Newton was a Puritan and a Young Earth Creationist which influenced all his works.

[Cal]

It has been noted that when the Royal Society was formed in 1662, many in the nucleus group were Puritans. This was the century of the Puritans and Newton was part of the movement. Puritanism had psychological effects on Newton which were related to his scientific endeavor.

In the history of science much attention is paid to the symbiotic relationship between Puritanism and science. First of all the Puritan had the personal qualities that serve any scientist well, such as practicality, orderliness, discipline and scrupulosity. His powers of observation for surveying the Scriptures literally served equally well for surveying and describing nature. The Christian view that God established a world order which obeys His ordinances, decrees and laws was only a step away from asking whether these laws can be discovered by observing nature.

There is another aspect about the English Puritans that is equally important for understanding the Puritan Isaac Newton. The Puritans inherited a Calvinistic distaste for the papacy, and with Newton, part of this distaste manifests itself in his arguments with Jesuit writers. We should also keep in mind that the Jesuits were the main source of scientific and historical ideas which came out of China. Especially in the realm of Jesuit-assembled chronologies, Newton felt that the Chinese records erred seriously. This was very similar to the fight Galileo had with the Roman Catholic Church and how Calvin and his interpretation of scripture and the Protestants supported Galileo.

Source: http://www.creationism.org/symposium/symp6no3.htm

Not only did Newton's Christian Puritan worldview result in the discovery of modern day science, but it appears he was a young earth six day creationist as well.

In a letter to Hugh Ross dated 1/23/04, Dr Carl Wieland stated:

"...You say that Newton referred to the use by ‘many of his respected contemporaries’ of those verses in Proverbs, Job, and Psalms to ‘support the great antiquity of Earth’. First of all, this is a relative term—we believe that the world is of ‘great antiquity’ too—as ancient as 6,000 years old! It is fallacious to take Hebrew terms of antiquity, which refer to ages comparable with man’s existence on earth, and import modern uniformitarian ideas of ‘age’ into them.

However, in that portion of his correspondence referring to those verses (which incidentally refers to the antiquity of the mountains and hills, not the whole earth), Newton says nothing at all about any contemporaries. Even more importantly, you omitted to mention that Newton’s reference to those verses was saying that he, Newton, would not use those verses to support antiquity.

This thus reflects, at the very least, a most careless reading of the Newton correspondence with Burnet. And Newton even indicates near the end of his 1681 letter to Burnet what his own inclination is: to follow Ex. 20:8–11 and the witness of the prophets, Jesus, the apostles and the church down to his day (including the theologians) in believing in literal six days."

Of course this would be very consistent with Newton's Christian Creationist worldview.

You can find a complete copy of Hugh Ross' and Dr Carl Wieland's letters one of my favorite website, Answers In Genesis (“AIG”).

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Heroes, like all of us human beings, have feet of clay.
Newton is no exception, but rather proves the rule. He was deeply effected by the puritan world view but himself was odd theologically to say the very least. Interestingly his theological and alchemical papers are now being scanned and made available at: http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk/intro.html

from any connection to his work in natural philosophy, his extraordinary theological and alchemical papers are unquestionably important in their own right. Composed over the whole of his career, many of his theological papers are strikingly original compositions that reveal the full extent of his passionate anti-trinitarian and anti-Catholic views. As for alchemy, he performed a number of innovative experiments and wrote broadly on the subject, though many of his notes in this area are not original compositions but transcripts and collations of previous authors. These are seldom acknowledged -- not because Newton was trying to pass the works off as his own, but because the notes were not intended to be read by anyone else, and he simply had no need to remind himself of his sources. In almost every aspect of his alchemical and theological pursuits, Newton drew from vast amounts of both past and contemporary writings, while he also engaged with and was influenced by contemporary religious, political and intellectual issues. An important part of the project's remit is to determine exactly how much of the corpus actually is Newton's work, and to identify the sources that he borrowed from, drew on or reacted against.

