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Php_2:8. Ἐταπείνωσεν ] is placed with great emphasis at the head of a new sentence (see on Php_2:7), and without any connecting particle: He has humbled Himself. Ἑαυτόν is not prefixed as in Php_2:7; for in Php_2:7 the stress, according to the object in view, was laid on the reflexive reference of the action, but here on the reflexive action itself. The relation to ἐκένωσε is climactic, not, however, as if Paul did not regard the self-renunciation (Php_2:7) as being also self-humiliation, but in so far as the former manifested in the most extreme way the character of ταπείνωσις in the shameful death of Jesus. It is a climactic parallelism (comp. on Php_4:9) in which the two predicates, although the former in the nature of the case already includes the latter (in opposition to Hofmann), are kept apart as respects the essential points of their appearance in historical development. Bengel well remarks: “Status exinanitionis gradatim profundior.” Hoelemann, mistaking this, says: “He humbled Himself even below His dignity as man.”
γενόμ . ὑπήκοος ] The aorist participle is quite, like the participles in Php_2:7, simultaneous with the governing verb: so that He became obedient. This ὑπήκοος is, however, not to be defined by “capientibus se, damnantibus et interficientibus” (Grotius); nor is it to be referred to the law, Gal_4:4 (Olshausen), but to God (Rom_5:19; Heb_5:8 f.), whose will and counsel (comp. e.g. Mat_26:42) formed the ground determining the obedience. Comp. Php_2:9 : διὸ καὶ ὁ Θεός κ . τ . λ . The expression itself glances back to μορφ . δούλου ; “obedientia servum decet,” Bengel.
μέχρι θανάτου ] belongs to ὑπήκ . γενόμ ., not to ἐταπ . ἑαυτ . (Bengel, Hoelemann)—which latter connection is arbitrarily assumed, dismembers the discourse, and would leave a too vague and feeble definition for ἐταπ . ἑαυτ . in the mere ὑπήκ . γενόμ . By μέχρι death is pointed out as the culminating point, as the highest degree, up to which He obeyed, not merely as the temporal goal (van Hengel). Comp. 2Ti_2:9; Heb_12:4; Act_22:4; Mat_26:38. This extreme height reached by His obedience was, however, just the extreme depth of the humiliation, and thereby at the same time its end; comp. Act_8:33; Isa_53:8. Hofmann groundlessly takes ὑπήκ . γίνεσθαι in the sense of showing obedience (comp. on Gal_4:12). The obedience of Christ was an ethical becoming (Heb_5:8).
θανάτου δὲ σταυρ .] τουτέστι τοῦ ἐπικαταράτου (comp. Gal_3:13; Heb_12:2), τοῦ τοῖς ἁνόμοις ἀφωρισμένου , Theophylact. The δέ , with the repetition of the same word (comp. Rom_3:22; Rom_9:30), presents, just like the German aber, the more precisely defined idea in contradistinction to the idea which is previously left without this special definition: unto death, but what kind of death? unto the most shameful and most painful, unto the death of the cross; see Klotz, ad Devar. p. 361, and Baeumlein, Partik. p. 97; and the examples in Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 168 f.; Ellendt, Lex. Soph. I. p. 388.
REMARK 1.
According to our explanation, Php_2:6-8 may be thus paraphrased: Jesus Christ, when He found Himself in the heavenly mode of existence of divine glory, did not permit Himself the thought of using His equality with God for the purpose of seizing possessions and honour for Himself on earth: No, He emptied Himself of the divine glory, inasmuch as, notwithstanding His God-equal nature, He took upon Him the mode of existence of a slave of God, so that He entered into the likeness of men, and in His outward bearing and appearance manifested Himself not otherwise than as a man. He humbled Himself, so that He became obedient unto God, etc. According to the explanation of our dogmatic writers, who refer Php_2:6-8 to the earthly life of Christ, the sense comes to this: “Christum jam inde a primo conceptionis momento divinam gloriam et majestatem sibi secundum humanam naturam communicatam plena usurpatione exserere et tanquam Deum se gerere potuisse, sed abdicasse se plenario ejus usu et humilem se exhibuisse, patrique suo coelesti obedientem factum esse usque ad mortem crucis” (Quenstedt). The most thorough exposition of the passage and demonstration in this sense, though mixed with much polemical matter against the Reformed and the Socinians, are given by Calovius. The point of the orthodox view, in the interest of the full Deity of the God-man, lies in the fact that Paul is discoursing, not de humiliatione INCARNATIONIS, but de humiliatione INCARNATI. Among the Reformed theologians, Calvin and Piscator substantially agreed with our [Lutheran] orthodox expositors.
