebrated not so much for his essence as for his actions, the creating, preserving, and governing of all things according to his good will and pleasure.²⁰

It is God's actions, then, emanating from his free and omnipresent will, that are manifest in his works, not the transcendent perfections of his essential nature. If the mind concentrates on the abstract features of God's infinite nature, it will lose its drift, according to Newton. It will fail to honor God for his direct and purposive dominion over the natural world. This is not to say, of course, that Newton rejects a metaphysical approach to God's nature. We must, however, guard lest such musings mask the significant aspect of God's nature—that he is a lordly master who is worthy of servants in virtue of the goodness and wisdom of his intelligent actions.

From all these considerations it is clear that Newton's primary motive is to make God comprehensible to the mind and worthy of attitudes of worship. Strictly conceived, God ought not "to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing"; nevertheless "all our notions of God are taken from the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness" to us. Accordingly, in the General Scholium, as in the manuscript under discussion, Newton insists that we know God best from the design of his creation, which reveals intrinsically his intentions and actions. By virtue of these characteristics "we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion" while "we admire him for his perfections."²¹

ii. Divine Existence and the Doctrines of Infinite Space and Time

The theological picture that emerges from Newton's religious sensibility is this: God is a being who always has existed and always will exist. His essential nature remains the same: he still is what he was and will continue to be what he is. On this view it is natural enough to think of God's existence as uncaused, such that there is never a time at which his being is preceded by anything else. For Newton this also means that God's nature is causally independent of any conditions, states of affairs, and circumstances external to his nature. Divine existence is explained solely by reference to God's previous existence, since existing omnitemporally is an essential fact pertaining to God's unending and permanent duration.

Furthermore, Newton does not hold that God is identical with Wisdom, Power, and Goodness, conceived as intrinsic attributes of his essential nature.²² According to Newton's theory of perfection, characteristics such as being wise, powerful, and good are attributes that divine nature instantiates in the highest and most complete manner, namely, infinitely, where infinity is understood as a transcendental characterization not subsumable under the Aristotelian categories. Thus, to say that God is infinitely wise is to characterize the view that he cannot but act wisely. Nor can anything prevent God from acting in any way that is appropriate in this respect to his nature. For God can never change, nor be changed, with respect to the attribute of omniscience.²³

On the assumption, therefore, that God possesses his perfections infinitely, nothing can prevent him from exercising his essential abilities. For all created things, including the uncreated natures of infinite space and time, are inferior to God's intrinsic perfections, since "by reason of its eternity andinfinity space will neither be God nor wise nor powerful nor alive, but will merely be increased in duration and magnitude, whereas God by reason of the eternity and infinity of his space (that is, by reason of his eternal omnipresence) will be rendered the most perfect being."²⁴ The same line of reasoning applies to divine immutability. Unlike Spinoza, who is able uniquely to specify divine immutability in alio, or by virtue of God's intrinsic nature alone, Newton adopts a position that obliges him to consider the condition of God's existence in relation to the nature of other existents.²⁵ On this view, God is an immutable being in that there is nothing whatsoever that can causally change or in any way affect his defining nature and attributes. Thus, God is fully able to be identically one and the same person by virtue of his defining attributes at all possible and actual times; for there is nothing whatsoever by virtue of which he can be caused to be otherwise than he is. And Newton concludes in the light of his theory of perfection and infinity that "not everything eternal and infinite will be God, nor will God be prevented from the eternal and infinite exercise of his omnipotence in the creating and governing of things, by the imperfect nature of created things."²⁶

For Newton infinity is a charatter that can be predicated of different sorts of things. It is a way of characterizing the mode of instantiation of first-level properties insofar as they allow something to be the highest exemplification of its kind. In itself infinity is neither a perfection nor an imperfection, nor is it defining of anything's nature. For "infinity is not a perfection except when it is attributed to perfections. Infinity of intellect, power, happiness, and so forth, is the height of perfection; but infinity of ignorance, impotence, wretchedness, and so on, is the height of imperfection; and infinity of extension is so far perfect as that which is extended." Accordingly, to conceive spatial extension as infinite is not to conceive space as constituting "God because of the perfection of infinity."²⁷

Newton's reasoning turns on the notion that things exemplify the nature that specifies the class or kind to which they belong. Furthermore, things can be conceived as either perfect or imperfect in accordance with the nature that they exemplify. In Newton's view there are levels of reality, and difference in level is defined in terms of the specific nature of the kind to which things belong, whether the reality in question is a perfection or an imperfection. A thing is infinite of the kind if it manifests in an exemplary manner the nature of that kind, but "no thing is by eternity and infinity made better or of a more perfect nature" ("Tempus et Locus," p.120).

So, according to Newton's scheme of predication, a thing can instantiate one and the same nature infinitely (that is, completely which another thing possesses deficiently. Thus, both God and we can be said to possess one and the same type of a given ability, except God possesses it infinitely, whereas we, in comparison, possess it deficiently. There are serious difficulties in this position. Standardly in theological thinking the notion that God has absolutely every perfection, such that he is uniquely one and the same being, is justified by arguing that the possession of every perfection implies supremacy and that supremacy implies uniqueness; otherwise there can be more than one supreme being. But Newton's account of the infinity of God's perfections (the notion that he possesses to the highest possible degree what other beings instantiate deficiently) provides no basis for ruling out the possibility that other beings might equally well exemplify the same perfections. Nor does his view that God transcends causal change help; for again it does not show necessarily that only one unique individual satisfies the claim. Here then is another example of Newton's anthropomorphic conception in which he holds that the same ontological principles apply to God that apply to finite things. And it raises the same difficulty that is present in his view that thecomposition of essence and existence that holds of God holds also of finite things.

The difficulty is this: How can Newton defend the unity and the uniqueness of divine being? I want to approach the larger framework of this issue by first considering if and how the dependence of space and time on God is causal. This question in turn is closely related to Newton's association of space and time with God's existence and also to the extent to which he "distances" existence from God's essence and substance.

Now, in my earlier study I argue that space, time, and existence function in Newton's divine ontology as "transcendental" predicates. In draft sheets intended for Des Maizeaux he tells us this about these special predicates:

The Reader is desired to observe, that whenever in the following papers through unavoidable narrowness of language, infinite space or Immensity & endless duration or Eternity, are spoken of as Qualities or Properties of the substance such is Immense or Eternal, the terms Quality & Property are not taken in that sense wherein they are vulgarly, by the writers of Logick & Metaphysicks applied to matter; but in such a sense as only implies them to be modes of existence in all beings, & unbounded modes & consequences of the existence of a substance which is really necessarily & substantially Omnipresent & Eternal; which existence is neither substance nor a quality, but the existence of a substance with all its attributes, properties & qualities, & yet is so modified by place & duration that those modes cannot be rejected without rejecting the existence.²⁸

Of this and cognate drafts I observed three things. First, that Newton is claiming that existence is not a real attribute or quality of the defining nature of substance. Second, that he connects space and time with the concept of actuality, that is, with the actuality of existence. And last, that Newton conceives these two doctrines as applying to divine existence itself.

Now, in order to secure this interpretation I argued that Newton was committed to the following basic perspectives:

1. Newton tells us that "infinite space or Immensity" and "endless duration or Eternity" are not "Qualities or Properties" of God's defining nature, because they do not inhere in divine substance in the manner of the properties or accidents of matter. In other words, these phrases denote transcendental features because they fall under none of the ten Aristotelian categories nor under the fifth of Porphyry's predicables, accident. In another of the draft variants for Des Maizeaux he says that these phrases should be taken "in such a sense as if the Predicaments of Ubi & Quando should be called qualities or properties when applied to the existence of a being which is omnipresent & eternal." That is, when God is declared immense, or everywhere with respect to space, and eternal, or of unending duration in time, these are not properties, let alone specific properties, that are ascribed to divine nature. The phrases refer, rather, to the manner of God's existence. "Ubi & Quando" answer two general questions: Where does God exist? "Everywhere" in respect to space. When does God exist? "Always" in respect to time. Ubi & Quando are therefore "transcendental" predicates in the precise sense that they refer to conditions of existence that every actually existing thing, God included, must satisfy. This line of reasoning is present in the thought of many thinkers, including Tommaso Campanella, Francesco Patrizi, Pierre Gassendi, and Walter Charleton, each ofwhom argues that space and time are infinite and presupposed by the items in Aristotle's categories, and are thus the general conditions through which the actuality of any existing thing, God included, must be understood.²⁹
2. I was struck by the fact that Newton is at pains to stress that "existence is neither a substance nor a quality," but rather an irreducible feature of all individuals insofar as they are actual, where to refer to a thing's actuality is not at all like speaking of the properties of its defining nature. I was also struck by the fact that Newton goes on to say that anything's existence "is so modified by place & duration that these modes cannot be rejected without rejecting the existence." Thus, to exist is to exist in the general order of the nexus of space and time in a manner appropriate to the nature of the thing in question. So in speaking of God's existence, "the existence of a substance which is … substantially Omnipresent & Eternal," we refer to God's state of being actual with respect to the infinity of space and time. Thus, to be an actual being with respect to infinite space and time is an inseparable fact about divine existence. And when Newton speaks of space and time as "unbounded modes & consequences" of God's existence, he means that they are irreducibly associated with the necessary existence of God's eternal and omnipresent being.

