Abstract
In the vast literature about Newton, little is devoted to explaining his religious views, except as personal aberrations, infantile views, or premature signs of senility. In recent years R.S. Westfall, Frank Manuel, James Force and a few others have tried to give some more impressive explanations of why one of the world’s greatest scientists should have spent so much time thinking and writing about religious matters.1 In this paper I should like to turn the problem around, and ask why did one of the greatest anti-Trinitarian theologians of the 17th century take time off to write works on natural science, like the Principia Mathematica?
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Notes
Gale E. Christianson, In the Presencee of the Creator, Isaac Newton and his Times, (New York 1984)
James E. Force, William Whiston, Honest Newtonian, (Cambridge 1985)
Frank E, Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian, (Cambridge, Mass. 1963), and The Religion of Isaac Newton, (Oxford 1974);
Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton, (Cambridge 1980).
Isaac Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, (London 1728), and Two Letters to Mr. LeClerc, (London 1754).
No inventory of Newton’s theological manuscripts has been published. Westfall, in op.cit. gives a survey of where manuscripts are located. I have found others at the University of Kentucky, at the Seventh Day Adventist Seminary at Barien Springs, Michigan, and in private hands. There is a sales catalogue of Sotheby’s for the manuscripts that were auctioned off in 1936.
On the history of Newton’s manuscripts, see Westfall, op.cit., pp. 875–877.
Isaac Newton, Theological Manuscripts, selected and edited with an introduction by H. McLachlan, (Liverpool 1950).
The correspondence is in Yahuda Ms. Var. 1, Box 42.
This information was acquired in private conversations with friends of Yahuda. He is still a very controversial figure in Israel. Shortly after his death his widow privately published a work of Yahuda’s entitled, Dr. Weizman’s Errors on Trial, an attack on what Chaim Weitzman said about Yahuda in his work, Trial and Error.
This appears as an appendix to Frank Manuel, Religion of Isaac Newton, “Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation,” pp. 107–123.
Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.1, fol. 12r; Manuel, Religion of Newton, p. 118.
Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.1., fol. 19v.
In the chronological order of Newton’s theological writings prepared by R.S. Westfall, unpublished.
Cf. John Harrison, The Library of Isaac Newton, (Cambridge 1978), p.239.
See Manuel, Religion of Newton, pp. 84–85.
Newton manuscripts, New College Oxford II fol. 192; Yahuda Var. Ms. 1.7, 1.9 and 1.10B, fol.11v.
Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St.John, (London 1733), chap. I, pp.1) 15.
Newton, Ibid., loc,cit. A much more detailed account of this appears in Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.7:3; 1.9:2 and 1.10B.
Newton, Observations, pp.4–5.
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., pp. 10–11.
Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.7:3, and 1.10B, fol.11v-12r.
Newton, Observations, pp. 11–12.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, (London 1658), chap. 1,sec. viii, p. 6, states, The Old and New Testaments “being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore Authentical.”
Newton, Observations, p.238.
Ibid., p. 239.
See Newton’s letter to Locke, Nov. 4, 1690, (full reference given in note 28); and West-fall, op.cit., pp. 312–313, for further references.
Yahuda Ms. Var. 14.
The first time two of these letters were published was inLondon in 1754. The full texts, plus a third letter are printed in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, edited by H. W. Turnbull, (Cambridge 1961), Vol. III, pp. 83) 146.
William Andrews Clark Library Ms., Newton, Paradoxical Questions concerning ye morals and actions of Athanasius and his followers; Keynes Ms. 10, King’s College, Cambridge, Paradoxical Questions… See also Yahuda Ms. 1.14.
Martin Bodmer Library, Geneva, Newton Ms. on the Mystery of the Grand Iniquity of the Church.
On this, see Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 390–91.
See note 28.
Cf. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian, chaps. VI and IX.
Newton, “A Short Chronicle of the First Memory of Things inEurope,” in The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, pp. 1–42; and Manuel, Newton, Historian, chap. III.
