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There are a number of scholars, as well as groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and others that claim that the declaration of the creeds that defined the Trinity were merely the Christian church synthesizing its beliefs with the contemporary pagan religions.
They claim says that there have been numerous religions in antiquity that have worshipped a divine triad or trinity. Such triads of gods can be found in the ancient religions of Sumer, Egypt, India, and others, which can be fairly easily verified. The presumption is made that the Christians of the third and fourth centuries were merely borrowing the theology from such pagan sources. First of all, it must be pointed out that if there were comparable theologies in other religions, that wouldn’t mean that it was simply being “borrowed”. There are a lot of religions that come to similar or even the same conclusions as others, all without “borrowing”. For example, most major religions have something very comparable to what Christianity calls “the Golden Rule”, yet in many cases, it is not possible that it was simply “borrowed” from one to another. They independently came to the same ethical conclusion quite on their own. Secondly, it must be noted that none of the other religions actually had a “Trinity” in the sense that it defined in the Christian church. It is true that other churches had triads of gods/goddesses (ie. Isis, Horus, Seb in Egypt), but the Trinity doesn’t teach there are three gods sharing power in conjunction, but that there is one God, expressed in three persons. Many critics and Christians alike think of the Trinity more as three separate gods, with one purpose, which is clearly not what Trinitarians teach.
The understanding of the Trinity, far from being an adaptation from other religions, was carefully formulated and worded in a way that maintained the unity and oneness of God, yet preserved the distinct personhood of the each character. The church fathers unanimously rejected anything that came remotely close to a polytheism, that is anything that denied God was one in essence or nature. However, on the other side of the spectrum, they had to avoid any wording that made Jesus and the Father the same “person” as it would lead to conclusions that “God the Father died on the cross” and other such unpalatable statements.
For a fuller discussion on the how the Trinity was formulated, you can click on these, or copy either of these into you brower: http://www.earlychurch.net/believeintrinity.htm
http://www.earlychurch.net/Trinity.htm
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