Divine Humanity: Explored and Defended

By David Brown

For almost a century British understanding of the life of Christ was dominated by one particular way of interpreting the incarnation: as a kenosis or 'self-emptying' that involved real change in God. In this controversial and ground-breaking work David Brown argues that the sharp decline in the popularity of such ideas in more recent years is undes

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: Feb 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780334047698

David Brown

David Brown is the host of the hit podcasts Business Wars and Business Wars Daily. He is also the co-creator and host of Texas Standard, the Lone Star’s statewide daily news show, and was the former anchor of the Peabody award-winning public radio business program Marketplace. He has been a public radio journalist for more than three decades, winning multiple awards, and is a contributor to All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and other NPR programs. Brown earned his PhD in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and his Juris Doctor from Washington and Lee University School of Law. He lives with his wife and two children in Austin, Texas.

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Introduction

All use of the term kenosis in Christian theology is ultimately derived from a famous passage of St Paul in his letter to the Philippians. As such, it has a long history. Throughout most of the Church’s life the ‘self-emptying’ or ‘abasement’ of God in Christ has been explained in terms of divine association with human lowliness rather than as entailing any real change to the divine nature itself. In describing how in the incarnation God the Son took on human nature, the Fourth Ecumenical Council (which took place at Chalcedon in 451) adopted the formula that divine nature and human nature both now existed in the single person that is Christ. However, whatever popular piety may have thought to the contrary, in expounding this two-natures Christology the Church’s theologians adamantly maintained that in that union the divine nature was never, and could never have been, subject to the perils of being human: to temptation, ignorance, suffering and death. Instead, strictly speaking, such notions were applicable only to Christ’s human nature. So although in virtue of the union, human experience was attributable to God in Christ, these huge qualifications were always seen to follow on more careful analysis.

Partly thanks to the rise of biblical criticism, partly because of the new interest in human psychology, and partly because of explorations of new options in philosophy (principally Hegelianism), that theological consensus began to be challenged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Modern kenosis can be defined as in essence the claim that the divine nature is now seen to be committed in the incarnation not merely to a symbolic drawing alongside humanity but also to an actual ontological entering into the human condition, with some real change in divinity itself. Although such new ways of thinking began with learned treatises in German and French, it was within the British Isles that the movement was to become for a while the dominant approach to Christology.

This story is traced in Chapters 2–4. Although such kenotic reflection is often at the present time summarily dismissed, such curt rejections belie a more complex reality. If truth be told, most major European theologians have accepted the notion at some level. More pertinent to this volume, many of the issues the movement raised remain unanswered. So, the first chapter and the final two attempt to identify why these earlier explorations remain of continuing importance.

1

Setting the Scene

Kenotic Christology in the sense primarily addressed by this book has its origins in nineteenth-century Germany, from whence it migrated across the North Sea to Scotland and England, there to flourish well into the twentieth century. The conventional account speaks of decline thereafter, with only occasional minor revivals. Certainly, within the British Isles there was almost total retreat from discussion of any appropriate, accompanying metaphysical or ontological categories. But, as I shall indicate in due course, this was not due to fundamental difficulties with the underlying idea, which remained popular. Moreover, there is at least one sense in which kenosis, admittedly transformed, won through in the end. In the latter half of the twentieth century most major theologians had come to speak of kenosis as lying at the very heart of the life of God as Trinity. How that partial victory relates to the earlier history of the modern development of kenosis will be considered in Chapter 6.

In the meantime, each of Chapters 2–4 will be devoted to exploring those earlier developments in each of the three principal nations involved – Germany, Scotland and England. In particular, the specific context within which such ideas emerged will be noted, not least because, while there are underlying similarities between the three countries, important differences also exist. However, in this present chapter I want first to paint a much broader canvas, and consider the wider background in Scripture and in the history of Christian doctrine. My aim, it should be stressed, is a more limited one than those first Kenoticists. It is not to argue that kenosis is already there in the appropriate sense in the Bible and in the history of the Church. Rather, it is to suggest that, although largely unanticipated, not only does nothing in Christianity’s past explicitly prohibit such a development, but also there were a number of suitable antecedents upon which Kenoticists could rightly build. To establish this much, I shall explore first the biblical witness, and then the significance of early creedal definitions, before finally examining some of the uses to which the notion of kenosis was put prior to the new sense it acquired in the nineteenth century. Attention to those earlier broader uses of the notion of the ‘self-emptying’ of God in Christ will help to make better sense of why a narrower, less metaphorical usage came eventually to be advocated in the nineteenth century.

