History of the 'Christian' Trinity - HIST (part 1)

(From the RDB Files)

The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine

(part 1 of 7) View Entire File

(The earliest parts of this history are somewhat speculative concerning their influence on the trinity doctrine of Christendom. They get more certain as we go along until, when we reach Alexandria near the end of part one below, there is little doubt concerning the overall accuracy.) 

HIST Parts 3-5 examine the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. when the trinity doctrine was forced upon the church.)

1 It is certain that, in spite of the popularity of such concepts in the false religions surrounding them, the faithful Jewish people and prophets of the Old Testament never accepted a three-in-one God. It is true that the unfaithful among the Israelites often borrowed pagan gods, pagan customs, and pagan concepts (including Baal and Astarte) and added them to their God-given religion. But there is no record (scriptural or secular) of a trinity concept even among them.

2 Faithful Israel had only one God and He was always a single individual named Jehovah (possibly pronounced "Yahweh" or "Yehowah" in Hebrew - see the PRONOUNCE study), their Father in heaven - (Deut. 6:4, 5; Is. 64:8; Ps. 83:16-18). That is the concept known as monotheism (meaning "one person alone is God").

"The religion of the [Old Testament] and Judaism is monotheistic and personal. 1. In the [Old Testament] the words el, eloah, and elohim, from related roots, are generic designations of God. Alongside and alternating with them stands the individual, personal name Yahweh [Jehovah]." - The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 2, p. 67.

Professor of ecclesiastical history L. L. Paine L. L. Paine, A Critical History Of The Evolution Of Trinitarianism, p. 4, tells us:

"The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a trinity is to be found there ... is utterly without foundation." [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
And Lohse states:

"From the very beginning, of course, Christians not only believed in God in the sense in which the Jews did, but they also believed in Jesus Christ." - p. 38, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, Bernard Lohse, 1985, Fortress Press.

3 This, then, was the faith that Jesus passed on to his Apostles. This is the truth that the Apostles passed on to their followers (who lived and taught this very same concept up to at least 150 A. D.).
150 A.D.)

"In this period [1st century A.D.] churches were still regarded as synagogues, whose members prayed three times a day and fasted twice a week like Jews... They professed monotheism in the same terms as did the Jews. .... Within individual congregations they continued to think, argue, and act like their Jewish counterparts." - pp. 121-122, The Rise of Christianity, W. H. C. Frend (trinitarian), 1985, Fortress Press.

4 It was not until over 300 years after the death of Jesus that the trinity concept was fully developed, refined, and officially and finally accepted by Christendom through a decree by the Church at Rome. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26-26a] (Also see the CREEDS study.)

"Speculative thought began to analyze the divine nature until in the 4th century an elaborate theory of a threefoldness in God appears. In this Nicene or Athanasian form of thought God is said to consist of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all equally eternal, powerful and glorious." - Encyclopedia Americana, 1944, v. 6, p. 619, "Christianity".

5 Yes, finally, by the end of the 4th century A.D., the trinity idea had been fully developed. The Roman Church had officially decreed the following points as being necessary for all Christians to believe:

There are said to be three divine persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - in the Godhead.

(1) Each of these separate persons is said to be eternal, none coming before or after the other in time.
(2) Each is said to be almighty, with none greater or lesser than the other.
(3) Each is said to be omniscient, knowing all things.
(4) Each is said to be true God.
(5) However, it is said that there are not three Gods but only one God.

6 But we should understand that in the more than 2,000 years from Abraham to the death of the last Apostle, John, Judaeo-Christianity had only one God, Jehovah ("YHWH"), the Father alone. (Cf. Ps. 83:18, KJV, ASV; Is. 63:16, ASV; and John 17:1, 3 - compare Jer.10:10, ASV).

But what about the powerful religious systems around them which controlled or profoundly influenced the entire known civilized world?

7 Babylon had a union of three gods who together represented all creation. This Babylonian concept was represented by the same equilateral triangle that represents the trinity concept in Christendom today.[27, 28, 29]

8 It is probable that this three-in-one god concept spread to India and Egypt at a very early date. Due to the perishable quality of much of the earliest writings in Egypt we get only glimpses of this concept in that land from a period before 700 B. C.[30, 31, 32] (It is abundantly clear from Egyptian sources in 200 B. C., but this will be covered when we discuss the powerful influence of Alexandria, Egypt.)
Morenz tells us, in fact:

"The trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians .... Three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology." - Egyptian Religion.

