Thursday, April 18, 2024

Philippians 2:7 on the True Humanity of Christ

  

. . . the emphasis on Christ’s full participation in the human condition—his genuinely entering into a human identity or nature—appears also when we reflect further on the sartorial language. The phrases “taking the form of a slave (μορφην δουλου λαβων)” (v. 7b) and “being found in figure (σχηματι) as a human” (v. 7d) suggest theatrical costume. But in Phil 2:6-11, these phrases denote an act of genuine divine self-transformation, and they slight the self-appointed thespians Caligula and Nero for their attempted (temporary and superficial) assimilations to the gods. These phrases mean on two levels: firstly, they denote a personal act of total divine self-transformation. Secondarily, the connote, thereby, a critique of the faux, staged, divinity of Rome’s emperors (and all those other rulers, following Alexander, who had dressed up as the gods to self-identity with them).

 

The divine self-transformation sense of the language in verse 7 is obviously primary because it is used to describe a whole life, not moments during a human life. Christ took servile form and human figure. He was born and really did hang on a cross. There is no desire to say here (or anywhere else in the early Chrisitan literature corpus) that the man Jesus of Nazareth dressed up to become something other than what he was. (In the gospel tradition he is remembered for his acerbic criticism of some in positions of civic leadership—the “hypocrites”—who only played their parts as an actor would). The real “dressing up” was done by the divine Christ in the very act of his becoming human. (Crispin Fletcher-Louis, The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, and Civic Virtues [Eugene, Oreg.: Pickwick Publications, 2023], 148-49)