Father of the universe.... The second is the Chochmah, whom we have sufficiently proved, both from sacred and Rabbinical writings, to be the creative Wisdom. The third is the Binah, or heavenly Intelligence, whence the Egyptians had their Cneph, and Plato his Nous Demiurgos. He is the Holy Spirit who ... pervades, animates, and governs this boundless universe.'"[259]
The bearing of this doctrine on Christian teaching is indicated by Dean Milman in his History of Christianity. He says: "This Being [the Word or the Wisdom] was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or the more abstract, notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and the Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism; it was pure Platonism; it was the Platonic Judaism of the
Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted from Philo on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should become cognisable to the sense of man; and even in Palestine, no doubt, John the Baptist and our Lord Himself spoke no new doctrine, but rather the common sentiment of the more enlightened, when they declared 'that no man had seen God at any time.' In conformity with this principle the Jews, in the interpretation of the older Scriptures, instead of direct and sensible communication from the one great Deity, had interposed either one or more intermediate beings as the channels of communication. According to one accredited tradition alluded to by S. Stephen, the law was delivered 'by the disposition of angels'; according to another this office was delegated to a single angel, sometimes called the Angel of the Law (see Gal. iii. 19); at others the Metatron. But the more ordinary representative, as it were, of God, to the sense and mind of man, was the Memra, or the Divine Word; and it is remarkable that the same appellation
is found in the Indian, the Persian, the Platonic, and the Alexandrian systems. By the Targumists, the earliest Jewish commentators on the Scriptures, this term had been already applied to the Messiah; nor is it necessary to observe the manner in which it has been sanctified by its introduction into the Christian scheme."[260]
As above said by the learned Dean, the idea of the Word, the Logos, was universal, and it formed part of the idea of a Trinity. Among the Hindus, the philosophers speak of the manifested Brahman as Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence, Intelligence, and Bliss. Popularly, the Manifested God is a Trinity; Shiva, the Beginning and the End; Vishnu, the Preserver; Brahmâ, the Creator of the Universe. The Zoroastrian faith presents a similar Trinity; Ahuramazdao, the Great One, the First; then "the twins," the dual Second Person—for the Second Person in a Trinity is ever dual, deteriorated in modern days into an opposing God and Devil—and the
Universal Wisdom, Armaiti. In Northern Buddhism we find Amitâbha, the boundless Light; Avalokiteshvara, the source of incarnations, and the Universal Mind, Mandjusri. In Southern Buddhism the idea of God has faded away, but with significant tenacity the triplicity re-appears as that in which the Southern Buddhist takes his refuge—the Buddha, the Dharma (the Doctrine), the Sangha (the Order). But the Buddha Himself is sometimes worshipped as a Trinity; on a stone in Buddha Gaya is inscribed a salutation to Him as an incarnation of the Eternal One, and it is said: "Om! Thou art Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Mahesha (Shiva) ... I adore Thee, who art celebrated by a thousand names and under various forms, in the shape of Buddha, the God of Mercy."[261]
In extinct religions the same idea of a Trinity is found. In Egypt it dominated all religious worship. "We have a hieoroglyphical inscription in the British Museum as early as the reign of Senechus of the eighth century before the Christian
era, showing that the doctrine of Trinity in Unity already formed part of their religion."[262] This is true of a far earlier date. Râ, Osiris, and Horus formed one widely worshipped Trinity; Osiris, Isis, and Horus were worshipped at Abydos; other names are given in different cities, and the triangle is the frequently used symbol of the Triune God. The idea which underlay these Trinities, however named, is shown in a passage quoted from Marutho, in which an oracle, rebuking the pride of Alexander the Great, speaks of: "First God, then the Word, and with Them the Spirit."[263]
In Chaldæa, Anu, Ea, and Bel were the Supreme Trinity, Anu being the Origin of all, Ea the Wisdom, and Bel the creative Spirit. Of China Williamson remarks: "In ancient China the emperors used to sacrifice every third year to 'Him who is one and three.' There was a Chinese saying, 'Fo is one person but has three forms.' ... In the lofty philosophical
system known in China as Taoism, a trinity also figures: 'Eternal Reason produced One, One produced Two, Two produced Three, and Three produced all things,' which, as Le Compte goes on to say, 'seems to show as if they had some knowledge of the Trinity.'"[264]