Born before all time: The Dispute over Christ’s Origin,
Karl-Josef Kushel.
[Trans.
John Bowden 1992, SCM Press ltd]
II.
The earliest Statement of the Pre-Existence of Christ? Phil. 2.6-11
This
is an astounding text, which cannot be compared with the history of the
tradition which we have come across so far. And because this text is
incomparable, the controversy over its interpretation in the history of
exegesis has also been incomparable[1].
What do we have here? With phrases such as ‘in the form of God’ and ‘equality
with God’, is this possibly ‘the earliest New Testament statement about the
pre-existence of Christ’?[2] Is
there an unparalleled change of perspective in Christology here, with
consequences to match? From the man Jesus, the ‘wanderer without a home’, who
having been enthroned as Messiah will return from heaven as Son of Man, to a
divine being who already in heaven was ‘equal to God’ (isa theou), ‘in the form of God’ (morphe theou), before he came to be ‘in the likeness of men’?
And
all this is in a very early, ‘pre-Pauline’, tradition history of the New
Testament! Indeed, since his pioneering investigations of Philippians in 1928,
Ernst Lohmeyer has been the key witness for a twofold thesis which still enjoys
wide assent. First, the text Phil. 2.6-11
was originally an independent literary unit, or more accurately a hymn, a song
of the community, with several verses, which was evidently sung in worship. And
secondly, given the context, Paul himself cannot have been the author of this
hymn.
Paul
is clearly quoting this text, so it must be older than the letter to
Philippians itself, and that was presumably written in the winter of 54/55[3].
Once
again – what a shift in perspective seems to have taken place here, from the
mere ‘post-existence’ of the crucified and risen Christ with God to a mode of
pre-existence! What an ‘advance’ there has been from an originally two-stage
way of thinking in Christology (life in lowliness – exaltation to divine
dignity) to a three-stage way: being with God – descent and life in lowliness –
ascent and exaltation. What a development! Could we not explain it particularly
in the light of the original notion of the Son of Man? Was it not in fact just
a small step from a Jesus as the Son of Man dwelling in heaven to the notion
that ‘the earthly Jesus had really already been the heavenly Son of Man’?[4] And
so not only Harnack, Barth and Bultmann, but a majority of
present-day-exegetes, right across all camps and confessions, take it from
granted ‘that in the pre-Pauline hymn to Christ the pre-existence of Christ is
presupposed, and there is already reflection on a decision by the pre-existent
Christ’[5] and
even a particular kind of systematic theology is highly interested in this
passage in Philippians. its representatives think that they have already found
here a statement about Jesus’ divine ‘form of being’, divine ‘mode of being’ –
in short, no less than a first ‘approach to the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity’.
I.
Christ – pre-existent like a Gnostic redeemer?
Bultmann’s thesis today
As I
have already reported at length, it was clear to Rudolf Bultmann that this hymn
speaks of the pre-existent of Christ. Why? Because it had been the earliest
testimony of Hellenistic Gentile Christianity, that Gentile Christianity which
became quite distinct from the original Jewish Christianity. Indeed Bultmann
had begun from an unparalleled ‘paradigm shift’ in earliest Christianity: the
‘ethical religion’ of a ‘Jewish sect’ had become a mythical cultic religion of
a Gnostic-syncretistic kind. Jesus, the wisdom teacher and rabbi, the
eschatological preacher of repentance and the prophet, had now been
reinterpreted in categories of Hellenistic myth and cult.
The
question is: was not Bultmann right in this assumption? Was not most of the
Christian community in fact driven out of Jerusalem very soon after the death
of Jesus (Acts 8.1b)? Did
it not have to form again in Hellenistic cities like Antioch or Damascus (Acts 11.19f)? And with this
transition to the Hellenistic sphere was not Christianity compelled to spell
out the proclamation of Christ with quite different, and now thoroughly
Hellenistic, categories, in the cultic context and in the scheme of a
mythological soteriology? With a critical analysis of Phil. 2.6-11 in 1950, Ernst Kasemann markedly supported his teacher
Rudolf Bultmann in this respect. So do we not have to talk of a pre-existence
of Christ in this hymn, because the text seems to breathe the air of
Hellenistic syncretistic Gnosticism? What is to be said about Bultmann’s theory
in the light of present-day research?
We
can make one preliminary comment here. Even those exegetes who still argue for
a Gnostic background to the New Testament, statements about pre-existence have
long since dissociated themselves from Bultmann’s understanding of Gnosticism.
No one any longer shares Bultmann’s conviction, taken over from Hans Jonas,
that the spirit of Gnosticism is identical with the spirit of antiquity
generally; no one any longer accepts Bultmann’s thesis, taken over from Richard
Reitzenstein, that the whole Gnostic world-view goes back to an ancient Eastern
myth of Iranian origin, to a kind of basic mythical model (the Anthropos myth
or the myth of the redeemed redeemer) underlying any notion of a Gnostic
redeemer. In the meantime scholars have taken the critical view that Bultmann
simply abstracted this basic myth, essentially from Manichaean texts; it does
not occur in this form in other Gnostic texts. Moreover, as a work by the
Berlin history-of-religions scholar Carsten Colpe showed as early as 1961, it
seems impossible to demonstrate that this myth is Iranian in origin. So
Hans-Martin Schenke, an expert on Gnosticism, can sum up the present day
criticism of Bultmann as follows: ‘Gnosticism is not age-old, but only a little
older than Christianity; it did not originate in Iran or in Mesopotamia but in
the area of Syria/Palestine; there is no single (primal) Gnostic myth of the
redeemed redeemer, but despite its uniform attitude to existence, world-view
and picture of the world, Gnosticism is from the beginning manifold and
variable in its myth, i.e. in its mythological objectifications’.