And noted trinitarian scholar Dr. M.G. Easton tells us:

"The Egyptians believed in a resurrection and future life, as well as in a state of rewards and punishments dependent on our conduct in this world. The judge of the dead was Osiris, who had been slain by Set, the representative of evil, and afterwards restored to life. His death was avenged by his son Horus, whom the Egyptians invoked as their "Redeemer." Osiris and Horus, along with Isis, formed a trinity, who were regarded as representing the sun-God under different forms." – Easton's Bible Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publ.

9 India had a clearly defined trinity concept dating back to 300 B. C. at least.[33] The Brahmanas (probably composed about 800 B. C.) frequently mention the vedic triad.[33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43]

10 Understandably, some members of Christendom refuse to admit the close relationship between ancient triads and pantheism and the "modern" trinity doctrine of Christendom. If we closely examine the ancient Hindu pantheistic triad, however, there is no mistaking its close kinship with the trinity doctrine adopted more recently by Christendom: The One "universal self-existing world soul" is composed of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva who were worshiped equally and were merely different manifestations of the One.

The book The Symbolism of Hindu Gods and Rituals admits, regarding the ancient Hindu trinity that was taught centuries before the first Christians:

"Siva is one of the gods of the Trinity. He is said to be the god of destruction. The other two gods are Brahma, the god of creation and Vishnu, the god of maintenance.... To indicate that these three processes are one and the same the three gods are combined in one form." - Published by A. Parthasarathy, Bombay. (As quoted in ti-E, p. 12.)

11 Yes, the ancient Hindu religionists who really believed in a single force or God found themselves unable to compete with the popularity of the many gods being worshiped throughout ancient India. So, in order to gain influence over the largest number of their countrymen, they actually compromised their belief and borrowed the trinity concept (probably right from its source in ancient Babylon), selected three of the most popular Indian gods, and incorporated them into their "One True God." - "I, the supreme indivisible Lord am three - Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva."[43]

12 We find that this Babylonian concept was popular with her "daughters" (her religious offspring), including India and Egypt, for hundreds of years while tiny, insignificant Israel stubbornly clung to her one, single-person God. Then, about 550 B. C., the rise of the extremely influential Greek philosophy/mystery religions began. Pythagoras (about 550 B.C.) may have been the founder of Greek philosophy and mystery religions. Certainly he was the earliest of the most influential Greek philosopher/religionists.

13 Pythagoras spent years studying with Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hindu religionists. When he finally returned to Greece, he formed a religious organization based on his knowledge gained in those foreign lands. He promoted a numerical symbolism in which he taught that God is number. More specifically, the Pythagoreans actually worshiped an equilateral triangle composed of dots.[44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50]

14 Although it was a secret religious organization whose "mysteries" were to be known only among its members, we have some clues to Pythagoreanism's deep "mysteries" that were borrowed from the religions of Babylon, India, and Egypt. Medieval numerologists, for example, admitted that they borrowed this mysterious knowledge from Pythagoreanism: The number three stands for "Trinity and extension of Godhead." [51]

Aristotle said (over 300 years before Christ):

"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 bound by threes, for the end, and the middle, and the beginning have this number in everything, and these compose the number of the trinity."[52]

15 So it appears that this "holy" number three used to "worship the gods" in unity came down from Babylon through Egypt and India, and through the extremely influential Pythagoras to the ancient Greek philosophy/mystery religions and even to Plato himself. [53, 54, 55, 56-56a]

16 From Pythagoras (550 B. C.) until its decline (about 550 A. D.) the great influence of the Greek philosophy/mystery religions was spread by Pythagoreans, Platonists, Neopythagoreans, and finally Neoplatonists.

"NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM...appeared during the first century B. C. [the faithful Jews were still clinging to their faith in a single one-person God, Jehovah the Father] in Rome, whence it traveled to Alexandria (the sect's chief center) where it flourished until Neo-Platonism absorbed it in the 3rd century A. D." [57]

Neo-Pythagoreanism was mainly the old Pythagoreanism with some borrowing from Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism.

"They appear to have regarded Pythagoras as a divine being [founders of religions tend to `develop' into a divinity or deity for that religion after a period of time] a status which he shared with certain numbers also, particularly one, three, and ten." "Neo-Pythagoreanism's importance consists chiefly in its influence on Neoplatonism ... and on Christian [?] Theology by Clement of Alexandria (150-220 A. D.)." [57, 58]

17 We are now at the point where the links of the trinity chain (from pagan Babylon to pagan India to pagan Greece) become enormously strong in their joining to Christendom: The Alexandria and Neo-Platonism links (along with the Rome influence, of course) were the critical connections that led directly to the Roman Church officially adopting the "Jesus is equally God" doctrine in 325 A. D. at the Council of Nicaea.