even the theosophists are closer to the truth of Newton than is our sanitized modern view of him
from: http://ts-adyar.org/magazine/the_theosophist/February_03/history.htm

An example of writing the history of science to exclude Hermeticism, is the marketing of Isaac Newton as an Enlightenment rationalist par excellence. Professor B.J.T. Dobbs points out that during his lifetime, Newton worked hard to stem the tides of materialism and mechanism (Dobbs, 1994, p.643), and he spent most of his time and expended the greatest of his energies on interests such as the chronology of the ancient kingdoms, Church history, theology, prophecy and alchemy (Dobbs, 1975/1983, p.6). But when Newton's papers were examined after his death in 1727, the alchemical papers were marked 'not fit to be printed' and put back in their boxes, where the approximately 650,000 words in his handwriting languished in their con- signed grave, largely unknown, until in 1936 the descendants of Newton's niece decided to sell the alchemical, theological and other papers in their possession (Dobbs, 1975/1983, p.13).

there is a lot on the net about his papers, a key way to get into the real Newton.

 

[Bulldog]

Wasn't Newton a universalist?

 

[Cal]

Heroes, like all of us human beings, have feet of clay.
Newton is no exception, but rather proves the rule. He was deeply effected by the puritan world view but himself was odd theologically to say the very least. Interestingly his theological and alchemical papers are now being scanned and made available at: http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk/intro.html



even the theosophists are closer to the truth of Newton than is our sanitized modern view of him
from: http://ts-adyar.org/magazine/the_theosophist/February_03/history.htm


there is a lot on the net about his papers, a key way to get into the real Newton.

The point I wanted to bring out with this and other similar posts is that the biblical teachings that are summerized in Calvinism have had and continue to have profound influences on people. These biblical revelations of truth, order, sovereignty of God, predestination, man's destiny to have dominian over the earth, proper interpretation of Scripture, and the fallability of man stimulated great thoughts and imaginations and encouraged great discoveries for the benefit of earth and all of mankind.

Whereas the gloom and doom of fatalistic paganism (like evolution) has resulted in the exact opposite in every area of life.

It's amazing to see the profound influences God's Word has had on the development of Western Civilization and the modern world. I am reminded by all of this of Christ's promise that the kingdom of God would start off as a tiny mustard seed and speck of yeast and then would grow into the largest tree and permeate the whole loaf.

As we see the light of the gospel change the face of the earth we can be encouraged about Christ's promises. We can also step on the shoulders of Christian giants and attempt to improve on their work knowing we are guaranteed advancement and success. Not as hero worship but in "joining in and buliding upon" the work of the Holy Spirit as He has worked in the lives of past Christians.

Of course, Newton, Calvin, Shakespeare, Galileo, King David and the Apostle Peter had numerous sins and faults and we can learn to try to avoid these in our lives. But we absolutely must learn what God has done and how He has done it through these and many other great Christian men so we can build upon their work and dominate the earth as He commanded man to do.

 

[Cal]

Wasn't Newton a universalist?

A lot of study has been made in this area and the conclusion of many scholars is we can't "pigeon-hole" Newton into any one category. Newton wrote extensive deep theological works on the trinity which weren't exactly 100% orthodox but he was not Arian and fought against Arianism.

Newton was a Puritan as was John Milton. They did a lot of deep thinking on many Christian doctrines and strayed a little from orthodoxy on a few of these doctrines, but the profound influences of numerous biblical truths as summerized in their Puritan Calvinism inspired, encouraged and validated many of their thoughts and imaginations which changed the world.

 

[theFijian]

Wasn't Newton a universalist?

And he'd never even heard of evolution (unsurprisingly)

Andy

 

[Cal]

And he'd never even heard of evolution (unsurprisingly)

Andy

Actually evolution was a concept of early Greek paganism, and as a matter of fact the quote that I provided in my first post was from a letter from Newton to Burnet, who was doubting the literal Genesis six day account. Newton was trying to convince him otherwise.