Time&Eternity

138 chapter 3
verse is true. While Newton’s concept of divine power is expressly linked to
a relation—God is always the Lord over servants 113 —in Leibniz, God is
“determined by internal reasons”; 114 God’s wisdom is absolute. The taming
of omnipotence by divine wisdom does indeed help Leibniz to get beyond
Clarke’s problem of the relationship of space/time and omnipresence/eternity
with its aporia of the identification of God with absolute space and absolute
time. But within his system, he is unsuccessful in conclusively conceiving
of God’s preservational activity, for the wisdom that is being
expressed in the preestablished harmony not only makes a continuous
preservation activity unnecessary, but it also renders any divine intervention
at all problematic. Leibniz is in danger of contrasting a self-functioning
world mechanism with an otherworldly God, while Clarke runs the risk of
integrating an omnipotent God into a closed system.
In both Clarke and Leibniz, God is necessary for understanding space
and time, as well as for comprehending the world. Both apportion to God
the position of logical guarantor for the rationality of the world mechanism.
Proof of this necessary God is thus also derived from the world’s coherence,
which brings God into a relationship of dependency with far-reaching consequences,
although this certainly had not been intended. What still appears
to be a valid mental construction on the horizon of the dawning eighteenth
century is soon transformed into a pile of rubble: The God who is
the necessary foundation of everything becomes a God who is constantly
retreating and for whom smaller and smaller gaps remain within what is not
yet explicable by the laws of nature. The modern theological discussion of
the “more than necessary” God should be understood as a counterpart to
this development. It claims that God cannot be proven to be the sufficient
ground of being on the basis of the world’s coherence; God always comes
from Godself. 115
The thoughts expressed here leave no doubt that, in Newton/Clarke
and Leibniz, theology and physics have mutually influenced each other. I
believe a decision cannot be made as to whether one can assign greater
influence to theology or physics in specific cases. It remains to be emphasized
that the distinctions worked out in the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence
developed into a dualism not only between time and space and between absolute
and relative, but also between space/time and matter and, finally, between
God and the world. In my view, the theistic concept of a God who is
absolute and static in divine majesty contributed to this process. 116 How
would it have been if Newton had included—if not an elaborated doctrine
of the Trinity—then at least a Christology? If it can be reasonably assumed
that Newton did not intend a development toward a “God of the gaps,”
would the result have been different if he had included Christology? What,