human
According to Maurice, 'The first Sephira, who is denominated Kether the Crown, Kadmon the pure Light, and En Soph the Infinite,[258] is the omnipotent 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.'
gpt
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.
human
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:
gpt
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.
human
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:
gpt
First God, then the Word, and with Them the Spirit.
human
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.'