Monday, October 12, 2020

Dennis Hamm on μορφῇ ("form") in Philippians 2:6

 

 

One recent interpretation takes morphē as an allusion to the “image” of Gen 1:26-27 and reads “emptied himself” as a reference to the earthly life of Jesus. That is, in his incarnation the Son took on the image of God by assuming human nature, but he refused to succumb to the temptation of Adam and Eve, to grasp for equality with God “(You will be like gods,” Gen 3:5). That understanding may resonate with the idea of Jesus as the new Adam, which appears in other letters of Paul (e.g., Rom 5:12-21), but it does not really fit the language of this poem. If the Christ hymn had intended an allusion to Gen 1:26-27, it would have used eikon, the Septuagint’s word for the “image” of God in Gen 1:26-27, not morphē (“form”). Moreover, the tempter in Eden promises Eve that the couple will be “like gods,” not that they will be “equal to God.” (Dennis Hamm, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon [Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2013], 99-100 n. 3)