The idea of kenosis as a portrayal of self-emptying love has always seemed to me both theologically attractive and pastorally promising. Theologically attractive because without prying unsubtly into the mysteries of eternal intra-trinitarian purposefulness, and while avoiding inappropriate precision in calibrating the relations between divine love and sovereignty, a kenotic Christology, for all its difficulties as a comprehensive theory, does acknowledge something definintive in the statement God is love, when that statement is made of the Word become flesh, crucified and risen. Pastorally promising because the story of salvation as it is told in the most significant textual locus for kenotic Christology in the NT, Philippians 2. 6-11, is a story which affirms both the identity of the God who comes to us in the humiliation of Christ, and the identity ofthe Christian community as one modelled on the reality of who Christ is, and what is therefore true about God.Self emptying love is thus definitive of Christian existence together, and in ethical demand and spiritually transformative practice, impels Christian community towards life at the radical edge of risky, costly love for the other.
In one stunning passage, the sanctified speculative imagination of Paul seems to have overcome the no less sanctified reverent restraint of one who fully recognised the limits of human thought; limits imposed not only by inadequacy of thought, but also by ineffability of subject. Yet here in this passage Paul states in a rhythmic prose poem what he conceived to be the all consuming, self-emptying motive of the One who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a right to be clung to – but emptied himself.
Now I know there are all kinds of critical and textual arguments about what Philippians 2.6-11 is about. And in this book on submission within the Godhead and the Church,the writer gives them a good hearing. But I do find her conclusion about the nature and purpose of this passage persuasive. Is it a hymn, and if so pre Pauline? No to both – Paul was quite capable of writing exalted prose, and there is no decisive evidence of other non- NT 'early hymns' in form, content or known usage such as this passage. Is it a passage explained as a contrasting parallel between Adam, who snatched at equality with God and Christ who became obedient unto death? Yes, but only if this argument isn't used to exclude the idea of Christ's pre-existence, which Dunn doubts, but Wright affirms, though both see Adam Christology as at least part of the explanation of the passage. Is it telling the story of salvation, a kerygmatic pronouncement (Martin) or is it a call to imitation of Christ (Fowl). In fact it is both argues Park – the passage proclaims the salvation story, but to pastoral and ethical purpose.
However the submission of Christ as depicted in Philippians 2.6-11 gives rise to a number of complex theological considerations. No one explanation exhausts the implications of this passage. There are strong textual connections with Isaiah 45 where submission to the sovereign God is the attitude that wins divine approval. Christ's actions in emptying himself and taking the form of a servant, and becoming obedient to death on the cross have significance both as descriptions of the saving efficacy of his humiliation and as exemplary demonstrations of an ethic of submissive obedience to God and others as characteristic of God's salvific action in Christ. The exaltation of Christ is not the reward for humiliation, but the confirmation that 'his humiliation belongs to the identity of God as surely as his exaltation does.' (R Bauckham, God Crucified (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1996), p. 61.
The revelation of God in Christ, conveyed through divine movements as depicted in this theologically unsettling passage, is of One for whom submission is not so much a precondition of exaltation, a necessary adjustment of sovereignty, but is an essential expression of divine identity and the characteristic modus operandi of divine love acting with redemptive purpose. God's approval of Jesus, bestowing on him the name which is above every name, is an announcement against grasping at status, clinging to privilege and right, selfish ambition and attraction to power. "Therefore God has highly exalted him….". The 'therefore' is a crucial theological hinge. 'He humbled himself and became obedient…….therefore…..'. This brief passage, with that eternally consequential inference has profound implications for how we think of God, how we understand the dynamics of the community of the church, and how we view submission as not only one amongst many Christian virtues, but as having the mind that was also in Christ Jesus, and points to the mind of God.
I'm not attributing all the above to this fascinating book – except that reading it, engaging with its careful arguments, pushes me into such reflection.
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