All of the contemporary exegetes we cited earlier as supporting the revelatory interpretation (Wright, Bauckham, Fee, Gorman, etc.) have maintained that the christological kenosis reveals that God is a God who loves in sacrificial ways and is willing to humble himself for the sake of his creation’s redemption. But these same thinkers are so resistant to being identified with the nineteenth-century radical kenoticists that they consistently refuse to follow through on the underlying logical and doctrinal force of their exegetical claims. What does the divine Son sacrifice? In what specific aspects of his existence is the divine Son humbled?
These questions are often treated by this group of interpreters as though their position itself does not necessitate any positive answers to them, as seen in the representative passages below:
Fee’s example, the second quotation above, demonstrates this most immediately: he claims that no genitive of content is required in Phil 2:7, but he then indicates that Paul’s usage of the emptying language elsewhere does imply some genitive of content—for to become “powerless” (Fee’s own language) is to be emptied of power, and to be emptied of significance (Fee’s own language) is clearly indicative of some content (“significance”) for the emptying. The other commentators use similarly ambiguous or contradictory phrasing. The corrective to such inconsistency can be rendered quite simply: to be sacrificial means to sacrifice something; to be humbled means to be diminished, limited, or divested in some way.
Ben Witherington makes the point effectively:
These questions are often treated by this group of interpreters as though their position itself does not necessitate any positive answers to them, as seen in the representative passages below:
It is not necessary . . . to insist that the phrase ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν demands some genitive of content be supplied [emptied himself of something]. . . . Rather, it is a poetic, hymn like way of saying that Christ poured out himself. - HawthorneAll of these statements argue that nothing constitutive of Christ’s pre-incarnational existence is given up (or, for Gorman, even limited) by the incarnational act. But the logic of the Philippians passage does not seem to allow for this; the paraenetic point fails without a sacrifice (a giving-up, a surrendering) of some ability, status, or capacity on the part of Christ. Moreover, these same commentators seem to be tacitly aware of this, for they imply quite clearly that Christ did, in fact, give up something, however vaguely stated, even in the same context in which they deny that he gave up anything.
Christ did not empty himself of anything; he simply “emptied himself,” poured himself out. This is metaphor, pure and simple.. . . Pauline usage elsewhere substantiates this view, where this verb means to become powerless or to be emptied of significance.The phrase “emptied himself” in should not be read as a reference to the divestiture of something (whether divinity itself or some divine attribute, or even as self-limitation regarding the use of the divine attributes), but “figuratively,” as a robust metaphor for total self-abandonment and self-giving. - Fee.
Fee’s example, the second quotation above, demonstrates this most immediately: he claims that no genitive of content is required in Phil 2:7, but he then indicates that Paul’s usage of the emptying language elsewhere does imply some genitive of content—for to become “powerless” (Fee’s own language) is to be emptied of power, and to be emptied of significance (Fee’s own language) is clearly indicative of some content (“significance”) for the emptying. The other commentators use similarly ambiguous or contradictory phrasing. The corrective to such inconsistency can be rendered quite simply: to be sacrificial means to sacrifice something; to be humbled means to be diminished, limited, or divested in some way.
Ben Witherington makes the point effectively:
[Ekenōsen] must have some content to it, and it is not adequate to say Christ did not subtract anything since in fact he added a human nature. The latter is true enough, but the text says that he did empty himself or strip himself. . . . The contrast between verses 6 b and 7 a is very suggestive; that is, Christ set aside his rightful divine prerogatives or status. This does not mean he set aside his divine nature, but it does indicate some sort of self-limitation.In short, some “genitive of inferred content” seems to be necessitated, though this is certainly not to say that we are thereby permitted to speculate in any sort of detail about the precise nature of that content.
But the point remains: one cannot undertake a sacrificial act that does not impose a sacrifice of something; sacrifice and humility imply content, else they surrender meaning. Moltmann gets at this quite strongly with his notion of “active suffering” or willing vulnerability. He argues that loving sacrifice-in-relation entails, at the most basic level, the surrendering of some level of security or status or power, because one has opened oneself up to another in relationship—the “other” can “affect” oneself.
- Samuel J. Youngs, The Way of the Kenotic Christ:
The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment