Newton and Christ: The Crazy Creative Parallels between the Godfather of Science and the Son of God

Even though it is easy to categorize Newton as a scientist and Christ as a religious figure, a deeper examination shows that each was using methods that don’t often fit into their ascribed category.

In order to grow our own ability to create, it is essential that we actively cross-pollinate, enriching our own understanding of the world by getting into the experiences of people very different from ourselves.

Christmas celebrates the birth of one of the most important religious figures of all time,Jesus of Nazareth. It seems only fitting, then, to invite another creative luminary to the table, Sir Isaac Newton, who was also born on December 25^th 1642.

Jesus of Nazareth and Sir Isaac, let’s break bread!

Fundamental Challenges

For both Newton and Christ, the fundamental challenges each had to overcome had to do with the prevailing dogmas of their times. For Newton, that dogma posited that the laws governing the Heavens and the laws governing the Earth had to be fundamentally different, or else what was the point in trying to earn one’s way into the Kingdom of Heaven?

For Christ, the prevailing dogma of the day were the disagreements, often violent, over what was the proper way to worship God.

For all of us, our well-worn, often hand-me-down belief structures and habitual ways of viewing the world around us keep us separated from the experience of being creative, of the felt sense that we are always already connected to a vibrant, interdependent world.

Journeys into the Wilderness

Before Newton and Christ began taking their seats for the work for which they are known, they both journeyed into the wilderness. For Newton, that wilderness was his family farm, which he hated. His father had died before Newton was born and his mother abandoned him when he was but three-years old, only to return eight years later with three new step siblings in tow. Worse, Newton’s immediate family frowned upon his inquisitiveness and experimental tinkering. But, in the summer of 1665, with the Black Plague sweeping over London, Cambridge University closed its doors forcing Newton to leave his beloved environment of academia.

Before Newton and Christ began taking their seats for the work for which they are known, they both journeyed into the wilderness.

Like Newton, Christ also left the comforts of his familiar environment. Christ’s wilderness was the Judean desert where he’s reported to have fasted for forty days and forty nights, all the while resisting temptations from the devil.

Though Newton was forced into the wilderness by circumstance and Christ by choice, such practices have been employed since the dawn of humanity for the sake of creative insight: intentional times of austerity and challenge have always been great sources of visions and clear seeing, the ability to rise above the fragmented details of our lives and see the patterns and purposefulness underneath.

The Defining Moment in the Eyes of the World

Though both of these men had many profound experiences in their lives, it is curious what nuggets popular culture remembers about them, and how those nuggets actually point to deeper longings in all of us, longings that are at the heart of creativity and Self-expression.

Ask any grade school student what they know about Sir Isaac Newton, and what’s likely to come up is the fable-like incident in his family’s apple orchard: An apple falls from a tree, strikes Newton on the head, and leaves him with new ideas about something called gravity.

Newton’s direct experience in that moment [in the apple orchard] overcame the prevailing beliefs of his time, beliefs that the laws governing the heavens and the terrestrial had to be fundamentally different…

In actuality, it was a quintessential “religious” moment, a creative insight best described as a mystical experience, yet one that ushered in a ground breaking scientific discovery.  In Newton’s own words, he recalls being in “a contemplative mood” in his family’s apple orchard, watching the moon in the distance when an apple happened to fall, and intuiting that the force holding the moon in place and the force drawing the apple to the ground had to be the same. In other words, Newton’s direct experience in that moment overcame the prevailing beliefs of his time, beliefs that the laws governing the heavens and the terrestrial had to be fundamentally different.  Newton’s experience, however, would plant a seed in his consciousness that he would develop into a new truth, a truth that he would work to develop over the next twenty years into the Law of Universal Gravitation.

As for Christ, his defining moment was his time on the crucifix, the corporal experience of a painful and prolonged death to absolve the sins of others. This horrific and most painful way of dying has become the symbol of the Christian faith, and one that represents both sacrifice and rebirth.

The crucifixion marked the biological death of the Son of God followed by his triumphant resurrection three days later.   While all the details of this event have been hotly contested for almost two millennium now, it, along with Newton’s tale of being struck in the head by an apple, metaphorically points to key aspects of the creative process: for something new to emerge, something first must die or be destroyed. A wooden table, for example, is made possible only by the death of a tree. The same can be said of our internal experience of the world: a creative life is marked by a continuous shedding of old beliefs, the death of outdated ideas, as new insights continuously emerge.