But
in the framework of Gnostic interpretation is there an alternative to Bultmann?
We shall see. Given the boundless debate on Gnosis and Gnosticism on the one
hand and Gnosis and the New Testament on the other, I want to concentrate on
one question. For all the criticism of Bultmann, is the Gnostic idea of a
redeemer perhaps still the key to an understanding of pre-existence in the
Philippians hymn? What is the argument for? What is the argument against?
The
argument for
1.
Even now, linguistic parallels to the decisive phrases which possibly express a
Christology of pre-existence (morphe
theou and isa theou) can be
demonstrated only in Gnostic texts: in Poimandres (‘Shepherd of Men’), a
tractate from the Gnostic collection of writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum, and also in the ‘Hymn
of the Pearl’ in the Syriac Acts of Thomas. Granted, all these texts come from
the period between the second and fourth centuries after Christ, but at the same time it is the case ‘that both
Poimandres and the Hymn of the Pearl are free from Christian influence’[6]. So
these texts from non-Christian Gnosticism could possibly point back to the pre-Christian period.
2.
The existence of a pre-Christian Gnosticism cannot be definitely ruled out. The
lack of any pre-Christian Gnostic texts in no way allows the sweeping thesis
that Gnosticism is a phenomenon that came about after the appearance of
Christianity, indeed that early Christianity itself ‘was a catalyst in the rise
of the Gnostic systems’[7].
The existence of Gnostic writings which are untouched by Christianity (for
example, the Corpus Hermeticum, the
whole of the Mandaean writings or various writings from the Nag-Hammadi
Library), and the existence of writings into which it is clear that the
Christian element was only incorporated later, at a secondary stage (e.g. the
Gnostic-Justin’s Book of Baruch and the Hypostasis of the Archons or the Gospel
of the Egyptians from the Nag Hammadi), tell against this.
Positions
which rule out any relationship between the New Testament and Gnosticism
therefore seem incapable of doing justice to the religious situation in the
first century. Moreover, even now some exegetes use categories like ‘reciprocal
influence’ or ‘mutual influence’. Thus the Gnostic expert Klaus Werner Troger,
in a recent volume on Gnosticism and the
Bible (1980), states that very few scholars nowadays still hold the view
that the Gnostic question is irrelevant for the New Testament: ‘Rather, there
is a widespread agreement that already in early Christianity there were
reciprocal influences between Christian and Gnostic ideas. Indeed, in my
opinion, the more that is taken for granted, the more clearly we can see the
complicated interactions between the ideas of earliest Christianity. The
evaluation of the Nag Hammadi texts which has now begun has done a good deal to
provide a concrete description of this multiplicity and to mark out clearly
some “trajectories”. In this respect the sources have already done more than
answer the limited question whether or not the New Testament has Gnostic
elements. The Nag Hammadi writings have above all provided valuable material
for the differentiation of Christological positions and traditions both in the
New Testament period and in the second and third centuries.’
3.
The existent of a pre-existent redeemer figure (the scheme of descent and
ascent) in Gnosticism is not just a product of Christianity, but can already be
recognized before Christianity. In this connection many theologians still keep
wrongly referring to the 1961 book by Carsten Colpe which I have already
mentioned. In so doing they have overlooked the fact, rightly pointed out by
Walter Schmithals, one of the militant apologists for research into Gnosticism
in the New Testament, that Colpe’s work did not ‘primarily discuss the redeemer
myth, but the notion of the primal man/redeemer in the history-of-religions
school and its foundations in Iran’.[8]
Indeed,
in his study, all that Colpe critically destroyed once for all were these
Iranian foundations of the myth of the primal man/redeemer presupposed by the
history-of-religions school. He expressly stated that he would deal with the
relationship between the Gnostic redeemer myth and New Testament Christology in
a third volume, but this has yet to appear. However, already in his 1961 book
Colpe argued against the earlier history-of-religions research ‘that Gnosticism
accepted a redeemer figure only under Christian influence’.[9] Of course, Colpe continued, the powerful
significance of Christ in Gnosticism was obvious. But alongside this it was
clear that in Gnostic texts the redeemer either bore another name or instead of
and alongside Christ there were other redeeming hypostases of self or spirit.
These had ‘not without reason led earlier scholars to assume that they
represented the pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer figure, which had simply been
suppressed by Christ’.[10] So
with his 1961 book Colpe had not prejudiced the question of the influence of a
Gnostic redeemer myth on New Testament Christology, but on the contrary had
presupposed the existence of both pre-Christian Gnosticism and pre-Christian
redeemer myths.[11]
Moreover,
in a symposium with mainly American and German contributors (The New Testament
and Gnosis), which appeared in 1983, Kurt Rudolph, one of the leading experts
on Gnosticism, judiciously observed: ‘In any case, the idea of a descending
Redeemer is strange, Hellenistic one for the original Christian kerygma as well:
it is, I think, connected with the beginnings of Gnostic thinking; it is found
already in Paul’s writings and then, above all, in the Fourth Gospel. Probably
it would still be hard to decide here who gave and who received.'
