Book #1: Religion and State by L. Carl Brown

[jmm99]

The three primary Christian systematic theologies: Unitarianism, Binitarianism and Trinitarianism, are addressed in the following references:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Trinity (First published Thu Jul 23, 2009; substantive revision Fri Sep 13, 2013)

The traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity is commonly expressed as the statement that the one God exists as or in three equally divine “persons,”, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Every significant concept in this statement (God, exists, as or in, equally divine, person) has been variously understood. The guiding principle has been the creedal declaration that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the New Testament are consubstantial (i.e. the same in substance or essence, Greek: homoousios). Because this shared substance or essence is a divine one, this is understood to imply that all three named individuals are divine, and equally so. Yet the three in some sense “are” the one God of the Bible. ...

Supplement to Trinity - History of Trinitarian Doctrines

1. Introduction

This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts. ...

Supplement to Trinity - Unitarianism

1. Terminology

The term “unitarian” was popularized in late 1680's England as a less pejorative and more descriptive term than “Socinian”for Christians who hold God to be identical to one and only one divine self, the Father. It has since been used as a denominational label for several distinct groups, but it is here primarily used in the descriptive, generic sense just stated. (The capitalized “Unitarian” is occasionally used here in the denominational sense.) All these groups have been labeled “antitrinitarian”. Although many unitarians have proudly flown the antitrinitarian banner, others strenuously argued that they expounded the correct trinitarian doctrine, the difference being that the former were promoting rival denominations, while the latter sought to be included in mainstream groups (i.e., traditionally trinitarian churches, or ones which were often assumed to be).

Wiki - Binitarianism

The link jumps to this section, which is material because of its timeframe - before the revelation of the Quran:

Larry W. Hurtado of University of Edinburgh uses the word binitarian to describe the position of early Christian devotion to God, which ascribes to the Son (Jesus) an exaltedness that in Judaism would be reserved for God alone, while still affirming as in Judaism that God is one, and is alone to be worshiped. He writes:

…there are a fairly consistent linkage and subordination of Jesus to God 'the Father' in these circles, evident even in the Christian texts from the latter decades of the 1st century that are commonly regarded as a very 'high' Christology, such as the Gospel of John and Revelation. This is why I referred to this Jesus-devotion as a "binitarian" form of monotheism: there are two distinguishable figures (God and Jesus), but they are posited in a relation to each other that seems intended to avoid the ditheism of two gods" (Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 2003, pp. 52–53).

Hurtado does not cite "binitarianism" as antithetical to Nicene Christianity, but rather as an indication that early Christians, before Nicea, were monotheistic (as evidenced by their singular reference to the Father as God), and yet also devoted to Jesus as pre-existent, co-eternal, the creator, embodying the power of God, by whom the Father is revealed, and in whose name alone the Father is worshiped. He writes,

"The central place given to Jesus…and…their concern to avoid ditheism by reverencing Jesus rather consistently with reference to "the Father", combine to shape the proto-orthodox "binitarian" pattern of devotion. Jesus truly is reverenced as divine." (Ibid, p. 618).

...

Before Hurtado's influential work, one classic scholarly theory of binitarianism was that the Holy Spirit was seen as in some sense identical to the Son, or uniquely embodied in him. The Shepherd of Hermas, among other sources, is cited to support the theory. In one of the parables, for example, an angel declares:

The preexistent Holy Spirit, which created the whole creation, God caused to live in the flesh that he wished. This flesh, therefore, in which the Holy Spirit lived served the Spirit well, living in holiness and purity, without defiling the Spirit in any way. … it had lived honorably and chastely, and had worked with the Spirit and cooperated with it in everything.

The classic theory of Christian binitarian theology, assumed by most dictionary definitions of binitarianism, asserts that some early Christians conceived of the Spirit as going out from God the creator, and is the creator: an aspect of God's being, which also lived in Jesus (or from other sources, appears to be thought of as Jesus's pre-existent, divine nature).
...
By the time of the Arian controversy, some bishops defended a kind of dual conception of deity, which is sometimes called "Semi-Arianism". The Macedonianism or Pneumatomachi typifies this view, which some prefer to call binitarian. The Semi-Arian view at that time was the Father and Son were God, but not the Holy Spirit;[citation needed] but none of the Arian views were strictly monotheistic (one being) [JMM: here, "unitarian" seems a better term than "monotheistic"].

All asserted that the God who speaks and the Word who creates are two beings similar to one another, of similar substance (homoiousia), and denied that they are one and the same being, or two beings of the same substance (homoousia) in which two are distinguished, as Nicaea eventually held. Nevertheless, the term binitarian is considered to be a more descriptive term than Semi-Arian, by current scholars, because the latter term has no precise meaning.

The Middle East, before the Quran's revelation, had a bountiful supply of Christian heresies. See, Wiki - List of Christian Heresies; and Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500 (1997; 792pp.)

All this background is useful in considering the term "People of the Book" in early Islam; but, I'm not contending that the early Muslims concerned themselves with parsing the varieties of the Christian herd (nor that they should have).

I'll argue, in the next parts, that the early Muslims took the passages material to the People of the Book (which focus on sacred texts, and little on comparative systematic theologies); and then applied them to the Jews and Christians according to the pragamatism called for by the then-current political environment. The early (and later) Muslims were very aware of the basic "we-they" distinction; and they governed the Jews and Christians accordingly.

Regards

Mike