The ethnic trinities and their relations to the Christian trinity : a chapter in the comparative history of religions

Front matter

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Preface

THE comparative history of religions is the latest and most productive field of investigation and discovery that historical science has opened. The field as a whole is vast in extent and complex and intricate in its character. This book deals with a single chapter of it. I was led to the study of the Ethnic trinities by my previous studies in the historical evolution of the Christian trinity, — finding as I did that Christian trinitarianism is only a part of a world-wide historical evolution that goes back to the very origins of religion itself. Thus, while the present volume is an entirely fresh and independent work, it may properly be regarded as a companion of my previous book: “© A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism, and its Outcome in the New Christology.” Its object is to carry the history of trinitarianism back of its later Christian form of development, and trace its primary sources as well as its historical evolution through the various Ethnic trinities until it enters its Christian stage, and then to compare with each other these different stages of vi PREFACE religious thought and draw from such comparison its historical conclusions.

It may be made a point of criticism by some of my readers that I have entered so deeply and fully into the philosophical development of Greek trinitarian thought; but my apology is that an accurate knowledge of New Platonism, and above all of Plotinus, is absolutely essential to the understanding of Christian medieval philosophy and theology, and of the modern ideas that have been evolved from them. Scholars are coming to realize —what until recently has been little appreciated — that Plotinus was the most original and acute philosophical thinker since Plato and Aristotle, and that his influence to-day has eclipsed that of his great masters. In fact, the Plotinian pantheistic monism is increasingly regnant in modern philosophy, not to say in Christian theology. It may be said that not a few of the historical and metaphysical blunders that have had vogue in past histories of Christian doctrine have arisen from ignorance of those later transformations of Platonism which are so clearly set forth in the speculations of Plotinus.

While I have restricted myself toa single phase of the general history of religions, it should be borne in mind that the evolution of the idea of God is central to all religious thought, and con-

PREFACE vii sequently that the subject-matter of this book will be found to include more or less directly many of the fundamental problems of theology. Like the earlier volume it is purely historical and critical, not dogmatic, resting entirely on the scientific inductive method ; and it will, I believe, furnish a new illustration of the truth of Strauss’s words, adopted as a motto on the title-page: “The true criticism of dogma is its history.”

If there are any who have been indisposed to accept the statements and conclusions of my previous book, I cannot doubt that the perusal of this one will overcome such indisposition, unless indeed their minds are proof against all purely historical evidence ; while to those who are ready to accept the divine revelations that are given in nature and history this new volume will, I am sure, bring new satisfaction. They will learn more fully perhaps than ever before that the world as a whole, not only in the realm of nature and natural law, but also in the history of man as a religious being, is full of divinity and of the proofs of a divine movement of love, and so will be able to read with a new sense of their profound meaning Browning’s lines : —

‘¢'The earth is crammed with heaven And every common bush afire with God.’’

LEVI L. PAINE.

Bangor, Mz., April, 1901.

ay

Contents

PART I THE ETHNIC TRINITIES CHAP. PAGE I. PRELIMINARY SURVEY : ; : ‘ 5 II. Specian Causks oF THE RIsE OF THE ETHNIC TRINITIES . 3 : ; : ; ; 14 III. GenerRAL CHARACTER AND RELATIONS OF THE Erunic TRINITIES . ; i‘ ; ‘ : 31 IV. Tue Hinpoo Braumanic TRINITY : X a at V. THe PERSIAN ZOROASTRIAN TRINITARIANISM . 64 VI. Tue Greek Homeric TRINITY . ‘ pas ¢ VII. Tur EvouuTion oF THE GREEK Paedormde TRINITARIANISM : ; ; : ’ F 124 VIII Tae Greek Puorinian TRINITY . 4 : 2462 PART II

THE RELATIONS OF THE ETHNIC TRINITIES TO THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY

I. Tae ExTerRNAL or HistoricaAL RELATIONS . 191 Il. Tue Internat RELATIONS — RESEMBLANCES e219 Ill. Tue Internat RELATIONS — DIFFERENCES . 270 IV. Tue PRovmeEntTIAL Mission oF CHRISTIANITY AS

Part I

“ Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, when as we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence “to seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures” early and late, that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by statute ? When a man hath been laboring the hardest labor in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument ; for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valor enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth.” — Joun Mitton.