At
any rate Christology (and soteriology) as attested in the New Testament was
born when Gnostic and Hellenistic ideas were already in the air.’[12] In
other words, if we cannot definitely rule out the existence of either a
pre-Christian Gnosticism or a pre-existent redeemer figure, an interpretation
of the hymn in Philippians in terms of the pattern of Gnostic ideas cannot be
illegitimate. But precisely what might it look like?
4.
The first half of the Philippian hymn can be understood against the background
of the widespread Gnostic theme: the theme of the origin of the world as the
result of the fall of the divine being, usually Sophia. In 1973, in an article
on ‘New Testament Christology and the Gnostic Redeemer’, Hans-Martin Schenke
attempted to give this Gnostic interpretation of vv.6-8. In pre-Christian Gnostic texts the theme had run
essentially like this: Sophia ‘seeks in covetous arrogance to be equal to the
divine primal Father by attempting, like him, to bring forth something from
herself alone; hence her product, primarily the demiurge, who for his part in
turn wants to be God, and then also the world, is just a miscarriage’.[13] And
what about the Philippians hymn? It will have been familiar with this
background, but transformed it – with Jesus as redeemer: ‘The Son of God does
not perpetrate the mistake of his sister, but descends into the world, leaving
behind in heaven the riches of his divine fullness in heaven for the sake of
what is to be redeemed, to make good this mistake. The description of his human
mode of being (“in the likeness of men”; “his life was that of a man”) sounds
very like docetism, as this emerges almost inevitably in the transference of
the Gnostic idea of the redeemer to Jesus.’[14] In
other words, in this hymn, Jesus is just as much a pre-existent divine heavenly
being as the Gnostic redeemer, and remains so in his apparent (docetic) human
form.
Our
question is: Is this the solution to the problem of the history-of-religions
background to the Philippians hymn? Certainly not.
The
argument against
If
we look closely, all these interpretations are in turn based on presuppositions
which are methodologically and hermeneutically questionable.
- Non-Christian texts or texts which only became Christian at a secondary stage are not automatically pre-Christian texts. The alleged Gnostic parallels to the Philippians hymn are back-projections from various non-Christian Gnostic writings and suggest a system which first existed in Gnosticism only in the second century CE. In other words, all Gnostic ‘parallels’ could just as well have come into being independently of Christianity and contemporaneously with it. There need not have been any kind of reciprocal relationship or mutual influence, and as long as the textual basis is questionable, this relationship remains abstract and hypothetical.
- In terms of content, too, we need to be
careful in explaining the Christology of the Philippians hymns by means of
the Gnostic redeemer. As early as 1964 the Protestant exegete Dieter
Georgi mentioned seven points which make dependence seem questionable. In
the Philippians hymn the idea of the primal man (in particularly the
primal fall) plays no part; in the hymn Jesus is human, but the Gnostic
redeemer myth knows no real incarnation, only a taking of human form by
the redeemer. In contrast to the myth, in the hymn there is no active
conflict between the redeemer and the powers hostile to God; moreover
believers, the objects of redemption, who are so important for the myth,
do not appear at all in the hymn. Furthermore, in the myth the ascent of
the redeemer into the heavenly sphere is either his own undertaking or the
work of a further redeemer who completes the incomplete work of the
previous one; the hymn, however, speaks of God’s action on the man Jesus
in the act of exaltation. The myth is about the return of the redeemer
from lowliness to an old state, a restoration to his old dignity; the hymn
is about appointment to a new, higher dignity and the beginning of his
position as ruler of the world, in other words a real enthronement. Finally,
in 2.10f, an
allusion to Isa. 45.23 (‘before
me every kneed will bow’) is an integral part of the hymn. The conclusion
is that the hymn does not say anything about the motivation of the descent
(‘to make good the fault’) nor is there any echo of ‘docetism’. On the
contrary in this hymn Jesus Christ is really human. Moreover, Dieter
Georgi is also certain that neither religious Hellenism in general nor
non-Christian Gnosticism in particular may be regarded as the
traditio-historical setting of this hymn, but the world of Hellenistic
Judaism, in which the Septuagint was a sacred text.
Here
we are at a decisive point. For in understanding a statement which may or may
not be about pre-existence, it is of crucial importance to define the
traditio-historical background. What can be said about that in the light of
contemporary exegesis?
- Both chronological and traditio-historical
reasons tell against deriving the hymn from syncretistic Hellenism. Anyone
who argues for the Gnostic background of the Philippians hymn always
follows Bultmann and others in presupposing that the place where this
christology came into being must have been the pre-Pauline ‘Hellenistic
Gentile Christian community’. But is this right? After extensive studies
of the history and chronology of earliest Christianity, the Protestant New
Testament scholar Martin Hengel has been able to demonstrate convincingly
that the concept of a ‘pre-Pauline Christianity’ must be completely
rethought[15]. Hengel rightly points out that already
in Jerusalem we have to begin from a twofold community structure: on the
one hand an Aramaic-speaking Jewish-Christian community (the ‘Hebrews’),
and on the other a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian community (the
‘Hellenists’). Now it is important that these ‘Hellenists’ were the only
ones who fled to Antioch after the conflict with the Jewish establishment
in Jerusalem (Acts 8.1b; 1.19); they also continued their
missionary work in Judea and Samaria, Phoenicia and Cyprus. The
‘apostles’, i.e. the Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians, had remained
behind in Jerusalem (Acts 8.1b).