Newton, Chronology, chap. I and p. 358; and Manuel, Newton,Historian, chaps. IV-VI.
Newton, “A Short Chronicle,” pp. 25–26; and Manuel, Newton, Historian, pp. 85–88.
Manuel, Newton, Historian, chap. VI.
A. S. Yahuda, The Accuracy of the Bible, (New York 1935).
From a private conversation in 1985.
Yahuda was challenged by the Egyptologist, Wilhelm Spiegelberg.
Yahuda’s essay is with his Newton manuscripts in Yahuda Ms. Var. 1, Box 43.
For example, see Ms. Keynes 146, New College Ms. 361.1, and Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.7.
Newton’s essay, “A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of the several Nations,” was published in John Greaves, Miscellaneous Works, (London 1737), Vol II, pp.405–433. Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.2:4, 1.2:5, 1.13:2 and 1.28:5 are on The Temple and the sacred cubit. The most complete statement by Newton on the structure of Solomon’s Temple (with illustrations) is in Babson College Ms. 434, “Prolegomena ad Lexici Prophetici partem secundam, in quibus agitur De forma Sancturarii Judaici.”
Newton, Observations, pp. 13–15 and 249–50; and Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.1, fols 1r and 19–20.
Cf. letter of Henry More to Dr. John Sharp, August 16, 1680, printed in Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Con way Letters, (New Haven 1930), pp. 478–79.
See for example Yahuda Ms. Var. 1.9:22, sec.ix, fol.87 and 10B. See also, Maunel, Religion of Newton, pp.90–91 and 100.
See Newton, Observations, p. 278, and Yahuda Ms. Var.1.1, fols. 84 and 28.
On Mede, see Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645, (Oxford 1979), chap. VII;
R.H. Popkin, “The Third Force in Seventeenth Century Thought: Skepticism, Science and Millenarianism,” in E. Ullmann-Margalith,ed., The Prism of Science, (Dordrecht 1986), pp.21)50.
Newton, Observations, pp. 252)53.
See Michel de Nostradamus, “Préface de M. Nostradamus à ses Prophéties, Ad Caesarem Nostradamus filium,” in E. Leoni, Nostradamus, Life and Literature, (New York 1965), pp. 120–131.
On this, see R.H. Popkin, “Newton and the Rise of Fundamentalism,” forthcoming.
William Whiston. The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy, (London 1708).
Newton was obviously interested in some of these prophecies. See for example, Yahuda Ms. Var.1.10B, fol.14, where Newton referred to the prophecies of Cotterus, Christina and Drabnicius, published by Comenius.
Newton, Observations, pp. 250–251.
Ibid., pp. 251–52.
Ibid., pp. 252–53.
Popkin, “Newton and the Rise of Fundamentalism.”
This theory of Newton is expounded in Leroy Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers, (Washington 1948), Vol. II, pp.659–669. Newton’s text is quoted on pp. 665–666. Froom was the leading historian of the Seventh Day Adventists.
Sir William Whitla, Sir Isaac Newton’s Daniel and the Apocalypse, (London 1922).
Force, Whiston, chaps. 1, 4 and 5.
Newton, Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Motte translation, (Berkeley 1936), pp. 544–546.
Cf. R. H. Popkin, “Newton and Maimonides,” in Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, forthcoming.
Friedrich Schelling, Darstellung des philosophischen Empiricismus, in Schelling, Werke, Band 10, (Stuttgart and Augsburg 1861), p. 261, translated by Dr. Fritz Marti. I am most grateful to Dr. Marti for bringing this discussion of Schelling’s about Newton to my attention.
Force, op.cit. pp. 23–25.
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Popkin, R.H. (1988). Newton’s Biblical Theology and His Theological Physics. In: Scheurer, P.B., Debrock, G. (eds) Newton’s Scientific and Philosophical Legacy. Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 123. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2809-1_4
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