The real Isaac Newton - Rejector of The Trinity believer in one God

turned

Junior Member
A very interesting documentary revealing a hidden and truly enlightened side to one of the greatest minds that western civilisation has known. His deep study of science led him to a firm conclusion that there is a Creator and based on his study of early Christian history, he was convinced that the concept of The Trinity was a falsification of the pure message of monotheism that Jesus preached.


BBC - 'Newton: The Dark Heretic'
Aired 2003
'Heretic' in the sense that he disbelieved in the concept of the Trinity.

A very interesting documentary revealing a hidden and truly enlightened side to one of the greatest minds that western civilisation has known. His deep study of science led him to a firm conclusion that there is a Creator and based on his study of early Christian history, he was convinced that the concept of The Trinity was a falsification of the pure message of monotheism that Jesus preached.

Newton vehemently rejected the corruption of the Christian establishment and the innovation that is the divinity of Jesus, his belief was the revealed God is one God. During his life he was forced to keep this belief secret for fear of being labelled a heretic and after his death this information was carefully suppressed.

The documentary also highlights the point that in the absence of study of the final divine revelation no matter how great the mind the knowledge of the unseen can not be deciphered as is illustrated by the fact that Newton spirals into a hopeless search for the truth by vigoursly engaging in the art of alchemy!
 

turned

Junior Member
Also you can download this file from

http://www.*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!.net/details.php?id=6870
 

Bluegazer

Junior Member
Assalamu Alaikum brother turned,


I'm very grateful for this thread you have started and for posting the video of the BBC documentary Newton: A Dark Heretic. I learned a lot from watching it, and from the link to another Islamic forum which you have mentioned in post #4.


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To begin with, I have transcribed the part that specifically deals with Newton's anti-Trinitarian views. It begins from 25 minutes and 14 seconds, and goes on as follows:

Narrator: But Newton faced a terrible dilemma the day he had started to climb the academic ladder. He would be required to take Holy Orders and become a cleric in the Anglican Church. This set him on a collision course that threatened to end in his disgrace. He researched the history of Christianity, and became convinced that both the Catholic and the Anglican Church were founded on a corruption of the Word of God.


Dr. Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge): Now, because Newton was so convinced that God is extremely powerful and unique, Newton (as the saying goes) reads himself into heresy. In other words, Newton begins to minimize; to play down; eventually to deny the divinity of Christ.


Professor Gale E. Christianson (Indiana State University): And Newton comes to the conclusion very early on that the Trinity is a blasphemy on the First Commandment, because the First Commandment says that "thou shall have no other gods before me", and the worship of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost -from Newton's point of view- is a heresy.


Narrator: So, by the early 1670s, Newton had become a secret heretic. He was convinced the doctrine of the Trinity -to which Henry VIII had dedicated Trinity College- was a form of blasphemy.


Professor Stephen Snobelen (University of King's College, Nova Scotia): If Newton had been exposed -while he was at Cambridge- as an anti-Trinitarian, his career would have been over. He would have been ostracized. It's almost certain that it wouldn't have involved being put to death, but -definitely- prison would have been one possibility.


Narrator: Newton would also have risked becoming a target for mobs of heretic hunters, often whipped into a frenzy by the clergy.


Dr. Justin Champion (Royal Holloway, University of London): A heretic -like a witch- is a threat, not just to Truth, but to you. It's a physical threat. It's going to compromise and corrupt the community. So very often we know -from witch hunts- that the mob; the people would take direct action against these sorts of individuals. People are lynched. People are kicked to death, they're burned.


Narrator: The violence of the times is reflected in Newton's suppressed manuscripts. In these he focuses his anger on the monks who corrupted Christianity by imposing the Trinity.


Professor Stephen Snobelen (University of King's College, Nova Scotia): We can see page after page of material in which he tries to argue that the early Church Fathers... they're actually villains, they're criminals. And in some cases he actually calls them murderers for some of the things that they had done.

==================================


The atheist [on the Islamic forum you referred to] posted a paragraph that reads as follows:

In addition to [publication of scholarly editions of Newton's major works], rumours circulated as early as the second decade of the eighteenth century that Newton's religious views were highly unorthodox. Evidence that Newton did not subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity was corroborated in 1754 with the publication of a lengthy analysis, originally sent to John Locke, that purported to show that a number of pro-trinitarian texts in Scripture were later insertions (New College, Oxford Ms. 361(4)).

The source of this paragraph is the following website [as posted on the Islamic forum you referred to]:

http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=20


When I clicked on the last phrase [(New College, Oxford Ms. 361(4)], I was taken to the following website:

http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/catalogue/viewcat.php?id=THEM00099


This latest website reads as follows:

Catalogue Record: THEM00099

Various drafts and copies of the Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture and related material.

1690-91.