So initially (up to the year 48) the community in Antioch may well not
have consisted – as Bultmann assumed – of Gentile Christians who did not
observe the law, and who had completely succumbed to Hellenistic
syncretism.
In
these circumstances, what does ‘pre-Pauline Christianity’ mean? Close
consideration of the chronology of earliest Christian history makes it clear
that the founding of the community in Antioch (or Damascus, where Paul went
first) and the conversion of Paul must have been chronologically very close
together, around the year 35. Is the development of an independent ‘pre-Pauline
Christianity’ conceivable in this time? More precisely, in this short time can
we imagine the full development of a Christian-Hellenistic cultic piety in
Antioch (a Kyrios cult) or a Christ myth (in the sense of the Gnostic redeemer
myth), which Paul is said to have found already existing? That is hardly
likely. The picture drawn by Bultmann, following Busset – with all its
consequences for the Christology of pre-existence – may therefore need to be
corrected.
We
need to reckon with two other facts. First, the formation of the Christological
tradition which Paul found in the Christian communities of Syria in the middle
of the 30s may have been of Jewish-Christian/Hellenistic origin and thus much
more markedly in continuity with ideas from the Old Testament and Judaism, and
the kerygma of the earliest Aramaic-speaking community. Secondly, for Paul from
the end of the 30s onwards (the chronology is not firm because of the differing
information in Acts and Galatians)[16] we must begin from the assumption that he himself
played an active part in shaping the kerygma of the Greek speaking
Jewish-Christian communities in Syria. ‘Strictly speaking, we can only talk of
a “pre-Pauline” community in the strict sense for the two to four years before
his conversion (c.AD 32-34), or at most until the end of the thirties[17]. In
other words, a christology like that of the Philippians hymn which Paul found
already in existence, and which he developed further, is to be understood as
being much more closely within the development of the Jewish-Hellenistic
tradition. On hermeneutical, chronological and traditio-historical grounds, and
on ground of content, a dependence on the pre-existence Christology of Gnostic
syncretism is improbable.
Form
this fact that the Jewish heritage rather than Hellenistic syncretism may be
the key to understanding the Philippians hymn, present-day exegetes have drawn
the radically opposite conclusion that the Philippians hymn does not speak of
the pre-existence of Christ at all. Indeed, an increasing number of present-day
New Testament scholars with good reason question the premises of exegesis
hitherto and cannot see pre-existence, let alone incarnation, in the Philippian
hymn. We must take stock here of the discussion, which has become more complex,
as Phil. 2.6-11 is a key text for
the problem of the pre-existence of Christ in the New Testament. Caution is
appropriate, so that particular theological interests do not get in the way of
an understanding of scripture. So,
2. Jesus – a contrasting figure to Adam?
Already
in the 1960s and 1970s Anglo-Saxon exegetes had paid more attention than
representatives of German exegesis to the basic alternative that in this text
Christ is not celebrated as a pre-existent heavenly being, but in good Jewish
fashion as a human counterpart to Adam[18].
That view cannot be completely false, simply because in other passages in his
correspondence Paul also compares Christ with Adam (Rom. 5.12-21; 1 Cor 15.21f, 45-47). In fact we can ask: is not
Adam, the first, original man, here replaced and surpassed by Jesus as the
definitive, ultimately valid man? In that case we should regard Gen. 1-3, the creation and fall of the
first man, as the traditio-historical background.
Linguistically,
this seems to be supported simply by the fact that one can virtually identify
‘form of God’ (morphe theou) – thus
literally, and better than ‘he was like God’ – with doxa (glory) or eikon
(image) of God[19].
The same holds for the Greek word homoioma
(‘and in the likeness of men’) of v.7,
which, moreover, is occasionally translated ‘in form like a man’. So the first
line of the hymn would speak of Christ, who like Adam was created ‘in the
image’ of God and like Adam participated in the ‘glory’ of God before his fall.
The contrasting term to ‘form of God’ would further confirm this derivation:
‘form of a slave’ is evidently an allusion to Adam’s fate after the fall. The
second contrasting pair at the beginning of the text would point in the same
direction: ‘likeness of God’ probably alludes to Adam’s temptation (he wanted
to be like God, Gen. 3.5) and
‘likeness of men’ in turn to Adam’s state after succumbing to sin.
The
phrase ‘being like God’ (Greek isa theou),
too, may not simply be translated with terms like ‘equality with God’, ‘being
like God’, as often happens. That would require the form isos theos. What we have in the text is the adverb isa, and that merely means ‘as God’,
‘like God’. So there is no statement about Christ being equal to God, and in
this in turn tells against an interpretation in terms of pre-existence.
So
on both traditio-historical and linguistic grounds, according to the Catholic
exegete and Jerusalem Dominican Jerome Murphy-O’Connor there is ‘no
justification for interpreting the phrase of the hymn in terms of being of
Christ’[20].