REMARK 2.
On a difference in the dogmatic understanding of Php_2:6-8, when men sought to explain more precisely the doctrine of the Church (Form. Conc. 8), was based the well-known controversy carried on since 1616 between the theologians of Tübingen and those of Giessen. The latter (Feuerborn and Menzer) assigned to Jesus Christ in His state of humiliation the κτῆσις of the divine attributes, but denied to Him their χρῆσις , thus making the κένωσις a renunciation of the χρῆσις . The Tübingen school, on the other hand (Thummius, Luc. Osiander, and Nicolai), not separating the κτῆσις and χρῆσις , arrived at the conclusion of a hidden and imperceptible use of the divine attributes, and consequently made the κένωσις a κρύψις τῆς χρήσεως . See the account of all the points of controversy in Dorner, II. 2, p. 661 ff., and especially Thomasius, Christi Pers. u. Werk, II. p. 429 ff. The Saxon Decisio, 1624, taking part with the Giessen divines, rejected the κρύψις , without thoroughly refuting it, and even without avoiding unnecessary concessions to it according to the Formula Concordiae (pp. 608, 767), so that the disputed questions remained open and the controversy itself only came to a close through final weariness. Among the dogmatic writers of the present day, Philippi is decidedly on the side of the Giessen school. See his Glaubensl. IV. 1, p. 279 ff. ed. 2. It is certain that, according to our passage, the idea of the κένωσις is clearly and decidedly to be maintained, and the reducing of it to a κρύψις rejected. But, since Paul expressly refers the ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε to the μορφὴ Θεοῦ , and consequently to the divine mode of appearance, while he makes the εἶναι ἴσα Θεῷ to subsist with the assumption of the μορφὴ δουλοῦ , just as subsequently the Incarnate One appears only as ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρ . and as σχήματι ὡς ἀνθρ .; and since, further, in the case of the κτήσις of the divine attributes thus laid down, the non-use of them—because as divine they necessarily cannot remain dormant (Joh_5:17; Joh_9:4)—is in itself inconceivable and incompatible with the Gospel history; the κτῆσις and the χρῆσις must therefore be inseparably kept together. But, setting aside the conception of the κρύψις as foreign to the N. T., this possession and use of the divine attributes are to be conceived as having, by the renunciation of the μορφὴ Θεοῦ in virtue of the incarnation, entered upon a human development, consequently as conditioned, not as absolute, but as theanthropic. At the same time, the self-consciousness of Jesus Christ necessarily remained the self-consciousness of the Son of God developing Himself humanly, or (according to the Johannine phrase) of the Logos that had become flesh, who was the μονογενὴς παρὰ πατρός ; see the numerous testimonies in John’s Gospel, as Joh_3:13, Joh_8:58, Joh_17:5, Joh_5:26. “Considered from a purely exegetical point of view, there is no clearer and more certain result of the interpretation of Scripture than the proposition, that the Ego of Jesus on earth was identical with the Ego which was previously in glory with the Father; any division of the Son speaking on earth into two Egos, one of whom was the eternally glorious Logos, the other the humanly humble Jesus, is rejected by clear testimonies of Scripture, however intimate we may seek to conceive the marriage of the two during the earthly life of Jesus;” Liebner in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. 1858, p. 362. That which the divine Logos laid aside in the incarnation was, according to our passage, the μορφὴ Θεοῦ , that is, the divine δόξα as a form of existence, and not the εἶναι ἴσα Θεῷ essentially and necessarily constituting His nature, which He retained,[115] and to which belonged, just as essentially and necessarily, the divine—and consequently in Him who had become man the divine-human—self-consciousness.