Radical and Revelatory: Moltmann’s Reading of Kenosis

The beginning of Moltmann’s kenotic Christology is thus neither in the concealment nor abandonment camp; his overarching kenotic theology means that his Christology reads Phil 2 as revelatory for divinity itself. Likewise, Colin Gunton (in the midst of a salvo against radical forms of kenotic Christology) writes that “it seems not inappropriate to speak of a self-emptying of God, but only if it is understood in such a way as to be an expression rather than a ‘retraction’ of his deity.” This well sums the trajectory that initializes Moltmann’s kenotic Christology.
 
Thus, we can call the baseline outlook on kenotic Christology that we find in Moltmann a “radical revelatory” model, for it uniquely combines emphases from both the radical interpretation and the revelatory. It entails real limitations applied to the divinity of Christ in his becoming human, but these limitations are extensions and radicalizations of the already existing kenotic patterns of the God-world relationship. The thematic thrust of this is conveyed by Moltmann in the following key passage:
 

[If] the significance of the Son’s incarnation is his true humanity, then the incarnation reveals the true humanity of God. That is not an anthropomorphic way of speaking, which is therefore not in accordance with God’s divinity; it is the quintessence of his divinity itself. . . . His strength is made perfect in weakness. The traditional doctrine about God’s kenosis has always looked at just the one aspect of God’s self-limitation, self-emptying and self-humiliation. It has overlooked the other side: God’s inward limitations are outward liberations. God is nowhere greater than in his humiliation. God is nowhere more glorious than in his impotence. God is nowhere more divine than when he becomes man.

- Samuel J. Youngs, The Way of the Kenotic Christ: 

The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, 2019.