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John Napier and the mathematics of the ‘middle future’ apocalypse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Philip Almond
Philip Almond*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the notion of ‘middle future’ apocalypticism through the work of the late sixteenth-century Scottish theologian and the discoverer of logarithms, John Napier. Middle future apocalypticism envisaged the end of the world, not in the immediate or far distant future but (rather like modern environmental apocalypticism) within the next 100–200 years. It enabled the understanding of the present in apocalyptic terms, and set out the requisite conditions, tasks and obligations – social, political and personal – essential for bringing to reality those events which were necessary precursors of the coming of Christ. John Napier's 1593 A Plaine Discovery of the whole Reuelation of Saint Iohn was the first Scottish work on the book of Revelation. Though later to be derided by historians of mathematics and science, in its time, it was highly influential, not only in Scotland and England but also in Protestant communities on the Continent. I explore the complex mathematics which Napier brings to bear and suggest that the middle future apocalypticism of Napier, as demonstrated in the carefully articulated mathematics of history in this work, is both socially conservative and socially active. Living in the seventh age, as Napier believed he did, did not entail either ‘downing tools’ and passively awaiting the end, nor actively hastening the end by radical social upheaval. But it did mean in the here and now fighting the Antichrist of Rome, bringing in Reformed religion and spreading the true Gospel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 54 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2010

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References

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