Chapter I Preliminary Survey

Tus book proposes a comparative study of the Ethnic and Christian trinities. Recent investigations in the history of religions have given a new aspect to this subject, and have entirely changed the view to be taken of the historical relation of the Christian ideas of God and those of other religions, and especially of the trinitarian doctrine of God as existing in a trinity of persons or of personal forms. This change has been brought about in two ways. In the first place, scientific and historical studies have developed new conceptions of the unity that underlies phenomena and events, of the universality of law, and of the evolution of all things along the lines of natural and moral causes. This principle of evolution first became evident in the processes of the physical world, and has been adopted as a cardinal axiom of science ; but it has been proved to be equally a fundamental force in all historical events. A historical evolution according to fixed historical laws is as surely working in human affairs as a natural evolution is working in all the movements of the material universe. An essential difference, however, is to be noted between physical and historical evolution. The latter is moral, involving the element of human free agency, with its consequent variability of human action, while the former is under strict physical law, and so fixed and invariable. But the moral kingdom is as truly one of law and evolution as the natural. The power of free will is not a mere erratic and unaccountable form of activity ; it has its own mysterious laws, and these laws work in harmony with all the laws of the universe, and play their proper part in the grand evolution of the world’s history.

For it must be recognized at once that all recent scientific discoveries tend towards a single result, namely, that one ultimate law of life and movement includes every form of existence, and produces one system of things which we call the universe. The old Platonic idea that this cosmos in which man has his place is an animal with a world-soul contains an element of scientific truth. The universe is one living organic whole, under the guidance of one active force or combination of forces, and all individual living things are held within its eternal sway. What is called the law of natural evolution is simply the last word and summary of all the scientific laws and principles that all recent investigations, from Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, down to the latest discoveries of the present day, have brought to light. That law, in the very nature of things, can allow no exception. ‘To break it once is to break it up forever, and dissolve the order of the world. Evolution is a process, the result of life, and so long as there is life, so long will it work according to the divine laws of its own nature in a ceaseless progress towards its highest ends. Man is mysteriously included in this great world system, and so we must expect that the law of evolution will reveal itself in human history as well as in physical science, and hence it is that what is called the scientific and inductive method of study and investigation is also the method of the true historian.

This universal evolutionary law or principle finds special illustration in the history of the world’s religions. Comparative religion — almost the youngest of the sciences, and which is destined to revolutionize theology and philosophy in many points, shedding new light as it does on the origin and wide prevalence of ideas and beliefs supposed to be unique, and the possession of a few favored men— gives conclusive proof of the fact that all the religions of mankind have been the result of a slow and wide development under a law of evolution that is universal in its range. To this law Christianity, as a system of religious beliefs and dogmas, forms no exception. Every article of the Christian creed is the full flower of a long historical evolution. The dogma of the trinity is a conspicuous example. Whatever be the truth as to the mode of the Divine Being, whether he really exists in personal unity, or in personal trinity, or is pluralized in all the gods of heathen polytheism, it is a historical fact which cannot be gainsaid, that the Christian trinitarian dogma as set forth in the Nicene Creed was the slow growth of centuries, starting from a single new point of religious belief, and unfolding itself step by step through successive accretions of religious thought gathered from various historical sources, passing from unity to duality, and from duality to trinity, then moving on from a lower inchoate trinitarian stage to one higher and more complete, until out of controversy and schism the full Nicene homoousian doctrine was reached. Thus the Christian dogma of the trinity as a historical evolution is to be classed with the other trinities of the Ethnic religions, and should be studied with them, as together forming a single chapter in the comparative history of religions.

This new scientific view of the historical relation of the Ethnic and Christian trinities has been amply sustained and illustrated by the recent historical discoveries in the field of the Ethnic religions. That some of these religions contained divine triads had been a recognized fact of long standing; but its real significance was not appreciated, and a scientific and critical study of the trinitarian elements and an estimate of their relation to the Christian trinity had never been attempted. The new researches, however, go much farther. They reveal trinities of varied forms and developments in almost all the Ethnic religions. Such trinities are found in the theogonies of the

Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Hindoos, the Gaulish-Celts, the Teutonic-Scandinavians, the Greeks and Romans, the Phrygians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Ameriean tribes, Hawaiians, Polynesians. That trinities should be so widely spread among the different peoples and races of the world is certainly a fact of great religious significance, and a historical study of these trinities should yield some fruitful religious and theological lessons. Such a study is especially needful in view of the fact that Christian traditional theology is founded upon assumptions that are entirely at variance with the results of the new science of comparative religion, particularly in the field of historical evolution. These assumptions are centred in the idea that God made a special, supernatural revelation of himself and of his mode of existence to the first progenitors of the race. Monotheism, or the doctrine of one God, was supposed to be a part of that primeval revelation. Polytheism was regarded as a perversion of the original faith, brought about by human sin and depravity which darkened the understanding and corrupted the will. This doctrine of the fall and original sinfulness of the race was based on the acceptance of the account in Genesis of the temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent as historical truth. Paul became the most influential expounder of it. He was a true Jew, and accepted the traditional Rabbinical theory of the plenary inspiration of the Old Testament