So
this text would be a piece of Adam Christology, of the kind that also emerges
in other contexts in the New Testament. It would be a further example of the
widespread two-stage christology of the earliest Jewish-Christian communities
(life-death/resurrection-exaltation of Jesus Christ) which we have already
analyzed, and thus would not be in the context of mythical tradition, but of
Old Testament tradition. So there is no
question here of a pre-existent heavenly figure; Rather, Christ is the great
contrasting figure to Adam. To be specific, was it not Adam who wanted to
become even more like God and thus succumbed to hybris and the primal sin? Was
it not Adam who then as punishment had to live a kind of slave’s existence? And
is not the Christ of the hymn precisely the opposite? Did he not give up his
being in the image of God voluntarily? Did he not take on the form of a slave,
not as a punishment, but voluntarily and obediently, so that then he was
appointed by God to his heavenly dignity? That, then, would be a contrast, the
great antithesis in this hymn: Adam the audacious man – Christ the man who
humbled himself; Adam the one who was humbled forcibly by God – Christ the man
who voluntarily humbled himself before God; Adam the rebellious man – Christ
the man who was utterly obedient; Adam the one who was ultimately cursed –
Christ the one who was ultimately exalted; Adam who wanted to be like God – and
in the end became dust; Christ, who was in the dust and indeed went to the
cross – and is in the end the Lord over the cosmos?
Thus
in this hymn Christ seems to be the new Adam who has finally overcome the old
Adam. There is no question of a pre-existence of Christ with the scheme of a
three-stage Christology; pre-existence, humiliation, post-existence. Instead of
this, the author celebrates the whole earthly-human life of Christ as a life of
voluntary self-surrender to lowliness, as obedience which extends to the
existence of a slave and a shameful death. In so doing he makes two things
clear. It is only because of, only through lowliness that Jesus could also
become the pantocrator; and, conversely, the pantocrator bears forever the
features of the humbled man, indeed the crucified slave.
Jerome
Murphy-O’Connor can therefore draw the basic conclusion:
‘Strophe 1: As the Righteous Man par excellence Christ was the perfect image
(eikon) of God. He was totally what
God intended man to be. His sinless condition gave him the right to be treated
as if he were God, that is, to enjoy incorruptibility in which Adam was
created. This right, however, he did not use to his own advantage, but he gave
himself over to the consequences of a mode of existence that was not his by
accepting the condition of a slave which involved suffering and death.
Strophe 2: Though in his human
nature Christ was identical with other men, he in fact differed from them
because, unlike them, he had no need to be reconciled with God. Nonetheless, he
humbled himself in obedience and accepted death.
Strophe 3: Therefore, God
exalted him above all the just who were promised a kingdom, and transferred to
him the title and the authority that had hitherto been God’s alone. He is the Kyrios whom every voice must confess and
to whom every knee must bow.
Thus
understood, the original hymn represents an attempt to define the uniqueness of
Christ considered precisely as man. This is what one would expect at the
beginning of Christian theology.’[21]
However,
there is a question raised about this. Are the contrasting parallels to Adam
really enough to explain the specific features of the Christ in this hymn? If
we compare the wording of Gen. 3,
are the parallels really so clear? Did Adam in fact deliberately want to become
like God? According to Gen. 3.5 he
is more of a sacrifice, someone who is twice misled, by the serpent and by the
woman. So on a close inspection of Gen.
3 there can be no question of saying that Adam wanted to retain his being
in the likeness of God ‘as a thing to be grasped’ and in an attack of hybris
wanted even more – all this in contrast to the humble and obedient Christ.
Furthermore, do not the phrases ‘he emptied himself’ and became ‘like men’
presuppose a state of divine being from which one can logically only empty
oneself to become like men? For what is humbling oneself if not incarnation,
becoming man? And one can talk more meaningfully about becoming man by assuming a pre-existence.
So
does not the very formula [of] ‘humbling himself’ presuppose the pre-existence
of Christ? Where does the statement about humbling himself and emptying himself
come from?
3. Jesus – a suffering servant of God?
The
term denoting ‘self-emptying’ is not attested anywhere else in Greek
literature, so its exact meaning is difficult to define. As early as 1954,
Joachim Jeremias pointed out that the best parallel to the content of this term
is to be found in the Old Testament. The context in the history of tradition
here could have been the fourth Suffering Servant song (Isa. 53). For there it is said of this servant of God that ‘he
poured out his soul to death’ (53.12);
‘Self-emptying’ would accordingly not presuppose pre-existence and not mean
incarnation, but refer to the cross of the suffering man Jesus.[22]
In a
recent, 1987, article another Protestant exegete, Matthias Rissi, has followed
the old master Jeremias. Rissi also concludes that the wording of the
Septuagint text of Isa. 53.12 is
different, but argues that this does not tell against Jeremias’ theory: ‘The
poet of the hymn uses his own words to express the same content as that of the
Old Testament text.’ And the content that he wanted to express was not
pre-existence but the suffering of a just and innocent person. Moreover, Rissi
claims, the only reason why Jeremias’ theory has constantly been questioned is
on the assumption that ‘Phil. 2.6
speaks of the pre-existence and therefore also of the incarnation of Christ’.
But here basically one unproven hypothesis has been used to support another:
because Christ is pre-existent, emptying himself can only mean incarnation; or
vice versa; because emptying himself can only mean incarnation; here Christ
must be pre-existent. But for Rissi himself, the assumption of pre-existence in
this text is ‘very questionable’.[23]
What is the alternative?
The
alternative is that in this hymn a messianically oriented servant Christology
from Isa. 53 has quite decisively
appeared alongside the Adam Christology of the first lines (2.6). This is also confirmed by the
parallel statements about exaltation in Philippians and Isaiah. The servant of
God in Isaiah will also one day be ‘exalted and lifted up’ (Isa. 52.13), just as it is said of the
Christ in this hymn that God has exalted him above all.
