Theology and the Laws of Nature

Much of contemporary physics assumes the existence of laws of nature, and many classic discoveries are couched in those terms: Newton’s laws of motion, ideal gas laws, laws of thermodynamics, and so on. The idea that there are laws of nature at all, however, emerged historically late, in seventeenth-century Europe. To be sure, before this, no one doubted that there were regularities to the operations of nature. But these regularities were not understood in terms of invariable laws. According to the Aristotelian philosophy that prevailed in the premodern West, for example, changes in the natural world were to be understood in terms of the intrinsic virtues and qualities of natural things. In practice, the operation of these internally located properties gave rise to an order that was regular “for the most part” (to use the formulation of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas) (Aquinas 2018, 3/99 201).¹ The distinctive feature of modern laws of nature, when they were first conceptualized in the seventeenth century, was that they were understood very differently as the external imposition of the will and power of God, which moved inert particles of matter that had no inherent motive powers. These laws were invariable and universal. At its inception, then, the idea of laws of nature had a theological foundation.

French philosopher René Descartes played a key role in introducing this idea (Henry 2004; Harrison 2008a). Descartes proposed that nature be understood in terms of particles of matter in motion. The fact that we observe regularities in the way things move, he insisted, owes to the fact that God moves them according to regularities he has willed. “God has established these laws,” Descartes (1985, 1:91, 97) explained, and he alone “is the author of all the motions in the world in so far as they exist and in so far as they are rectilinear.” “Law of nature,” on this understanding, was not a mere metaphor but conveyed the fact that the regularities in the natural world resulted from the decrees of a law-giver—God. Descartes (1985, 1:90–1, 93–6) proposed that laws of nature derive their immutability and universality from their divine author, who is likewise unchangeable and omnipresent.

This understanding of laws of nature became fundamental to the new scientific worldview of the seventeenth century (although thinkers differed about how the laws were to be derived or discovered) (Harrison 2013). The English experimental philosopher Robert Boyle (1999–2000, 11:111, 302), for example, insisted that God had established the laws of motion and that their regularity was guaranteed by his ongoing creative activity in sustaining them. Isaac Newton adopted a similar view of laws of nature. The preface to the second edition of his Principia mathematica, arguably the most celebrated scientific work of all time, states forthrightly that the laws of nature originate in “the perfectly free will of God, who provides and governs all things” (Newton [1713] 1999, 397). The Newtonian philosopher and theologian Samuel Clarke (1738, 2:697–98), who vigorously defended the Newtonian worldview against the German philosopher G. W. Leibniz, summed up the core of this approach: “The course of nature, truly and properly speaking, is nothing else but the will of God producing certain effects in a continued, regular, constant, and uniform manner; which course or manner of acting, being in every moment perfectly arbitrary, is as easy to be altered at any time as to be preserved.”

This view of laws of nature, which provided a justification for inductive inferences, persisted well into the nineteenth century. (David Hume’s well-known identification of the problem of induction, incidentally, stems in part from his adoption of a weaker conception of laws of nature.) Late in that century, however, in one of the great ironies of history, the inviolability of laws of nature began to be used as evidence against God’s involvement in the natural world. This resulted from a habituation to the idea of laws of nature and a convenient amnesia about its origins. What had once been understood as constant divine creative activity was now simply accommodated to a “nature” whose laws were presumed to require no further explanation. Thus was born modern scientific naturalism and, along with it, the misconception that theological commitments were somehow incompatible with genuine science (Harrison 2024, 242–53). The emergence of naturalism necessitated the tacit repudiation of the role played by theological considerations in the history of science. Its birth accordingly coincided with the invention of the dubious science–religion conflict narrative, the refutation of which has kept historians of science busy for several decades (Numbers 2010; Hardin, Numbers, and Binzley 2018; Lightman 2019).

It remains to be asked, notwithstanding the theological origins of the concept of laws of nature, whether science remains logically indebted to theology. Some have argued that it does (Foster 2004; Swinburne 2010; see also Koperski 2023). But there are ways to avoid this conclusion. One would be to abandon the traditional conception of laws of nature. The distinguished philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright (2005), for example, has espoused the principle “no God, no laws,” arguing that “the concept of a law does not make sense without the supposition of a law-giver.” But her conclusion is that this gives us reasons to abandon the idea that nature is governed by natural laws (Cartwright 1983, 1993; also Giere 1999). Cartwright’s position notwithstanding, we can still conclude that it is inconsistent to espouse a strong naturalism while at the same time affirming that the universe really is governed by laws of nature. To the topic at hand, the “no God, no laws” principle implies that certain widely held understandings of science (if not its uncritical practice) do implicitly require theology.