Scriptures. Hence his philosophy of heathenism, namely, that sinful and fallen men “did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” so that God gave them over to the delusions of polytheism and idolatry. But these views of Paul, which have been so influential with later Christian theologians, have no historical basis. It is a piece of Jewish traditionalism which the Jewish convert, Paul, carried with him into the Christian church. Monotheism, so far from being the earliest doctrine of God, is a late development of human thought. It involves a long process of analysis and synthesis in the observation and investigation of the external world. In the beginnings of human experience man saw only particular phenomena. The unity of nature was unperceived. The world was filled with separate causalities and agencies. The idea of a first cause behind all the original activities of nature was a flight of reflective thought to which those first children of the race were utterly unequal. Polytheism was the natural and spontaneous religion of the primeval world. The sentence, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’—a statement that seems -so ancient to us, as we read it in the first chapter of Genesis, —is in reality modern, when seen in its true historical place in the long evolution of man’s ideas of God. The writer of that sentence had behind him many centuries of Hebrew thought and faith, and behind the oldest Hebrew was his Chaldean ancestor, with his polytheistic creation myth left on record for us, fortunately, in the resurrected clay tablets of Nineveh. I have spoken of the earliest members of our race as children. Such indeed they were. Their gaze upon the outer world around them was like that of the rustic in Pollock’s “ Course of Time ” who —

“ Thought the visual line that girt him round,

The world’s extreme ; and thought the silver moon, That nightly o’er him led her virgin host, No broader than his father’s shield.”

In that primeval time the imagination was the chief interpreter to man of nature and its powers. It was man’s religious imagination that turned the sun into a god, and filled sky, air, earth, and sea with multitudinous divine beings. With the development of the reflective and rational faculties man began to read in nature the signs of order, law, and unity. Then followed the tendency to find a headship among the various divinities of the vast polytheistic pantheon. Here the trinitarian idea, which so many analogies and indications of tripleness in nature and man had suggested, came in to help. ‘Trinities became the superior gods, and this step became a half-way house to another, namely, the idea of a first god among the three, like Brahma in the Hindoo trimurti, Zeus among the Greeks, and Jupiter among the Romans. But monotheism was not easily made congenial to the polytheistic mind, and remained the idea of the cultured and philosophic few. The trinitarian conception, however, was more easily accepted. It satisfied the sense of plurality, and also met in a degree the need of a higher unity. It was at this trinitarian stage of polytheistic limitation that the Ethnic religions mostly stopped. Only in several of the Ethnic philosophies, as they should be rather called in distinction from the popular religions that were based upon them, was a theistic or pantheistic unitarianism reached. That such a trinitarian half-way house should have been erected between the most unrestricted polytheism and the most abstract unitarianism, and have remained as the traditional abiding-place of Ethnic religions, is seen to be most natural, when we note how easily Christian theologians were led to use this device as a support of their own trinitarian doctrine. The Christian trinity was held up in early Christian apologies as the golden mean between a crude heathen polytheism, on the one hand, and a stark Jewish monotheism, on the other. Even modern apologists have employed the same device. So astute and accomplished a theologian as Henry B. Smith declares that the old Biblical and Platonic theistic doctrine of God as a uni-personal being is in fact a form of deism, and he substitutes for it a trinitarian theism of his own, namely, that God exists as an absolute uni-personality, while not uni-personal but tri-personal, — a form of doctrine which seems to me utterly self-destructive, and is a strange theism indeed.

The trinitarian idea has a similar relation to the pantheistic philosophies which were developed out of the original polytheistic religions. These philosophies sought to bring the popular polytheism into harmonious relation with the metaphysical conception of a divine unity. This was accomplished by an evolution theory according to which one primal being became the original cause of all multiform existence. All individual gods were mere emanations from a single monad, — different modifications of one divine Being. This logical rather than scientific evolution — for it had no scientific basis — started from a speculative unity, but made no further use of it, except as a transcendental background for the trinitarian stage to which it moved at once, and which was made the real zod or or centre of the whole system. Why the triads should have had so prominent a place in this pantheistic theory is not very clear, since it was only a single step in a descending series. Yet in fact the trinities of the pantheistic philosophies are the most definite and fixed of all the Ethnic trinities, and in them the line of division is sharply drawn between the gods who form these trinities and the other numerous gods who complete the evolution. This is the case with the Hindoo trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, Civa, and still more clearly with the New Platonic or Plotinian “ three hypostases,” — 70 €v, 6 vois, 7) Yuy7.

