This is a continuation of part 2.

When
the Unitarians in the Watchtower society wish to prove that the Trinity comes
from paganism in general, they quote, more often than any other single
reference book[i] in their Should
You Believe In the Trinity? the work “The
Paganism in Our Christianity [which]
declares: ‘The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan.’”[ii]  While the lack of context makes the
quotation extremely difficult to trace,[iii]
one can with great diligence discover that it comes from pg. 197 of the book in
question, written by one Arthur Wiegall[iv]
(New York, NY:  Knickerbocker
Press, 1928).  An extensive
quotation of Wiegall will demonstrate to all just how credible—or rather,
incredible—he is:

[T]he
miraculous . . . made [Christ] God incarnate to the thinkers of the First
Century;  all these marvels make
Him a conventional myth to those of the Twentieth.  Many of the most erudite critics are convinced that no such
person [as Jesus Christ] ever lived. . . . [The] twelve disciples [were invented
from] the twelve signs of the Zodiac. . . . [The gospels are] meagre and
garbled accounts . . . borrowed from paganism . . . many of the details of the
life of our Lord are too widly improbable to be accepted in these sober days. .
. . [M]any gods and semi-divine heroes have mothers whose names are variations
of “Mary” . . . the name of our Lord’s mother may have been forgotten and a
stock name substituted. . . . . The mythological origin of [the record of
Jesus’ birth] is so obvious that the whole story must be abandoned. . . .
[When] St. Luke says that when the child was born Mary wrapped Him in swaddling
clothes and laid Him in a manger . . . [the] author was here drawing upon Greek
mythology. . . . The story of the Virgin Birth . . . is derived from pagan
sources. . . . The story of the forty days in the wilderness and the temptation
by Satan . . . [comes from] a pagan legend. . . . the account of the
Crucifixion . . . parallels . . . rites of human sacrifice as practiced by the
ancients. . . . In primitive days it was the custom in many lands for a king or
ruler to put his own son to death as a sacrifice to the tribal god. . . . in
the primitive Passover a human victim was probably sacrificed. . . . [T]he side
of Jesus [being] pierced by a lance . . . [relates to] a widespread custom
[like] . . . the primitive Albanians used to sacrifice a human being to the
moon-goddess by piercing his side with a spear. . . . Nobody in his senses now
believes that Jesus ascended into Heaven . . . His body must anyhow have died
or been cast aside. . . . such an ascension into the sky was the usual end to
the mythical legends of the lives of pagan gods . . . [T]he Christian
expression “washed in the blood of the Lamb” is undoubtably a reflection of . .
. the rites of Mithra. . . . [T]he worshippers of Mithra practiced baptism by
water. . . . There is no authentic evidence that Jesus ever intended to
establish a Church . . . the Lord’s Supper has been changed . . . under
Mithraic and other ancient influences. . . . The doctrine of the Atonement . .
. nauseates the modern mind, and . . . is of pagan origin, being indeed the
most obvious relic of heathendom in the Faith . . . it is not, of course,
supported by anything known to have been said by Jesus. . . . this idea of a
god dying for the benefit of mankind, and rising again, had is origin in the
fact that nature seemed to die in winter and revive in spring. . . . [T]he Logos [the Greek term for “Word,” used of the Lord Jesus
in John 1:1, 14; 1 John 5:7; Revelation 19:13] theory, which had been adopted
by the author of the Gospel of St. John from the philosophy of Philo . . . went
a long way towards establishing the identification of Jesus Christ with God . .
. the idea of the Logos itself
was pagan. . . . Sunday, too, was a pagan holy day . . . the Jewish Sabbath . .
. is obviously derived from moon-worship. . . . Now Sunday . . . had been for
long the holy day in the solar religions of Mithra . . . Christians . . .
[worshipped on Sunday] by pagan custom. . . . in this Twentieth Century
thoughtful men . . . [reject] the phantom crowd of savage and blood-stained old
gods who have come into the Church, and, by immemorial right, have demanded the
worship of habit-bound man.”[v]

Weigall is obviously
an irrational, Bible-hating wacko. 
He provides no documentation, no proof, nothing that even closely
resembles a semblance at an argument for the claims in his book;  they are nothing but the speculations
and ridiculous accusations of his feverishly anti-Christian mind.  The Watchtower quotes Weigall more than
any other individual in their Should You Believe in the Trinity?—despite the fact that a quote from him on the origin
of the Trinity has about equal weight with a quote from a supermarket tabloid
about King Kong being sighted in Yosemite National Park or one of the Tooth
Fairy opening up a dental practice in New York City.

The quotations made by Arians and Unitarians to
affirm that the Trinity is derived from paganism are regularly unreliable and
untrustworthy, and they are all, in any case, false.  The Scripture, which is superior to all uninspired
historical evidence, manifests the Biblical origin of Trinitarianism.  The Arian and Unitarian interpretation
of post-Biblical history is also unscholarly and mythological.  The idea that the Trinity is derived
from paganism cannot be sustained.

Arians (and others) sometimes put together a
variety of pictures of three pagan gods in a group[vi]
to scare people into thinking that the Trinity comes from paganism, and
sometimes manufacture or find various further quotations that allege that the
Trinity was derived from various pagan religions.[vii]  However, there simply is no connection
between pagans who worshipped many gods and sometimes put three of them
together (as they would sometimes put two, four, or some other number of their
gods together in a particular idolatrous image) and the tri-unity of the one
God of the Bible.[viii]

Similarly, Unitarians and modalists may affirm
that Trinitarianism was derived from Plato or Platonic philosophy.  They offer as proof for their
contention extremely questionable quotations of the sort examined above, by
people like Norton, Lacugna, and Weigall. 
What they do not do is quote Plato.  A rather severe problem for their position is that the
writings of Plato do not contain the doctrine of the Trinity.[ix]  Nor do the writings of Aristotle or
other pre-Christian pagan philosophers. 
Similarities of language[x]
between post-Christian neo-Platonic philosophers and Christian Trinitarians are
weak, and similarites of meaning are either nonexistent or very strained.  If they were to indicate anything, they
would demonstrate the influence of Christian theology upon the thought of
post-Christian pagan philosophy, rather than the reverse.[xi]  Furthermore, even if one were to
establish genuine and clear Trinitarian testimonial from pre-Christian pagan
writings—which cannot be done—it would not demonstrate that Christians took
pagan ideas into their theological system when they believed in the
Trinity.  The fact that the
fundamentals of Trinitarian doctrine were given to Adam (Genesis 1:2, 26),
recognized by righteous Gentiles in the Old Testament era (Job 19:25-27; 33:4,
echoing Genesis 1:2) and believed by Israel in the Mosaic economy (Isaiah
48:16) makes the consideration that remnants of the original Trinitarian
revelation might be present among those descendents of Adam that fell into
paganism, or among those pagans influenced by Israel or righteous Gentiles in
the Old Testament era, a definite possibility.  In this case, Trinitarian ideas present in pre-Christian,
non-Jewish writings would be evidence of influence from the God of Adam and of
Israel.[xii]  What cannot in any wise be established
historically is that Christian Trinitarianism was simply the influx of pagan
thought into theological thinking.

-TDR