The Interpretative History of Kenosis

There are three general trends in the interpretative history of the passage, and we can identify them heuristically as follows:

• the traditional interpretation (which sees the kenosis as concealing the divine qualities in Christ),
• the radical interpretation (in which kenosis consists in the abandoning of divine qualities in Christ),
• a contemporary interpretation that has lately become quite prominent in exegetical scholarship (wherein the kenosis has been viewed as revelatory of God’s character and action).

 A. Concealment (Traditional) Interpretation

“In the form of God” [morphē theou] was taken as parallel with “equality with God” [einai isa theōi] and thereby glossed as the divine substance of the Second Person of the Trinity (Athanasius called it “the essential nature of the Word”). This reading of the “form of God,” when combined with the Hellenistic assumption of divine immutability,meant that the “self-emptying” (heauton ekenōsen, v. 7) was seen to entail a hiding or concealing of divine qualities in the midst of the human nature’s assumption: “‘[the Word] humbled himself’ with reference to the assumption of the flesh.
 
B. Abandonment (Radical) Interpretation

For these more-properly kenotic schools of thought the “kenosis of Philippians 2:7 and context (vv. 6–11) was . . . taken as a real self-relinquishing, limiting, or emptying of divine attributes, powers, prerogatives, and/or glory by the pre-existent Logos upon the event of the Incarnation.

Thomasius famously distinguished between what he termed the “immanent” attributes (which are divinely essential and necessary) and the “relative” attributes (which are not essential, because they only relate to the governing of the contingent created order). It is this second category of attributes, which includes omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, that Thomasius saw to be relinquished by the assumption of humanity. Thus Thomasius felt he could say that though Christ truly abandoned certain divine properties upon becoming incarnate, he still “lacks nothing which is essential for God to be God.” The immanent attributes of the Godhead—love, faithfulness, holiness, etc.—are retained fully in the incarnation. But the self-emptying of the Logos in the kenotic Christology of Gess was yet more extreme. Whereas Thomasius supported the abandoning of some attributes possessed in the pre-existent state, Gess argued for their complete abandonment in order for the Logos to be transformed, quite literally, into a human person. As Gerald Hawthorne states, for Gess, “the presence of any divine attributes would destroy the reality of Jesus’ humanness.
 
C. Revelatory (Contemporary) Interpretation
Commentators as diverse as Hawthorne, Hurtado, Wright, David Brown, and James Dunn recognize that the hymn is calling the Philippians to account using the example of Christ’s sacrificial humility as a kind of paraenesis.

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

The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, 2019 

 

The Ambiguity of “Emptying” in the Revelatory View

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:
 

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. - Hawthorne
 
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.

All 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.
 
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. 

Revelatory Interpretation on Kenosis

There are three general trends in the interpretative history of the passage, and we can identify them heuristically as follows: the traditional interpretation (which sees the kenosis as concealing the divine qualities  in Christ), the radical interpretation (in which kenosis consists in the  abandoning of divine qualities in Christ), and a contemporary interpretation that has lately become quite prominent in exegetical scholarship  (wherein the kenosis has been viewed as revelatory of God’s character  and action).

Revelatory (Contemporary) Interpretation

For the ancient Christologies, the majesty of God in Christ as the immutable, transcendent, almighty deity had to be preserved in the face of ancient challenges like Arianism, and so the hymn was appropriated to those ends. For the ninenteenth-century kenoticists, the radical humanity of the incarnation had to be emphasized in the face of ever-growing post-Enlightenment critiques of dogmatic history. Ultimately, however, in both cases, there seems to have been a certain determinative sense in which the passage was commandeered by foregoing doctrinal concerns, rather than being used to formatively direct those doctrinal concerns.
 
Gratefully, much contemporary scholarship has studied the passage with more critical awareness of such ingrained presuppositions, and this more neutral work has opened new avenues in understanding. Thus we now turn to a spectrum of scholarship on the passage that is both recent and integrative, encompassing many of the foregoing interpretive issues into a fresh outlook on the passage. This interpretation takes the kenosis of Christ to be not a concealment of divinity, and not an abandonment of any foregoing aspect of that divinity, but rather a revelation of the divinity’s character and nature. Hence we can call this the “revelatory” interpretation. The major interlocutors who have contributed to such an understanding include Gerald Hawthorne, N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Gordon Fee, and Michael Gorman.
 

