The doctrine of the Trinity is often contemptuously set aside as merely a variant of philosophical speculations which are found in many religions and really of not more importance than the Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu of the Indians. Now this statement, however confidently made, is not supported by the evidence of facts. Modern Hindu speculation has indeed evolved a set of three gods, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, which we shall discuss presently, but the formation of triads of gods in ancient religions is remarkably rare.
As soon as the deity was degraded to quasi-human status, we find, of course, gods male, gods female, and their progeny, and thus sets of gods: father, mother, and son, but this introduction of sex life into the divinity has clearly nothing in common with the Christian Trinity, which is not only asexual and purely spiritual, but the Third Person is not generated from two independent individuals as the fruit of their union. In the Trinity there is but one single personal source and principle, one unborn, un-proceeding person from whom the other two arise, viz., God the Father. Moreover, in the Trinity the three Persons are coequal and coeternal, and they possess all three the one, numerically one, divine nature. The Christian Trinity is the most emphatic assertion of the unity and unicity of the Godhead, whereas in pagan religions, whatever their triad may be, it is an absolute denial of the unity of the Godhead.
In Egyptian religion we may have the worship of the material Sun, Ra, and this Sun may be worshiped as the Sun at rising, the Sun at noon, and the Sun at setting. But this can hardly be adduced as a variant of the Trinity, as it is no speculation at all concerning the nature of the deity, but merely the outcome of observing the visible phases of the material Sun in the sky. In the Egyptian religion we have, furthermore, the myth of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Osiris is treacherously slain by his rival Set and descends to the Netherworld to become god of the dead. Isis, his sister-wife, mourns him and posthumously gives birth to Horus, who is the triumphant Sun, avenging his father. This myth may contain a reminiscence of some remote historical occurrence, or it may be originally some naive dramatization of the Sun slain at night by darkness and rising to another and new life in the morning, or most probably Set is the invading destructive desert overcoming the agricultural strip along the Nile and yet being overcome by the triumph of the new season in the arable land, but whatever be the origin of the tale, how can the Christian Trinity be considered a variant of it? What have they in common beyond the bare number three?
In the Semitic pantheon there are multitudinous gods and goddesses, who have children. In Babylonian religion, as well as the Egyptian one, we know how the city-gods or tribal deities, through political changes, the triumph, defeat, or amalgamation of local communities, were thus made relatives to one another for State reasons, and divine genealogies were constructed to meet political needs, but here again is it not an outrage on common sense to see in these variations of the Christian Trinity?
In the Babylonian pantheon, the most multitudinous crowd of deities known to history, there is some sort of chief triad of gods: Anu, Bel, and Ea, representing heaven, earth, and sea. The Babylonian pantheon is an amalgam of Semitic and Sumerian ideas, and the supremacy of a deity depends on the political predominance of the city where he is worshiped.
The gods Anu and Ea were originally Sumerian gods. Ea was the god of the city of Eridu on the Persian Gulf and reputed the giver of learning and wisdom. He was the Neptune or ocean god and embodied the mysteriousness of the distant waters. Bel is the well-known Baal, or “Lord” of the Bible, since the Semites conceived the deity as lord or king: melek. As “Lord” of the City of Nippur he took the characteristics of its old Sumerian city-god Enlil, a storm-god wielding the hurricane, and was gradually transmuted into the lord of the earth and the lord of mankind. Anu was the most ancient of all the gods; the word means heaven and no doubt was once used for a purer concept of the deity, before it was degraded to a kind of political polytheism….How can anyone of common sense see any connection whatever between their crude Babylonian fancies and the Christian Trinity? One might as well cite Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury or Zeus, Ares, and Hermes as prototypes of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
As the palmary instance of non-Christian Trinity the Hindu Trimurti of Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu is always brought forward.
The Hindu Trimurti is a late speculation; it does not belong to the ancient Indian or Aryan religion. It came about this way. The worshipers of Vishnu and Siva formed two rival sects. In the original Aryan pantheon they were but two lesser deities, but they gradually gained great popularity. Vishnu was a kind, benevolent god, Siva a stormy and destructive god. Either sect would exalt the greatness of its own god to a sort of identification with absolute deity. This absolute deity was first considered as something impersonal, “Brahma,” but in Vishnu “absolute thought and goodness” became more clearly personified and worshiped, not as a faint abstraction, but as an individual. Thus Vishnu gives to Brahma personality, and Brahma gives to Vishnu absoluteness and supremacy. In order to include all three names the following doctrine was started. Vishnu, i.e., Brahma as person, appears as Brahma in order to create the world, as Vishnu (a subordinate form of the original Vishnu) in order to preserve the world, and as Siva in order to destroy it. Thus the three principles governing this material universe are personified….
It is obvious to all that this Trimurti has nothing in common with the Christian Trinity. It has, in fact, not even the number three strictly in common, since under the three names, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, really four realities are pictured, whether we duplicate Brahma, first as the Absolute and then as the personal God in Vishnu, or whether we again duplicate Vishnu as representative of Brahma with Vishnu as the maintainer. Moreover, the three gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, in no sense stand towards one another as the Three in the Christian Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
There is no “destroyer” in the Blessed Trinity, and there is no “Son” in the Hindu Trimurti. In fact, the Trimurti is only a clerical device by which the names of three popular Hindu divinities are attached to the perpetual cosmic process of production, maintenance, and destruction. It is pantheism in the guise of polytheism and never transcends the material, for even Brahma has a body of some sort and is not pure mind or deity.