Some years ago we visited Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, the birth place of Isaac Newton and now looked after by the National Trust. As I recall the house and contents were very interesting.

However, Sir Isaac Newton wrote more books about theology and alchemy than he did about science, but there was nothing I recall seeing or hearing about that. It has to be said that unlike som of his work on science his other works were mostly not published.

Newton did not have orthodox Christian beliefs but he did accept that the Bible gives a comprehensive chronology of the world from creation.

Archbishop James Ussher is the most famous person who produced such a chronology in his Annals of the world. He determined that the world was created in 4004BC. Ussher did make a few assumptions to reach this date, including about fractions of years. I have explained some of that in my own chronology pages. Newton’s calculations differed from Ussher by only 6 years, giving the date as 3998BC. Others who accept that scripture is our supreme authority on such things have arrived at similar dates. The significant variation being that a translation of Genesis into Greek before the coming of Christ, has some longer ages for people, and so some assume those were correct and come up with a greater overall age by a thousand or more years.

Theologically, Newton seems to have struggled with the doctrine of the trinity and thus with the fact that bible believing Christian worship Christ as the eternal Son of God.

He was not however a Deist, as he warned against the idea that the universe is like a clock that God has made and wound up and left to run. Newton seems to have considered God to be active, as the Bible teaches, in upholding the universe. He was particularly interested in the prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse (The Book of Revelation).

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