Moreover
Phil. 2.10 contains a clear allusion
to Isa. 45.23: ‘To me every knee
shall bow, every tongue shall swear.’ So it is only the post-existent, exalted
Christ to whom here a dignity is attributed which otherwise is reserved only
for God. And in fact allusions to other Old Testament texts seem to point in
the same direction[24].
So
for Rissi it is clear that the author of the Philippians hymn has constructed
his poem exclusively from Old Testament material like Gen. 1.3 and Isa. 53; 45.
The sources are neither wisdom reflections on the righteous sufferer nor
mythological speculations about a pre-existent divine being, but the messialogy
of the book of Isaiah. So vv. 6 and 7 would not be speaking of a
pre-existent heavenly being or of incarnation, but solely of the life of Christ
on earth. Rissi’s conclusion is that ‘the Christ as the true man in God’s
purpose did not let himself be led astray like the first man but remained
sinless; however, he did not do so as an ideal figure but as a real human being.
He fulfills the role of the servant of God in Isa. 53. He is the man Jesus who was exalted because he humbled
himself, and at the end will receive eschatological homage from all. This is
clearly a Jewish-Christian interpretation of the career of Christ on the basis
of an Christological interpretation of the Old Testament.’
This
interpretation in terms of the Old Testament which cannot discover
pre-existence and incarnation in Phil.
2.6-11 has recently been supported by an investigation by Klaus Berger, the
Protestant exegete from Heidelberg, into ‘Hellenistic Genres in the New
Testament’. In his view, underlying both
the Philippians hymn and Heb. 1
there would be the tripartite scheme of the encomium, a genre widespread in
ancient literature and also in Hellenistic Judaism, which would comprise
statements about the nature of a person, his actions and his reward. Here
Sirach 44ff. will have molded structure and semantics. So there would be a
parallel between Christ, who was ‘in the form of God’ (Phil. 2) or a ‘reflection of the glory’ (Heb. 1), and Abraham, whose glory was equal to none (Sr. 44).
Similarly there was also Moses, who was not only beloved and full of ‘glory’,
but whom God also revered ‘like a God’ (Hebrew Sirach 45). The same goes for
Joshua (Sirach 46), Samuel (Sirach 46) and David (Sirach 47). The conclusion is
that ‘from this sequence it follows that Phil.
2.6 is primarily concerned with making statements about high status and by
no means necessarily concerned with pre-existence. I do not think that it can
be proved that this is a statement about incarnation. It may be much more about
the contrast between election and sending by God on the one hand and obedience
on the other.’[25]
The
conclusion to be drawn from this is that one need not borrow extra biblical
notions and texts to understand Philippians
2. The Jewish background is enough for understanding this hymn and indeed
for providing continuity with Aramaic Jewish Christianity in the proclamation
of Christ. So’ humbling himself’, ‘emptying himself’, is not to be understood
as the act of a mythical pre-existent heavenly being, but as a qualification
for the man Jesus. Like the Son of Man and Son of God of the earliest
Aramaic-speaking Jewish-Christian community, he was understood and confessed as
a lowly figure and as God’s plenipotentiary, as an eschatological
representative, as the true human being and definite messenger. Thus Phil. 2.6-11, this early text, would be
in continuity with the Aramaic Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem.
And
yet, do such interpretations really do justice to the phrase ‘in the form of
God’? Furthermore, does this approach really understand the whole breadth and
depth of this hymn? Would Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christianity have dared to
use statements like ‘form of God’ and ‘humbled himself’? Are there not
categories here which have been influenced by Hellenism? And if that is the
case, must we not look for a more strongly colored Hellenistic background
within Judaism?
4. Christ pre-existent like God’s wisdom?
But
what tradition of Hellenistic Judaism is relevant to the Philippians hymn? The
case that exegetes like Edward Schweizer and Dieter Georgi argued in isolation
as early as the 1960s is now commanding broad assent: the tradition of wisdom
theology.
Perplexing
parallels
In
fact, if we assume that underlying this passage is the notion of wisdom as it
is depicted in particular in the Old Testament texts which we have discussed
here, perplexing parallels to the Philippians hymn emerge. Granted, nowhere in
the case of wisdom with God, and Wisdom 9.10 speaks of the sending of his
pre-existent wisdom from God’s throne. According to Sirach 24, wisdom similarly
does not remain in her pre-existence, but comes to human beings in the form of
the Torah. Precisely here, pre-existence, sending or descent from the heavenly
sphere characterizes the picture of wisdom. And is not this precisely the case
in the part of the Philippian hymn? Granted, in this hymn Christ is not
explicitly the one who is ‘sent’. But he, too, does not remain with God any
more than wisdom does; he, too, descends into the human world.
Furthermore,
a wisdom background also seems to be indicated by the fact that in the second
part of the hymn Christ is described in the same way as ‘the righteous’ in the
book of Wisdom (chs. 3;4).They too had to go through persecution and suffering
in order to be translated to heaven. And they too will one day sit in judgment
at the last judgment and rule over the nations. Is this not also precisely the
case with the Christ of the Philippians hymn? Is not death in Phil. 2.8 an end, but a turning point
towards exaltation from lowliness? Indeed, according to Wisdom 10.13-14, does
not wisdom similarly join the righteous in following the way to slavery and the
humiliations of imprisonment? In short, if in this hymn there are already so
many parallels between Christ and God’s wisdom, is not Christ also just as
pre-existent as the wisdom of God?
