Babylonia:

 

“The ancient Babylonians recognised the doctrine of a trinity, or three persons in one god - as appears from a composite god with three heads forming part of the mythology, and the use of the equilateral triangle, also, as an emblem of such trinity in unity. ³”

 

These are just two examples of triune deities from other civilizations and their religions, there are several more examples, including Sumeria and also Egypt, yet we want to show you one more example of how the concept of a triune godhead made sense in the 4th century with the creep of Greek philosophy before we go further into that concept. Here are two examples of ancient Greek / Hellenic philosophers that commented regarding the concept of triune or 3 in one deity concepts:

 

Greece:

 

“In the Fourth Century B.C. Aristotle wrote: ‘All things are three, and thrice is all: and let us use this number in the worship of the gods; for, as the Pythagoreans say, everything and all things are bounded by threes, for the end, the middle and the beginning have this number in everything, and these compose the number of the Trinity’⁴”

 

“No writer ever avowed or taught a belief in any tenet of religious faith more fully or plainly than Plato sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity in his Phxdon, written four hundred years B.C. His first term for the Trinity was in Greek: I, Agathon, the Supreme God or Father; 2, the Logos, which is the Greek term for the Word ; and 3, Psyche, which the Greek Lexicon defines to mean ‘soul, spirit, or ghost.’ In this exposition of the Trinity adopted by the Greeks, and published four hundred years B.C., we have the identical doctrine of the Christian Church. In the Platonic or Grecian Trinity, the first person was considered the planner of the work of creation, the second person the Creator, and the third person the Spirit, which moved upon the face of the waters in the first chapter of Genesis, and infused life into the mighty deep at creation; who presided at the baptism of Christ as it had done at his conception or generation, and as it does at the incarnation and re-incarnation of all men. ⁵

 

It should be noted here in this last quote, that the doctrine of the Trinity which mainstream Christian churches and denominations have was actually written in the 4th Century A.D. by those claiming to be members of the

 

True Church, but actually written by a Greek Philosopher published in 400 B.C., that’s 400 years even before

 

Christ was born. What makes it worse is that this Greek Philosophical concept was drawn into the Christian Church, turning the church away from the true teachings of the Bible and Scripture by those who studied Greek Philosophy, as will be seen in the next topic of Greek and Hellenic Philosophy.

 

Even Arthur Weigall commented on the concept of the Trinity doctrine and its implementation into the Christian Church being a pagan belief and not mentioned in the Bible, he states:

 

“It must not be forgotten that Jesus Christ never mentioned such a phenomenon [the Trinity], and nowhere in the New Testament does the word ‘trinity’ appear. The idea was only adopted by the

 

Church three hundred years after the death of our Lord; and the origin of the conception is entirely pagan …”

 

“The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the idea to their own faith. They paid their devotions to God the Father and to Jesus Christ, the Son of God and they recognised the mysterious and undefined existence of the Holy Spirit; but there was no thought of these three being an actual Trinity, co-equal and united in One …”

“The application of this old pagan conception of a Trinity to Christian theology was made possible by the recognition of the Holy Spirit as the required third ‘Person,’ co-equal with the other ‘Persons’...”

 

“The idea of the Spirit being co-equal with God was not generally recognised until the second half of the Fourth Century A.D. … In the year 381 the Council of Constantinople added to the earlier Nicene Creed a description of the Holy Spirit as ‘the Lord, and giver of life, who proceedth from the Father, who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified.’…

 

“Thus, the Athanasian creed, which is a later composition but reflects the general conceptions of Athanasius and his school, formulated the conception of a co-equal Trinity wherein the Holy Spirit was the third ‘Person’; and so it was made a dogma of the faith, and belief in the Three in One and One in Three became a paramount doctrine of Christianity, though not without terrible riots and bloodshed…⁶”

 

This is interesting when a person understands the Philosophical School of thought that Athanasius belonged to and was trained with:

 

“It is an undoubted fact that more or less all over the world the deities are in triads. This rule applies to eastern and western hemispheres, to north and south … in some mystical way, the triad of three persons in one. The first is as the second or third, the second as first or third, the third as first or second; in fact, they are each other, one and the same individual being. The definition of Athanasius, who lived in Egypt, applies to the trinities of all heathen religions. ¹”

 

As can be seen, older authors regarding this topic, even though most were Trinitarian themselves, all accept that the concept of the Trinity is purely and fully pagan in origin and not Christian, but was adopted by Christianity to align with Pagan religious concepts, ideals and Philosophies.

 

It could be asked why the True Church believers allowed this, the answer is simple, by the late first century, we can see from the bible in 3 John 9-10 that conditions for the Church had become so bad that false teachers, apostles and deceitful workers” (2 Corinthians 11:13) had popped up, and some openly refused to acknowledge or receive representatives of the Apostle John and were excommunicating true Christians from the Church.

 

This leads us to the concepts of Greek / Hellenic Philosophy that caused the move and turning of true worship and understanding away from factual scriptural understanding and into a classical philosophical debate for what was thought, incorrectly, as accurate “understanding”.

 

Footnotes:

 

Previous Page

Next Page

 

 

PLEASE, now that you have read this article, do not just take our word for it.  Get your Bible, look at it and read the Scriptures for yourself, and feel free to get our Book of Bible Articles or look at our articles website for further Bible Studies and Articles.