Radical Solutions

Both Newton and Christ left us with new and useful ways of seeing the world.   Newton’s experience in the apple orchard eventually led to The Law of Universal Gravitation, a theory that indeed overcame the prevailing belief that the laws governing the Heavens and the laws governing the Earth had to be fundamentally different.

Christ saw the divine in all people, regardless of race, religion, or profession, which, as you might imagine was extremely provocative to the powers that be.

And why was Christ killed? Because his basic message was this: it’s more important to love than to be holy. Christ saw the divine in all people, regardless of race, religion, or profession, which, as you might imagine was extremely provocative to the powers that be. The dark side of religion and belief systems of any sort has always posited the holy against the dammed, which is a powerful, but ultimately flawed motivator for keeping folks in line.

But Christ saw through such righteous exploitation and returned to us the fundamental miraculous and divinity of all people, a notion that ultimately got him killed.

Truths and Half Truths

Oscar Wilde once said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”   So, too, it goes with the contributions of both Newton and Christ.

Although Newton’s mystical experience in the apple orchard overcame the prevailing view that the laws of the Heavens and the laws of the Earth had to be fundamentally different, Newton’s main contender for the greatest scientist who ever lived, Albert Einstein, put a whole new spin on things.

…while the physics ushered in by Newton continue to describe the world observable to the naked eye, Einstein’s theories began to tackle the exotic behaviors at either end of the spectrum…

On the one hand, Einstein’s equation E=mc2 posited that matter and energy were in essence the same, thereby continuing to show the interdependent nature of the universe. However, while the physics ushered in by Newton continue to describe the world observable to the naked eye, Einstein’s theories began to tackle the exotic behaviors at either end of the spectrum, including the extremely small (quantum) and the inconceivably large (cosmic), thereby in some ways, creating a new divide between the laws governing the relative (Newtonian Physics) and the absolute (Quantum physics).

Furthermore, due to an error in the Julian calendar system used by England at the time it’s become evident that Newton wasn’t actually born on Christmas day, but 10 days later, on January 4^th, 1643. Per orders from the Vatican nearly a century earlier, other parts of Europe had already made the correction. But due to England’s Protestant stance, a stance founded on rejecting the exploits of the Papacy, England was slow to adopt the more accurate calendar themselves presumably for (here we go again!) dogmatic disagreements, all of which brings us back to the fundamental challenges Christ was trying to overcome: proper worship is impossible if it is bereft of love.

Cross-Pollination

Even though it is easy to categorize Newton as a scientist and Christ as a religious figure, a deeper examination shows that each was using methods that don’t often fit into their ascribed category.

We’ve already discussed how the experience that ushered in The Law of Universal Gravitation was more mystical than scientific. Such is true of any scientific discovery, all of which begin with the formation of a hypothesis, a formation with origins that are often deeply mysterious.

And though Newton is best known for his scientific discoveries, his writing on religious matters were far more abundant, which is evident in statements such as, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.”

Jesus, on the other hand, was quite objective in his approach to spirituality. He saw through the perils of fundamentalism and dogma, which gave reason for people from different sects to fight against one another. Instead, he urged his followers to return to fundamental glue that binds us all: love. To this day, it is unfortunate how much this important teaching has been lost. Worldwide, people continue to fight over religious beliefs, rituals, and customs, while others seek to return to the love that binds us all regardless of who we are or what we do. To paraphrase a quote by comedian Lenny Bruce, “Every day people are straying away from the Church and going back to Jesus.”

Enduring Legacy

Christ’s message–that it is more important to love than to be holy–is, by far, one of the greatest paths to full creative expression that I’ve ever come across.

Newton left us with three game-changing advances in physics, mathematics, and optics and his famous book Principia Mathematic. But his humility and his fascination with the world around him remained with him his whole life. Late in his life he wrote:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

His epitaph, written by English poet Alexander Pope, expresses the religious impact of his discoveries:

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said “Let Newton be” and all was light.

As for Christ, his life and his teachings continues to be in the hot seat. From morals, to politics, to reproductive rights, to geopolitical strategy, the Son of God remains at the nexus of many of the world’s enduring hopes and aspirations as well as its debates and conflicts. Though his relatively short life has been hyper-analyzed to the point of folly and the details of it continuously flushed out, fought over, written and re-written, revealed, revolutionized, revisited, and in some cased reviled, in my opinion, whether or not he died and was reborn is not the most important aspect of who he was.

As one who loves the creativity evident in all people, cultures, and in the amazing creations of nature, and as one who loves love, Christ’s message–that it is more important to love than to be holy–is, by far, one of the greatest paths to full creative expression that I’ve ever come across.

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