http://www.sabbathcovenant.com/book2MysteryReligionOfBabylon/Chapter3.htm#The%20Pagan%20Trinity
I can not argue with what I read here can you?
This shines a new light on why there are so many Christian denominations.
Nun of them seem to agree.
Okie
This thread has been reported for a move to Great Debates
What about the monks?
The Christian trinity concept isn’t found in the Bible explicitly, that’s true. On the other hand, lots of people who study this concept feel like it’s the best explanation for certain things that are in the Bible.
As for the pagan origin… I don’t see anything there that is particularly convincing. All this person has done is create a list of three’s throughout the world religions, and many of those items are really tortured comparisons to the trinity. Cerberus has three heads and so the trinity is pagan? Come on.
If someone wants to find pagan similarities to Christianity, there are better examples than the ones on that page.
This is an unanswerable question until you give a precise definition of “pagan” that you wish to use. The word “pagan” originated within the Christian community and was used to describe non-Christian and non-Jewish religions. I suspect that would now extend to non-Muslim as well. In that sense of the word, Christianity cannot be Pagan.
If, however, you’re asking is Christianity polytheistic due to its belief in the trinity, well that question truly belongs in great debates (where I see this is going). I think most Christians would answer no even if they can’t decide how many angels can dance on a pin.
My own opinion is I really don’t care if it’s polytheistic or not.
A slightly better example would be the triune goddess, “Maid/Mother/Hag.”
However, I’ve never seen a convincing link between this and Christianity. (Robert Graves tried very hard to establish one, but I don’t believe anyone takes him seriously these days… Did anyone ever?)
Easily. Most of the tripe on that web site is either a misinterpretation of various pagan mythologies or simply made up out of whole cloth.
The “IHS” = “Isis, Horeb, Seti” caim is the clearest invented bit, but there are others.
IHS is from the standard Greek practice of abbreviating names to either the first three or first and last letters of a name. In this case, the Greek [symbol]IHSOUS[/symbol] (Iesous, Jesus) was shortened to [symbol]IHS[/symbol]. Later, as the Greek images were brought into Western Europe where Latin prevailed, the Greek letters [symbol]IHS[/symbol] were transliterated into the Roman IHS and folk etymology turned it into an abbreviation of Iesus Hominum Salvator, (Jesus, Savior of Men).
If the “Isis, Horeb, Seti” connection had had any validity, then the second “letter” would have been a rough breathing mark, (looking a bit like an apostrophe). The letter “H” in Greek is Eta, (long E), not the Latin H. Horeb written in Greek, looks like this: ‘[symbol]WREB[/symbol], with no “H” at the beginning.
The same sort of silly errors permeate that whole web page.
Now, none of this makes any claim that the Christian Trinity is a true representation of God, (if he or she exists), but the question put forth was whether one could argue against the silly web page and the answer is a resounding, “Of course.” It is all made up.
Moved to Great Debates from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Certainly the Bible contains references to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. That all three are distinct can be seen in the baptism of Jesus, where Jesus is the Son, the Holy Spirit is seen as the dove, and the Father is the voice coming down from Heaven. And all three being significant is seen in Jesus’s instruction to the Apostles to “baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”.
So, no, the concept of the Trinity isn’t explicitly laid out in the Bible, but I’d say the implicit references are pretty strong.
TRINITY, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their claims to adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter.
– Ambrose Bierce
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
– Don McLean
The doctrine of the Trinity arose from the effort to countenance the divinity of Jesus. Claiming that Jesus was God, while at the same time declaring his obedience to God, creates a logical impossibility unless you posit that both are God, yet mysteriously one. Adding the Holy Spirit merely cements the proposition.
Actually, I think it’s more like this:
Sometimes I feel discouraged
I think my work’s in vain
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again
If you can’t pray like Peter
If you can’t preach like Paul
Then go home and tell your neighbor
That He died to save us all!
And not like anything so rational or philosophical as you are describing.
My understanding is that the Trinity came out of the First Council of Nicaea (325 CE). Not a lot of pagan representation there, to my knowledge.
JC: This guy, Thomas, you couldn’t tell him nothin’, you know? He was always askin’ me for my ID. Soon as I see him- “Got any ID?” To this day, he doesn’t believe I’m God.
I: Are you God?
JC: Well, partly. You know that. I’m a member of the Trinity.
I: Yes, in fact you’ve written a book about the Trinity, haven’t you.
JC: That’s right. It’s called, “Three’s a Crowd.”
I: “Three’s a Crowd.”
JC: Um-hmm.
I: As I understand it, it’s nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on the Holy Ghost.
JC: Listen, it’s not an attack. You wanna know what it is? I don’t get along with the Holy Ghost, all right? So I leave him alone. That’s it. What he does is his business.
I: Well, why? What’s the reason?
JC: Well, first of all, ya never know who he’s gonna be. Every day he shows up, he’s somethin’ different. One day he comes in the meetin’, he’s a dove, another day he’s a tongue of fire, always foolin’ around. (annoyed) Listen, I don’t bother with the guy. I don’t wanna know about him. I don’t see him. I don’t talk to him.
The divinity of a person is very un-Jewish. The divinity of a person, however, was extremely Roman. You’d think that the later Bible writers, who grew up in an environment where descent from gods was commonly thought to be possible, would want to make the king of the Jews divine in order to be equal or greater to the emperor.
Descent from gods had a long tradition - Alexander the Great was convinced he was descended from gods. I don’t think many of us living in our mostly monotheistic world can imagine what a small leap this would be.
There are a few people–and whoever is behind this website is one–who have gone off the rails due to an overly-literal interpretation of Acts 4:12:
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
They take that to mean ONLY the original Hebrew name of Jesus–often spelled in English as “Yeshua.” They believe that even translations of the name are invalid; so no God; no Dios; no Jesus; and so on. From another page on that website–
Beyond that, I mentioned in another thread that the doctrine of the Trinity is written into the very fabric of the Bible. “Elohim” is a plural word (which means, based on Hebrew grammar, that it refers to 3 or more) and yet it takes a singular verb. That fact alone is enough to absolutely prove the doctrine of the Trinity beyond the shadow of any possible doubt.
Did y’all check the home page for the link in the OP? That’s some serious stuff, friends. Seriously crazy. Seriously lazy. Seriously ignorant. The purveyor of the stuff on that sie couldn’t be more bat-turd crazy if he were a cave floor.
Site, not sie.
Sounds sorta like Biblical Freemen on the Land. I assume they won’t go to any church that puts a gold fringe on the Christian flag.