Clivedurdle

Is not this water spirit blood stuff classic alchemy?

The Celts were definitely into three of everything as well!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_goddess

hatsoff

I don't buy that. I am not surprised the trinitarian mode is common among ancient religions. The conclusion that I draw from the examples, however, is not that each trinitarian religion stole the idea from the one before it, but rather that it is a natural way for humans to reconcile many aspects of God with monotheism.

douglas

I remember reading something about a certain literary form that was popular at the time the Gospel's were written that used a "trinity" formula. Luke uses it when describing the Jesus' triple rebuke of his disciples whom he catches napping in the garden:

I honestly can't remember where I read this (maybe Randall Helms' Gospel Fictions?) but there was a name for this style, like you might call something a Quatrain. It's no secret that the authors were somewhat fascinated with numerology, and perhaps desperately wanted to have something that added up to 3.

Makes you wonder, if they had wanted the Holy "Quatrain", what would the fourth thing be? Father, son, holy spirit, and ?

The Evil One

But why 3? Why not a Quadrinity or a Duinity or a Quintinity? Any of those would be an equally natural reconciliation of multiple aspects with monotheism.

Malachi151

But the thing is, many people argued against it. The church father that strenuously argued for it was Athanasius of Alexandria, and it was a concept that had been a part of Egyptian religion for hundreds of years.

It also has relations to triangles and pyramids. Triangles were seen as a very special form of geometry due to the math involved, and this was promoted by Pythagoras as well.

EthnAlln

I don't know about the alchemy; it's a new subject to me. The blood in association with female deities would make sense (menstruation and parturition). Perhaps the water also relates to parturition.

So where does the "spirit" fit in here? The Greek word is "pneuma," which explains its origin. Even our word "respiration" has the same root as the word "spirit," and similarly with the Sanskrit "Atman" ("atmosphere", and the German word "atmen," meaning "breathe"). Russian has a word "ataman," meaning a Cossack chieftain, but that one probably comes from "ottoman."

EthnAlln

So I suspected. That's why I said it was credited to him; I can't be sure of anything that happened so long ago, except in the rather limited area of history of mathematics, which I do know something about. Thanks for this information.

Athanasius would no doubt have spoken Greek, and his creed is called the "quicunque vult" from the Latin beginning of it.

Somewhere I remember reading a statement by Bertrand Russell to the effect that Athanasius died just in time to avoid being condemned for a different heresy, possibly the Sabellian (the view that the Father and the Son are merely two aspects of the same person) or the monophysite (the view that Christ had only one nature, the divine, rather than both human and divine natures). Or it may have been still another heresy.

EthnAlln

The Pythagorean cosmology was indeed based on the shapes of regular geometric figures, as explained by Diogenes Laertius. Plato seems to have adapted or adopted some of this Pythagorean cosmology in his Timaeus. The Greeks knew they were indebted to Egypt for the beginnings of their mathematics. Herodotus says that geometry came into Greece from the Egyptian surveyors (episkepsomenoi and anametresontes, literally overseeing and remeasuring men). (Our word surveyor, from French, also means overseer, and the Greek word is the source of the word bishop and the word episcopalian.) In the Laws Plato talks about the sophisticated methods of teaching arithmetic employed by the Egyptians.

judge

Well this site does have a theological axe to grind, but none the less might give a different perspective to Catholic or protestant sources.

The Nestorian Contoversy

hatsoff

As far as I know those ideas existed, too. I don't see the problem, here.