The biblical witness

As already noted, the introduction of the term finds its original locus in a famous passage from Paul’s letters, in Philippians 2.5–11, where at verse 7 the Greek verbal equivalent is used to describe the voluntary self-‘emptying’ of Christ in the incarnation. However, before investigating possible meanings, now that the writings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century advocates of kenosis are much less well known by contemporary readers, it is important to stress that, although it is true that some indeed did place heavy reliance on this particular passage in their discussions, most did not. What mattered for them rather more was the direction of the Gospels as a whole. The Synoptics, it was argued, are most naturally read as attributing such a limited consciousness and power to Jesus that, rather than divinity unqualified, a ‘human’ or ‘reduced’ consciousness seems most appropriately taken as the subject. Even in the much higher Christology of John, with its presentation of a much greater awareness in Christ of his divinity, there remains an awareness mediated through his humanity. Indeed, one early Kenoticist (Godet), as we shall see, used his commentary on John’s Gospel to argue for precisely this claim, that Christ’s own words in John point readers towards a kenotic understanding. So even from the Gospels alone (without Paul ever having been brought into the equation at all) the need was felt to speak, at the very least, of divine powers in abeyance. Indeed, even Lutheran and Calvinist Kenoticists, whose tradition, unlike the Anglican, has usually prioritized Paul, found themselves giving greater weight to the Gospels, precisely because Paul has so little to say about Jesus’ earthly life.

Nonetheless, it is worth examining the Philippians passage in some detail, for reasons other than its supposed key role in the argument. It is a matter of discerning how the kenotic position may still build on texts that may originally have meant something rather different. For most of Christian history biblical texts were assumed to bear an already fully articulated orthodox doctrinal position. What, however, the rise of biblical criticism has forced upon us is appreciation of the often quite gradual way in which God’s providence has brought the Church to fuller awareness of the truth. This is an issue that will be explored in more detail in subsequent chapters. But it is worth anticipating here, given the often presumed centrality of the Pauline passage. What I want to disentangle are two separate questions: what did the passage originally mean? And how might it be used in our own day? Of course, there needs to be some connection, but it need not be one of absolute identity.

The original meaning

One recent commentary speaks of the passage as ‘the Mt Everest of Philippians study’.[1] Even this is an undoubted understatement if another commentator is to be believed in describing it as ‘a passage which in the twentieth century has been the subject of an uncontainable deluge of scholarly debate, quite possibly more so than any other New Testament text’.[2] Its use in the discussion of kenosis is only one small part of the explanation for such attention. The ambiguity of the passage’s grammar and of some of its terms (such as ‘form of God’) is more pertinent, as is the perception that, though early, it may possibly offer some of the highest Christology in the New Testament. Certainly, some are prepared to speak of an unqualified identity with God. One distinguished biblical scholar insists that the ‘name’ the figure is given at his exaltation must be that of Yahweh, though admittedly here he differs from most commentators, who prefer Jesus or Kurios (Lord).[3] The latter term would still make Christ worthy of worship, but more in the manner of angels in the Jewish context or of the Emperor in the pagan.[4] The most obvious argument against the stronger Yahweh or theos remains the avoidance of such a designation elsewhere in Paul, and in the New Testament generally, apart from John.[5]

It is not just the precise nature of Paul’s conclusion that is in dispute, but also both the circumstances in which the abasement begins and the manner of that abasement. The Greek phrase that speaks of him ‘not thinking it robbery to be equal with God’ could mean that he was already in a position of equality but chooses not to exercise that equality, or it could mean that, though not treated as equal, he had the means to grasp at such equality had he wished. The former would of course draw the meaning closer to orthodox Christianity, but there seems little to compel such a reading, and against it could be set the use of the intensive huper for the subsequent exaltation of verse 9, apparently suggesting, as it does, that Christ has now been raised to a position beyond that which he held prior to his abasement. Equally, the term morphe or ‘form’ of God can be used to suggest both outward appearance and inner reality. So, minimal and maximal ontological implications are alike possible.

