... Newton was harbouring a terrible secret. He believed that the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity was a diabolical fraud and that all of modern Christianity was tainted by its presence. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was not equal in any sense to God the Father, although he was divine, and was worthy of being worshipped in his own right. Newton did not arrive at these beliefs as a result of pursuing some dilettantish hobby; nor were they the result of studies he pursued at the end of his life. Instead, they lay at the heart of a massive research programme on prophecy and church history that he carried out early in his career. This was at least as strenuous, and, in his eyes, at least as "rational" as his work on physics and mathematics.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "... Newton was harbouring a terrible secret. He believed that the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity was a diabolical fraud and that all of modern Christianity was tainted by its presence. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was not equal in any sense to God the Father, although he was divine, and was worthy of being worshipped in his own right. Newton did not arrive at these beliefs as a result of pursuing some dilettantish hobby; nor were they the result of studies he pursued at the end of his life. Instead, they lay at the heart of a massive research programme on prophecy and church history that he carried out early in his career. This was at least as strenuous, and, in his eyes, at least as "rational" as his work on physics and mathematics." in the context of "Rob Iliffe, (2017), Priest of Nature: Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton chapter: Introduction: A Rational Christian, publisher: Oxford University Press" to mean that wisdom is timeless.