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Binitarianism is a Christian theology of two persons, personas, or two aspects in one substance/Divinity (or God). Classically, binitarianism is understood as a form of monotheism — that is, that God is absolutely one being; and yet with binitarianism there is a "twoness" in God, which means one God family, and as said in Genesis, one Gods (Elohim). The other common forms of monotheism are "unitarianism", a belief in one God with one person, and "trinitarianism", a belief in one God with three persons. While binitarianism is sometimes used self-descriptively, it is also used to denote Christian error or heresy as are the following related terms: *"Ditheism/Bitheism", a belief in two Gods working against one another's purpose, e.g. God versus the Satan. This term has been used to describe the doctrines of the World Churches of God by the offshoot Christian Churches of God. ==Scholarly views of early Christian theology== 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). Hurtado's view might be interpreted as urging that, at this stage of the development of the Church's understanding, it could be said that God is a person (the Father), and one being; and that Jesus is distinct from the Father, was pre-existent with God, and also originating from God without becoming a being separate from him, so that he is God (the Son). This view of a ''binitarian pattern of devotion'' would posit a unity of God's being, and a oneness of the object of worship, which is sympathetic to its predecessor view in Judaism; and it also displays a plurality of simultaneous identities which is sympathetic to its successor in trinitarianism. It is a development of understanding of Christ, in other words, from which arose several understandings in the course of development, that eventually came into conflict with one another. 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 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: a person 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). This view further asserts that the same Spirit is given to men, making them a new creation, and sharers in the same hope of resurrection and exaltation. This interpretation of early Christian belief is often cited in contrast to trinitarianism. However, trinitarians cite the same sources as examples of pre-Nicene Christian monotheism, not orthodoxy, but "proto-orthodox" - that is, one of several versions that existed among Christians, which explain monotheism as a plurality (Father, Son, Spirit) in one being, prior to orthodoxy's settlement in Christianity. 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'', as at that time it was the Semi-Arians who were the main binitarians. None of the Semi-Arian views were strictly monotheistic (one being). 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 persons of the same substance (homoousia) in which two are distinguished, as Nicaea eventually held. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Binitarianism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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