Less than a year before his death in 1704, Locke wrote to his cousin, Peter King, concerning some papers he had delivered to his friend Isaac Newton:

King quickly assured Locke that he had personally delivered the papers to Newton, that they had discussed them, that Newton was ‘very well pleased with [the] design and performance’ and that he would ‘Critically peruse’ them. A week later King reported to Locke that he had been back to Newton's house and that Newton had read Locke's papers ‘half over’, but that they could not ‘freely discourse’ about them because other people were present.Footnote ¹

The mysterious papers in question were undoubtedly Locke's A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans. Until now, it was not known if Newton had remarked upon Locke's work or, in turn, whether Locke had ever received Newton's comments. Nevertheless, we now know that not only did Newton comment on Locke's work, but that Locke's final version of the Paraphrase and Notes on Romans took into account notations reflecting Newton's unorthodox views of the Trinity.

Newton and Locke 1690–1704

It is well known that in the early 1690s Locke and Newton had an active correspondence concerning theological matters and the interpretation of various biblical works,Footnote ² and that Newton had engaged Locke to publish some anti-trinitarian tracts subtitled, An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture in a Letter to a Friend.Footnote ³ The Historical Account contained a textual analysis of the famous Comma Johanneum,Footnote ⁴ or 1 John 5:7, and 1 Timothy 3:16. Locke was to have published these papers through his friend Jean Le Clerc and would have done so had not Newton changed his mind at the last minute.Footnote ⁵ Newton may have realised that, if it came to be known that he was responsible for writing An Historical Account, it could have had a damaging effect on his career. It certainly would have cost him his Lucasian chair at Cambridge, as it did his protégé and successor, William Whiston, who was removed in 1711 for his anti-trinitarian beliefs.Footnote ⁶

Although Newton was prudent enough to keep his views on the Trinity away from public scrutiny, manuscript evidence indicates that there is little doubt that he held to a theological position very close to Arianism.Footnote ⁷ Locke, too, was quite cautious when it came to divulging his stance on the Trinity, though theological notes written in the 1690s entitled Adversaria Theologica, which set out scriptural evidence for and against the Trinity, reveal that he took the matter quite seriously.Footnote ⁸ Nevertheless, Locke's failure to publicly affirm the traditional doctrine of the Trinity in the Reasonableness of Christianity drew the ire of his critics, notably John Edwards, Edward Stillingfleet, John Milner and others who thought that Locke was anti-trinitarian.Footnote ⁹ Locke's counter-argument that he never denied the Trinity did little to defuse the situation.Footnote ¹⁰ The mere fact that Newton entrusted Locke with his anti-trinitarian tract, concerning a possible textual corruption which Locke himself had already noted,Footnote ¹¹ however, indicates that both Newton and Locke would have discussed aspects of the Trinity between themselves, even if they did not share their views with the public.

In the autumn of 1702, while Locke was working on his Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul, Newton visited Locke at his home.Footnote ¹² Locke respected Newton's opinion in scriptural matters and was anxious to get his opinion of his work on the Corinthian correspondence.Footnote ¹³ Newton eventually returned Locke's manuscript in May, along with some others comments ‘in the inclosed papers’.Footnote ¹⁴ Newton probably concurred with much of Locke's interpretation, especially since he mentions that Locke's ‘Paraphrase and Commentary on these two Epistles is done with very great care and judgement’.Footnote ¹⁵

As mentioned at the outset, the other Pauline epistle about which Locke was anxious to learn Newton's opinion was his Paraphrase and Notes on the book of Romans. Until now, it was not known whether Locke received Newton's comments or to what extent he may have been influenced by them. In light of the discovery of a manuscript fragment containing Newton's comments in the Yahuda collection,Footnote ¹⁶ however, one can now say for certain that Locke did receive Newton's criticism and incorporated his suggestions into his own text. It is to this manuscript which we now turn.

An analysis of Newton's comments on Romans

Locke and Newton had an ongoing theological relationship for a decade and a half. Their discussions concerned a shared interest in contemporary theological texts and a dangerous, but shared, heterodox theological view. Newton's comments on Locke's last great work yield insight into Locke's theological views on the Trinity in the last months of his life, a subject of some controversy among Locke scholars.Footnote ¹⁷ Although Newton's notes are mostly editorial, serving to clarify the sense of the passages, it is noteworthy that Locke took all of these into account. There are, however, a few comments that go beyond the editorial and deal with specific theological matters.

Newton's comments on Locke's interpretation of Romans 1:3–4, and Locke's subsequent insertions, suggest that John Marshall's view that Locke harboured anti-trinitarian sympathies late in his life is correct. This can be illustrated by a textual comparison of Locke's original draft of Romans 1:3–4 with Newton's comments on the passage and the final published text of Locke's analysis of Romans 1:3–4 in the Paraphrase and Notes.

