Recall from Part Three, that Gregory of Nyssa had asserted that the Trinity dogma lands somewhere between monotheism and polytheism, becoming something else entirely and thus its formulation destroyed both. Long before Gregory, Gnosticism had already come to virtually that same conclusion. This is a fact that historians consistently confirm. Adolf von Harnack said that Gnosticism was the acute Hellenization of Christianity, whereas what came to be called orthodox Trinitarianism was gradual Hellenization…

“…The Gnostic systems represent the acute secularising or hellenising of Christianity, with the rejection of the Old Testament; while the Catholic system, on the other hand, represents a gradual process of the same kind with the conservation of the Old Testament… “ Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, Chapter 4, par. 2.

Here Harnack is saying that the Gnostics first adopted concepts from the Greek philosophers and other worldly religions, and the Trinitarian Catholic system later followed suit although the latter process was gradual rather than quick. So here is yet another scholar and historian asserting that the Trinity owes itself to the Hellenists.

The Gnostics cannot be considered “spiritual” by biblical standards. Therefore, they must be considered “carnal,” and thus their views must also be considered as appealing to things that can be understood by the five carnal senses. That being so, it isn’t a surprise that the Gnostics would have adopted the concept and the term homoousios from the pagans. They assimilated whatever they thought true from whatever source they stumbled upon. Whatever “seemed right to a man” is what seemed right to the Gnostics. Clearly, Trinitarians adopted the Gnostic practice of adopting concepts from other religions as well…

“The…Gnostics…were versatile and eager seekers who integrated every tradition they could find into their thought and practice…the Sethians moved from religion to religion, incorporating what seemed appropriate, forever combining and refining their knowledge…
“Sethian mythology was organized around a primary trinity: the Father (the Invisible Spirit), the Mother (Barbelo), and the Son (Autogenes, ‘the self-generated one,’ also sometimes called Anthropos, ‘the human one’). The Apocryphon of John, another Sethian text, amplified the three elements of the trinity…
“Many of their doctrines and beliefs found their way into mainstream Christian teachings on prayer and the ascent to the divine, negative theology and the Trinity and uses of Platonic thought in theology. Despite the orthodox church’s untiring efforts to exclude them, the Sethians had a dramatic and lasting impact on Christianity.” Richard Valantasis, The Beliefnet Guide to Gnosticism and Other Vanished Christianities, 36-38, 44.

So, “Sethian mythology” preceded the ECTD’s, and likely even predated Christianity. It was simply one of many Gnostic sects. Included in the list of Gnostic doctrines that “found their way into mainstream Christian teaching” was, of course, the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Gnostics, as we see, also paved the way for later Christians to adopt philosophy…

“Traditional Christianity has sought to find a middle way, combining Zion and Greece…The New Testament has been interpreted according to Plato and Aristotle, and the distinctive Old Testament ideas have been left out of account…
“It may be that traditional Christianity has been divinely guided in thus transferring itself into a dominant Greek environment. In that case let us cease to talk of the Bible as the Word of God…
“The Bible…is the Word of God, and the Old Testament is an integral part of that Word. The Old Testament is essential to the understanding of the whole Bible, and it cannot be replaced by any other way of thought and life, not even by that of Plato and Aristotle. This replacement of the Hebrew knowledge of God by the results of the speculations of the Greeks has been the characteristic feature of the history of Christian thought.” Norman H. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (New York: Shocken Books, 1964), 10, 14.

Here is yet another modern scholar that Trinitarians falsely claim doesn’t exist. This scholar just said that “traditional Christianity” had transferred “itself into a dominant Greek environment” thereby again confirming that Platonism was the dominant viewpoint in interpreting the Bible by Trinitarians. Mainstream Trinitarian Christianity took up the anti-Christian practice of adopting pagan thought into its belief system. The Trinitarians may have begun by adopting Plato and Aristotle, but when Constantine came along, as we have seen, it turned directly to Egypt and its Hermeticism. What all this means is that if you want to be a Trinitarian, you must accept that the pagan world, and the antichristian Gnostics, knew many important things about your God that the Old Testament prophets of Yahweh and the handpicked apostles of Jesus Christ the Lord didn’t know and didn’t know how to express let alone explain. Paganism also had better words and phrases to describe Trinitarianism’s God than are available in God’s Word, the Bible.

If the prophets and apostles had said that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were homoousios, the Trinity wouldn’t be called a mystery today, it would be called scriptural. However, it is not scriptural, and it was not taught, let alone believed, by any of the prophets or apostles. The “Christian” Trinity doctrine, in its current accepted form (coequal, coeternal), wasn’t taught in the first, second, or even the third century. It is an adoption of pagan definitions of deity that run entirely contrary to the definitions in Scripture. And it was imposed on the Trinitarian Church by the legal heir to the throne of Satan, who had a political agenda for doing so.

