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Today we continued our in-depth look at the Shema - specifically, how the Shema shows that there is one God. Here are a few highlights from class today:
Deuteronomy 6:5-9 “Hear (Shema), O Israel: Yahweh our God is one Yah: And thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”
While the Shema is the heart of the Torah (and all Scripture), the heart of paganism is its opposite: the Trinity doctrine…
The
Trinity doctrine is not unique to, nor original with, Christianity. It has deep
Pagan roots, dating back to at least two centuries BC, and has been prominent
in many Eastern religions ever since.
• “If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that
Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism [meaning one God]
of the first Christians, (who differed from their fellow Jews only in the
belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah), was changed, by the church of
Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets,
invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy
of belief.” The History of Christianity by Peter Eckler
• Marie
Sinclair, Countess of Caithness, in her 1876 book Old
Truths in a New Light, states: "It is generally, although erroneously,
supposed that the doctrine of the Trinity is of Christian origin. Nearly
every nation of antiquity possessed a similar doctrine. [The early
Catholic theologian] St. Jerome testifies unequivocally, 'All the
ancient nations believed in the Trinity'" (p. 382).
|
The “Christian” Trinity diagram is exactly like the
pagan triangle explaining the pagan trinity, across cultures. Only the
names have been changed. |
• "The ancient Babylonians recognized the doctrine of a
trinity, or three persons in one god—as appears from a composite god with
three heads forming part of their mythology, and the use of the equilateral
triangle, also, as an emblem of such trinity in unity" (Thomas Dennis
Rock, The Mystical Woman and the Cities of the Nations, 1867, pp. 22-23).
• The Puranas, one of the Hindoo Bibles of more than 3,000 years
ago, contain the following passage: “O ye three Lords! know that I recognize
only one God. Inform me, therefore, which of you is the true divinity, that I
may address to him alone my adorations.' The three gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and
Siva [or Shiva], becoming manifest to him, replied, 'Learn, O devotee, that
there is no real distinction between us. What to you appears such is only the
semblance. The single being appears under three forms by the
acts of creation, preservation, and destruction, but he is one.”
• "Hence the triangle was adopted by all the ancient nations as a
symbol of the Deity … Three was considered among all the pagan nations as the
chief of the mystical numbers, because, as Aristotle remarks, it contains
within itself a beginning, a middle, and an end. Hence, we find it designating
some of the attributes of almost all the pagan gods" (Sinclair, pp.
382-383).
• 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'" (Arthur Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, 1928, pp. 197-198).
Egyptologist
Arthur Weigall, while himself a Trinitarian, summed up the influence of ancient
beliefs on the adoption of the Trinity doctrine by the Catholic Church in the
following excerpt from his previously cited book:
"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 ancient Egyptians, whose influence on early religious thought was profound, usually arranged their gods or goddesses in trinities: there was the trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, the trinity of Amen, Mut, and Khonsu, the trinity of Khnum, Satis, and Anukis, and so forth …
"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 recognized 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 recognized 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 proceedeth 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 [the 4th-century Trinitarian whose view eventually became official doctrine] 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 …
"Today a Christian thinker . . . has no wish to be precise about it, more especially since the definition is obviously pagan in origin and was not adopted by the Church until nearly three hundred years after Christ" (pp. 197-203).
The Roman
Catholic and Orthodox Church Councils (Western and Eastern churches) brought
the Trinity doctrine into “Christianity”:
“The mystery of the Trinity is the central doctrine of the Catholic Faith. Upon it are based all other teachings of the Church.” Handbook for Today’s Catholic, p 12 (March 1994)
The
Christian Church’s roots were originally from Judaism, which was, and still is,
a monotheistic (One-God) religion. There is no belief in a polytheistic
(Plural) God in the Old Testament. OT scriptures declare the singleness of God:
· Isaiah 43:10 “Ye are My
witnesses, saith Yahweh, and My servant whom I have chosen: that ye may
know and believe Me, and understand that I Am He: before Me
there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me.”
· Isaiah 45:18 “For thus saith Yahweh that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it… I Am the LORD; and there is none else.”
“We believe in the doctrine of the triune God, because we have received it by tradition, though not mentioned at all in Scripture.” Cardinal Hosius, Conf. Catholic Fidei, Chap XXVI
From an edict given in 380 AD by Theodosius (commanded
by Constantine):
“Let us believe the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, under an equal majesty, and a pious trinity. We authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians; and as, we judge that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the infamous name of heretics… they must expect to suffer the severe penalties, which our authority guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict upon them.”