The Authorised King James Version of Romans 1:3–4 reads:

The draft of Locke's paraphrase on Romans 1:3–4 (Bod. MS Locke e.2, fo. 3r), which Newton would have seen, reads:

Newton's comments on Romans 1:3–4 (Yahuda Var. 1, Ms Newton, 8.2, fo. 4) begin with questions and comments on Locke's draft. The Yahuda manuscript appears to be a working copy of a letter to Locke commenting on the Paraphrase. Newton edited his own comments, crossing some words out and adding other interlinear comments (indicated below by the angle brackets). Clearly, the final version is the product of much thought and careful editing on Newton's part. Newton's draft of his comments reads:

That Locke received these comments is evident from the changes made between Locke's original draft and the final published version. Indeed, Locke's revisional notes in the manuscript of his draft suggest that he was working from a copy of Newton's comments. These notes include strikeouts, interlinear additions (in angle brackets) and marginal notations (in italics below). Locke's text of Romans 1:3–4 with corrections reads as follows:

What is evident from this comparison is that the differences between Locke's draft and his final version indicate the extent to which Locke was struggling with the trinitarian question. As Marshall notes, Locke's Paraphrase, while not expressly denying the divine nature of Christ, concentrates more on the fleshly or earthy nature of Jesus.Footnote ¹⁸ Locke points out in his note (4*) that this verse concerns Paul's distinction between the flesh and the spirit (i.e. ‘according to the spirit of holyness’, κατὰ πν∈μα, and ‘according to the flesh’, κατὰ σρκα). In his explanatory notes to this passage, Wainwright suggests that Locke's interpretation agrees with that of Henry Hammond, who also understood this passage as demonstrating a contrast between flesh and spirit. Wainwright mentions that Locke is aware of both Joseph Mede's interpretation, which contrasts the flesh and the Holy Spirit, and John Biddle's interpretation, which mentions Jesus’ spiritual holiness after the resurrection.Footnote ¹⁹ Early Protestant Reformers such as Luther and Calvin noted that the contrast between the flesh and spirit in this passage referred to the union of the divine and human natures in Jesus that were necessary for salvation, but Marshall is right to point out that Locke does not explicitly assert the divinity of Jesus here.Footnote ²⁰ And although Arthur Wainwright argues that Locke's interpretation is similar to Hammond's, who understands the phrase ‘spirit of holiness’ as ‘his eternal Spirit’, Locke does not mention anything about Jesus’ ‘eternal nature’ in his paraphrase or his notes on this particular passage.Footnote ²¹

I would argue that Locke's reluctance to attribute an eternal divine nature to Jesus here is related to Newton's comments, which would suggest that Locke is taking a more anti-trinitarian position than was previously thought to be the case.Footnote ²² Locke's original paraphrase of Romans 1:3–4 can imply that Jesus had a divine spiritual nature that came from the spirit of God, that is, the ‘spirit of holiness’ () could be taken to mean that it is by the Holy Spirit that Christ, being born of a virgin, imparts his saving power by virtue of his death and resurrection. Locke's final corrections of this verse, however, move away from implying that it is the spirit of holiness through which Jesus was born of a virgin and raised from the dead, to an understanding whereby the spirit of holiness is set in contrast to the flesh and, especially, in contrast to the sinful flesh. In other words, in the draft that Newton saw, Locke had glossed ‘the spirit of holiness’ to mean ‘that more pure and spiritual conception and extraction which he had from the overshadowing of the spirit’, whereas in the final draft Locke understood ‘the spirit of holiness’ to mean ‘that more pure and spiritual part which in him over ruled all’. The agency of the ‘spirit’, which Locke's first draft can imply, is changed to a ‘spirit’ which is not distinct from but part of Jesus, and kept Jesus’ human body from sin. Locke's reworking of his manuscript suggests that the spirit is something that Jesus has in greater abundance over other human beings and indicates a contrast, however great in Jesus, with the flesh. In the final draft, Locke opts for a more anthropological or ethical understanding of Jesus than the soteriological one his earlier draft could be taken to imply.

Newton's initial response to Locke's paraphrase (reconstructed from the crossed out words and interlinear notations) reads like this: ‘[Jesus Christ], who was made of y^e seed of David according to the flesh in being born of a woman & expressed to be the son of God with power the first begotten from y^e dead according to y^e spirit of holyness’. Newton's understanding of the passage emphasises Jesus’ divinity at the resurrection and that, moreover, his sonship was based on his being the first to be resurrected. The phrase ‘spirit of holyness’ seems to indicate, in this case, something like ‘according to what is prophesied’ in the Bible. This understanding of Romans1:3–4 is made explicit in Newton's final edited version, which is the one that Locke would have received.Footnote ²³ It reads, ‘[Jesus Christ] who was made of y^e seed of David according to the flesh by his birth of a woman & declared to be the son of God with power according to y^e spirit of holyness & by his resurrection he being the first born from y^e dead (Coloss. I. 18. the promise w^ch was made with our fathers God hath fulfilled unto us in that he hath raised up Jesus again as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou are my son, this day have I begotten thee. Act XIII.33)’. This interpretation leaves no doubt that the ‘spirit of holiness’, for Newton, refers to Jesus’ sonship as predicted in the Old Testament (Ps. 2:7), and that Jesus, moreover, is extraordinary by virtue of his being the first-born from the dead (Col. 1:18).

