NEWTON WRESTLES WITH THE TRINITY DOCTRINE

In his writings, Newton gave much attention to the doctrine of the Trinity. One of his most outstanding contributions to the Biblical scholarship of the time was his work An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture, first published in 1754, twenty-seven years after his death. It reviewed all the textual evidence available from ancient sources on two Bible passages, at First John 5:7 and First Timothy 3:16.

In the King James Version Bible, First John 5:7 reads:

“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

Using early Church writers, the Greek and Latin manuscripts and the testimony of the first versions of the Bible, Newton proved that the words “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one,” in support of the Trinity doctrine, did not appear in the original inspired Greek Scriptures. He then traced the way in which the spurious reading crept into the Latin versions, first as a marginal note, and later into the text itself. He showed that it was first taken into a Greek text in 1515 by Cardinal Ximenes on the strength of a late Greek manuscript corrected from the Latin. Finally, Newton considered the sense and context of the verse, concluding, “Thus is the sense plain and natural, and the argument full and strong; but if you insert the testimony of ‘the Three in Heaven’ you interrupt and spoil it.”⁴

Summing up both passages, Newton said: “If the ancient churches in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts, I understand not, why we should be so fond of them now the debates are over.”⁵ In the two hundred years and more since that treatise was compiled by Isaac Newton, only a few minor corrections have been necessary to the evidence he adduced. Yet it was only in the nineteenth century that Bible translations appeared correcting these passages. Part of Newton’s original manuscript in his own handwriting is illustrated on the next page by courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England.

[Box on page 246]

Reproduction of a part of Newton’s handwritten “An Historical Account,” refuting the Trinity doctrine

influenced by it. So then by the unanimous consent of all the ancient and faithful Interpreters we have hitherto met with (who doubtless made use of the best Manuscripts they could get) the testimony of the three in heaven was not anciently in the Greek.

And that it was neither in the ancient Versions nor in the Greek but was wholy unknown to the first churches is most certain by an argument hinted above, namely that in all that vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity in Jeromes time and both before and long enough after it, this text of the three in heaven was never thought of. Tis now in every bodies mouth and accounted the main text for the business and would have been so then had it been in their books and yet it is not once to be met with in all the Disputes, Epistles, Orations and other writings of the Greeks and Latines (Alexander of Alexandria, the Council of Sardica Athanasius, Basil,