Another way of evading the force of the “no God, no laws” principle would be to seek recourse to a weaker, “Humean” understanding of laws of nature, according to which laws are not features of reality but more like conditional generalizations based on human experience. But this approach has well-known difficulties of its own (van Fraassen 1989, 40–64; Carroll 1990; Berenstain and Ladyman 2012). “Laws” thus understood do not support counterfactuals (which is something that most of those who harbor a realist conception of science usually need it to do); it allows for trivially true “laws”; it does not allow that there is something necessary about how events transpire; it makes the problem of induction more acute. Most scientists, and not a few philosophers, have accordingly found the Humean solution too weak a formulation to sustain their intuitions about how nature operates. An apparent dilemma here is also that a weaker understanding of laws of nature seems to vitiate the claims of naturalism over against theistic readings of nature. (I say “apparent” because it involves a failure to realize that the strong version of laws of nature arguably relies upon an implicit theology.)

In sum, practitioners and philosophers of science cannot hold to both naturalism and a robust conception of laws of nature. Any view of science that is predicated on a notion of inviolable natural laws owes some commitment to the theological premise that makes that conception rational.

Theology and the Social Legitimacy of Science

A second historical case of theological dependence concerns the social legitimacy of science. In order to appreciate the significance of the legitimacy question, it is important to understand that there is nothing natural or intuitive about the approach of experimental science. Nor is it obvious that the pursuit of scientific knowledge should occupy a prominent place in the activities of a society. From a historical and cross-cultural perspective, the general rule is that most cultures have not developed practices that look much like modern experimental science. In those that have, their version has not come to assume the prominence and epistemic prestige science currently enjoys in the West. Generally, societies do not develop into what historian Stephen Gaukroger (2006) refers to as “a scientific culture” like ours. Cases in point would be ancient Greece, China, India, and medieval Islamic cultures. We might say that the normal course of scientific development, when it happens at all, conforms to a “boom-bust” pattern characterized by bursts of scientific activity followed by periods of relative stasis when societies turn their attention to other priorities (Ben-David 1971; Cohen 2010). Scientific development then stalls. What makes for a scientific culture is a set of values that leads a society to prioritize scientific activity and propel it to the center of the culture. In the early modern West, this singular process of consolidation was accomplished by appeals to specific values, and theological values were central.

There are two reasons we now tend to take the question “why prioritize science?” for granted. One is that the manifest material benefits science confers seem obvious; the other is that we rank those material benefits more highly than other things, such as cultivation of the arts or the individual pursuit of wisdom and virtue. Again, however, for most societies—and indeed in the West before modern science got underway in earnest—the answer to this question was less obvious. Moreover, it was not immediately clear that experimental science could deliver much by way of material benefits. Initially, the practical payoffs of the new scientific approach were meagre. More importantly, very few thought the pursuit of practical utility was an appropriate goal for serious intellects. The cultivation of moral and intellectual virtues was regarded as the highest intellectual pursuit. While it may seem surprising to us now, the new scientific approaches of the seventeenth century attracted widespread criticisms about their social value. The new science was thought to focus on undignified objects of investigation, seemed crassly utilitarian, and often fell short of accomplishing its own underwhelming goals (Purver 1967, 7; Benedict 2001, 46–51; Gaukroger 2006, 36–8; Harrison 2008b). As one articulate critic of the new science expressed it: “Those men therefore, who have applied themselves by their writings to promote vertue and godliness, in their kind . . . were generally thought to have deserved of mankind, as well (if not better) as the most renowned inventours, or promoters of useful Arts or Trades. Had Aristotle never written any thing but his Ethicks, . . . he deserved the thanks of all ages” (Casaubon 1669, 6). Aristotle’s emphasis on ethics was much preferred to messy experiments and bloody dissections. Even if the latter did eventually yield a few modest, practical outcomes, these might still not be considered worthy of serious intellectual investment.