According to von Harnack, the Gnostics were also the first to speak of the persons as “of one substance” (homoousios). This was before Nicaea, and even before the economic, subordinating Trinitarians like Justin and Tertullian. We shouldn’t be surprised that Tertullian adopted anti-Christian terminology. After all, he flat out admitted that he adopted the Valentinian doctrine of the projection of one god out of another. So then, Nicaean Trinitarianism owes their main catchwords and bywords of trias (Trinity) and homoousios (one substance/essence) to the anti-Christian Gnostics. Harnack wrote…

“The Gnostic terminologies within the Æon speculations were partly reproduced among the Catholic theologians of the third century; most important is it that the Gnostics have already made use of the concept ‘homoousios’; see Iren., I.5.I,… I.5.4,… I.5.5…In all these cases the word means ‘of one substance.’…Other terms also which have acquired great significance in the Church since the days of Origen (e.g., agénnetos) are found among the Gnostics…Bigg. (1. c. p. 58, note 3) calls attention to the appearance of trias in Excerpt. ex. Theodotus § 80, perhaps the earliest passage.” Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, I, 259, § 3, footnote 357.

Even the word “Trinity” represents a major cover-up! Harnack says that it was the Gnostics who first coined the word regarding their view of the godhead. Later, the nominal Catholic Church partially reproduced those same terms to define and describe their similar views. Specifically, Harnack lists three words. First is the Gnostic word homoousios, which was used in the Nicene Trinitarian Creed to mean the three persons were “of one substance.” Another word is agénnetos. This word, which means “not generated,” is the Gnostic word that Trinitarians would use to distinguish the Father from the Son; that is, it is a term for the Father’s distinction from the Son. In their view, the Son was generated from the Father, but the Father alone was ungenerate and unbegotten, thus agénnetos. Finally, there is the word trias, which in English is the word Trinity itself. Tertullian is credited with translating the Greek word trias with the Latin word trinitas, and that eventually led to the English word Trinity.

Recall in Part Two how it was shown that all four words of the Trinitarian confession, “one substance, three persons” comes directly from pagan philosophy and mythology? Well, now you can add the word “Trinity” to that list as well. The entire confession, “A Trinity of one substance in three persons” can entirely be directly attributed to pagan and/or Gnostic terms and concepts. That’s incredible for a doctrine that attempts to pass itself off as entirely biblically derived. That is what deception looks like.

For a long time, Trinitarians have been pressed about why their doctrine so resembles pagan triads. And they have typically responded to the effect that it couldn’t be proven, and anyway, they believe in a Trinity, not a triad. This contention has gone on since Justin and Tertullian first complained that they were being accused of believing in two gods or three gods. But now we see they never had an excuse for their sin of going after the gods round about them. Their same-substance gods came to them from paganism… and Gnosticism…

“Surprising though it may seem, there is total agreement among scholars on at least one point. Adolf von Harnack, Ignacio Ortiz de Urbina, Luis M. Mendizábal, George Leonard Prestige, Peter Gerlitz, Éphrem Boularand, John Norman D. Kelly, Frauke Dinsen, Christopher Stead—all without exception agree in claiming that the Gnostics were the first theologians to use the word homoousios…The late Aloys Grillmeir wrote: ‘The early history of the Nicene homoousios shows us that the theologians of the church were probably made aware of this concept, and thus of the doctrine of emanation, by the Gnostics.’” Pier Franco Beatrice, “The Word ‘Homoousios’ from Hellenism to Christianity”.

Harnack also notes that the Trinitarians, like the Gnostics, practiced adopting pagan ideas…

“…the Gnostics…were, in short, the Theologians of the first century. They were the first to transform Christianity into a system of doctrines (dogmas). They were the first to work up tradition systematically… They are therefore those Christians who, in a swift advance, attempted to capture Christianity for Hellenic culture, and Hellenic culture for Christianity, and who gave up the Old Testament in order to facilitate the conclusion of the covenant…
“The majority of Gnostic undertakings may also be viewed as attempts to transform Christianity into a theosophy, that is, into a revealed metaphysic and philosophy of history, with a complete disregard of the Jewish Old Testament soil on which it originated, through the use of Pauline ideas, and under the influence of the Platonic spirit…” Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, Chapter 4, par. 2, page 229.

It was exactly these methods that Trinitarians employed in developing their doctrine. Trinitarianism is thus a continuation of Gnostic thought and methods. Thus Trinitarianism is Neognosticism.

Of course, a Trinitarian will initially reject this idea. One of their defenses might be that they obviously haven’t rejected the Old Testament God as the Gnostics did. However, that simply isn’t true. Trinitarians to this day reject the Old Testament God in the way the Jews, including Jesus, conceived of God as singular in person.

I wonder how many Trinitarians have ever considered that when they try to “reason things out” that they don’t understand, they are falling in line with the traditions of Gnostics, philosophers, Pharisees, etc., going all the way back to the serpent in the Garden.

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