Philippians 2:7 and Its Christological Interpretations

The final element of this line of exegesis comes into focus when we consider that the participle hyparchōn has been argued by Moule (and followed more recently and forcefully by Wright, Gorman, and others) as being causative—“because he was in the form of God”—rather than concessive—“although he was in the form of God.”That is, the self-emptying does not provide any sort of exception to or abandoning of the form of God. Rather Christ’s self-emptying is illustrative of the fact that he possesses the form of God. This fundamentally shifts the understanding of kenosis in the passage. For, on this interpretation, it is quite correct to say that when Christ empties himself he is demonstrating his divinity, and not doing something that obscures it (as in the traditional interpretations) or that is an exception to that divine life (as in the radical interpretations).
 
Gorman is emphatic here: “Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ’s emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ’s exercising his divinity, his equality with God.” Wright expresses it similarly, saying ekenōsen “does not refer to the loss of divine attributes but—in good Pauline fashion—to making something powerless, emptying it of apparent significance. The real humiliation of the incarnation and the cross is that one who was himself God, and who never during the whole process stopped being God, could embrace such a vocation.”
 
Such an interpretation—the kenosis as a revelation of God’s divinity rather than an exceptional mode of being undertaken by that divinity—clearly challenges the radical forms of kenotic Christology.
 
Graham Ward, quoting F. F. Bruce, concurs, saying that “the implication is not that Christ, by becoming incarnate, exchanged the form of God for the form of the slave, but that he manifested the form of God in the form of the slave.” It is in this sense that we can unify also the tapeinotic and kenotic aspects of the hymn, which means that we must go beyond positions that claim “Jesus’ kenosis was sociopolitical rather than metaphysical,” for Christ’s “tapeinosis” (humble bearing of his life in the world) is reflective of the kenotic divine economy at large and involves the real suspension of things that had characterized the divine life “prior to” the incarnation (majesty, glory, splendor, etc. see John 17:5). Here then we find exegetical foundation for discussion of the “humanity of God.” 

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

The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, 2019 

Prayer Develops An Intimate Personal Relationship with God

Matthew 6:9–10 convincingly shows that one should not pray primarily in order to receive goods and services from God but to render service to God. Prayer is not first and foremost an exercise to vindicate the disciple’s causes, meet the disciple’s needs, fulfill the disciple’s desires, or solve the disciple’s problems. Rather, one’s priority must be the promotion of God’s reputation, the advancement of God’s rule, and the performance of God’s will. These three petitions are essentially one expression of burning desire to see the Father honored on earth as he is already honored in heaven.

- David L. Turner.

If God knows what we need, why bother praying? 

Because prayer is not like sending an order form to a supplier. Prayer develops an intimate personal relationship with an abundantly loving God, who also happens to know us deeply. His knowledge of us should encourage us toward confident and focused prayer. A child may feel an immediate need for candy; a parent considers the child’s long-term needs. Stretch that parent’s concern and perspective to an infinite dimension, and there you find God’s loving care.

Prayer does not beg favors from a reluctant shopkeeper. Prayer develops the trust that says, “Father, you know best.” Bring your requests confidently to God.

- Barton, B. B

The Lord's Prayer

 The Lord’s Prayer is a part of the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus teaches principles that characterize the radical kingdom he announces and the attitudes and behavior that characterize those who participate in it.
 
And so, Jesus teaches a kingdom prayer. He establishes the standards of good practice for his followers first through negative examples that teach them how they should not pray (vv. 5–8), and, second, through a model prayer that teaches them how they should pray (vv. 9–13: Οὕτως οὖν προσεύχεσθε ὑμεῖς. The context suggests that the imperative in v. 9 is best taken as a customary present, expressing a habitual action. Contrary to those whose prayers are habitually self-promoting, those whose prayers follow Jesus’s model cultivate a different habit.