We have thus seen that monotheism, historically considered, is the end of an ascending series of beliefs concerning God, rather than the beginning of a descending series, and that history inverts the traditional view.

The same result is reached in that modification of monotheism which is found in the Christian dogma of the trinity. This dogma has also been traditionally held to be a part of the original revelation of God to the race. It was supposed to be found in the Old Testament. Christ was believed to have taught the elements of it in his interpretations of the Scriptures concerning himself. Augustine held that the first verses of Genesis contained a trinitarian reference. This idea likewise is without historical foundation. The Ethnic trinities are a comparatively late development in the history of religious thought when viewed from the side of the remote past, though ancient when looked at from the standpoint of later historical times. It is to be remembered that the prehistoric ages cover by far the longest period in the vast process of the life of the world. All authentic history is but a modern chapter of the earth’s annals as a whole. As to the Old Testament, it contains the history of a vigorous and radical reaction from the Ethnic polytheism to monotheism, and its strong insistence on the doctrine of one God made the development of the trinitarian dogma impossible. The Christian trinity was historically a new development out of Jewish monotheism, in consequence of the doctrine that grew about the person of Jesus Christ, though it obtained the materials from which it was formed from earlier Greek philosophical thought. It is also to be noted that the _ Ethnic trinities as well as the Christian exhibit long and definite stages in their evolution. The most complete trinities are of late date. The Hindoo ¢rimurtz did not reach its final stage till the fifth or sixth century of our era, though its origin dates from pre-Christian times. The Plotinian New Platonic trinity, the most perfect trinity as a speculative metaphysical theory that has ever been conceived, belongs to the third century A.D. So the Christian trinity required four centuries for its complete development in the Nicene and pseudo-Athanasian creeds.

Chapter II Special Causes Of The Rise Of The Ethnic Trinities

From this preliminary survey we pass to a closer investigation of the historical origin and character of the Ethnic trinities. Their origin is hid in the obscurity of the prehistoric ages. When the Ethnic religions first appear under clear historical light they are already polytheistic, and the trinitarian feature is more or less fully developed. In the latest authoritative book! on the Babylonian religion and mythology, it is stated that “ we can thus trace back the existence of this great triad of gods (Anu, Bel, and Ea) to the very beginning of history.” This is equally true of the Egyptian and the Hindoo trinities. Thus an investigation of the causes that led to their development must be conducted with such side lights as are afforded us from early man’s religious nature and environment and from the forms into which these trinities were moulded. The radical question is, why a trinity of gods, or a triune god, rather than a duad or a quaternity of gods, or a duo-une or quadrune god? Certainly there is

1 See Books on Egypt and Chaldea, vol. iv. 1899, by Budge and King, of the British Museum.

nothing peculiar in the number three to distinguish it from the other numerals. <A triangle is no more remarkable as a geometrical figure than a square or a pentagon. Why, then, should three have become the sacred number of deity? The question might here be raised whether after all trinity was so eminent in the Ethnic religions, whether in fact too much has not been made of the triads that have been found. It is true that the Ethnic polytheism allowed a considerable latitude to its trinitarianism. There were changes from one triad of gods to another, also duplicates of triads, and in the Egyptian religion there are counted eleven triads. Professor Rawlinson finds a quaternity of gods in some districts. But these exceptional cases only prove and emphasize the rule, and Bishop Westcott’s avowal in his book on “The Symbolism of Numbers” is substantially true: “It is impossible to study any system of worship throughout the world without being struck with the peculiar persistence of the triple number in regard to Divinity.” Three, then, was somehow held among the early races of mankind to be a peculiarly sacred number, and as such especially appropriate to deity.

