Editing Isaac Newton (section)

=== Religious views ===
{{Main|Religious views of Isaac Newton|Isaac Newton's occult studies}}
Although born into an [[Anglicanism|Anglican]] family, by his thirties Newton had developed unorthodox beliefs,<ref name="Newton – 1">[[Richard S. Westfall]]&nbsp;– [[Indiana University]] {{Cite book |url=http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/newton.html |title=The Galileo Project |publisher=([[Rice University]]) |access-date=5 July 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200929133323/http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/newton.html |archive-date=29 September 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref> with historian [[Stephen Snobelen]] labelling him a [[heresy|heretic]].<ref name="heretic">{{Cite journal |last=Snobelen |first=Stephen&nbsp;D. |date=December 1999 |title=Isaac Newton, heretic: the strategies of a Nicodemite |journal=The British Journal for the History of Science |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=381–419 |doi=10.1017/S0007087499003751 |jstor=4027945 |s2cid=145208136}}</ref>

By 1672, he had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only been available for public examination since 1972.{{sfn|Katz|1992|p=63}} Over half of what Newton wrote concerned theology and alchemy, and most has never been printed.{{sfn|Katz|1992|p=63}} His writings show extensive knowledge of [[Early Christianity|early Church]] texts and reveal that he sided with [[Arius]], who rejected the conventional view of the [[Trinity]] and was the losing party in the conflict with [[Athanasius of Alexandria|Athanasius]] over the [[Creed]]. Newton "recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him."{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=315}} He was especially interested in prophecy, but for him, "the [[great apostasy]] was trinitarianism."{{sfn|Westfall|1980|p=321}}

Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the last moment in 1675, he received a government dispensation that excused him and all future holders of the Lucasian chair.{{sfn|Westfall|1980|pp=331–34}}

Worshipping [[Jesus|Jesus Christ]] as [[God in Christianity|God]] was, in Newton's eyes, [[idolatry]], an act he believed to be the fundamental [[sin]].{{sfn|Westfall|1994|p=124}} In 1999, Snobelen wrote, that "Isaac Newton was a [[heresy|heretic]]. But&nbsp;... he never made a public declaration of his private faith—which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unraveling his personal beliefs." Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a [[Socinian]] sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an [[Arianism|Arian]] and almost certainly an [[anti-trinitarian]].<ref name="heretic" />

[[File:Newton-WilliamBlake crop.jpg|thumb|''[[Newton (Blake)|Newton]]'' (1795, detail) by [[William Blake]]. Newton is depicted critically as a "divine geometer".<ref>{{Cite web |date=25 September 2013 |title=Newton, object 1 (Butlin 306) "Newton" |url=http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copyinfo.xq?copyid=but306.1 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130927214741/http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copyinfo.xq?copyid=but306.1 |archive-date=27 September 2013 |access-date=25 September 2013 |publisher=[[William Blake Archive]]}}</ref>]]

Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Newton |first=Isaac |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dz2FzJqaJMUC&pg=PA436 |title=Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia |date=1782 |publisher=Joannes Nichols |location=London |pages=436–37 |access-date=18 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414055022/https://books.google.com/books?id=Dz2FzJqaJMUC&q=%22gravity%20may%20put%20the%20planets%20into%20motion%22&pg=PA436 |archive-date=14 April 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Along with his scientific fame, Newton's studies of the Bible and of the early [[Church Fathers]] were also noteworthy. Newton wrote works on [[textual criticism]], most notably ''[[An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture]]'' and ''[[s:Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel|Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John]]''.<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16878 ''Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170120113904/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16878 |date=20 January 2017 }} 1733</ref> He placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which agrees with one traditionally accepted date.<ref>John P. Meier, ''[[John P. Meier#A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus|A Marginal Jew]]'', v. 1, pp. 382–402. after narrowing the years to 30 or 33, provisionally judges 30 most likely.</ref>

He believed in a rationally [[immanent]] world, but he rejected the [[hylozoism]] implicit in [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] and [[Baruch Spinoza]]. The ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason. In his correspondence, he claimed that in writing the ''Principia'' "I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity".<ref>Newton to [[Richard Bentley]] 10 December 1692, in Turnbull et al. (1959–77), vol 3, p. 233.</ref> He saw evidence of design in the system of the world: "Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice". But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities.<ref>Opticks, 2nd Ed 1706. Query 31.</ref> For this, Leibniz lampooned him: "God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Alexander |first=H. G. |url=https://archive.org/details/leibnizclarkecor00clar/page/11 |title=The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1956 |pages=11}}</ref>

Newton's position was defended by his follower [[Samuel Clarke]] in a [[Leibniz-Clarke correspondence|famous correspondence]]. A century later, [[Pierre-Simon Laplace]]'s work [[Traité de mécanique céleste|''Celestial Mechanics'']] had a natural explanation for why the planet orbits do not require periodic divine intervention.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tyson |first=Neil Degrasse |author-link=Neil deGrasse Tyson |date=1 November 2005 |title=The Perimeter of Ignorance |url=http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance |url-status=dead |journal=Natural History Magazine |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180906154623/http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance |archive-date=6 September 2018 |access-date=7 January 2016}}</ref> The contrast between Laplace's mechanistic worldview and Newton's one is the most strident considering the famous answer which the French scientist gave [[Napoleon]], who had criticised him for the absence of the Creator in the ''Mécanique céleste'': "Sire, j'ai pu me passer de cette hypothèse" ("Sir, I can do without this hypothesis").<ref>Dijksterhuis, E. J. ''The Mechanization of the World Picture'', IV 329–330, Oxford University Press, 1961. The author's final comment on this episode is:"The mechanization of the world picture led with irresistible coherence to the conception of God as a sort of 'retired engineer', and from here to God's complete elimination it took just one more step".</ref>

Scholars long debated whether Newton disputed the doctrine of the [[Trinity]]. His first biographer, [[David Brewster]], who compiled his manuscripts, interpreted Newton as questioning the veracity of some passages used to support the Trinity, but never denying the doctrine of the Trinity as such.<ref>Brewster states that Newton was never known as an [[Arianism|Arian]] during his lifetime, it was [[William Whiston]], an Arian, who first argued that "Sir Isaac Newton was so hearty for the Baptists, as well as for the Eusebians or Arians, that he sometimes suspected these two were the two witnesses in the Revelations," while others like [[Hopton Haynes]] (a Mint employee and Humanitarian), "mentioned to [[Richard Baron (dissenting minister)|Richard Baron]], that Newton held the same doctrine as himself". David Brewster. ''Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton''. p. 268.</ref> In the twentieth century, encrypted manuscripts written by Newton and bought by [[John Maynard Keynes]] (among others) were deciphered<ref name="The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume X" /> and it became known that Newton did indeed reject Trinitarianism.<ref name="heretic" />