In the face of such disapprobation, advocates for the new sciences appealed to religious values to establish the social legitimacy of their endeavours. There were three main avenues of appeal. Francis Bacon argued that the material benefits science promised to confer could be understood as a form of Christian charity in action. For Bacon (1857–74, 2:153), the goal of science was “the relief of the human estate.” In so far as it accomplished this, it was to be understood as an embodiment of charity, the most elevated of the Chrisitian virtues (Bacon 1857–74, 3:221f, 3:294, 4:20f; Harrison 2001). This line of justification admittedly called for some adjustment of how the virtues themselves were conceptualized, and to a degree, Bacon played a role in the momentous transition in moral thinking away from traditional conceptions of virtue towards something like utiliarianism (Macintyre 1981). In Bacon’s case, charity, in its relation to the pursuit of knowledge, aimed at external works directed towards pratical ends, in addition to contributing to the process of individual sanctification (Bacon 1857–74, 4:20f.; Gaukroger 2001, 221). Over time, however, elements of moral formation tended to fall away from justifications of the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Another theological justification for practicing science was that it conferred knowledge of God through the study of his creatures. The importance of contemplating nature had long been a theme in the Christian West, as reflected in the venerable notion of the “two books,” the book of scripture and the book of nature. Apologists for the new science allowed that a general sense of God’s wisdom and power could be deduced from even a casual acquaintance with nature’s operations. But they argued that a more profound appreciation of the nature of God came from the detailed understanding of nature that only experimental science could provide (Boyle 1999–2000, 3:220, 235.) Boyle (1999–2000, 3:238, 278–79) expanded on this principle to argue that experimental science is essentially “reasonable worship of God” and natural philosophers are priests of nature.

These two themes were often combined in the early modern period to shore up justifications for scientific pursuits. In essence, the argument was that “science” is a way of fulfilling the double injunction: love your God and love your neighbor. As Boyle (1999–2000, 3:192) expressed it:

By the one, sound notions are proposed to the reader’s apprehension from the contemplation of God’s creation and the governance of the world, and thereby good matter is suggested to his affections for the advancement of his devotion: by the other, there are divers things delivered, which may tend to enlarge mans power of doing good: by them, in the whole, both honour to God, and our charity to our neighbours may be assisted: in which two, the substantial part of all the most noble, not only human, by Christian virtues, both speculative and practical, are certainly contained.

Claims that the conduct of science was a means of operationalizing both piety and practical virtue became important themes for defenders of the new natural philosophy (Glanvill 1676, 5, 25; Sprat 1667, 322f.; Edwards 1696, pt. 1:206–14, pt. 2:150).

A third element of the theological legitimation of science came from the proposal that scientific practice is a means of recapturing a dominion over nature that had been lost in the wake of the Fall. A common reading of the Genesis narratives was that in his state of prelapsarian perfection, Adam had enjoyed a comprehensive scientific knowledge of nature and complete dominion over it. Following his rebellion against God, however, he lost this knowledge and his mastery of the creatures. Oversimplifying somewhat, we can say that medieval readings of Genesis tended to emphasize the moral rather than material losses that resulted from Adam’s primeval transgression. Accordingly, reversal of those losses involved the quest to recover a lost mastery of disordered desires, with “the beasts” being allegorized as passions that needed to be brought under control (Harrison 1998). More literal interpretations of Genesis, characteristic of the early modern period, stressed instead a literal mastery of the natural world. Science was thus understood as the means by which the curse of the Fall could be partially redressed.

This idea of science as a redemptive enterprise became central to establishing its social legitimacy during its infancy. Bacon (1857–74, 8:350) wrote in 1620 that “man by the fall fell at the same time from this state of innocency and from his dominion over creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences.” Science, he insisted, could restore “the sovereignty and power” Adam had enjoyed “in his first state of creation” (Bacon 1857–74, 3:220; 4:7). This would become a familiar theme in defenses of the Royal Society, founded in 1660. Robert Hooke (1665, preface), the first curator of experiments at the Royal Society contended that experimental science was a means of disciplining human knowledge seeking and a palliative to “the mischiefs, and imperfection, mankind has drawn upon it self.” These restorative ideals also found their way into contemporary culture, easing the birth of a new scientific approach that was regarded with suspicion in certain quarters (Harrison 2007, 183).