Bibliographical Details
Call Number: Ms. 361(4)
Location: New College Library, Oxford, UK

Contents
ff. 2-41 'An historical account of two notable corruptions of Scripture in a Letter to a Friend', in English with Greek and Latin citations, c. 25,000 words. At the top of the first page, in Thomas Pellet's hand: 'No. 30'. Copy of two letters of 14 November 1690 written by Newton to John Locke on 1 John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16 respectively: in this version they read as one continuous text. A crucial document for the study of Newton's theology, in particular his anti-Trinitarianism. It is a painstaking and extremely detailed collation of these two verses, both widely regarded as clear evidence for Trinitarianism, as they appear in surviving early Bibles in various languages and as they are quoted by various Fathers. Newton's conclusion is that the wording was altered, by accident or design, in the fourth or fifth century.
Locke sent a copy of the original letters to Jean Le Clerc. On 11 April 1691 Le Clerc suggested that the original author read Simon's Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament (Rotterdam, 1689), which Newton did, leading him to incorporate new information from Simon and from Burnet's Travels into this version of the text. The document was published in 1754 from a manuscript in the Remonstrants' Library and then more accurately by Horsley in 1785 (Horsley, 5: 493-550). Printed from this manuscript in NC, 3: 83-129. Cf. the expanded Latin translation of the first letter in Yahuda Var. 1 Ms. 20.
ff. 43-8 Copy of part of the above, in another hand, c. 2,500 words. Probably a printer's copy made in preparation for Horsley's edition.
ff. 49v-68 'The third Letter.' First version (draft A), in Newton's hand, of another letter sent to Locke soon after the earlier texts, in English with Latin and Greek citations, c. 8,000 words. This deals with other allegedly Trinitarian passages in Scripture which Newton believed to be corrupt. Printed in NC, 3: 129-44.
ff. 70-83 Second version (draft B), with a few changes, of the 'Third Letter', begun by Newton and completed by Conduitt (ff. 80-3), apparently copying from draft A. Possibly connected with Hopton Haynes's translation of the letter into Latin in 1709. In the section written by Newton, the variant readings between drafts A and B are all noted in Conduitt's hand on the facing pages.
ff. 85-101 Copy of draft B of the 'Third letter' in Horsley's hand, including copies of Conduitt's notes of the variant readings.
ff. 104-5 'Another Letter Written by <to> a friend who had perused the former Letters': revision of the beginning and end of the 'Third Letter'. Newton's hand, c. 800 words. Printed in NC, 3: 144-6.
ff. 107-8 Much neater copy of the above in another hand.
f. 109 Partial copy in the same hand.
ff. 112-14 Another copy in Horsley's hand.
ff. 117-21 Earlier drafts of parts of the first letter, in Newton's hand, c. 5,000 words.
This bundle also contains another 117 leaves of later material relating to Newton and Newtoniana, including a codicil to Catherine Conduitt's will concerning his papers (f. 139, 26 June 1737, printed in Brewster (1855), 2: 341), 18th-19th century correspondence of the Ekinses, Horsley, David Brewster and others about the whereabouts and ownership of the papers, and press cuttings about the erection of the Newton monument in Grantham in 1858 and the publication of Brewster's biography (1855).

Notes:
New College Mss. 361.1-4 comprise the Ekins papers given to New College in 1872.

Record Last Modified at 09:52 on 7 Nov 2005


The above two websites are part of The Newton Project:

Welcome to the Newton Project

Although Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is best known for his theory of universal gravitation and discovery of calculus, his interests were much broader than is usually appreciated. In addition to his celebrated natural philosophical writings and mathematical works, Newton also wrote many theological texts and alchemical tracts. We already have texts and images of many of these works on offer on our site and our goal is to make all Newton's writings freely available online.

The Newton Project is a wholly non-profit organization. We are always grateful for donations of any size. Anyone wishing to contribute to our work should contact us to receive details of how to make a tax-deductible donation.

Source: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=1


You'll notice that from foil 2-41, the document cited [in the article with the headline Various drafts and copies of the Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture and related material] is a letter entitled 'An historical account of two notable corruptions of Scripture in a Letter to a Friend'. One of those two corruptions was in the text of 1 John 5:7. This text is also known as the Comma Johanninum.


Please click on the following link, where I have proved [from Christian sources] that the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestants [judging from their Bible versions] have also come to a conclusion that the text of 1 John 5:7 was corrupted:

http://www.turntoislam.com/forum/showpost.php?p=153172&postcount=127



Best regards,

Bluegazer
 

Amir_of_spain

Junior Member
Newton was a man of God. His studies of physics made him religious, closer to Allah. The christian scholars of his time had a vision, that newton who had done wonders in scientific advancement for england, if he was made to study theology perhaps it would bring about a new era of the Church. However this backfired, as newton took his theological studies as seriously if not more seriously than his scientific studies. And thus he rejected trinity, but went one step further, saying this innovation has occurred due to the priests. If only he had obtained a copy of the quran.
 

ditta

Alhamdu'Lillaah
Staff member
Asalaamu'Alykum,

That was a very beneficial documentary and i learned a lot. Only Allah knows whether he died as a believer, but he didn't adopt the beliefs of people of his time, rather he affirmed that there is One God, the Almighty which must count for something. Wow, that was really a great documentary, i can't express this enough.

Walaykum Salam
 

turned

Junior Member
Have transferred to YouTube since GoogleVideo is being taken offline in the next few weeks.

[yt]A2DWBjyVfNU[/yt]
 

Rustandi

الفقير الى الله
:salam2:


wow... just wow, i really never expected this, jazaakallahu khayran for this very beneficial video , downloading this right away...
 

abdul-aziz

Junior Member
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