Commenting on
“the form of God” (μορφῇ θεοῦ) is “the Glory of God,” G.
Walter Hansen notes:
A number of interpreters have defined the
meaning of the form of God by referring
to numerous references in the OT that indicate that the glory of God is the
outward appearance of the presence and majesty of God:
“There was the glory of the LORD appearing in
the cloud” (Exod 16:10).
“The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai”
(Exod 24:16).
“Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory’” (Exod
33:18).
“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting,
and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exod 40:34).
“Moses said, ‘This is what the LORD has
commanded you to do, so that the glory of the LORD may appear to you’” (Lev
9:6).
“And the glory of the LORD appeared to all
the people” (Lev 9:21).
“The priests could not perform their service because
of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple” (1 Kings 8:11).
“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps
24:1).
“’Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the
whole earth is full of his glory’” (Isa 6:3)
“’Arise, shine, for your light has come, and
the glory of the LORD rises upon you’” (Isa 60:1-2).
“Like the appearance of a rainbow in the
clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance
of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezek 1:28).
“I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming
from the east, . . . and the land was radiant with his glory” (Ezek 43:2).
“I looked and saw the glory of the LORD filling
the temple of the Lord” (Ezek 44:4).
The glory of God dramatically overpowers
people by filling the tabernacle, the temple, the land, the whole earth, and
the heavens with radiant, transcendent light.
Paul develops his argument in Romans 1 from
this perspective that the glory of God is the outward appearance of God’s power
and majesty. Paul critiques those who have suppressed the truth: “They . . .
exchanged the glory of the immortal God or images” (Rom 1:23). He baes his
accusation on the premise that “since the creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom
1:20). This revelation of God in creation is the glory of God when he
encountered Christ: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’
made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s
glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).
This evidence that both the OT and NT speak
of the glory of God as the manifestation of God supports the definition of the form of God as the glory of God. The
form of God in which the preincarnate Christ was clothed was the glory of God. (G.
Walter Hansen, The Letters to the
Philippians [The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Nottingham: Apollos,
2009], 136-37)
Interacting
with Gordon Fee’s Pauline Christology,
Hansen writes:
Fee (205) rejects the definition of the form of God as “the glory of God.”
He points to the parallelism of the phrases, the form of God and the form
of a slave, and notes that it is impossible to apply glory to the role of
the slave. But this criticism misses the antithetical nature of the parallelism.
The hymn draws a contrast between the form of God and the form of a slave. The
word form means outward appearance in
both cases. But the form of God is
glory; the form of a slave is
humiliation. (Ibid., 137 n. 130)