Philippians 2.6-11 has generated an immense amount of scholarly literature from journal articles and monographs not to mention blog posts, video lectures, and podcasts. What does the enigmatic phrase "in the form of God" mean? Did Paul intend us to think Jesus refused to grasp at equality with God or that he refused to exploit the equality he already had? What does it mean that Jesus emptied himself? Today we are getting into the weeds in order to understand what Philippians 2 is all about. I don't want to say too much before you get a chance to listen, but I can at least tell you this: Dr. Perriman does not believe it's about a pre-existent being becoming a human. My guest today is Andrew Perriman who has a degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford as well as an MPhil and PhD from the London School of Theology where he currently works as an Associate Research Fellow. He teaches New Testament and works with graduate students on biblical interpretation.
Vollenweider, Samuel (1999). “Der ‘Raub’ der Gottgleichheit: Ein religionsgeschichtlicher Vorschlag zu Phil 2.6(11). New Testament Studies: 413–33;
Fletcher-Louis, Crispin (2020). “The Being That Is in a Manner Equal with God (Phil 2:6c): A Self-Transforming, Incarnational, Divine Ontology.” Journal of Theological Studies.
"Most students of the New Testament today understand Philippians 2:6-11 as a pre-Pauline hymn that was composed for early Christian worship"
https://brill.com/view/journals/bi/11/3/article-p361_10.xml
Paul acted as a "theologos" in writing a brief speech in exalted prose honoring Jesus Christ, whom he had taught the Philippians to honor instead of the emperor.
https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/66/1/90/2386177
PHILIPPIANS 2:6–11 AS SUBVERSIVE HYMNOS:
A STUDY IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT
RHETORICAL THEORY
M ICHAEL WADE M ARTIN
Lubbock Christian University
Michael.Martin@lcu.edu
B RYAN A. N ASH
Lubbock Christian University
if any were to appreciate the strategy employed in Philippians 2:6–11 of taking up and
then subverting standard headings of praise so that the shameful is exalted (see below), it would have been the uneducated, poor, and enslaved....this hymn celebrates Christ, a pre-existent god, for
becoming human.
Christ is praised because he adopted what by every topos would normally be judged a more
shameful station than was rightly his. And he did this, the hymn claims, because of his servant nature—because his mind was characterized by humility. (Paul’s introductory comments further elaborate the virtue as a motive: it counts others better than
oneself [2:3]; it looks to others’ interests rather than one’s own interests [2:4]).
divine form is usually not visible apart from mystical experience. This suggests to us that in a Jewish religious context the [form in greek] – of God refers to a form or shape with essential existence apart from human perception.
an assertion of Christ’s pre-temporal origins in divine form.
Whereas praise of divinized men often begins with attribution of
descent from divinity, this hymn asserts that Christ was himself
divine in his pre-existence (understanding ‘form of God’ in a
Jewish religious context to be an accurate reflection of inward
reality).
This, however, is remarkably not the primary point of praise
made about Christ’s origins. The assertion, rather, belongs to a
concessive participial phrase (‘although he was in the form of
God . . .’) that leads to the primary point, namely that Christ
emptied himself and took the form of [greek for slave]" (‘slave’).
The hymn praises Christ neither for having
high descent nor for overcoming low descent, but rather for
exchanging high for low descent—that is, for traversing the
same spectrum of familial status as the divinized Romulus, but
in the opposite direction. In the move from ‘the form of God’ to
‘the form of a slave’, Christ takes on what in the Greco-Roman world constituted lowest possible origin.
The Christ-hymn, by comparison, praises Christ for being ‘born in the like-
ness of humanity’. This is striking in two regards. First it entails
a reversal of the normal polarities assumed in hymnic praise of
the birth of a deus.
.... we encounter a god who adds to his divine form
fleshly embodiment.
Indeed, the kind of movement celebrated in the hymn—the
fleshly embodiment of the spiritual—was most commonly
viewed in negative terms. In Plato’s Phaedo, the immortal
soul’s descent into the body is framed as an obstacle to rationality.
