Growth of the Trinity Concept

104:0.1The Trin­ity con­cept of re­vealed re­li­gion must not be con­fused with the triad be­liefs of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions. The ideas of tri­ads arose from many sug­ges­tive re­la­tion­ships but chiefly be­cause of the three joints of the fin­gers, be­cause three legs were the fewest which could sta­bi­lize a stool, be­cause three sup­port points could keep up a tent; fur­ther­more, prim­i­tive man, for a long time, could not count be­yond three.

104:0.2Aside from cer­tain nat­u­ral cou­plets, such as past and pres­ent, day and night, hot and cold, and male and fe­male, man gen­er­ally tends to think in tri­ads: yes­ter­day, to­day, and to­mor­row; sun­rise, noon, and sun­set; fa­ther, mother, and child. Three cheers are given the vic­tor. The dead are buried on the third day, and the ghost is pla­cated by three ablu­tions of wa­ter.

104:0.3As a con­se­quence of these nat­u­ral as­so­ci­a­tions in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the triad made its ap­pear­ance in re­li­gion, and this long be­fore the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of De­i­ties, or even any of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, had been re­vealed to man­kind. Later on, the Per­sians, Hin­dus, Greeks, Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ro­mans, and Scan­di­na­vians all had triad gods, but these were still not true trin­i­ties. Triad de­i­ties all had a nat­u­ral ori­gin and have ap­peared at one time or an­other among most of the in­tel­li­gent peo­ples of Uran­tia. Some­times the con­cept of an evo­lu­tion­ary triad has be­come mixed with that of a re­vealed Trin­ity; in these in­stances it is of­ten im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from the other.