From the 1860s onwards J. B. Lightfoot appealed to apparent parallels in Plutarch and in Philo to justify a strong ontological interpretation. His own suggested expansion of the text reads as follows:

Though existing before the worlds in the eternal Godhead, yet he did not cling with avidity to the prerogatives of his divine majesty but divested himself of the glories of heaven, and took on him the nature of a servant, assuming the likeness of men.[6]

In this he has been followed by his successor in the see of Durham, Tom Wright.[7] But Greek usage of the relevant terms actually seems more fluid than such claims would appear to imply, and thus not to point quite so definitively in any one direction.[8] Indeed, the fact that the parallel use of morphe in the text talks of him during his earthly life ‘in the form of a slave’ argues for metaphorical rather than ontological categories in translation (that is, ‘god-like’ and ‘slave-like’), since otherwise one would surely have expected ‘human being’ as the corresponding ontological term to ‘god’ rather than such an obviously figurative description as ‘slave’ or ‘slave-like’.[9] This is not to say that metaphorical language cannot carry ontological implications, only that there is nothing in the text that seems to require such a reading.[10] It is also important to remember that God is only introduced absolutely at verse 9, and even then Christ’s exaltation is declared to be all ‘to the glory of God the Father’ (v. 11). So on balance, in determining the original meaning of this passage, something much less resonant of later Christology is to be preferred:

who, while living in the sphere of God, did not consider to be like God something of which to take advantage, but himself he emptied, taking on the sphere of a slave; born in humanity’s likeness, and in appearance perceived as a human being, he experienced humiliation for himself, becoming obedient to the point of death.[11]

This translation bears no comparison with the eloquence of Lightfoot’s English style, but at least now the potential ambiguities in meaning are fully apparent. In Lightfoot’s case it is difficult to detect any possibility of an intended parallel with Adam, whereas with this latter translation one can see how just such a comparison might have been at the back of Paul’s mind. In the story of the Fall Adam did try to grasp at equality with God, whereas here the new Adam follows quite a different course.[12] With recognition of that anticipatory ‘antitype’ in the Hebrew Scriptures, though, comes the realization that ‘god-like’ or ‘in the sphere of God’ could also be, like slavery, primarily figurative or metaphorical in its meaning. It would then only be with the second Adam’s exaltation that humanity becomes in some sense identified with God in more than a nominal way. That takes us far from later orthodoxy but, if those who think that Paul is adapting a pre-existing hymn are right, this would not necessarily suggest that Paul’s own Christology was quite that low.[13] Instead, he could have been adapting phrases already familiar to his readers, to drive home here not a doctrinal point but, first and foremost, an ethical injunction.[14] The passage, it will be recalled, is introduced by the demand, ‘let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus’ (v. 5). Perhaps the Philippians saw in Christ’s exaltation a means to their own, and had forgotten how that point had first been reached, through service or humiliation. Talk of the possibility of assaults on the divine prerogative might possibly then be less a matter of the conduct of the first Adam and more of the way ‘god-like’ earthly rulers in general behave in seeking to appropriate still more power to themselves. No, says Paul, that was not Christ’s way, and so it should not be ours.