Christ’s emptying of divine form in exchange for human appearance
would have represented an inversion of the normal order of things
(‘Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility [tapeinoßros0n:] count others more significant than yourselves’). It is the virtue that according to Paul characterizes ‘the mind . . . which is . . . in Christ Jesus’ (2:5; emphasis ours) and also,
as a corollary of Paul’s participationist Christology, the mind of
the church. As Paul puts it, the Philippians should have the
‘same mind’ (2:2); that is, they should ‘have this mind among
[them]selves which is also in Christ Jesus’ (2:5).
In celebrating Christ’s humility as a virtue, the hymn is engaging in the scandalous. Humility was not merely overlooked as a
virtue in Hellenistic society—it was widely considered an obstacle to virtue.
That Christians should view humility as a virtue was therefore quite striking.
Crucifixion was a form of execution reserved for only the lowest class of criminals. The Greeks employed it exclusively with slaves.
Justin Martyr, who felt compelled to address critics who ‘charge us with madness, saying that we give the second place after the unchanging and ever-existing God and begetter of all things to a crucified man’. 79 Justin’s response ‘make[s] it clear that the dishonour involved in the death of Jesus by crucifixion was one of the main objections against his being son of God’. 80 Celsus sounds similar objections, portraying Jesus as ‘bound in the most ignominious fashion [2tim0tata]’ and ‘executed in a most shameful way [a2sc0sta]’. 81 And Christian writers did not disagree. In Heb. 12:2, ‘shame’ and ‘the cross’ are closely linked [3pGreek"; ‘he endured the cross, despising its shame’]. 82
The Christ-hymn praises Christ for undergoing the latter kind of post-humous exaltation, only with understood caveat that the man exalted and deified also pre-existed in the ‘form of God’.
Christ is posthumously exalted on the basis of a life divested of honour and status out of service to others. In the Philippian context, the handling of this topos above all others may well have served as poignant anti-Roman rhetoric aimed at the ruling class.
Parallels to the method are seen in Aelius Aristides’ hymn to Dionysus, where at least two different topoi are amplified by comparison:
the piece displays all the features ancient rhetoricians judged essential to the hymnos genre: it is epideictic in content, it takes as its subject a divine being, it is in contrast to epainos a complete composition, and perhaps most importantly it is shaped beginning to end in both its form and content by epideictic topoi.
https://corpus.ulaval.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/3bc8a610-da4f-4172-82a2-289bbdf590c9/content
The Interpretation of to einai isa theo in Phil 2:6: "Equality with God"?
Thèse Ph.D.
Benjamin Karleen
Going from divine glorious autonomy to shameful servile subjection would have been
particularly repulsive in the larger eastern Roman society. Paul’s paraenetic objective would lie in
encouraging in his readers the counter-cultural type of humility for the sake of unity in their assembly that Christ had exhibited in his own mindset and choices. Reading τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ as describing preincarnate circumstances fits naturally into the
flow of such a trajectory. Though the preincarnate Christ belonged to the divine class and not the
human class, received divine recognition by others, and exercised divine autonomy (on which see
above on ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ), he surprisingly did not consider holding on to living in the remarkable
circumstances in which God lives. That Christ did not retain the circumstances he lived in fits more
naturally and directly in a narrative about social downgrading than the idea that he did not retain
being equal in nature with God. Here we thus take ἴσα θεῷ not as an adjectival phrase
complementing the subject ὃς with εἶναι as linking verb (“being like God”), but rather as an
adverbial phrase modifying εἶναι as a verb of existence (“existing in the way that God exists”).
