Due to the limited space and the enormous volume of this subject, I am restrained into a very brief summary of the historicity of the Trinity doctrine. As I will prove with historical facts, this doctrine was mainly fabricated in the 4rth century CE by the RCC and not as the Gospels argue that it was taught by Jesus during his ministry!
Trinity was an universal concept in all ancient religions mainly based of the three attributes of the Sun-god that was universally venerated as their Chief-deity, as “creator”, “preserver” and “destroyer” (Three In One)! The first to have “introduced” in their religion this doctrine, were the Hindus, based on the so far documentation. Brahma is the Father “Vajrapani”, “Manjusri” is the deified teacher, and “Avalokitesvara” is the Holy Spirit.
The Buddhists had also the self-triplicated Buddha, and in Japan and China, the majority of whom are Buddhist, they call Buddha, “Fo” in speaking of their “Trinity”, they say “The three pure, honorable and precious Fo”. (Charles Allen “India Through the Lens” Photography 1840-1911, Ed. Vidya Dehejia p 372) The Jainists had the triple Jiva, and the Vandals had their god named Trigglaf represented with three heads like the three headed elephant of the Hindus.
In the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings writes: “In Indian religion, we meet with the trinitarian group of Brahma, Siva, and Viṣṇu, and in The French Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel which also confirms the international veneration of the Trinity, it also says of Plato’s Trinity: “The Platonic trinity, itself merely a rearrangement of older trinities dating back to earlier peoples, appears to be the rational philosophic trinity of attributes that gave birth to the three hypostases or divine persons taught by the Christian churches. This Greek philosopher’s conception of the divine trinity can be found in all the ancient [pagan] religions.”
In the Greek Pantheon, the Triadic Hekate was venerated, in the late times of antiquity, in which she appears as a triadic deity, essentially expressing the three worlds (Divine, Earthly and Dead). The statues of the goddess usually had three faces while, in other versions, the face of the woman was next to a horse’s and a lion’s faces. The Greeks had also Orpheus (originated in Thracia) who wrote, “All things were made by One godhead in three names and that this god is all things”. This doctrine was brought from Egypt as many Greek philosophers like Plato, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, were taught in Egypt and had drawn their dogmas from Orpheus’ (see Champers Encyclopedia article “Orpheus”).
The notorious “In the beginning was Logos and Logos was with God, and the Logos was God”, is originally said by the philosopher Amelius (2nd century CE) and earlier by Heraclitus, (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. p. 142), plagiarized by the author of the John’s Gospel! (Heraclitus: The Obscure Philosopher, ed. Cactus https://www.skroutz.gr/s/24499853/Heraclitus-The-Obscure-Philosopher.html )
The Egyptians had also their Trinity in one and the priests of the temple in Memphis explained this mystery saying, “the Monad created the Dyad who engendered the Triad and it is this triad that shines through nature”. Thulis one of the great monarchs of Egypt, when he consulted the Oracle of Serapis asking, “Tell me if there is one greater than me, or will ever be one greater than me”? The Oracle answered, “First God, after the Logos, and with them the Holy Spirit”, all these are of the same nature and make but one whole, of which the power is eternal. Go away mortal, thou who has but an uncertain life” (Higgin’s Anacalypsis vol 2 p 14).
The Egyptian TRINITY is mentioned as an omniscient during the reign of Sostra by John Malalas 7-8 century BC, who informs us that he had studied Asclepius’ work on the “Hermes Trice Great Asclepius, A dialogue of the divine nature”. He argued that Hermes the Thrice Great or Thoth, the Egyptian was a divine man with a terrible wisdom and that he had three hypostases in a single deity. The Egyptian concept of the Holy Triad, was composed of “The Father, The Mother and The Son”, (Osiris, Isis, and Horus), a concept copied by the early Christians in which they added the “hosts of heaven making a “Holy Tetrad”. Please note, that the “Hosts of Heaven”, were the angels, the stars and constellations that were considered as gods (Yahweh, the god of the hills, the mountains and of the armies)! Whence, the threefold Jewish candlestick representing the 7 planets with the sun in the middle. See the following links…..
Jewish Worship, Pagan Symbols
The god Apollo who had his tomb at Delphi in Greece, in Egypt he was called “The Logos”. (Higgin’s Anacalypsis vol 2 p 102), equated with Thoth, whence his name “Thoth-Hermes Thrice Great”. The “Logos” was a great mystery among the Egyptians who in their Holy Books, mentioned, that “I know the mystery of the Divine Logos, The Word of the Lord of all, which was the maker of it. The Logos, this is the first person after himself, uncreated, infinite ruling over all things that were made by him”. (James Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern thought” p 402).
Τhe Assyrians had Marduk as their Logos, the Chaldeans had Memra, the Persians had Oromazdes (the creator, the Father), Mithra (the mediator, Savior, the second Mind) and Ahriman (the destroyer) named also “Triplasios” as their Trinity, affirmed by Plutarch in his work “On Isis and Osiris”. The Scandinavians had as Trinity, Odin-Frey-Thor, the Druids had Taulac-Fan-Mollac, the Siberians had “The Creator of all things”, The God of Armies” and The Spirit of Heavenly Love” all united in one god. The Mexicans had their trinitarian god Tezcatlipoca, Huizlipochtli, and Tlaloc, the Peruvians venerated their sun trinity-god composed of Apompti (the Father), Churunti (the Son-sun) and Intiquaoqui (the brother-sun).
