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).
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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).
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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.
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