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At some point in his preparation for ordination, Newton began to struggle with the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity was a topic of deep and heated discussion during the seventeenth century, and in the Anglican Church there was considerable division over it. (Deviations from Trinitarian doctrine within the English church were rampant.) Denying the Trinity was heretical, and so Newton remained extremely cautious about his views. Over his lifetime, he seems to have changed his exact position on the doctrine of the Trinity, but it is difficult to tell. Newton never discussed publically his beliefs on the Trinity, and his notes on it were not found until after his death.
We know, however, that Newton believed in the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit; he also believed that Jesus was the Messiah and atoned for our sins with his death on the cross. Newton even believed, contrary to Arianism (of which he is usually accused), in the eternality of the Son. He also embraced the straightforwardly biblical position that the Father and Son are one. What Newton did not believe, however, was that the Father and Son were one in the sense that they were
consubstantial or of the same substance. According to Newton, the Father and Son were one, but this unity was not a metaphysical unity; rather, it was one of dominion and purpose.
There were a number of reasons for Newton’s denial of consubstantiality. The most important reason for Newton was that he simply didn’t see it in Scripture. Newton felt that consubstantiality was a metaphysical concept imported from Greek philosophy, a practice of which he was extremely suspicious. Consubstantiality was, he felt, a very shaky inference from Scripture: “All the old Heresies lay in deductions,” he said, “the true faith was in the text.” Newton blamed both Athanasius
and Arius for distorting Scripture when, in the fourth century, they “introduced metaphysical subtleties into their disputes and corrupted the plain language of Scripture.” Their ancient debate seemed to have more in common with Plato and Aristotle than with Jesus. Newton asked whether “Christ sent his apostles to preach metaphysics to the unlearned people, and to their wives and children?”
Furthermore, the two main scriptural proof texts for the Trinity, Newton said, were corrupted by segments of the church to support the doctrine. In his letter to John Locke—“Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture”—Newton outlines how 1 John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16 may have been altered. So, the shaky inference from Scripture to the doctrine of the Trinity was based on a shaky foundation.
Ironically, it was Newton’s unswerving allegiance to the (genuine) words of Scripture that compelled him to deny consubstantiality and embrace what he saw as the true doctrine of the Trinity.
In addition to believing that consubstantiality was not a scriptural doctrine, Newton believed that the metaphysics underlying it “is unintelligible. ’Twas not understood in the Council of [Nicea]...nor ever since.” Just what is a substance, and what does it mean to be of the same substance (and not merely the same
kind of substance)? “Substance” is a philosophical term that is mysterious at best. Like Locke, Newton believed that, even if things possessed some underlying substance, we know little, if anything, about it. And if this is so for ordinary material objects, how much more in the case of God?
As Frank Manuel writes, however, we must be careful to not “pigeonhole [Newton] in one of the recognized categories of heresy—Arian, Socinian, Unitarian, or Deist.” It may be that Newton himself never came to a final, clear position. This isn’t surprising. The doctrine of the Trinity is
officially a mystery, an article of faith that is incomprehensible. And the line between incomprehensibility and incoherence is often difficult for mortals to identify.
Newton’s scientific methods spilled over into his study of theology. Notice that the doctrine of consubstantiality is an
explanation of the biblical data, not a parroting of it. That is, the doctrine is a
hypothesis, in the Newtonian sense. Newton, therefore, was not denying the original data—the words of Scripture—but rather the hypothesis used to make sense of them. Hypotheses are always less certain than the facts they are employed to explain.
But one thing
is clear. Newton denied consubstantiality, and this was enough to give him pause when it came time for ordination. How could he—while doubting what the Anglican church saw as a fundamental tenet (at least officially)—take a vow to support
everything Anglicanism held dear? He therefore chose to resign as senior fellow of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, and so from his Lucasian professorship. This was a brave thing to do: retiring from Cambridge would mean a lifetime of watching sheep wander his Woolsthorpe estate.
Mitch Stokes is a Fellow of Philosophy at New Saint Andrews College, a modern dance enthusiast, and a champion recumbent bicyclist.
http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Theology/isaac-newton-on-the-trinity-hypothesis.html