Now, these perspectives on space, time, and existence seem to me to inform Newton's opening statement in "Tempus et Locus": "Time and Place are common affections of all things without which nothing whatsoever can exist. All things are in time as regards duration of existence, and in place as regards amplitude of presence. And what is never and nowhere is not in rerum natura" (p. 116). Here Newton makes a distinction between affections that characterize all the sorts of physical things and, by implication, those that are specific to various sorts and kinds. But there is another distinction that Newton has in mind. Common affections of course apply universally to all things, but time and place for Newton are special sorts of common affections. Notice that he stresses the phrases "duration of existence" and "amplitude of presence" in characterizing the association of time and place with the actuality of anything's existence. This implies that time and place specify anything's actual existence, in contrast to properties that inhere in a thing's specific nature. Thus, Newton probably has in mind a traditional distinction among affections: those that characterize things by virtue of their nature, and those that pertain universally to their sheer existence alone. Moreover, common affections of this latter sort are often categorized as external affections, again on the ground that they are not specific to any particular sort or kind. Thus, individual things not only endure in time; they are present in the same or different places through time. In "De Gravitatione" (c1668) the same line of reasoning is applied explicitly to God's "quantity of existence." Newton tells us that the "quantity of existence of each individual [being] is denominated as regards its amplitude of presence and its perseverance in existence. So the quantity of existence of God is eternal in relation to duration, and infinite in relation to the space in which he is present."³⁰ It is clear that Newton thinks of space and time as "common affections" of God's "quantity of existence." But in saying that space and time are "affections of being in so far as it is being," he is not saying that being in itself entails duration and extension in space (that is, that to be is to be extended and to endure). Again, he invokes a distinction between affections that characterize natures as natures and those that pertain to the fact that a natured individual exists. Of the latter kind are space and time.

Carriero is not happy with this account of why Newton associates space and time with God's existence rather than with his substance. Nor is he happy with reading Newton's claim in the GeneralScholium that God is not eternity and infinity but only eternal and infinite to mean that Newton is breaking with the traditional view of God as strictly identical with all his attributes, existence included. I am not happy with the implications of this reading either. It raises in acute form the problem of the unity of divine being.

I will come to this issue and the implications for my interpretation shortly. In order to approach the problem of unity, let me briefly consider Carriero's alternative interpretation. He concentrates on a passage from Newton's defender Clarke in which Clarke says that to claim God exists in space and in time means only that God is "Omnipresent and Eternal, that is, that Boundless Space and Time are necessary Consequences of his Existence." Carriero interprets the last phrase on space and time as being in apposition with the claim that God "is Omnipotent and Eternal." To Carriero this suggests two things: (1) that Clarke and Newton believe that an omnipresent existent is one whose existence necessarily produces boundless space, and an eternal existent is one whose existence necessarily produces boundless time; and (2) when Clarke and Newton claim that God is not identical with boundless space and time, they are not denying that he is identical with his attributes omnipresent and eternal. Their claim means, rather, that God is "not identical with the necessary causal consequences of those two attributes, boundless space and time." Thus, for Carriero infinite space and time are necessary emanations from a necessary being, and are therefore causally dependent on God.

There are two points, then, on which Carriero and I disagree. (1) Contrary to my view he believes Newton holds that God is omnipresence and eternity, the traditional view that God is one with his defining characteristics. (2) Given this conception, Carriero goes on to suggest that space and time are necessary causal productions of an etemal and omnipresent being. Accordingly, what God is not identical with on this view is the necessary causal consequences of these two attributes, namely, boundless space and endless time.