While such considerations would tell decisively against using the passage in support of a traditional Chalcedonian two-natures Christology, they are no less decisive against any modern kenotic understanding. Not that these are by any means the only arguments against. Even the key phrase ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a servant’ is on its own more naturally read without any such metaphysical implication. Thus in traditional Lutheran exegesis it had been taken to apply simply to how Christ conducted himself in the incarnation, for example in holding back his powers at the temptations. Although in the minds of most modern commentators the structure of thought is now presumed to imply a pre-incarnational decision, even this hardly of itself pulls decisively towards kenosis in the sense of some real change in God. With ‘emptied’ as the main verb, New Testament scholars argue that the kenosis consists simply in acquiring the form of a slave, with nothing removed that was essential to his nature prior to that point. For the latter to have been the meaning, the Greek, it is maintained, would need to have reversed participle and main verb and so run: ‘having emptied himself, he took the form of slave’.[15]

An appropriate modern application

The way in which later conceptions of the incarnation, whether the modern kenotic or the more traditional two-natures view, have been read into the passage does alert us to the difficulty of keeping the question of exegesis distinct from our own particular theological prejudices. Certainly, greater caution is required on the part of Kenoticists in imposing later ideas on the text. Yet, while true, it is an accusation that might with equal justice be mounted against advocates of a two-natures Christology.[16] Apart from the points already noted, it may be observed that nothing is said about retaining a heavenly position during the self-abasement. Indeed, quite the opposite seems implied, since we are told that it is a position that will only be returned to Christ, and in greater measure, after the resurrection. At the same time the decision is characterized as one in which he plays no part. Rather, it is wholly accomplished by God on his behalf: ‘Wherefore also God highly exalted him’ (v. 9).

Such difficulties in the exegesis of the passage do thus provide a salutary warning against allowing prior doctrinal assumptions ever to predetermine or trump biblical interpretation, not only where kenosis is in view but, equally, some more traditional form of orthodoxy. How far the problem extends is well illustrated by a quite different, non-christological application of the passage. Consider how the abasement is described. The Greek indicates that exaltation follows as a result of such humiliation. Protestant exegetes have always been embarrassed by this apparent endorsement of a works ethic, with reward following on from appropriate action. As a result Calvin did not hesitate to distort the Greek in order to avoid any such implication. For him the Greek particle dio at verse 9 (‘therefore’ in most translations) can at most mean quo facto (‘what follows next’) and not cause or reason.[17] Barth goes even further along this path. For him Paul cannot possibly be saying that ‘he who was humbled and humiliated was afterwards exalted, was indeed . . . rewarded for his self-denial and obedience’. Instead, dio indicates two halves or aspects of the same reality, with glory also present in the humiliation. So despite what might seem to be the obvious meaning of the text, he is adamant that ‘it is not by reference to the example of Christ that Paul would strengthen what was said in verses 1–4’.[18] Nor is the problem by any means confined to the exegesis of doctrinal theologians. The distinguished biblical scholar Ernst Käsemann can be found making the same mistake, despite his unwillingness to follow Barth in also finding in the hymn a two-natures Christology.[19] Yet such contortions could easily have been avoided by observing that there is nothing said about reward actually being the motivation, as distinct from its result. Exaltation can be seen to follow as a consequence precisely because the motive was not the reward as such but action out of obedience. Distortions in exegesis or translation were, therefore, quite unnecessary.

There is surely an important general lesson here about the relation between Bible and doctrine. Theologians are naturally keen to draw doctrinal conclusions from Scripture, and Paul is particularly open to such possibilities. Nonetheless, theologian and biblical scholar alike need to exercise caution. Paul’s primary motivation in writing, as in this passage, may often have been primarily practical, in offering a guide for living. This is not to say that doctrinal implications may not be drawn, but the words need first to be heard in their own right. Indeed, so far as the Philippians passage is concerned, I am convinced that the more frequently the attempt is made to hear the relevant verses in their own right, the more likely will they be found to echo the images of poetry rather than the sharpness of dogma – and that irrespective of whether or not they were based originally on a hymn from which Paul is borrowing. The language is surely more like Charles Wesley’s description of Christ as ‘emptying himself of all but love’, or ‘of his dazzling glories shorn’.[20] As Gordon Fee observes, ‘this is metaphor pure and simple’, though I take it that his point is not that metaphor never carries ontological commitments but rather that the direction in which it pulls has to be resolved by other means. [21]