The
translation of the words en morphe
may be crucial here. In fact this word morphe
can be translated not just as earthly ‘copy’ but also as more-than-earthly
‘form’. But what does ‘form’ mean here? It is hardly – as it is in terminology
elsewhere – something of a person’s own, something belonging to a person. The
text explicitly says ‘in’ the form.
One has a form, but one is not in it.
What does this mean? The range of meaning of this unusual word is particularly
wide, as has been demonstrated in particular by the 1942 article of J. Behm
which all the exegetes always quote. A clear ‘definition’ of the phrase en morphe theou seems to be ruled out. Only one thing is certain: regardless of the
nuance of meaning that one decides for, en
morphe theou cannot just refer to the earthly Jesus, but must imply some
kind of pre-existent mode of Christ with God.[26]
What
the text does neat mean to say
However,
precisely because of the different nuances in meaning, we would do well not to
press the text, whether linguistically, theologically or in terms of the
history of religion. It is striking how succinct the basic theological
statement of the text is, how it builds up theological tensions without
resolving them. Any interpreter has to remain aware that: ‘What needs to be
noted in theological interpretation is that the hymn itself speaks in the unguarded
language of praise, not in the diction of an exact dogmatics which has been
safeguarded on all sides.’[27] So
this hymn knows nothing of questions about two ‘natures’ of Christ.[28] The
phrases ‘emptying himself’ and ‘being in the likeness of men’ are not to be
understood as referring to the assumption of human nature by an abidingly
divine person, nor is the text interested in clarifying the following problems.
Is the equality with God given up along with the self-emptying? Is the ‘being
equal to God’ at all affected by being equal to human beings, or is it
completely unaffected? Is there any assertion of a before or after (formerly
God, now man), or is it a state of contemporaneity affirmed (he is in the
likeness of both God and human beings)? Catholic exegetes like Rudolf
Schnackenburg make subtle but important distinctions here: ‘the form of God’ is
not a statement about how Christ is; it says nothing about his ‘divine being’.
It is not about the divine nature of the pre-existent Christ but about a divine
mode of being, namely that of doxa.
The
projection back onto the text of problems which have arisen in the history of
dogma puts so much pressure on it that it becomes unrecognizable. Such problems
include: ‘If Christ is only in the constitution or mode of being of God instead
of in his essential form, in the context of Trinitarian theology this can
easily and quite consistently be understood modalistacally and christologically
in terms of the “habitus theory which
corresponds to Nestorian thought”. And that would be a serious error.’[29] All
such talk overlooks the Jewish-Christian context of the hymn, its character as
a hymn and the inner dynamic of its thought. Joachim Gnilka’s warning needs to
be taken seriously. True, he translates morphe
in too forced a way as ‘that order of existence which shapes being in terms of
its essence’, but at the same time he adds: ‘However, in order to exclude
understanding, one must make it quite clear to those with dogmatic interests
that there is no speculation about the natures of Christ here.
Here
we have the first beginnings of a reflection on the pre-existent being of
Christ, but it is orientated far more on the saving event deriving from the
pre-existent Christ than on Christ himself.’[30] And
even a historian of dogma like Alois Grillmeier leaves no doubt that:
‘Certainly no such “definition” of the “nature” of the pre-existent Christ is
intended in the statement en morphe theou
hyparchon. The concern is simply to stress the divine might and glory which
the one like God possessed and voluntarily gave away. So what we have in v.6 is a concept of “being like God”
shaped by Old Testament thought.’[31]
So
this text is not to be appropriated for dogmatic interests. Moreover, numerous
further questions of detail remain unanswered: the self-emptying of Christ is
clearly depicted as a deliberate decision. But when did it take place? While
Christ was still in his divine mode of being, or only when he was in his
earthly mode of being? Does the self-emptying mean only a surrender of the divine
‘prerogatives and manifestations’ or even a ‘surrender of the divine essence’,
a ‘surrender of the divine self’? We learn nothing about this. Nor do we learn
anything about the reason for the humiliation, e.g. whether it had a
soteriological purpose: the only reason given in the text raises more questions
than it answers: ‘Therefore God
exalted him.’ A momentous ‘therefore’! Did the price of the exaltation have to
be the shameful death on the cross? What kind of a God can he be who requires
this price, only later to recompense the one who has been thus humbled? What
kind of a God can he be who did not prevent this slave from having to go
through all this, even to the cross? And finally, why this whole history at
all, a history which begins in the divine mode of being and leads back to it in
a heightened form? Question upon question, which the text evidently leaves to
its readers to cope with. Why? Because this text is not a theological treatise
but a poem, a great piece of poetry.
We
have noted the arguments for and against an interpretation of the Philippians
hymn in terms of pre-existence. Which are the most convincing? Three arguments
seem to me to be largely capable of commanding a consensus today:
- The spiritual background of the Philippian
hymn is neither Aramaic-speaking Jewish-Christianity nor a non-Jewish
syncretistic Gnosticism but the tradition of Hellenistic Jewish
Christianity.
- A variety of Jewish traditions have found
their way into the text. Their specific feature is a combination of
motives. But regardless of the degree to which traditions of an Adam
Christology and a servant of God Christology may have played their part,
the text owes an important dimension of its chronology to the wisdom
tradition.
