Historical Truth - Trinity

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Hello,

I received an e-mail from a friend recently. He was comparing the Trinity to pagan religions. The “gist” was as if the Trinity we worship was “created” and found like other religions with Sun, Moon, and Stars, as other pagan religions have been. Secondly he suggests that our Holy Spirit is Female.

I have no education in these pagan religions. What is the best way to present the truth? How do I present the Truth to him?

Your help would be appreciated.

The graph he e-mailed me is below.

Check out these other trinities:


  1. *]Sun (God)
    *]Moon (Goddess)
    *]**Star **(God Child)

    Babylonian

    1. *]Baal
      *]Ishtar
      *]Tammuz (Baal-bereth)

      Catholic

      1. *]Father (YHVH)
        *]Spirit (Female Catholic Archetype)
        *]Son (Jesus)

        Egyptian

        1. *]Osiris Nimrod
          *]Isis Semiramis
          *]Horus

          Freemasonry

          (3 lesser lights)

          1. *]West
            *]South
            *]East Worshipful Master

            Mexican

            1. *]Teotl
              *]Coatlicue
              *]Quatzalcoatl

              Norse

              1. *]Odin
                *]Frea
                *]Thor
 
Tony B.:
Hello,

I received an e-mail from a friend recently. He was comparing the Trinity to pagan religions. The “gist” was as if the Trinity we worship was “created” and found like other religions with Sun, Moon, and Stars, as other pagan religions have been. Secondly he suggests that our Holy Spirit is Female.

I have no education in these pagan religions. What is the best way to present the truth? How do I present the Truth to him?

Your help would be appreciated.

The graph he e-mailed me is below.
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One big problem is that the list doesn’t contain “other” Trinities. Trinity indicates one God (one divine nature) with three persons.

His pagan examples are all three gods, which is contradictory to the Christian notion of God as being all-powerful, since multiple gods would only control those things the other 2 gods don’t, and therefore they become nothing more than weak version of the true God.

Your friend is also engaging in a purely logical fallacy. Ask him if he is pagan because he drinks water or sleeps or talks. After all, the pagans did all of these actions, and so he must (by his logical fallacy) be copying the pagans.
 
I love G. K. Chesterton’s analysis when comparing Christianity and Myths. Myths were created by poets in order to try and approach the truths of existence. When ancients worshiped the myths, they knew they were fiction. It was the truths in the stories not the fiction that they worshiped.

Even today we have story tellers and poets who write tales like Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. We know they are fiction but revere the stories when they touch truth. No matter how well they tell the stories, they never have the fullness of truth.

Christianity is different in that our religion is based on historical facts as well as stories from the Old Testament which reveal truth.

For GKC’s full explanation read the Everlasting Man, chapter 5 Man and Mythologies.
 
Try this: Refuting the Jesus Myth

Pertinent quote:
Pagan similarities
Allegations that Christianity is an adaptation of a pagan religion have been around for ages. In the 19th century, Kersey Graves wrote his notorious The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviours - a book so poor that even the Internet Infidels admit (in rather more diplomatic language) that it is a load of old cobblers. Just recently the tradition was carried on in The Jesus Mysteries by Peter Gandy and Timothy Freke. These two amateurs are equally willing to play fast and loose with the facts using carefully pruned quotations, mis-translation and anachronism to produce a woefully inaccurate picture.
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With this is in mind I present “Bede’s Guide to the Production of a Best-seller that Undermines the Roots of Christianity”. With this I can guarantee that you will be able to find all the parallels you like between paganism and Christianity or indeed, properly adapted, between any other two unrelated subjects that you care to name.
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  1. The first thing to do is ensure you cast your net as widely as possible. So within Christianity you should include every cult, heresy and sect you can get your hands on. Gnosticism will be particularly helpful as they did indeed borrow large chunks of pagan thought which is partly why they were considered heretics in the first place. As for paganism, this can include just about everything. Freke and Gandy comb not only Greek cults (Oedipus) but also Egyptian (Horus and Osiris), Roman (Bacchus) and Persian (Mithras). Elsewhere you will find Celtic deities, Norse beserkers and Indian mystics pulled into the fray. Now, with this vast body of writing, finding parallels will not be too challenging provided you are willing to wade through it all.
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  1. But don’t restrict yourselves to pagan religions from before the time of Christ. Remember your methodology should be that Christians copied pagans and not the other way around. This is useful because you can now point to similarities between paganism and Christianity after the latter was already widespread. So if, like Freke and Gandy, you can find a picture showing Bacchus on a cross dating from two hundred years after Jesus was crucified you can still claim that the Christians copied the pagans and not the other way around.
  2. Language is important. Christian terms such as ‘salvation’, ‘Eucharist’, ‘word made flesh’ and ‘lamb of god’ are common currency today. Therefore when translating or paraphrasing pagan sources always use modern Christian language. Never mind that the ancient pagans would not have known what you were on about - you are not talking to them. In this way you can call a woman being raped by various kinds of wildlife a ‘virgin birth’, you can call having ones body parts stuck back together a ‘resurrection’ and you can call just about every Greek hero a ‘son of god’. Also it is helpful to use King James Bible phrases and style when quoting pagan texts. It gives them some more gravitas.
  3. Do try to confuse liturgy and practice with history. For instance the mystery religions and Christianity were both underground movements so they had to operate in similar sorts of ways. Sacred meals and ritual washing are as old as religion itself so the Christianity using them as well as pagans is not surprising at all. Make it sound like a complete revelation.
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5.Say totally different things are in fact closely related. For instance, Mithras was sometimes represented by a bull. Say this is the same as Jesus being called the lamb of God (ignoring that one is a symbol of sexuality and strength and the other of innocence and humility). Compare the Mithric ritual of taking a shower in the warm blood of the aforementioned bull with Christian baptism with water. Claim that the thieves crucified with Jesus are the same as a pair of torch bearers that appear on some illustrations of Bacchus.
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  1. For goodness sake do not mention the things that really made the pagan mysteries interesting. After all your work of showing that Jesus and Bacchus are one and the same, you will lose everything if you let on that Bacchus was the god of drunkenness and his worship involved getting plastered and having sex with anything in sight (goats being a particular favourite). In fact, keep sex out of it altogether. Yes, sex was the central feature of an awful lot of these pagan rituals but that is not the point your are trying to make.
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  1. Avoid up to date scholarship which will probably pour cold water over your vaunted theories. You will find plenty of nineteenth and early twentieth century writers with a bone to pick that can support your wildest speculations. And do not worry if not everyone agrees with you - you can always dismiss the dissenters as apologists or as those unable to cope with your earth shattering ideas.
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And the Holy Spirit is not a mother figure, as He proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the THIRD person, not the Second.
 
Hello,

Thus far the info you all have provided is very simple but informative. I seem to stumble on the simple things all the time. (but they are no less important!)

Thanks for the info. Thanks for the websites. This Forum is, and has been, and always will be a great source of info for me.

Thank you!

P.S. Side Note - I believe my firend has lost his faith in the Church. He has become a FreeMason and is quite proud. His mother has become a JW. Please say a prayer for him when you get the chance. thanks.
 
Your friend is working too hard. Here’s a simpler proof for him:
  1. Christians believe in supernatural beings (God and the angels).
  2. Pagans believed in supernatural beings first.
  3. Christianity springs from paganism.
It’s so foolproof, really. 😃
 
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