Nevertheless, once the point is conceded, the question of further development of the passage can then be raised. That is, the admission of such a less precise original meaning need not preclude Kenoticists from using the passage in their own distinctive way, any more than it prevents someone from utilizing something like Lightfoot’s account to offer a more traditional expansion.[22] Perhaps a parallel may be drawn with the words of the centurion at the foot of the cross: in the familiar version, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’ (Mark 15.39).[23] Close study of Old Testament usage, and indeed even the parallel verse in Luke, now make it plain that no high christological implications need have been intended by the words.[24] All the phrase usually implies is that a particular human being exists in some special relationship to God, but this still falls well short of how the Church later interpreted the term as indicative of Jesus’ unique divine sonship. So ‘a son of God’ might well be the better translation, as indeed the Greek allows.[25] That weaker version may even have been Mark’s original intention, since this would have been a more likely utterance from a pagan centurion, coming as he did from a world in which a plurality of divine men or demigods was acknowledged. Nonetheless, on my view it remains legitimate to read the text in the stronger incarnational sense, if so desired, especially in church, not least if as a community the Church believes that this is the direction in which the New Testament as a whole points. So I do not think that accuracy and church usage necessarily point in the same direction. Translations that adopt ‘a son of God’ may well be essential for purposes of private or corporate study, where such difficulties must be faced. But a Good Friday service, for example, is surely an altogether different context and issue, where hearing Christ described as merely ‘a son of God’ would definitely jar.[26] Indeed, because the Greek construction allows for both stronger and weaker readings, it is possible that Mark was deliberately playing on such ambiguity, in order to allow both for an appropriate historical context and for where true faith might ultimately lead the reader.

So, similarly then with Philippians. Just as one can easily hear the language of incarnation in the Marcan verse, so there are no difficult contortions that must be resorted to, in order to find here foundations for the more modern kenotic reading, or else for a strong notion of self-abnegation within a two-natures Christology. Of course, either position would need to be carefully justified from elsewhere in revelation, but of that need kenotic writers were, as we shall see, fully aware. In any case, as I have argued at length in other writings, it would be quite wrong to tie use in liturgy or sermon exclusively to how the meaning of individual scriptural passages was first intended or received.[27]

As I indicated at the beginning of this discussion, most Kenoticists were not like A. B. Bruce in placing great reliance on this passage, in order to justify their position. For instance, Oliver Quick saw its main focus, as I do, in ethical injunction, and not in doctrinal exposition.[28] But perhaps the best example of the distinction I have been trying to draw here between original meaning and how the passage may be used doctrinally is afforded by the writings of a Methodist biblical scholar who was also a Kenoticist, Vincent Taylor (d. 1968). Despite himself wishing to advocate such a doctrinal position, he observes of this passage:

In this matter we cannot press upon St Paul the ideas of Giessen or those of Tübingen. St Paul says nothing about the abandonment of the attributes of God. We must distinguish between the kenosis he describes and kenosis as a Christological hypothesis.[29]

Nonetheless, he continues:

The hymn speaks of the majesty of the glory of Christ’s pre- incarnate life, his renunciation of this glory and his full acceptance of a human lot culminating in obedience unto death, and the exaltation which reveals all that is true of him. Who can doubt that in this matchless hymn is the creative material of a living Christology?

So Kenoticism must stand or fall on the best interpretation of the New Testament as a whole, and more especially the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, and not just on one over-argued passage in Paul. What kind of self-understanding in Jesus do the Gospels present, and how can the pressures to speak of both divinity and humanity be best reconciled? Modern Kenoticists faced those questions against the backdrop of the rise of biblical criticism and a new emphasis on human psychology. Such factors were absent in shaping the decisions of the early church councils. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to oppose the two worlds, as though Kenoticism had entirely stepped outside patristic concerns. As with Philippians 2, it is only if too narrow a focus is allowed that conflict and dissimilarity are all that emerge. A closer study of the decisions of Chalcedon in 451 will confirm this view.