As to the first point of disagreement, I find it difficult to square Carriero's view with Newton's theory of divine predication. The evidence I adduce seems to indicate that Newton views God's omnipresence in relation to the "infinity of his space" and his existence in terms of the omnitemporality of his duration. On this view God's existence differs from finite existence in that it is infinite with respect to space and unending with respect to time. Thus God is not to be understood Platonically either as infinity itself or as etemity itself. The point is put succinctly in the General Scholium: As God "is not etemity and infinity, but etemal and infinite" so "he is not duration or space, but endures and is present."³¹ Closely related to this is Newton's conception of space and time as items outside the categories; indeed, they are the invariant conditions necessary for the actual existence of anything, God included.

This brings me to the second point. When Newton says that space and time are consequences of God's existence, Carriero reads this claim as stating a causal relation between God's being and what that being produces necessarily. It is not clear, however, how Carriero understands the relation; for example, is it efficient or formal causation? It will be useful, then, to explore this issue briefly as it bears on the question of the ground of divine unity.

In my earlier study I argued that the relation between divine being and the infinity of space and timeis one of ontic dependence. I now think it can be seen (in a curious sense) as a causal dependency, and, moreover, one that has a legacy in theological and philosophical thought. Noticing that Newton claims that space "is, as it were, an emanative effect of God," and also an affection of being qua being, I suggest that a possible influence is Henry More, who views space as an "effectus emanativus" of divine being and also an attribute of "ens quatanus ens." More defines "an emanative effect" as "coexistent with the very substance of that which is said to be the cause thereof." And "an emanative cause" is understood as "such a cause as merely by Being, no other activity or causality interposed, produces an effect."³² Noting also that More denies that any action or active causal efficacy obtains between an emanative cause and its effect, I argued that the relationship for More is ontic rather than causal, and that Newton also views the matter in this way.

Interestingly enough, there is medieval background for reading this relationship under the rubric of efficient causation. In the writings of Duns Scotus and Robert Grosseteste we find the idea that divine power is causally prior to its acts.³3 Moreover, this type of causal priority holds between things existing at the same time, or, in the case of God and his acts, together in etemity. This view of course involves the commonplace medieval conception that causes need not precede their effects. Indeed, not only need they not necessarily precede their effects, but they need not exist in time at all. The cause, however, is naturally prior to its effects both temporally and eternally since the effect has no being without its cause. But causal priority among eternal things does not require the creation or production of the effect by the cause. The effect has being just because the cause is simpliciter, but the converse does not hold. Augustine's foot eternally embedded in dust, and thus eternally causing its footprint, is an example of this relationship.

There is medieval precedent, then, for speaking of eternal and efficient causes. And something of this sensibility may be reflected in More's notion of an "emanative cause," and similarly in Newton's view of the relationship between divine existence and the reality of space and time. But since the notion of an eternal and efficient cause does not involve any activity, production, creation, or active efficacy between it and its effect, it is difficult to distinguish natural or ontic dependence in these contexts from the notion of causal dependence between eternal things.

Now, both Carriero and I want to argue that Newton associates space and time with God's existence in an attempt to distance them from divine essence. For Carriero, Newton makes this maneuver because he thinks the association of space and time with divine existence best fits his conception of space and time as necessary emanations from a necessary being. For me it is because infinite space and time characterize best Newton's view of the nature and manner of divine existence as such, as well as his belief that God is continuously present to creation in a dynamic and providential way. Carriero's interpretation has the difficulty that there is no compelling reason why a necessary being (one who is both eternity itself and infinite presence itself) must necessarily generate space and time from the necessity of its being. This is an emanationist model of creation which holds that a necessary being necessarily creates by emanation from its being. But why should Newton's Christian and voluntarist God necessarily create anything, let alone externalize space and time as necessary emanations from its essential attributes?