The issue of what the phrase ‘sonship’ means in the vast corpus of Newton's theological writings is complex. Often Jesus is the ‘son of God’ because he was prophesied as such in the Old Testament. In a manuscript from the Keynes Collection entitled, ‘Religion’, Jesus is defined as ‘the Sun of righteousness spoken of by Malachi, the son of man and the Messiah spoken of by Daniel, the servant of God and lamb of God and Redeemer spoken of by Isaiah’. In other writings, Newton argues that Jesus is the son of God insofar as he exists before the world, but is subordinate to the Father. Jesus becomes the Lord only after the incarnation and the crucifixion. In the Martin Bodmer MS, ‘On the Church’, Newton writes, ‘Because the Word of God received life from the Father immediately, both before the world began and at his resurrection from the dead, therefore he is the Son of God in a sense peculiar to himself.’ Later in the same manuscript, Newton understands Jesus as the ‘Son of God’ insofar as his miraculous birth and resurrection were concerned, not because Jesus was of the same substance (ὁμooὐσιoς) as the Father. Newton writes, Jesus is ‘called the Son of God with respect to his miraculous birth of a Virgin and his resurrection from the dead, and there is no mention in scripture of any other generation of the Son of God’.Footnote ²⁴ All three of Newton's ideas (i.e. ‘son’ as predicted in the Old Testament, as subordinate to the father, and as uniquely born of the Virgin and the first resurrected) can be seen in his comment on Locke's paraphrase of Romans 1:3–4.

In the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), Locke had also made reference to the same text to which Newton had referred, Colossians 1:18, to describe Jesus’ sonship as ‘The First-born from the dead’.Footnote ²⁵ In fact, some of the language Locke uses in this discussion of sonship in the Reasonableness echoes his early draft of Romans 1:4. In the Reasonableness Locke had written that ‘God nevertheless, out of his Infinite Mercy, willing to bestow Eternal Life on Mortal Men, sends Jesus Christ into the World; Who being conceived in the Womb of a Virgin (that had not known Man) by the immediate Power of God, was properly the Son of God’, and in the draft of Romans 1:4 Locke wrote, ‘[Jesus] was by the extraordinary power of god shewn in his being born of a virgin and raised from the dead manifested to be the son of god’.Footnote ²⁶ In the Reasonableness passage, Locke argues that being a son of God implies immortality, which was a distinctive mark of being in the image of God. Adam was also a son of God, in His image and potentially immortal, but he forfeited his immortality by transgressing the commandment.Footnote ²⁷ Jesus, however, by becoming the first-born from the dead, allows other humans to have eternal life by becoming adopted sons of God. The passage in the Reasonableness as well as the early draft of the Paraphrase suggest that it is by the power of God as manifested in the virgin birth and by the resurrection that Jesus is the son of God.

In the final draft of the Paraphrase, however, the emphasis is clearly placed on the resurrection as the distinguishing mark of being the son of God. This indicates a subtle but clear theological shift from the Reasonableness. The fact that Newton also emphasised this point in his comments to Locke indicates that Locke's rewriting of the passage bears Newton's influence. Locke's revisions further underscore the meaning of óρισθ∈ντoς, which Locke translates as ‘declared’, and to which he refers in a note on this passage (§4), to imply that what makes Jesus ‘the son of God’ is that he was the first to be resurrected. In his note, Locke writes:

It appears, therefore, that in the latter months of his life, Locke was moving even further away from the trinitarianism of his youth, thanks, in part, to his ongoing hermeneutical relationship with Newton. Newton's choice of Locke as the go-between for his anti-trinitarian tracts in An Historical Account was more than coincidental and more than a simple exploitation of Locke's publishing connections with Le Clerc. Locke would have been sympathetic to Newton's theses and Locke was a person with whom Newton could ‘talk freely’. In Locke's final draft of his Paraphrase and Notes on Romans, ‘spirit’ comes to mean merely a contrast to the flesh (i.e. not an eternal spirit), and ‘son’ comes to mean that Jesus was the first to be resurrected (i.e. sonship was not to imply that Jesus was not literally the ‘son of God’ through a miraculous birth). The orthodox trinitarian connection between the Father, Son and Spirit is thus subtly undermined in Locke's rewriting of his manuscript, a rewriting that bears the influence of his Arian friend.

Yahuda Var. 1, Newton MS, 8.2, fo. 4

The version of A Paraphrase and Notes that Newton received in late Fall of 1703 is preserved in Bod. MS Locke e.2, fos. 1r–4v only. It contains two parallel columns for both the Authorised Version and Locke's paraphrase. Newton would have sent this version back to Locke along with a fair copy of his comments, probably by early winter 1704. Bod. MS Locke e.2, fos. 5r–100v contains a later revised version of the Paraphrase, which incorporates all of Newton's comments. This later version contains additional material in the notes that Newton would not have seen.

Crossed-out passages appear as strikeout. Original square brackets appear as [] and original round brackets as (). All underlined words, phrases, notes etc, retain their underlining. Marginal and interlineal notations appear in angle brackets < >. Conjectural words appear within curved brackets followed by a question mark{?}.