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The first occurrence of this word in the Epistles is in Rom_2:20, where St. Paul speaks of the Jew as ‘having in the law the form of knowledge and of the truth.’ The word he uses is ìüñöùóéò , which is found again only in 2Ti_3:5 (‘having the form of godliness’), where it clearly has a disparaging sense and may be taken to mean an affectation of or an aiming at the ìïñöÞ of godliness. ìïñöÞ itself is that which manifests the essence or inward nature of a thing, ‘outward form as determined by inward substance,’ in contrast with ó÷ῆìá which means ‘outward form as opposed to inward substance.’ ìüñöùóéò occupies an intermediate position between these words; the Apostle hesitates to use ó÷ῆìá , yet he will not use ìïñöÞ . The term happily expresses his meaning in Rom_2:20 -the Law, so far as it went, was an expression, one might even say an embodiment, of Divine truth. It did not go far enough to be called ìïñöÞ , yet it was more than more outward fashion ( ó÷ῆìá ). There is not the same note of disparagement about the word here as in 2Ti_3:5; it is rather one of incompleteness.
We may turn now to the well-known use of the word ìïñöÞ itself in Php_2:6 f., where Christ is said to have been in the form of God and to have taken the form of a slave. The first thing to bear in mind is that St. Paul used the common speech of his day, and this word, like many others, had wandered far from the accurate metaphysical sense in which it was used by Plato and Aristotle. The lengthy and thorough discussions of the word and its relation to ïὐóßá , öýóéò , åἶäïò , and similar terms by Lightfoot (philippians4, 1878, p. 127ff.) and E. H. Gifford (The Incarnation, 1897, p. 22ff.) remain as examples of fine scholarship, but it is now generally recognized that St. Paul uses ìïñöÞ here in an easy, popular sense, much as we use the word ‘nature.’ Several passages in the Septuagint (e.g. Job_4:16, Dan_5:6, Wis_18:1-4, 4Ma_15:4) witness to the same tendency- ìïñöÞ is the appearance or look of some one, that by which onlookers judge. But, while St. Paul avoids metaphysical speculations on the relation of the Son to the Father, he implies here, as elsewhere, that Christ has, as it were, the same kind of existence as God. The closest parallels are åἰêὼí ôïῦ èåïῦ (Col_1:15) and ðëïῦóéïò ὤí (2Co_8:9), the latter passage reminding us of the great antithesis in Php_2:6-7 between the ìïñöὴ èåïῦ and the ìïñöὴ äïýëïõ . äïῦëïò stands for man in opposition to God and must not be pressed literally. It is worth noting that St. Paul insists on Christ’s direct exchange of the one form for the other, in contrast to Gnostic views which represented Him as passing through a series of transformations. To return to ìïñöὴ , which here denotes, as it usually does, an adequate and accurate expression of the underlying being, and so points to the Divinity of the pre-existing Christ, one may, without any detraction from this honour, point out that St. Paul always regards the Death and Resurrection of Christ as adding something to it. It is after the return to glory that Christ is declared the Son of God ‘with power’ (Rom_1:3-4), and becomes Lord (Php_2:9-11). It only remains to point out that Christ’s assumption of the ‘form’ or ‘nature’ of a servant does not imply that His ‘Ego,’ the basis of His personality, was changed. (See further article Christ, Christology, p. 193f.)
Before leaving this word, we may notice the use of the verb ìïñöüù in a beautifully expressive passage, Gal_4:19, where the Apostle adopts the figure of a child-bearing mother; he is in travail for the spiritual birth of Christ within his Galatian friends, straining every power to shape their inner man afresh into the image of Christ. The use of the word ‘form’ in Rev_9:20 and 1Ti_2:13 (in each case translating ðëÜóóù ) calls for no remark.
Two other passages in the Epistles demand consideration. In Rom_6:17 St. Paul is glad that the Romans have become sincerely obedient ‘to that form of teaching’ to which they were delivered; and in 2Ti_1:13 there is an exhortation to ‘hold the form (Revised Version ‘pattern’) of sound words which thou hast heard from me.’ The word used in Rom. is ôýðïò , which must be taken in its usual Pauline sense of ‘pattern,’ ‘standard.’ No special type of doctrine is meant (see F. J. A. Hort, Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians, 1895, p. 32); the reference is to a course of simple instruction, like that in the first part of the Didache (‘The Two Ways’), which preceded baptism. In 2 Tim. we have the compound ὑðïôýðùóéò , lit. [Note: literally, literature.] an ‘outline sketch,’ and so a ‘pattern’ or ‘example.’ It is the emphatic word in the sentence, and the meaning is best brought out by the translation, ‘Hold as a pattern of healthy teaching, in faith and love, what you heard from me.’
A. J. Grieve.