18 Yes, even if there had been no previous links leading back to Hindu India (and even Babylon), the study of the critical Alexandrian and Neo-Platonist influences would still be sufficient to expose the completely pagan origin of the trinity doctrine. The two are so intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to know how much one influenced the other and vice versa. In fact, this Alexandrian philosophy as a whole came to be known as Neoplatonism.[59]

19 Alexandria, Egypt, is probably the single most important source of the infiltration of an already popular pagan trinity concept into Christendom. We cannot fully appreciate its importance without a close look at this extremely influential city from its birth in the 4th century B. C. until its successful imposition of a trinity doctrine on the Roman church in the 4th century A. D.

Alexander the Great had the Egyptian city of Alexandria built in 332 B. C. (The Hindu Trinity had been established in India by this time.) Alexander had already stretched his empire into the plains of India, "and brought many [Hindu] native princes under his rule." [60]

As time went on, the ties between Hindu India and Alexandria became even stronger.

"Under the [Roman] Empire, Alexandria became the greatest trade centre in the world. The Roman Alexandrian merchants had numerous settlements in South India. .... Moreover, Clement, Chrysostom, and other early Christian writers speak about the Indians [Hindus] in Alexandria and their cults." [61]

Alexandria, Egypt, had even developed a trinity doctrine of its very own long before Christian times. It appears to have been a blend (not surprisingly) of Egyptian, Hindu, and Greek philosophy/mystery religions.


"This fusing of one god with another is called theocrasia, and nowhere was it more vigorously going on than in Alexandria. Only two peoples resisted it in this period: The Jews, who already had their faith in the one God of heaven and earth, Jehovah, and the Persians, who had a monotheistic sun worship [Mithras]. It was Ptolemy I [who died in 283 B. C.] who set up not only the Museum in Alexandria, but the Serapeum, devoted to the worship of a trinity of gods which represented the result of a process of theocrasia applied more particularly to the gods of Greece and Egypt [with a distinct Hindu flavor].

"This trinity consisted of the god Serapis (= Osiris + Apis), the goddess Isis (= Hathor, the cow-moon goddess), and the child-god Horus. In one way or another almost every god was identified with one or other of these three aspects of the one god, even the sun god Mithras [very important in the religion of Constantine the Great [96, 97, 98] which we shall see when we examine the Nicene Council] of the Persians. and they were each ; THEY WERE THREE, BUT THEY WERE ALSO ONE." - The Outline of History, Wells, vol. 1, p. 307, 1956 ed.

other

(It may be of some interest to note the name of the first god of this pagan trinity - Serapis and the name of the temple devoted to the worship of this pagan trinity - the Serapeum. The name of an Egyptian bishop and "a prominent supporter of Athanasius"[62] and "defender of the [trinitarian] Nicene faith at the Council of Sardica in 343 [A. D.]" [63] was Serapion. This name appears to be a praise to the god Serapis.)[64]

20 In addition to its own home-grown pagan trinity (and the trinity in its imported Hindu cults), Alexandria became host to Neo-Platonism (which also incorporated a trinity concept as it came down through Pythagoras, and then Plato, into the western world). From the time of Jesus until about 150 A. D. Christian teachings had been passed down in fairly pure form. As the highly respected (and highly trinitarian) Christian history text, Christianity Through the Centuries, states:

"...the writings of the New Testament were completed just before the end of the first century after Christ. Men who knew the apostles and the apostolic doctrine continued the task of writing Christian literature. These men were known as the Apostolic Fathers. Most of the literary works of these men were produced between 95 and 150. Certain well-defined characteristics appear in their writings. Their utterances are informal simple statements of sincere faith and piety and show little evidence of the philosophical training in pagan philosophy that one notices in the writings of Origen [in Alexandria] and Clement of Alexandria [and most who followed]." - p. 77.

21 The influence of Alexandria upon Christianity became so great that by the time the Apostolic Fathers had passed away (about 150 A. D.) it had "become the seat of Christian erudition and the Orthodox faith and was frequently torn by bloody religious dissensions."[65]

22 Alexandria's most noteworthy feature was its permanent passion for syncretism.[66]  Syncretism (like eclecticism) is a word that describes the way that the early church (after the death of the Apostolic Fathers) chose various ideas and doctrines from pagan religions and philosophies and incorporated them into the "Christian" church. The most influential center (by far) for this practice of borrowing pagan ideas and fusing them into Christendom was in Alexandria, Egypt.[67] It became known as the Alexandrian School[68] and the religious "Christian" philosophy it developed is known as the Alexandrian Philosophy.[69]

"Soon after the middle of the 2nd century [or soon after 150 A. D. when the Apostolic Fathers left the scene] a catechetical school [70] to instruct converts from paganism to Christianity was opened in Alexandria .... The men of the Alexandrian School were anxious to develop a system of theology that by the use of philosophy would give a systematic exposition of Christianity. They had been trained in the classical [pagan] literature and philosophy of the past and thought that it could be used in the formation of Christian theology....

