David,
Why does every Christian that believes God to be some type of multiple, believe that he is three?
Some, like the Oneness Pentecostals, are binitarians, believing in one essence composed of two persons. But binitarians no doubt inherited this "one essence" idea from the trinitarians.
Many historians and Bible scholars agree that the multiple of three now called the Trinity owes much to the three-god beliefs of Greek philosophy and pagan polytheism and definitely not to the monotheism of the Jews and the Jewish Jesus. Alexander Hislop devotes the first 128 pages of his book The Two Babylons to proving that the "three Persons" of the Trinity are directly descended from the ancient Babylonian trinity but have been given Christian names and characteristics. He shows that the origin of the Babylonian trinity was the triad of Cush (the grandson of Noah), Semiramis (his wife), and Nimrod (their son). At the death of Cush, Semiramis married her son, Nimrod, and that began the historical confusion between the father and son that is so prevalent in early paganism and in the modern Trinity. On page 16, Hislop wrote that the Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian triads were symbolized by the equilateral triangle, just as the Catholic and Protestant Trinity is often illustrated today. The historian H. W. F. Saggs, in The Greatness That Was Babylon, page 316, explains that the Babylonian triad consisted of "three gods of roughly equal rank."
In his book Babylonian and Assyrian Religion, the historian S. H. Hooke goes into great detail about the ancient Sumerian trinity: Anu was the father, the king of the gods and the primary god of heaven; Enlil, was a creator god, the god of the earth and the wind-god; and Enki was the god of waters and the "lord of wisdom."
In his Egyptian Myths, George Hart, lecturer for the British Museum and professor of ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics at the University of London, shows how Egypt also believed in a "transcendental, above creation, and preexisting" god called Amun. Amun was really three gods in one. Re was his face, Ptah his body, and Amun his hidden identity. (Page 24) The well-known historian Will Durant agrees that Ra, Amon, and Ptah were "combined as three embodiments or aspects of one supreme and triune deity." (Oriental Heritage, page 201)
In Caesar and Christ, Durant states that Christianity was not ashamed to borrow from pagan culture: "Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it." (Page 595) Dr. Gordon Laing, retired Dean of the Humanities Department at the University of Chicago, agrees that the worship of the Egyptian triad Isis, Serapis, and the child Horus probably accustomed the early church theologians to the idea of a triune God, and was influential in the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity as set forth in the Nicaean and Athanasian creeds. (Survivals of Roman Religion, pages 128, 129) Laing devotes his entire book to the comparison of Roman paganism and the Roman Catholic Church, from which all Christendom received the so-called "Christian" Trinity.
These were not the only trinities that early Christians were exposed to. The history lecturer, Jesse Benedict Carter, tells us about the Etruscans. As they slowly passed from Babylon through Greece and went on to Rome, they brought with them their trinity of Tinia, Uni, and Menerva. This trinity was a "new idea to the Romans," and yet it became so "typical of Rome" that it quickly spread throughout Italy. The names of the Roman trinity, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, reflect this heritage from the Etruscans. (The Religious Life of Ancient Rome, pages 16-19, 26)
Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, a Catholic scholar and professor at Yale, confirms the Church's respect for pagan ideas when he states that the Apologists and other early church fathers used and cited the pagan Roman Sibylline Oracles so much that they were called "Sibyllists" by the 2nd century critic, Celsus. (The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition [100-600], pages 64, 65)
In contrast, Judaism is strongly monotheistic with no hint of a trinity. Contrary to the false belief that "hooberus" is promoting, the concept of the Trinity did not come from the Old Testament. Nor did Jesus speak of a trinity. The message of Jesus was of the coming kingdom; it was a message of love and forgiveness. He never hinted or gave even one clue that God is composed of three persons. As for his relationship with the Father, Jesus said, "I can do nothing on my own initiative ... I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me." (John 5:30) In another place he said "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me." (John 7:16) His words "The Father is greater than I" leave no doubt as to their relationship. (John 14:28)
The belief that God is a multiple of three stems from paganism, not from the Bible.
Herk
