Isaac Newton's religious views - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sir Isaac Newton was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

physicist

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

, mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, astronomer

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

, natural philosopher

Natural philosophy

Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...

, theologian and alchemist

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

. He also wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies

Isaac Newton's occult studies

Sir Isaac Newton , the noted English scientist and mathematician, wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies.These occult works explored chronology, alchemy, and Biblical interpretation ....

.

Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, as he considered himself to be one of a select group of individuals who were specially chosen by God for the task of understanding Biblical scripture. Newton’s conception of the physical world provided a stable model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world. Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.

Although born into an Anglican

Anglicanism

Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...

family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

; in recent times he has been described as heretical to orthodoxy.

Biblical studies

Though he is better known for his love of science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, the Bible

Bible

was Sir Isaac Newton's greatest passion. He devoted more time to the study of Scripture than to science, and he said, "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily." He spent a great deal of time trying to discover hidden messages within the Bible

Bible code

The Bible code , also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of secret messages encoded within the text Hebrew Bible and describing prophesies and other guidance regarding the future. This hidden code has been described as a method by which specific letters from the text can be selected to...

. After 1690, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible

Bible

. In a manuscript Newton wrote in 1704 in which he describes his attempts to extract scientific information from the Bible, he estimated that the world would end no earlier than 2060. In predicting this he said, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

Prophecy

Newton was a strong believer in prophetic interpretation of the Bible

Bible

and considered himself to be one of a select group of individuals who were specially chosen by God for the task of understanding Biblical scripture.

Unlike a prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

in the classical sense of the word, Newton relied upon existing Scripture to prophecy for him, believing his interpretations would set the record straight in the face of what he considered to be, "so little understood".

Though he would never write a cohesive body of work on Prophecy, Newton's beliefs would lead him to write several treatises on the subject, including an unpublished guide for prophetic interpretation entitled, Rules for interpreting the words & language in Scripture. In this manuscript he details the necessary requirements for what he considered to be the proper interpretation of the Bible.

He used the book of Daniel and Revelation to work out the dates he used

Time of the end

In his posthumously-published Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John, Newton expressed his belief that Bible prophecy would not be understood "until the time of the end", and that even then "none of the wicked shall understand". Referring to that as a future time ("the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching"), Newton also anticipated "the general preaching of the Gospel be approaching" and "the Gospel must first be preached in all nations before the great tribulation, and end of the world".

2060 A.D.

Over the years, a large amount of media attention and public interest has circulated regarding largely unknown and unpublished documents, evidently written by Isaac Newton, that indicate he believed the world could end in 2060 AD. (Newton also had many other possible dates e.g. 2034) The juxtaposition of Newton, popularly seen by some as the embodiment of scientific rationality, with a seemingly irrational prediction of the "end of the world" would invariably lend itself to cultural sensationalism.

To understand the reasoning behind the 2060 prediction, an understanding of Newton's theological beliefs should be taken into account, particularly his nontrinitarian beliefs and those negative views he held about the Papacy. Both of these lay essential to his calculations, which are themselves based upon specific chronological dates which he believed had already transpired and had been prophesied within Revelation

Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...

and Daniel

Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is a book in the Hebrew Bible. The book tells of how Daniel, and his Judean companions, were inducted into Babylon during Jewish exile, and how their positions elevated in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The court tales span events that occur during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar,...

, books within the Christian Bible.

Despite the dramatic nature of a prediction of the end of the world, Newton may not have been referring to the 2060 date as a destructive act resulting in the annihilation of the earth and its inhabitants, but rather one in which he believed the world was to be replaced with a new one based upon a transition to an era of divinely inspired peace. In Christian theology, this concept is often referred to as The Second Coming

Second Coming

In Christian doctrine, the Second Coming of Christ, the Second Advent, or the Parousia, is the anticipated return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, where he sits at the Right Hand of God, to Earth. This prophecy is found in the canonical gospels and in most Christian and Islamic eschatologies...

of Jesus Christ and the establishment of Paradise

Paradise

Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...

by The Kingdom of God

Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is a foundational concept in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.The term "Kingdom of God" is found in all four canonical gospels and in the Pauline epistles...

on Earth. In Judaism it is often referred to as the Messianic era or the "Yamei Moshiach" (Days of the Messiah).

God as masterful creator

Newton saw God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. Nevertheless he rejected Leibniz' thesis that God would necessarily make a perfect world which requires no intervention from the creator. In Query 31 of the Opticks, Newton simultaneously made an argument from design and for the necessity of intervention:

This passage prompted an attack by Leibniz in a letter to his friend Caroline of Ansbach

Caroline of Ansbach

Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach was the queen consort of King George II of Great Britain.Her father, John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, was the ruler of a small German state...

:

Leibniz' letter initiated the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence

Leibniz-Clarke correspondence

The Leibniz–Clarke correspondence was a scientific, theological and philosophical debate conducted in an exchange of letters between the German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, an English supporter of Isaac Newton during the years 1715 and 1716...

, ostensibly with Newton's friend and disciple Samuel Clarke

Samuel Clarke

thumb|right|200px|Samuel ClarkeSamuel Clarke was an English philosopher and Anglican clergyman.-Early life and studies:...

, although as Caroline wrote, Clarke's letters "are not written without the advice of the Chev. Newton".
Clarke complained that Leibniz' concept of God as a "supra-mundane intelligence" who set up a "pre-established harmony" was only a step from atheism: "And as those men, who pretend that in an earthly government things may go on perfectly well without the king himself ordering or disposing of any thing, may reasonably be suspected that they would like very well to set the king aside: so, whosoever contends, that the beings of the world can go on without the continual direction of God...his doctrine does in effect tend to exclude God out of the world".

