Newton's voluntarist conception of God had three major consequences for his natural philosophy. First, it led him to reject Descartes' version of the mechanical philosophy, in which matter was logically equated with extension, in favor of the belief that the properties of matter were freely determined by an omnipresent God, who remained free to move the particles of matter according to God's will. Second, Newton's voluntarism moved him to affirm an intimate relationship between the creator and the creation; his God was acted on the world at all times and in ways that Leibniz and other mechanical philosophers could not conceive of, such as causing parts of matter to attract one another at a distance. Finally, Newton held that, since the world is a product of divine freedom rather than necessity, the laws of nature must be inferred from the phenomena of nature, not deduced from metaphysical axioms -- as both Descartes and Leibniz were wont to do.

It is indeed ironic that such a theologically interesting story should remain largely unknown among theologians, not to mention other scholars. Even the late Richard S. Westfall, the leading Newton scholar of our time and a keen student of Newton's theological views, mostly failed to see the relevance of Newton's theological views for the content of his natural philosophy. Much scholarship on Newton hitherto has been dominated by the "conflict" school of historiography, growing out of the Enlightenment, according to which religion and science are bitter opponents that cannot possibly influence one another in positive ways; relations of the sort detailed here have gone unnoticed, for they have been inconceivable. In this essay, however, we see the degree to which Newton himself was not an Enlightenment person -- not a "Newtonian," as that term is typically understood.