The Pagan Influence of the Trinity Doctrine by Otto Augustus Wall M.D., Ph.G., Ph.M. 1920
About the time of the beginning of our Era there was a period of great unrest among the thinkers of the world. Greek philosophy, Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Manichaeism, Montanism, Gnosticism, made great inroads on the older faiths, and Judaism underwent many changes. Then, when Christianity came, it too met with all the other competing ideas, and while at first it was fairly free from Pagan ideas, it soon adopted the policy of making converts by adapting itself to their views, so as not to make a change from one of the other faiths to Christianity too abrupt or difficult.
The Christian Church took over everything it possibly could and gave Christian explanations for the Pagan festivals, philosophy, etc.; in this way the simple faith of the early Christians became swamped with foreign ideas, but the church-fathers amalgamated all the ideas into one more or less congruous mass of doctrines, so that it has been fairly said, that "modern Christianity is based on pre-Christian Paganism and post-Christian metaphysics." Much of what modern Christians believe is not based on the Bible, but is derived from other sources.
For instance, at a very early stage of Christianity, they believed in One God; the belief was Unitarian; by about the beginning of the third century the belief that Jesus was a son of God, and was himself a God, prevailed quite generally, and then when a third person, the Holy Ghost, was accepted by the church, the belief was Trinitarian. These two divisions were fairly even in numbers; but the influence of Origen (a fanatical self-castrated zealot) established the theory of the Trinity more and more firmly, until by about 400 A.D. the belief in the Trinity was general.
The philosophical definition of the Trinity varied much; some holding that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were but different names for the same God, but manifesting himself in different phases, and that the Trinity was of the same order as when Plato and the later philosophers said of man that he was a Trinity of Soul, Mind and Body. So God manifested himself as the Creator (Father), the Redeemer (Son), and the Giver of Life (Holy Ghost); but all three were but manifestations of different functions or phases of the same thing, of the same God. Others, and possibly the majority, believed that each of these three was a distinct individuality, and while they still spoke of One God, they really had in mind Three Gods.
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