"They developed an allegorical system [70] of interpretation that has plagued Christianity since that time. .... This method of interpretation of the Scriptures has done much harm to the cause of correct interpretation and has resulted in absurd and, often, unscriptural theological ideas." - Christianity Through the Centuries, E. E. Cairns, Ph.D., Zondervan Publishing House, 1977 printing, pp. 119-120.

"Influences were strangely mingled [in the Alexandrian School], the reasoning of the refined and imaginative Greek, the practical, positive Roman, the visionary, idealistic Jew, the mystic Hindu, all brought to bear upon pagan philosophy and the new teachings of Christianity. The outgrowth of this movement was Neo-Platonism, a name sometimes given to Alexandrian philosophy as a whole.... The chief characteristic of Neo-Platonism was the attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy [including, of course, Pythagoreanism] with the teachings of Christianity. In other words, the Alexandrian Philosophy may be described as Christian truth MODIFIED by philosophic speculation." - New Standard Encyclopedia, v. 1, 1952, "Alexandrian School."

(But what is really being done when the Christian truth is being "MODIFIED"?)

We find this understanding confirmed by The Encyclopedia Americana:

"At Alexandria, Egypt ... the first serious attempt was made by Christians [?] to ADJUST the facts and truths of the gospel and the relations of Christian doctrine to reason and philosophy. Tertullian, ... the first [in Christendom] to apply the word `Trinity' to the conception ... of the triune Godhead, and Origen [89] ... are the commanding figures of the period." - 1944, v. 6, p. 609.

(Again, what is really being done when someone attempts to "ADJUST the facts"?)

Remember that the influence of one philosophy/mystery religion became so great in Alexandria during this time that Alexandrian philosophy as a whole came to be known as Neo-Platonism. Let's briefly examine this extremely influential pagan philosophy/mystery religion.

23 As we have already seen - the chief characteristic of Neo-Platonism was the extreme effort to thoroughly mix the leaven of "Greek philosophy with the teachings of Christianity." Let us see what the leaven of the philosophy of Neo-Platonism included.

"Neo-Platonism started as a synthesis [blending] of Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, adapted Jewish and Oriental [includes Hindu] religious elements, [and] crept, though professedly pagan, into patristic [early church] Christian theology. .... Its most potent phase [was] from 200 to 550 A. D. wherein it was the chief philosophy of classical paganism." - Encyclopedia Americana, v. 20, pp. 97-98, 1982.

"Neo-Platonism is a blend of almost all the major lines of philosophical thought which preceded its epoch; one of the most remarkable attempts in history to weave all the strands of existing systems into a single web of thought. Its greatest interpreter was Plotinus who was born near Alexandria in 205 A. D. and died in Rome 270. .... The influence of Plotinus and later Neo-Platonists on Christian theology is of immense importance." - An Encyclopedia of Religion, V. Ferm (ed.), 1945, p. 525.

24 Plotinus was a disciple of Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria (about 160-242 A. D.) who is considered to be the founder of Neo-Platonism. Saccas left no writings of his own, but his lectures greatly influenced Plotinus and others.[71]

Plotinus, like the Pythagoreans, had a high respect for the number three; and he makes great use of threefold distinctions." - The Greek Philosophers, Rex Warner, 1958, p. 221.


"Plotinus ... proclaimed that God is revealed in the material world in a trinity of manifestations" - p. 28, Bible Review, Feb., 1997.

"But what is God [in the writings of Plotinus]? `He' too is a triad …" – p. 610, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster, Inc.

25 To make a long story short, Plotinus (and undoubtedly his influential teacher, Ammonius Saccas, before him) included an already popular pagan trinity concept in his very influential teachings of Neo-Platonism.[72, 73, 74, 75] Scholars of Church history constantly emphasize the tremendous influence of Neo-Platonism (which has to include its basic pagan-developed trinity idea) on Christendom which had begun to borrow doctrines, customs, and philosophy from paganism by 200 A. D.[76, 77, 78, 79] The 1983 Academic American Encyclopedia states:

"Neoplatonism had a profound influence on Christian and Islamic philosophy and theology." - p. 85, v. 14.

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Trinity Index

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