29. ‘Being in the form of God .
. . [he] made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant
. . . [and] humbled himself . . . unto death, even the death of the cross’
(Phil. 2.6-8). He is the true God who designs to bow down (inclinari);
he is a true man who is able to die. ‘Wherefore God also hath highly exalted
him, and given him a name which is above every name’ (Phil. 2.9) Between him
who gives honour and him who receives it, every name is triple: the lowest
[name is] ‘man’; the middle one ‘angel’; the highest ‘God’. He gave this name ‘which
is above every name’ not to him whom be begat, but to him whom he sent, who ‘became
obedient unto death’ (Phil. 2.8). What is new about believing that he had the
form of a servant, since, as the apostle bears witness (2 Cor. 5.21), he did
not disdain to tolerate the opprobrium of [being a] sin. ‘For he hath made him
to be sin for us, who knew no sin?’ ‘For it is written,’ he said (Gal. 3.13), ‘”cursed
is every one that hangeth on a tree”.’ It was for this reason that he was
raised up on high, so that (Phil. 2.10) ‘at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow’ . . . that is to say not just men, but also angels [should bow the knee]
to him, who, according to the same apostle (2 Cor. 8.9) ‘though he was rich,
yet for your sakes he became poor’. He was rich from all time, poor because he
came from a womb; rich in heaven, poor in his swaddling clothes. (Avitus of
Vienne, Theological Letters to Gundobad, King of the Burgundians, in Avitus
of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose [trans. Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood;
Translated Texts for Historians; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002], 181-82)
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