But my position also harbors a difficulty. To claim that Newton believes space and time to be essential conditions for the actuality of all existing things, God included, has the consequence thatthe unity of God's essence and existence is threatened. Newton can hold that the existence of a finite thing is grounded in its nature because God has actualized the concrete existence of that nature. It is thus unified by God's creation act. But what unifies God's existence and essence? The claim that God exists eternally, in the sense that there is no time at which his existence can fail, does not ground the necessity of his existence. The modal notion that God can at no time fail to exist cannot itself be grounded in the claim that God exists omnitemporally. From the temporal "exists at all the times there are" one cannot derive the modal "cannot not exist at any time." That God cannot not exist is a claim about his nature as such, not a claim about sheer omnitemporal existence. Thus the conception that God's existence is eternal and omnitemporal still allows that a contingent relation obtains between divine essence and existence. It seems, then, that to preserve divine unity, Newton must fall back on the traditional view that God's existence is a necessary perfection of his nature if God is to be conceived as a necessary being. But then why should that necessary nature need to externalize space and time as necessary consequences of its essential attributes, and why should its actuality demand existence with respect to the infinity of space and time?

Notes

¹ J. E. McGuire, "Existence, Actuality, and Necessity: Newton on Space and Time," Annals of Science 35 (1978), 463-508.

² Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), chap. 2.

³ J.E. McGuire, "Newton on Place, Time, and God: An Unpublished Source," British Journal for the History of Science 11 (1978), 114-129. Page references to this article will be given in the text.

⁴ Alexandre Koyré and 1. Bernard Cohen, "Newton and the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence," Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, nos: 58-59 (1962), 101.

⁵ Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, ed. Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), p. 545. Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica: The Third Edition (1726), assembled and edited by Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), II, 759.

⁶ A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, Unpublished Papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 357. Koyré and Cohen, op. cit., p. 97.

⁷ See J. E. McGuire and Steven K. Strange, "An Annotated Translation of Plotinus, Ennead 111.7 on Eternity and Time," Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989), 251-271.

⁸ H. McLachlan, Sir Isaac Newton: The Theological Manuscripts (Liverpool: The University Press, 1950), p. 56.

⁹ Op. cit. (n. 2), p. 101.

¹⁰ University Library, Cambridge, Add. 3965, sec. 13, folio 542'.

¹¹ I. Bernard Cohen, "Isaac Newton's Principia, the Scriptures, and the Divine Providence," in Philosophy, Science, and Method, ed. Sidney Morgenbesser, Patrick Suppes, and Morton White (New York: St. Martin's, 1969), p. 528.

¹² Op. cit. (n. 5), p. 545.

¹³ Op. cit. (n. 6), p. 104.

¹⁴ Op. cit. (n. 4), p. 101.

¹⁵ Gregory MS, 247, Library of the Royal Society. See J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, "Newton and the 'Pipes of Pan,'" Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 21 (1966), 108-143.

¹⁶ See A. Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), chaps. 6 and 8; and op. cit. (n. 4), for the view that Cabala has little real influence on Newton. For a careful and comprehensive discussion of makom and simsum in the writings of More and Raphson and the relation of these writers to Newton, see Brian P. Copenhaver, "Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton, and Their Predecessors," Annals of Science 37 (1980), 489-548.

¹⁷ Portsmouth Collection MS, Add. 3965, 12, f.269 VLC. See also McGuire and Rattansi, op. cit. (n. 15), p. 120.

¹⁸ Op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 545, 759.

¹⁹ Ibid., pp. 544, 759.

²⁰ Op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 21-22.

²¹ Op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 545-546, 759-760.

²² Ibid., p. 545.

²³ See McGuire, op. cit. (n. 1), for a discussion of this conception.

²⁴ Op. cit. (n. 3), p. 118.

²⁵ See op. cit. (n. 1), for a discussion.

²⁶ Op. cit. (n. 3), p. 120. See also "De Gravitatione" in Hall and Hall, op. cit.

²⁷ See "De Gravitatione," pp. 102-103.

²⁸ Op. cit. (n. 4), p. 101.

²⁹ See McGuire, op. cit. (n. 1), for discussion of these thinkers.

³⁰ Op. cit. (n. 6), p. 103.

³¹ Op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 545, 759.

³² See McGuire, op. cit. (n. 1), for a discussion of More's views.

³³ John Duns Scotus, God and Creatures: The Quadlibetal Questions, trans. Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), question 19, art. 11, 19.27, 19.28, 19.29. John Duns Scotus, De Primo Principia, trans. Allan B. Wolter (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1966), 2.29, 2.31, 2.32, 2.33. Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in VIII Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, ed. Richard C. Dales (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1963), Liber Quartus, 96-97.