Newton: Bible Student and Scientist
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was born in Lincolnshire on Christmas day nearly two months premature, and posthumous to his father. In the superstition of the day, all three of these circumstances were considered to portend a child of exceptional abilities, and so he was. He was born in the last year a witch was publicly burned at the stake in England. When he went to his grave at age 85, he was and still is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time.
But the advocates of rational thought were inventing a fiction, for first and foremost Newton was a man of faith. This community has long ignored or belittled Newton’s strong commitment to Christianity and earnest non-conforming Bible study. Nearly one million words, mostly unpublished even today, range over biblical prophecy, the Times of Restitution, translation and manuscript errors, chronology, the measurements of Ezekiel’s temple compared against the New Jerusalem, and the Great Pyramid.
The article following reproduces some of Isaac Newton’s writing on Scripture. The editors do not concur with all of the specific interpretations, but it is remarkable how much of an understanding of the kingdom was known so far back. Newton’s keen mind permitted him to see truths that we might have thought were little known until the harvest.
Newton’s public anti-Trinitarian positions and writings continually created difficulties for his patrons. He required special royal dispensation for him to secure a post as professor, ironically enough, at Trinity College, Cambridge. Significantly, he is responsible for the scholarship that challenged the spurious acceptance of 1 John 5:7 into the Greek New Testament.
When Newton died unmarried, the executors of his estate largely found his religious writings to be an embarrassment. They kept all but four sequestered, where they remained unread until the twentieth century.
(This synopsis is based on the highly recommended “Religion of Isaac Newton,” by Frank E. Manuel, Oxford, 1974. See also H. MacLachlen, Isaac Newton, 1950. Modern spelling adopted throughout.)
– Richard Doctor