This latter meaning for εἶναι is well-attested in the lexicons and was a common interpretation of
εἶναι in Phil 2:6 among nineteenth century commentators (see Meyer, Müller, and Vincent in
Chapter 3). We believe that the adjectival translation “being like God,” which we saw was possible
in two later Greek texts in Chapter 6, while not inaccurate for Phil 2:6, does not sufficiently
communicate issues of honor highlighted in the context and for which ἴσα θεῷ was likely chosen
as a collocation.
https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.1080/2222582X.2021.1949367
recast crucifixion as a masculine act of endurance leading ultimately to glory, as in the so-called Christ hymn of Philippians 2. Yet, visualisation of the crucifixion confronted Christians with the problem that Christ might be viewed, literally, as unmanly, non-ideal. This article elaborates angst over shoring up Christ's masculinity by juxtaposing early Christian interpretations of the Christ hymn, in particular its image of Christ in the form of a slave, and the Alexamenos graffito. Christ's enslaved form, marked in the Roman world as crucifiable, was re-presented by writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian as a model of self-control, mastering and purging slavishness. In contrast, the Alexamenos graffito, etched within a context of enslavement, put the crucified Christ on full display, complete with a donkey head and its attendant associations with both slavery and the mockery of philosophical figures. Instead of taking the graffito to represent only the ridicule of Christ, or Christians generally, this essay takes seriously its satirical resonances, making a mockery of masculine ideals in ways that may have suggested solidarity with the enslaved. The article thus underscores early Christian anxiety over Christ's masculinity, potential alternative responses among the enslaved, as well as new possibilities for making sense of the Alexamenos graffito within its context.
Clement views the human body of Christ, which is an enslaved body in
Phil 2:7, not as a failure of normative conventions, but as the very model by which
humans can learn about the potential for a human to become divine.
The Lord himself will speak to you, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself,” the
compassionate God longing to save humanity. And already the Logos itself speaks to
you manifestly, putting disbelief to shame. Yes, I say, the Logos of God became a human
in fact in order that you also might learn from a human how perhaps a human might
become a god. (Protr. 1.8.4)16
Clement:
But that human with whom the Logos dwells does not
embellish himself, nor is he fabricated. He has the form of the Logos, becomes like God,
is beautiful, and does not beautify himself …
If the flesh is a slave, as Paul also testifies, how can anyone reasonably adorn the female
slave as a pimp does? For that the fleshly is the form of a slave the apostle says in the
case of the Lord “that he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” calling the
outward human a slave before the Lord became a slave and bore flesh. But the
sympathetic God himself set the flesh free from corruption and slavery, releasing it from
the death-bringing and cruel, and conferred upon it incorruption, bestowing on the flesh
this holy embellishment of eternity—immortality. (Paed. 3.1.1.4–2.3)
Clement’s sterilised version of Christ’s enslaved form might be compared with
Tertullian’s strong objection to the assertion by Marcion that the form of the slave
(morphēn doulou) for Christ is not the reality (Marc. 5.20.3–5).
Paul cast out a demon spirit of Python in Philippi that was in an enslaved female fortune teller!! (Acts 16:16)....bishop was used a title for the priests at the Apollo temple...
A first century account of church minutes of Philippi have been discovered! Wow. see chapter 7, "meals" in Kloppenberg's "Christ's Associations" p. 209-44.
Paul quotes a well-known hymn!!!
It's a Christ version of the 4th Servant hymn of Isaiah, chapter 45:23 and Isaiah 53:12
chanted in an antiphonal manner!!
Antiphonal chants - Eastern and Christian playlist
the Greek for "opposite voice" and is used in music, especially liturgical music, to describe a call-and-response style of singing, like two halves of a choir singing alternating verses
more book analysis of Philippians
the adverb used "equality with God" is not meant to be "exact" equality as in an adjective but rather since it's in adverb form it's more of a looser "equality" as in "likeness" or "similarity" (p. 15)
Grasping equality is seen as allusion to Adam taking the forbidden fruit...Hurtado rejects this...
In the wisdom literature of the 2nd Temple, incorruptibility was the emphasis.
German scholars consider the Hermetic text of alchemy Poimandres to be similar to Philippians 2:6 to 11!!!
p. 23
"God is thus love self-emptying...the event of the incarnation..."