Page 36 - Countering Trinitarian Arguments With Historical Reference

Christianity, [or became Catholic] brought to Christianity some of their pagan beliefs and practices."
Butlers Biblework By J. Glentworth Butler D.D., New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1889, Vol. I, pages 128-129. “A Trinity of Deities is common to all [ancient Pagan] nations, the Emperor of China offers once every year a sacrifice to the Spirit of Trinity and Unity. Laotse (600 BC) says “Tao is by nature one; the first begat the second; both together brought forth the third; these three made all things. We are more familiar with the Indian [Hindu] Trimurti, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, who are represented and worshiped as three persons are, thought the origin Divine principle Brahma is but one. In a commentary on the Rig-Veda it is said: There are three deities, but there is only one, Godhead, the great soul. The so called Chaldeans oracle says, the Unity brought forth the Duality which dwells with it and shines in [Logos] intellectual light; from these proceeded the Trinity, Anu, Nuah, and Bel. In like manner we find a Divine Trinity among the Babylonians [Shamash Sin Ishtar or Anu, Enlil, and Ea, or later Nimrod Ishtar and Tammuz], and the Egyptians [Amen-Ra who was one yet a triad and many, also Osiris Isis and Horus]. The divinities of Greece are grouped by mythologers both in successive and a simultaneous Trinity [Zeus, Hera, and Apollo or the triple goddess Hecate]. So, too among the Scandinavians [Thor, Woden and Fricco/Frigg], the ancient Prussians, the Pomeranians, the Wends, and the old Americans. Do not all these coincidences serve as an indirect proof to compel us to acknowledge that Schelling was right when he said, “The philosophy of mythology proves that a Trinity of Divine Personalities is the root from which have grown the religious ideas of all nations of any importance that are known to us? This Idea does not exist because there is such a thing as Christianity; on the contrary, [Trinitarian] Christianity exists because this ideal [a Trinity] is the most original of all.”
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Edited by James Hastings with the assistance of John A. Selbie, M.A., D.D. and Louis H. Gray, M.A., Ph.D. 1955, page 458. Under “Trinity.”
“Trinity. The Term and Concept. —(a) The Term ‘Trinity from Lat. Trinitas appears to have been first used by Tertullian, while the corresponding Greek term ‘Triad’ appears to have been first used by Theophilus (ca 180 AD) the Christian apologist, an older contemporary of Tertullian. In Tertullian, as in subsequent usage, the term designates the [Catholic] Christian doctrine of God as Father, Son, and Spirit. (b) Although the notion of a divine Triad or Trinity is characteristic of the [Catholic] Christian religion, it is by no means peculiar to it. In Indian [Hindu] religion, e.g., we meet with the Trinitarian group of Brahma, Siva, and Visnu; and in Egyptian religion with the Trinitarian group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, constituting a divine family, like Father, Mother, and Son in mediaeval Christian pictures. [Icons or Idols of false gods.] Nor is it only in historical religions that we find God viewed as a Trinity. One recalls in particular the Neo-Platonic view of the Supreme or Ultimate Reality, which was suggested by Plato in the Timaeus; e.g., in the Philosophy of Plotinus the primary or original Realities are triadically represented as the Good or in numerical symbol the One, the Intelligence or the One- Many, and the World-Soul or the One and Many.”
35