[116] But as this cannot find its adequate explanation either in the absolute consciousness of God, or in the archetypal character which Schleiermacher assigned to Christ, or in the idea of the religious genius (Al. Schweizer), or in that of the second Adam created free from original sin, whose personal development proceeds as a gradual incarnation of God and deification of man (Rothe), so we must by no means say, with Gess, v. d. Pers. Chr. p. 304 f., that in becoming incarnate the Logos had laid aside His self-consciousness, in order to get it back again only in the gradual course of development of a human soul, and that merely in the form of a human self-consciousness. See, in opposition to this, Thomasius, Christi Pers. u. Werk, II. p. 198 f.; Schoeberlein in the Jahrb. f. D. Th. 1871, p. 471 ff., comp. the latter’s Geheimnisse des Glaubens, 1872, 3. The various views which have been adopted on the part of the more recent Lutheran Christologists,[117] diverging from the doctrine of the Formula Concordiae in setting forth Christ’s humiliation (Dorner: a gradual ethical blending into one another of the divine and human life in immanent development; Thomasius: self-limitation, i.e. partial self-renunciation of the divine Logos; Liebner: the entrance of the Logos into a process of becoming, that is, into a divine-human development), do not fall to be examined here in detail; they belong to the province of Dogmatics. See the discussions on the subject by Dorner, in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. 1856, 2, 1857, 2, 1858, 3; Broemel, in the Kirchl. Zeitschr. of Kliefoth and Mejer, 1857, p. 144 ff.; Liebner, in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. 1858, p. 349 ff.; Hasse, ibid. p. 336 ff.; Schoeberlein, l.c. p. 459 ff.; Thomasius, Chr. Pers. u. Werk, II. pp. 192 ff., 542 ff.; Philippi, Dogmat. IV. 1, p. 364 ff.
According to Schoeberlein, the Son of God, when He became man, did not give up His operation in governing the world in conjunction with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but continued to exercise it with divine consciousness in heaven. Thus the dilemma cannot be avoided, either of supposing a dual personality of Christ, or of assuming, with Schoeberlein, that heaven is not local. Not only the former, however, but the latter view also, would be opposed to the entire N. T.
[115] Comp. Düsterdieck, Apolog. Abh. III. p. 67 ff.
[116] Paul agrees in substance with the Logos doctrine of John, but has not adopted the form of Alexandrine speculation. That the latter was known to him in its application to the Christology, may at least be regarded as probable from his frequent and long intercourse with Asia, and also from his relation to Apollos. His conception, however, is just as little Apollinarian as that of John; comp. on Rom_1:3 f.; Col_1:15.
[117] Schenkel’s ideal transference of Christ’s pre-existence simply into the self-consciousness of God, which in the person of Christ found a perfect self-manifestation like to humanity, boldly renounces all the results of historical exegesis during a whole generation, and goes back to the standpoint of Löffler and others, and also further, to that of the Socinians. Comp. on Joh_17:5. Yet even Beyschlag’s Christology leads no further than to an ideal pre-existence of Christ as archetype of humanity, and that not as a person, but merely as the principle of a person;—while Keerl (d. Gottmensch. das Ebenbild Gottes, 1866), in unperceived direct opposition to our passage and to the entire N. T., puts the Son of God already as Son of man in absolute (not earthly) corporeality as pre-existent into the glory of heaven. From 1Co_15:47 the conception of the pre-existence of Christ as a heavenly, pneumatic man and archetype of humanity (Holsten, Biedermann, and others) can only be obtained through misapprehension of the meaning. See on 1 Cor. l.c., and Grimm, p. 51 ff.