Isaac Newton: Scientist and Biblical Scholar

Newton’s study of the Old Testament was, as was to be expected, rigorous and thorough. He had more than thirty different versions or translations of the Bible. He learned Hebrew in order to study the original texts of the prophets. He began a notebook in which he schematised his study, with headings such as ‘Incarnatio’ and ‘Deus Pater’. He amassed a huge library of biblical and patristic literature. He read all the authorities of previous centuries, and assimilated the most modern texts of seventeen-century theology in his desire for knowledge. He wished to become the master of his subject, as he had previously become the master of optics and the master of mathematics. At his death he left a manuscript on biblical matters, incomplete, of some 850 pages as well as a mass of assorted papers and notes.

In particular he became preoccupied with a dispute of the forth century, during the course of which he determined that the true faith – Protestantism, as he conceived it – had taken a perverse and highly injurious turn. The great controversy was between Arius and Athanasius. Athanasius propounded what had then become the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, in which Christ is seen as equal or ‘consubstantial’ with God. Arius denied the doctrine of the Trinity by denying that Christ was of the same substance as God. The views of Athanasius were accepted at the Council of Nicaea in 325, and of course became a part of the Nicene Creed.

But in the course of his intense study of the biblical texts Newton concluded that Athanasius had perpetuated a fraud. He had interpolated key words into the sacred Scriptures to support his argument that Christ was God. In that endeavour he had been supported by the Church of Rome, and from that corruption of the texts had sprung the general corruption of the Christian Church itself. The purity and faith of the early church had been destroyed by superstitious zealots who were intent upon bowing down before the illusion of the Trinity or Three In One. His mathematical, as well as his spiritual, creed directly opposed their position. In his support of Arius Newton was proclaiming that the priests and bishops of the Church were practising idolatry in their worship of Christ. Newton discovered, in the words of a fellow Arian, ‘that what has been long called Arianism is no other than Old uncorrupted Christianity; and that Athanasius was the grand and very wicked Instrument of that Change’. In his notebook Newton declared that ‘the Father is God of the Son’.

Newton also believed that the true religion was derived from the sons of Noah, and had been transmitted by Abraham, Isaac and Moses. Pythagoras was a convert to this religion, and passed it on to his disciples. Christ was a witness to that primitive faith in his simple commandments to love God and to love one’s neighbour. In a later document Newton declared that we must worship ‘the only invisible God’…at the peril of our souls ‘we must not pray to two Gods’. We must not worship Christ. Christ had been filled with divine spirit, but he was not God.

The fact was that, in the mid-seventeenth century, Arianism was still considered to be a dangerous heresy. If Newton had admitted his faith he would have been stripped of his university appointments, as were other and less cautious Arians. So he did not discuss these matters openly. He reserved his theological conversations for fellow believers. The full scale of his religious heterodoxy was not revealed until after his death, and even then the knowledge of it was suppressed by those scholars who believed that the father of English science must be above suspicion. To all outward appearances he remained a firm and orthodox member of the Church of England…

Extract from Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Newton, pp 52-54.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the English genius, was the author of ‘Principia’, one of the most important books in the history of science and discoverer of gravity.