Sir Isaac Newton was one of the smartest men who ever lived. He was a mathematician and a scientist who discovered gravity. He and Albert Einstein were the two most influential scientists ever.
Newton also was a very devout Christian and student of the Bible. His friend John Locke—a member of the so-called Newton Circle, whose writings later had a profound influence on the crafting of the U.S. Constitution through Thomas Jefferson—wrote of Newton’s “great knowledge of the Scriptures, wherein I know few his equals.”
Using the prompt, “Isaac Newton’s Theological Beliefs, here’s what AI Overview says, “Isaac Newton held deeply unorthodox Christian beliefs, secretly rejecting the Trinity and viewing Jesus as a created being, not divine, in favor of “pure monotheism” with a single, all-powerful God (Pantocrator) governing the universe through natural laws. He saw his science as a theological project to understand God’s design, a pursuit he kept hidden to avoid heresy charges, viewing orthodox Christianity’s Trinitarian doctrine as a ‘diabolical fraud’ and corruption.”
Isaac Newton Was Not a Secret Arian
I have two pages about Sir Isaac Newton and his theological beliefs in my book The Restitution: Biblical Proof Jesus Is Not God, which is 570 pages and cites over 400 scholars. And the subhead is, “Sir Isaac Newton: A Secret Arian?” The question mark indicates that Newton most certainly was not an Arian, but that is what the world has thought. The main reason was that he was “secret” about his unorthodox theology to avoid controversy. But in all of his writings, both published and unpublished, he wrote more about theology than science, alchemy, and mathematics combined.
But we all know that Artificial Intelligence only provides the majority view of what people think. Thus, the AI Overview then goes on to get something quite wrong about Sir Isaac by saying, “Newton believed Jesus was a created intermediary, subordinate to God the Father, not co-equal or divine, a view aligned with the 4th-century priest Arius.” This is correct except the last clause about being aligned with Arius.
In fact, when England asked Newton to accept a chair at Cambridge University in his name, he balked. Why? England was a church-state must like most of Europe. Thus, it would have required Newton to accept the Church of England’s “Thirty-Nine Articles” of Church Theology. Newton really knew that he could not do that because it had two articles about the doctrine of the Trinity.
As Newton delayed, the state dropped that matter and moved ahead anyway. Years later, when Newton retired, thus relinquishing his Cambridge chair, he chose for his chair successor his friend William Whiston, a member of the Newton Circle and an thoroughgoing Arian. But Newton told Whiston privately he must never publicly admit to being an Arian. When Whiston accepted the honor, and later divulged publicly his Arian beliefs, Newton thereafter ended their friendship because of it.
Church Orthodoxy Vs. Arianism
The 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Council and the Nicene Creed (they happened in the year 325 A.D.) were just celebrated ten days ago. I blogged about it since Pope Leo XIV went to where it happened, in Iznik (formerly Nicaea), Turkey, to celebrate it. Emperor Constantine had called for this council because Arius, a priest in Alexandria, Egypt, had stirred up controversy by teaching God the Father had created the man Jesus of Nazareth as the preexistent Logos-Son before the creation of the universe.
But Bishop Alexander—head of the entire Egypt diocese, the 3rd largest in the Roman Empire—strongly opposed this Arian teaching by claiming, especially from the Bible’s Gospel of John, that Jesus had preexisted as the Logos-Son throughout all of eternity past so that there was never a time when God created him.
This teaching by Bishop Alexander was not original with himself. It had first been put forward by the first systematic theologian, whose name wasOrigen. He labeled this teaching “eternal generation,” which is surely an oxymoron. Nevertheless, eternal generation became Christian orthodoxy, but I think it is more properly called church orthodoxy because it is not the true teaching of the Bible, as Newton rightly claimed.
Newton has been labeled an Arian, but this is completely false. He believed exactly as I do: (1) there is only one God, whom Jesus called “Father,” and (2) Jesus is not God as the Nicene Creed wrongly identifies him. And God is not a Trinity, which word and concept are not in the Bible.
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