It must be conceded that little, if anything, is left of these theological arguments for the value of science. No one today thinks that science derives its legitimacy from a Christian Fall–Redemption narrative or that it is an expression of the double imperative to love God and love your neighbor. Accordingly, it may seem reasonable to conclude that whatever insecurities attended the birth of modern science, science no longer needs recourse to theology to secure its social legitimacy. Yet the history of early modern science points to the facts that science is not self-authenticating and that its social license rests upon a capacity to appeal to the value system of the society in which it operates. Although we rarely reflect upon this, the legitimacy of science still ultimately rests on appealing to certain values. (Why do we value the specific outcomes science delivers? This question takes us to the realm of values, not facts). If there is anything to the argument that the West’s value system remains essentially Christian, in terms of its historical origin and normative content (see, e.g., Siedentop 2014, Spencer 2015, Holland 2019), even if that reliance is no longer widely acknowledged, it could be argued that the ongoing legitimacy of science still rests upon a covert theological foundation. This situation would parallel, in certain respects, the reliance of some contemporary understandings of science on a covert theological conception of the order of nature discussed in the first section.

It is also the case that while the social prestige of the sciences remains relatively high, in recent years it has faced a number of challenges (Etsy 2025; Mann and Hotez 2025; Plümper and Neumayer 2026). Questioning of the authority of science has been linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, the replication crisis, growing awareness of scientific fraud and misconduct, and the rise, in certain quarters, of science-hostile governments. These unfortunate developments serve as a stark reminder that the issue of the social legitimacy of science has never really gone away. Returning to our core question, then, it might be argued that science still needs if not theology then something like it to provide the necessary normative grounding that gives it a social license. Without such a moral grounding, it remains vulnerable to a range of ideologically motivated attacks. Accordingly, it is not implausible to argue that the present vulnerability of science is owing in part to the gradual, and largely unnoticed, expiration of its original theological warrant. If science does not need theology, at the very least, it may need something that can play the legitimating role theology once did.

Conclusion: Does Secular Modernity Need Theology?

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1976, 60) was a twentieth-century German judge and legal philosopher known for a dictum of political philosophy: “The liberal secularized state is nourished by presuppositions that it cannot itself guarantee.”² Böckenförde was essentially proposing that the liberal state rests upon foundational assumptions about human beings and what constitutes their common good that it is unable to justify on the basis of its own moral resources. What is required for such a guarantee is, in fact, a set of religious commitments that come from “outside”. On this account, to state it baldly, liberalism, in spite of its apparently secular ethos, “needs theology.” The twenty-first century has witnessed increasing attacks on liberalism, from both left and right. These can be plausibly linked to the incapacity of liberalism to defend itself by relying only on the meagre arsenal of its own secular values.

In this article, I have set out an analogous argument for secular science. Despite the overt naturalism of science, we might think of it as resting upon presuppositions that have been tacitly carried over from the Christian culture in which it was first nurtured. Science might accordingly be regarded as living on the borrowed credit of these original theological foundations. This, I have suggested, may be true in two senses: in relation to the logic of laws of nature and in relation to the values that have lent it social legitimacy. Clearly, the unreflective practice of science does not presently require the overt profession of any theology. But it can be argued that science nonetheless “needs” theology if it is to provide a coherent account of its logical foundations and secure its moral legitimacy.

Two closing reflections. As the Böckenförde dictum suggests, the question of science’s ongoing reliance upon unacknowledged theological principles can be regarded as a subset of a broader question concerning the general indebtedness of secular modernity to hidden theological considerations. Opinion is divided on this question, with some arguing that key secular institutions of Western modernity derive their content and ultimate legitimacy from the Christian ethos in which they originated (Löwith 1949; Becker 1932). Others maintain that secular modernity, in spite of its historical trajectory, is legitimate in its own right (Blumenberg 1985).³ This is not place to attempt a resolution of that question. My own view is that some aspects of some present institutions, including the sciences, do indeed seem to rely upon unstated religious premises or values (Harrison 2023).

A second issue worth pondering concerns not the past relation of science and theology but its future. For most of Western history, the formal study of nature was intimately connected to theology—notwithstanding the prevalence, since the late nineteenth century, of dubious narratives suggesting otherwise. This prompts the question of the future of science–theology relations and whether the years to come might see some new rapprochement with theology. What this might look like is not altogether clear, and prevailing models (such as intelligent design) are not auspicious, just as prominent admixtures of theology and politics—witness Christian nationalism—are deeply disturbing. But these unfortunate realities need not constitute a barrier to envisioning new, creative, and edifying modes of thinking. A good starting point for a new way forward would be an acknowledgment of the positive role played by theology in the genesis of modern science and an abandonment of the tired story of the inevitability of science–theology conflict.

Competing Interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.