That certain numbers have peculiar sacredness was a very early tradition. Such were seven, ten, as well as three. It was an ancient idea that numbers had a deep and fundamental significance. Pythagoras, the most famous and venerated name in early Greek philosophy, built his whole system of the origin of the universe on numbers, finding in them the first principles of order and beauty and law. The peculiar sacredness of seven was emphasized in Hebrew tradition and especially recognized by the Mosaic laws, but was by no means limited to that people. Christianity accepted the Old Testament idea, and the Roman Catholic Church has perpetuated it in its seven sacraments, seven mortal sins, ete. It was a Pythagorean idea that odd numbers are more propitious than even numbers, and this superstition has taken deep hold on men. The elder Pliny declares: “‘ Odd numbers have more power than even ones.” Virgil, in one of his Eclogues, sings: ‘¢God takes delight in odd numbers.” The Romans were very superstitious about unlucky even days of the months. How far this explains the early sacredness attached to three cannot be known. But Plutarch tells us that “The Romans were very careful in their curses to repeat them three times, —three being with them a mystic number.”

There is a remarkable passage in Aristotle (“ De Ceelo,” i. 1) in which he distinguishes line, plane, and body as having magnitude in one, two, and three directions. ‘Since body has magnitude in three directions, it has magnitude in all directions : hence three equals all, or is the complete or perfect number.” He quotes the Pythagoreans to the effect that everything is marked off by threes: “The end, the middle, and the beginning have the number of the whole and are a triad.”’ Hence he adds: ‘‘ Therefore, having received from nature as it were laws of it (i. e. the triad), we also employ this number (three) for the holy rites of the gods. Moreover, we apply predicates of common terms in the same manner. For we call the term ‘two, or ‘the two,’ ‘both,’ but we do not style them ‘all.’ But concerning ‘the three,’ we first use this expression (all), and these forms of language, as has been said, we follow because nature herself thus leads the way.” This curious passage plainly indicates that Aristotle found or thought he found the number three to contain a unique feature or principle of nature. The universe, he conceived, is based on the principle of “ the triad.” It is interesting to note how Aristotle connected the laws of nature with those of religion and the gods. The rites of religion in his day had apparently some trinitarian features which he regarded as somehow connected with the trinitarian character of nature itself. Aristotle does not pursue this point farther, but plainly he started a line of speculative thought which would have logically led him to a trinitarian conception of God himself.

There is no trinitarian element in Aristotle’s philosophy, except so far as it may be drawn from the general principles of Platonism, which he accepted ; where, as we shall see farther on, a trinitarian principle lurks. But plainly Aristotle must have been struck with the evidences which nature seemed to afford of a triadal character in the constitution of things. Too much, indeed, should not be made of this passage, which occurs, not in a philosophical work, but in a treatise of physics. Aristotle, on the whole, cannot be counted as in any sense a religious trinitarian. He held to the unity of God, whether theistically or pantheistically is not quite clear. His testimony, therefore, is the more remarkable, and helps us to understand how the ancient world should have singled out three as a number of peculiar sacredness. The indications of a natural and divine constitution which Aristotle discerned in the triple characteristics of external things may also be found in the human soul and in its laws of thought and reasoning. Psychology finds a tripartite division clearly distinguishable in the soul. The functions of the intellect, the sensibilities, and the will are quite diverse. Yet the soul is one, with a single self-consciousness. So, also, the logical reason works in a threefold way. All thought in its development involves thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The Aristotelian syllogism, which expresses the law of all logical mental processes, consists of three parts : the major premise, the minor premise, and the conclusion. Augustine made use of such analogies drawn from the composite nature of the soul and its activities ~ in his work on the Trinity. These tripartite distinctions which he finds in the faculties of man are not of a very scientific character, but they show that Aristotle’s idea of a triad as a part of the constitution of nature and as somehow symbolizing the divine existence was a fertile thought, and found reception in other minds. A considerable portion of Augustine’s treatise is devoted to the comparison of God as existing in trinity and man as having a trinity of faculties and modes of thought and action.

The same line of defense of the mysterious, if not contradictory, character of God, as triune or tri-personal, has been adopted by many later theologians. The position has been taken that in the very nature of things God must exist in trinity, and that such a trinitarian mode of existence is essential to the full expression of the moral and personal life of God. The point to be noted is that it is an argument for the dogma of the trinity drawn from the triune distinctions found in nature and in man. One form of this argument is seen in the so-called “social trinity ”’ recently set forth by Shedd, Fairbairn, and others, — a view which seems to have a singular popularity. It seems to be assumed that a person must be put into social relations with some other person or persons in order to the exercise of self-consciousness, and as before creation God was alone he must have had an interior triple personality as the basis of conscious existence. This theory is simply another speculative effort to explain and defend the threeness of God; but it is psychologically unsound. Self-consciousness, which is the condition of personality, does not require the actual existence of any individual non-ego in order to its activity.