In addition to stepping in to re-form the solar system, Newton invoked God's active intervention to prevent the stars falling in on each other, and perhaps in preventing the amount of motion in the universe from decaying due to viscosity and friction. In private correspondence Newton sometimes hinted that the force of Gravity was due to an immaterial influence:

Leibniz jibed that such an immaterial influence would be a continual miracle; this was another strand of his debate with Clarke.

Newton's view has been considered to be close to deism

Deism

Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...

but differed in that he invoked God as a special physical cause to keep the planets in orbits. He warned against using the law of gravity

Law of Gravity

"Law of Gravity" is the fifteenth episode of the seventh season of the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.-Plot:Before the start of his shift, Keppler eats dinner at a diner where he runs into an older man named Frank McCarty...

to view the universe as a mere machine, like a great clock. He said:
On the other hand, latitudinarian

Latitudinarian

Latitudinarian was initially a pejorative term applied to a group of 17th-century English theologians who believed in conforming to official Church of England practices but who felt that matters of doctrine, liturgical practice, and ecclesiastical organization were of relatively little importance...

and Newtonian ideas taken too far resulted in the millenarians, a religious faction dedicated to the concept of a mechanical universe, but finding in it the same enthusiasm and mysticism that the Enlightenment had fought so hard to extinguish. Newton himself may have had some interest in millenarianism

Millenarianism

Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...

as he wrote about both the Book of Daniel

Book of Daniel

and the Book of Revelation

Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...

in his Observations Upon the Prophecies.
In a manuscript he wrote in 1704 in which he describes his attempts to extract scientific information from the Bible, he estimated that the world could end on 2060. In predicting this he said, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

Newton’s conception of the physical world provided a stable model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world.

Orthodoxy

Newton was born into an Anglican family, and remained part of the Anglican establishment for the majority of his life. However, Newton's private religious views were not in line with Anglican doctrine

Anglican doctrine

Anglican doctrine is the body of Christian teachings used to guide the religious and moral practices of Anglicans.-Approach to doctrine:...

.

According to most scholars, Newton was Arian

Arianism

Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...

, not holding to Trinitarianism

Trinity

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...

. 'In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry

Idolatry

Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...

, to him the fundamental sin'. As well as being antitrinitarian

Nontrinitarianism

Nontrinitarianism includes all Christian belief systems that disagree with the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, the teaching that God is three distinct hypostases and yet co-eternal, co-equal, and indivisibly united in one essence or ousia...

, Newton allegedly rejected the orthodox doctrines of the immortal

Immortality

Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...

soul

Soul

A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...

, a personal devil

Devil

The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

and literal demon

Demon

call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...

s. Although he was not a Socinian

Socinianism

Socinianism is a system of Christian doctrine named for Fausto Sozzini , which was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Minor Reformed Church of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries and embraced also by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period...

he shared many similar beliefs with them. A manuscript he sent to John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity

Trinity

was never published.

Newton — like many contemporaries (e.g., Thomas Aikenhead

Thomas Aikenhead

Thomas Aikenhead was a Scottish student from Edinburgh, who was prosecuted and executed at the age of 20 on a charge of blasphemy. He was the last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy.-Indictment:...

) — faced the threat of severe punishment if he had been open about his religious beliefs. Heresy was a crime that could have been punishable by the loss of all property and status or even death (see, e.g., the Blasphemy Act 1697). Because of his secrecy over his religious beliefs, Newton has been described as a Nicodemite

Nicodemite

Nicodemite is term that 'generally denotes a secret or timid adherent'. Most often it is used as a term of disparagement, applied to persons who are suspected of public misrepresentation of their actual religious beliefs by the practice of and dissimulation .Introduced into 16th century religious...

.

In a minority view, T.C. Pfizenmaier argued Newton was neither "orthodox" nor an Arian, but that, rather, Newton believed both of these groups had wandered into metaphysical speculation. Pfizenmaier also argued that Newton held closer to the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics and Protestants. However, S. D. Snobelen

Stephen Snobelen

Dr. Stephen Snobelen, originally from British Columbia, is a professor of the history of science and technology at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia...

has argued against this from manuscripts produced late in Newton's life which demonstrate Newton rejected the Eastern view of the Trinity.

Other beliefs

Henry More

Henry More FRS was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school.-Biography:Henry was born at Grantham and was schooled at The King's School, Grantham and at Eton College...

's belief in the universe and rejection of Cartesian dualism may have influenced Newton's religious ideas. Later works — The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) — were published after his death.

Newton and Boyle

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...

’s mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox clergy as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians. The clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way in which to combat the emotional and mystical superlatives of superstitious enthusiasm, as well as the threat of atheism.

The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

magical thinking

Magical thinking

Magical thinking is causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion, and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or...

, and the mystical elements of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, were given their foundation with Boyle’s mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle’s ideas their completion through mathematical proof

Mathematical proof

In mathematics, a proof is a convincing demonstration that some mathematical statement is necessarily true. Proofs are obtained from deductive reasoning, rather than from inductive or empirical arguments. That is, a proof must demonstrate that a statement is true in all cases, without a single...

s, and more importantly was very successful in popularizing them. Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles. These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to pursue his own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect himself with his own rational powers.

External links

Isaac Newton Theology, Prophecy, Science and Religion - writings on Newton by Stephen Snobelen
Stephen Snobelen
Dr. Stephen Snobelen, originally from British Columbia, is a professor of the history of science and technology at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Biblical studies

Prophecy

Time of the end

2060 A.D.

God as masterful creator

Orthodoxy

Other beliefs

See also

External links