Chalcedon and acknowledging two natures in Christ

Some critics of Kenoticism might be prepared to concede what has been said above about Scripture, but still insist that the notion in its modern form remains quite incompatible with orthodox Christianity. For them it clearly flies in the face of the obvious intentions of the early ecumenical councils of the Church, and in particular the Fourth Ecumenical Council’s sharp distinction between the two natures in Christ, divine and human. In its familiar formula:

recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without divisions, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence.[30]

Such a formulation, it will be said, deliberately excludes the possibility of any blurring of the two natures of the kind that was advocated in nineteenth-century Kenoticism, with divinity in one sense or another reducing itself to the human level, at least during the period of the incarnation. Hiding behind that apparently single objection, however, lurks quite a wide variety of different considerations. So it will be worth our while to try to separate them out. Once again, as with Scripture, it is important to distinguish original intentions and continuity under changed circumstances.

Original intentions

The first issue then concerns the intentions of the Council. On its strongest interpretation it could be seen as requiring of all subsequent Christian formulations of the doctrine of the incarnation some variant of what has come to be known as two-natures Christology, a fully human and a fully divine nature united in a single subject or person. By way of justification a story could then be told of progressive exclusion of anything less than such fullness, as in the case of previous councils now the sacrifice of divinity, now that of humanity, and now of the unity of the person, is each decisively rejected in turn, in order to secure what is seen by advocates as a more balanced and more coherent overall account. Thus the First Council of Nicaea in 325 could be read as rejecting Arius because his attempts to secure identification with our humanity had offered a less than full divinity.[31] Apollinarius is then condemned at Constantinople (381) because, although a strong unity in a single person is secured, it is achieved at the cost of a less than full humanity.[32] Finally, Ephesus (431) condemns Nestorius, because, though full divinity and full humanity are alike present in his account, it is achieved through the juxtaposition of two persons rather than their existence in one single entity.[33] So, on this view Chalcedon comes as the appropriate and inevitable culmination of these exclusions in its insistence that all three desiderata had to be realized in any adequate account of the incarnation: full divinity; full humanity; and unity in a single person. Loyalty to Christianity’s doctrinal past would, therefore, seem to require precisely this kind of formulation as its proper starting point.

More detailed consideration of the Fourth Council’s deliberations, however, reveals a more complex reality. The majority of its members seem to have been reluctant to accept any further definition, and it was really the Empress Pulcheria and her consort, the soldier Marcian, who forced the issue, largely on pragmatic grounds that a single formula might stand a better chance of uniting the empire in both West and East.[34] As Henry Chadwick observes, ‘the prospect of yet another definition of faith was looming, and was most unwelcome. The bishops were aware that pagans laughed at the Church for a continual succession of synods creating new creeds’.[35] Indeed, had Dioscurus, the Bishop of Alexandria, kept silent, it is quite possible that the delegates might have accepted the more ambiguous ‘out of two natures’ rather than what was eventually agreed, ‘in two natures’.[36] Even as it was, some in the East still thought the definition was compatible with Monophysitism (a ‘single nature’), while in any case generally in that part of the empire it seems to have been regarded more as a launch pad for further reflection than definitive in itself.[37] So Chadwick’s conclusion is that ‘because of its mosaic character, the definition had something for almost everyone other than Eutyches and the ultra-Cyrillians’.[38] Aloys Grillmeier in his own exhaustive survey of early Christology 40 years earlier had come to a not dissimilar conclusion, adding that in Chalcedon ‘there is no attempt at a philosophical definition or speculative analysis’.[39]

That is why a number of modern writers prefer to speak of the Council as imposing negative constraints for future discussion rather than one specific, positive model for presenting the incarnation. So, for example, one American patristic scholar concludes that ‘what our historical analysis suggests is that the Definition’s terminology can be treated as second-order language . . . two ways of talking about Christ which the Council asserts to be data of Christian tradition . . . logically different . . . mutually supplementary’.[40] A more recent contribution from an English scholar takes a somewhat similar line. She speaks of the definition leaving us at a ‘boundary, understood as the place now to which those salvific acts must be brought to avoid doctrinal error, but without any supposition that this linguistic regulation thereby explains or grasps the reality towards which it points’.[41] The author makes much of the root meaning of the Greek term used here for ‘definition’ (horos) as ‘boundary’ or ‘limit’. [42] My own inclination would be to put much