This kingdom prayer has six petitions, grouped in two sets of three. The first set presents requests about God: three clauses, each [p. 21] with a third-person, aorist imperative verb, followed by a noun modified by a second-person possessive pronoun (vv. 9–10). The imperative is a natural choice in prayer, because it is the verbal form normally used when someone of lower status communicates to a superior.1 The second set of petitions presents requests about human needs (vv. 11–13). Each of these petitions contains a first-person, plural pronoun, and the second and third petitions are connected to the previous one by καί (“and”) to form one long sentence.
 
Our English translations may lead us to think that the first petition is a statement or declaration (i.e., “hallowed be your name” = “your name is holy”). We have seen that the Greek verb, however, is not an indicative but an imperative that expresses a petition. It is a request to God that his name be treated as holy because at the present time it is not always so. Essentially this is a plea for the coming of God’s kingdom, which Jesus says has drawn near (4:17). The second request articulates this plea: “May your kingdom come!”
 
The third request extends the plea for God’s kingdom to come in its fullness. Its word order in the Greek is illuminating. The emphasis is on the first clause, “as in heaven.” God’s will is done in heaven in a way not yet done on earth. The point is not simply to pray that God accomplish his will, but that God accomplish it on earth as it is [already done in heaven].
 
Through repetition and variation, the first three petitions ask God to realize his kingdom in all its fullness. Yet it is not a passive prayer. It is not a request that God act while human beings wait and watch. This kingdom prayer orients Jesus’s followers to the present revelation of God’s future reign. As a result, we may live in this kingdom by promoting God’s person, will, and ways rather than our own.
 

-  J. Scott Duvall, Devotions on the Greek New Testament: 52 Reflections to Inspire and Instruct

 

Moses and His Life Experiences

Learning how to control his violent temper and learning how to serve were only the first of many lessons that Moses learned in Midian. God is never in any great hurry to prepare his servants to do his will, especially when he has some great work for them to accomplish. There is no better example of this than the prophet Moses, who spent four decades in the wilderness before beginning his public ministry. The book of Acts explains that forty years passed between Moses’ flight to Midian and his encounter with God at the burning bush (Acts 7:29, 30). Forty years! Someone has pointed out that “Moses was 40 years in Egypt learning something; he was 40 years in the desert learning to be nothing; and he was 40 years in the wilderness proving God to be everything.” Whenever we are tempted to grow impatient with God’s timetable for our lives, we should remember Moses, who spent two years of preparation for every year of ministry.
 
During the forty long years that Moses spent in Midian, God used three experiences to prepare him for his primary calling, which was to lead God’s people out of Egypt. The first was his living situation. The precise location of Midian is somewhat uncertain. The Midianites may have lived in Arabia, but more likely they lived on the Sinai Peninsula, near the Gulf of Aqaba. The term does not refer primarily to a place, however, but to a people group—a tribe of desert nomads. Living with the Midianites meant living in the wilderness.
 
Moses’ wilderness experience was of great practical significance. One of the things he learned was the wilderness itself—its geography and topography. Later, when he led God’s people out of Egypt, he knew things like where to find water and how to find his way back to God’s holy mountain. But Moses’ wilderness experience was of even greater significance spiritually, for before he led Israel out of Egypt, Moses had an exodus of his own. It was in the wilderness that he learned what it was like to be an outcast. The people of God were strangers in Egypt, but Egypt was Moses’ home—so much so that the daughters of Reuel immediately identified him as “an Egyptian” (Exod. 2:19). It was only when he went out to live in the desert that Moses experienced alienation for himself. At the birth of his first son, he said, “I have become an alien in a foreign land” (v. 22b). The foreign land Moses seems to have had in mind was not Midian but Egypt, since he was speaking in the past tense. The verse should thus be translated as follows: “A stranger I have been there,” with Moses referring back to his upbringing in Pharaoh’s palace. It was through his wilderness experience that he learned to identify with God’s people in their suffering.
 
The second life experience God used to prepare Moses for leadership was his family situation. Not only did Moses become a husband in Midian, but he also became a father: “Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, ‘I have become an alien in a foreign land’ ” (v. 22). The name Gershom comes from the Hebrew verb garash, which means “to drive out or to expel”; thus it may refer to Moses’ own experience in being driven out of Egypt. It also sounds like the Hebrew words ger and sham, a pun that means “an alien there.” The Bible does not include these domestic details simply out of biographical interest. Moses’ family situation was part of his preparation for ministry. As a husband, he learned how to love and serve his wife. As a father, he learned how to care for and discipline his children. By settling into the life of the home Moses learned how to be a servant-leader.
 