The Jews had their Trinity in Cabbala (Idra Sutra Sohar iii 228, & B. Frank, “Son of the Man, p 78) as Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai says, “Come and see the mystery of the word Elohim. There are three degrees, and each degree by itself alone and yet, notwithstanding they are all one, and joined together in one, and cannot be divided from each other”.
In two of the three monotheistic religions (Judaism and Islam) the Triune Godhead was completely abolished, while in Christianity it assumed the form of the Holy Trinity with all its doctrinal-theological peculiarities that up to day are still debated and disputed by some sects. But what is important is that the feminine element was completely eliminated from the Christian conception of divinity (although originally accepted as we see below), and was limited only to the recognition of the “God-bearing” and “holy” Mother of Jesus, “ever-virgin” (?), but definitely not a goddess!
However, the early Israelites did venerate a Trinity which was consisted of the “ruach” (literally meaning “breath”, and often as “spirit” Ruach ha-Qodesh or “Divine Spirit” associated with the divine fire, adopted from the Zoroastrian astral religion in Babylon, El/Yahweh the male sun-deities and Asherah the female, also represented as the moon, are the other two parts of the trinity. The Spirit of God was also understood allegorically as a white dove which was the sacred totem bird of Astarte (and of Venus, Buddha, Isis etc) who was the Canaanite antecedent of Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, whose Spirit “hovered” over the waters of the creation (see Genesis, chapter I). In the OT we read of the “Lady Wisdom” (Sofia of the Gnostics) to whom the Israelite women offered baked cakes with the mark of the cross on them, representing the “Ruach”. The “Lady Lion, or the Lady of Heaven” was Asherah. For more information see in “THE PRE-CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS OF YESHUA”, by Lewis Keizer, Ph.D.)
This dogma was obviously copied by the Christians from heathen sources, but caused them many problems, as originally there were two mortal persons involved in this Trinity (Son and Mother) when it was copied from the Egyptians, alluding to polytheism, whose substance was and still is disputed even up to now, when the Mother was banned and the Holy Spirit was inserted. The problem was solved by adopting Plato’s concept of substantiality! However, up to day, the Church hasn’t managed to solve it once and for all.
The New Bible Dictionary says, that “the formal doctrine of the Trinity was the result of several inadequate attempts to explain who and what the Christian God really is. To deal with these problems the Church Fathers met in 325 at the Council of Nicaea to set out an orthodox biblical definition concerning the divine identity.” However, it wasn’t until 381, “at the Council of Constantinople, [that] the divinity of the Spirit was affirmed.”
I know that you will be surprised to learn that Arianism was for a time, the orthodox Christian theology supported by Auxentius of Milan and Eusebius of Nicomedia. Eusebius was very influential in the Royal court of Constantine the Great and in fact, he was supposed to had baptized the Emperor in his villa in Nicomedia, on May 22, 337 into the Arian faith on the Emperor’s deathbed. This fact is still questioned by historians.
Two of Constantine’s sons, Constantius II and Valens, became Arians thus the Arian faith was promoted by these Emperors as the orthodox faith. It was thanks to a redefinition of the Sabellian heresy which invoked the Greek word homoousios (“identical substance”) to explain the relationship between the Father and the Son that the RCC rejected Arianism. This “heretical dogma” at that time was advanced by the Church of Rome, the place where the Sabellian heresy had originally sprung. Athanasius of Alexandria, who had succeeded Alexander as bishop who had died in 328 CE, immediately began attacking the orthodox Arians by promoting the “homoousios” concept. He stated that the Father and Son were both consubstantial divine persons, which was different from the Sabellian heresy, and introduced an additional component, that of the Holy Spirit of the same substance. Thus, there were now three Personifications of God that had always existed, co-eternal and sharing the same identical substance. Hence, it was Athanasius who had “invented” in a way and “introduced” the new non-biblical doctrine, the Holy Trinity which was enforced again by the Council of Constantinople in 381.
The teaching of the three Cappadocian theologians, Basil the Great (330–379), who was bishop of Caesarea; Basil’s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395), who was bishop of Nyssa; and a close friend, Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389), who became Patriarch of Constantinople, “made it possible for the Council of Constantinople (381) to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which up to that point had nowhere been clearly stated, not even in Scripture” (The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, “God,” p. 568). https://archive.org/details/harpercollinsenc00mcbr
The triangle that is seen in Christian churches alluding to Trinity, is of pagan origin, namely from India (Brahma, Vishnu Siva) where it figures on temples with an eye in the center and mystically connected with the word AUM, also used such as by the Buddhists. The Egyptians represented their trinity with a simple triangle too. The leaf of the trefoil that figures in many churches, has its origin in Egypt and is seen on the shoulders of many Egyptian deities, like Osiris the Savior, representing the three in one mysteries and the Egyptian Triad “Father-Son-Mother”. The trefoil was also sacred among the Druids of Britain representing their holy triad. (see in “Bible myths and their parallels in other religions” By T. W. Doane, & H. Blavatsky “The Secret Doctrine” & “On Isis and Osiris”).
Pagan imagery in Christian art
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-near-eastern-world/borrowing-from-the-neighbors/ Pagan imagery in Christian art
Do you still believe that the Trinity doctrine was a “Christian invention and exclusivity”?
Approved ~ FS
Δεσμώτης
Article URL : https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/is-god-a-trinity/the-surprising-origins-of-the-trinity-doctrine