‘Bringing the works of Isaac Newton to life’

Newton's Views on Prophecy

Newton devoted most of his life to the study of Scripture and to church history. The organising principle of this study was his version of the standard Protestant tradition of prophetic interpretation, developed most brilliantly (as Newton and others saw it) in the seventeenth century by Joseph Mede and his followers. This approach began in the 1520s as Protestantism took hold in Europe and centred on the story of the historical rise and fall of the religion of the Devil as told in Revelation. In weekly sermons, the godly would be regaled with references to the Lamb of God, the Two- and Ten-horned Beasts, the Whore of Babylon, and the final battle between Michael and the Dragon, all of which pointed unerringly towards the practices of the Catholic Church. Although traditional exegesis of the apocalypse interpreted many of the events described in Revelation as taking place in the first few centuries of the Church, radical protestants located much of the action in their own time. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both lay and academic interpreters linked apocalyptic images to specific events in history, and they devised complex codes for unravelling the twisted meanings of the text. Many elements became standard, including the association of Antichrist with the Pope, and -- via the technique of gematria (attributing numbers to letters) -- the name of the Number of the Beast (666) was latinised as lateinos and identified with the Pope. By the mid seventeenth-century, English protestants tended to follow Mede in linking the prophecy of the opening of the first six of the seven Seals with the development of the Church up to the penultimate decade of the fourth century. At this point the first of the 144,000 Elect, consisting of godly saints and martyrs, were sealed up and protected from the diabolical events that were to follow. Thereafter, the first six of the seven trumpets heralded the rise of heathenism (Islam and Catholicism) and then antichristianism; in modern times, heroes such as Luther and Calvin were announced by the pouring of the first few of the seven vials of wrath against the idol-worshipping Catholics.

Newton accepted much of this standard story, but his doctrinal interests entailed that he would transform it in extraordinary ways. Unlike orthodox Catholics and Protestants, he could not accept that once Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire in the early 4^th century, the reigns of the antitrinitarian Emperors were disastrous for Christianity. Instead, it was the alliance of the papacy with Roman imperial power after 381 that ushered in the Great Apostacy, or the earthly dominion of Antichrist. Specifically, Newton thought that after the seventh seal was opened in 380AD, the corresponding vials and trumpets depicted the same events. In the fifth century, for example, the second, third and fourth vials and trumpets depicted the rise to power of Catholicism but they also described the terrible reverses suffered by the immoral Catholics at the hands of what Newton believed to be the godly Goths, Barbarians, Vandals and Huns. An implication -- or underlying assumption -- of this approach was that the Protestant Reformation was not a major revolution in the history of Christianity, or at least not as significant as was made out by other commentators. This is hardly surprising given Newton's commitment to an antitrinitarian theology that was detested by both Catholics and orthodox Protestants.

Although there is little evidence of a 'scientific' approach in these studies, Newton did write as if his findings were the result of evidentially-based research. Unlike other exegetes -- and especially those who had made radical apocalyptic predictions in the turbulent political period of his youth -- Newton countenanced a sober, retrospective understanding of how the prophecies had been fulfilled or 'accomplished'. Newton also saw himself as one of those specially chosen by God for the task of understanding Scripture, and he composed an extraordinary introduction to the study of prophecy in which he offered an extensive analysis of the meaning of prophetic terms and images. Towards the end of his life Newton mitigated the intensity of his anti-Catholicism, although he continued to adhere to a fundamentally religious understanding of history. His radical religious beliefs remained almost completely unknown until William Whiston published the gist of them in his Collections of 1728.

Find out about Newton's views on the corruptions of Scripture and the Church.

• Home
• About Us
• What's New (Sep 28, 2007)
• Featured Texts
• About Newton & his Life
• Newton's Archival Legacy
• The Catalogue of his Manuscripts
• Read Newton's Writings
  • Introduction
  • Theological Writings
    • Introduction
    • Prophecy
    • Corruptions of Scripture and the Church
    • Chronology
    • Doctrine
  • Natural Philosophical Texts
  • Alchemical Papers
  • Mint-Related Papers
  • Notebooks
• View Other Texts & Resources
• Help