It was in the same home that Moses grew in his relationship with God, for when he accepted Zipporah’s hand in marriage, he became a member of her clan. The Midianites seem to have worshiped the one true God, the God of their father Abraham. It seems significant that Reuel was a priest and that his name means “friend of God.” In all likelihood Moses received spiritual instruction from his father-in-law, so that by the time he saw the burning bush, he had already been reintroduced to the God of Abraham.
 
Thirdly, Moses learned how to serve God through his work situation. Job opportunities are somewhat limited in the wilderness, and since his father-in-law was a shepherd, Moses became a shepherd. We know this because the next chapter begins with him out tending his flock (Exod. 3:1).
 
This was hardly the profession Moses would have chosen because he was raised in Egypt, and the Bible says that “all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians” (Gen. 46:34b). But the Bible also shows that many great leaders got their start as shepherds. This is because there is a lot to be learned from tending sheep. For starters, sheep are not very bright, which means they need someone to lead them to food and water. They make an easy target for predators; so they need someone to protect them. They are prone to wander; so they need someone to bring them back into the fold. In short, sheep are completely dependent on shepherds for their care, which is why the Bible so often compares God’s people to sheep. In the words of the psalmist, “we are his people, the sheep of his pasture” (100:3b). Like so many sheep, we need divine guidance, nourishment, and protection. It was by tending his flock, therefore, that Moses learned how to feed, defend, and rescue the lost sheep of Israel. Since God’s people are the sheep of his pasture, there was no better way for Moses to learn how to lead them than by spending forty years as a shepherd. When Asaph later meditated on God’s saving work in bringing his people out of Egypt, he said, “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps. 77:20; cf. Ps. 78:52; Isa. 63:11).

God used the experiences Moses had along his spiritual journey to prepare him in a special way for a special work. By being faithful in small things, he was prepared for something big. It is doubtful whether we will ever lead God’s people out of bondage. But even if we are not named Moses, God has a plan for us. The Bible says that “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). When the Scripture says that “we are God’s workmanship,” it means that God is at work in our lives to prepare us for his service.

Not only has he prepared good works for us to do, but God is also preparing us to do them, and he does this through the ordinary experiences of daily life. God uses our mistakes, even the kinds of mistakes that send us into the wilderness for decades. In order to become the man God intended him to become, it was necessary for Moses to go out into the wilderness and take care of sheep. Even if we are working a job that does not seem to match our gifts or our interests, God will use it for our good and for his glory.

- P. G. Ryken  & R. K. Hughes. Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory, p71–74.

Why Unleavened Bread

Unleavened bread reminded the Israelites of their hasty departure. But getting rid of the yeast had another purpose. Although it is not explicitly stated in Exodus 12, Jewish teachers have always understood yeast to represent the corrupting power of sin. Unleavened bread symbolizes holiness. What makes this comparison suitable is that unleavened bread is made of pure wheat untouched by yeast.
 
When God’s people ate unleavened bread, therefore, they were reminded to keep themselves pure from sin, and especially from the evils of Egypt. To this day, when devout Jewish families celebrate Passover they search their homes for leaven and then sweep it out the door. This symbolic act shows that they have a commitment to lead a life free from sin.
 
Yeast is an appropriate symbol for sin because of the way it grows and spreads. As yeast ferments, it works its way all through the dough. Sin works the same way, which is why the Bible makes this comparison. Sin is always trying to extend its corrupting influence through a person’s entire life. But God had something better in mind for his people. He was saving them to sanctify them; so before they left Egypt he wanted them to make a clean sweep.
 
God wanted to do something more than get his people out of Egypt; he wanted to get Egypt out of his people. He was saving them with a view to their sanctification; so he told them to make a clean sweep. He commanded them to get rid of every last bit of yeast, the old yeast of Egyptian idolatry. To further show that they were making a fresh start, God gave his people a new calendar.
 
In the case of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the New Testament teaching is perfectly clear. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:6–8).
 

- P. G. Ryken  & R. K. Hughes. Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory, p340-342.