- With the wisdom theology, for the first time a notion of pre-existence comes into view. It is here that the decisive difference from Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christianity may lie – and also in the Christological reception of wisdom theology (in the Sayings Source). The phrase morphe theou seems to necessitate the acceptance of a pre-existent mode of existence of Jesus Christ with God before his ‘humbling himself’. But how is this mode of being to be interpreted? What is the function of the statement about personal pre-existence that is made here? I shall now, finally, attempt my own interpretation of the Philippians hymn.
5. A hymn to the crucified and exalted Christ
My
presupposition is that we do justice to this text only if we do not read it
with eyes either of those with a dogmatic concern or those opposed to dogma,
but simply note its linguistic subtleties, its inner dynamic and its poetic
form. If we do this, the basic principle for understanding the text is that the
Philippians hymn indeed contains a statement about the pre-existence of Christ,
but this does not have any independent significance. So no interest in a
distinctive Christology of pre-existence can be recognized. How is this view to
be justified? A look at the poetic form and the narrative perspective will make
this comment plausible. Then the theological conclusions can be drawn.
A
great piece of poetry
First
of all, linguistic subtleties in the text itself tell against seeing it as an
independent statement about pre-existence. That is true above all of v.6, which is decisive for a
Christology of pre-existence. The RSV’s ‘though he was in the form of God, he
did not count equality…’ similar to many renderings of this passage, is an
unhappy and misleading translation. Why? Because it reads into the text an
inappropriate contrast between once and now, then and today, prior time and
present time; it needs to be noted that the original text runs en morphe theou hyparchon, with a
present particle; i.e. it does not define any particular time. Literally
translated, this decisive passage must run: ‘he, being in the “form” of God, did not count equality…’ What is the
difference?
The
difference is decisive for our consideration of whether this is a statement
about pre-existence. For if we translate literally, we have neither an abstract
definition of essence nor a determinative definition of a prior time here. On
the contrary, from the beginning the text displays a dynamic movement. The
hearer is caught up into a dynamic movement which is the dynamic of the process
of humbling itself.
Furthermore,
secondly, far too little attention is paid to the fact that the verb hyparchon contains within it the word arche, origin. If we translate this
literally as well, we could say, ‘He who has in origin in God’s “world”.’ So
the disputed en morphe is not a
statement about essence but a statement about origin. The Protestant exegete
Hermann Binder has recently brought this out again (with a reference to Ernst
Kasemann) and rightly concluded: ‘Somehow (!) there is thus a hint of the
notion of pre-existence which was native to early Hellenistic Christianity, so
that in Phil. 2.6 there would be the
first result of independent reflection within the church on the claim of the
historical Jesus to be the Son of God.’[32] In other words, morphe theou is certainly a statement about pre-existence, possibly
even the earliest in the New Testament, but it has no independent significance
in the text as a whole.
Thirdly,
the text is a piece of great poetry. It is a song, a hymn, which may have had
its real place in the liturgy of the community, whether at baptisms (Kasemann)
or in the celebration of the Eucharist (Lohmeyer). And as is well known, good
poetry has laws of its own, a reason of its own.[33]
In
its image poetry can express that for which there are as yet no concepts; it
can boldly and metaphorically open up frontier realms of language which
conceptual language is concerned to take in only at a later stage; it can draw
outlines and leave details aside. So, ‘It is understandable that bold
Christological sketches of this kind were not at first presented in the form of
speculative prose, but in hymns inspired by the Spirit’ – thus, rightly, Martin
Hengel.[34]
But
why is the text good literature? It is good because it builds up contrasting
tensions of high drama to interpret the Jesus event and produce an incomparable
paradoxical density in the smallest of spaces: in the world (‘form’) of God –
in the world (‘form’) of human beings; like God – like a slave; hold on to
compulsively (‘a thing to be grasped’) – empty voluntarily; humiliation –
exaltation; slave – kingly rule; death – enthronement; cross – cosmocrator.
This deliberate literary contrast and tension in turn allows us to conclude
that this hymn is not just about the earthly Jesus, the new Adam or the
suffering servant of God, but about a Jesus who before his humbling himself to
be in human form was ‘in the world of God’. Only in this way are the
contrasting dynamic and the drift of the text there from the start: origin from
God and yet a life, like that of human beings. However, it is important that
the text deliberately builds up all these tensions and dispenses with any
conceptual, philosophical or theological bridges. It is a hymnic sketch, a
poetical spirit of the end-time, a product of the earliest post-Easter enthusiasm.
This
literary and aesthetic definition has consequences for present-day theological
interpretation. For the poetic language of the text is not provisional
theological language, nor a lower form of theological reflection. It has not
arisen from the naïve feelings of an enthusiastic poet which must now be
brought down to the solid ground of theological sobriety by means of
philosophical and conceptual reflection. Legitimate though conceptual
theological and philosophical reflection may be, it must be relative to this
poem, and not vice versa. In other words, the theological reflection must be
done in such a way that the poetic tension in the structure of the hymn, its
openness and nuances, are expressed and not concealed by pre-shaped conceptual
theological language. The fragile images and subtle nuances of meaning must not
be dissolved into what is claimed to be conceptually simple ‘thus and not
otherwise’, and be cemented in with formulae. On the contrary, all the formulae
must continually be open to these images.
And
so the statement about the ‘form of God’, too, is to be regarded as ‘a
form-critical element of style in the Christ-hymn, not as a general theme of
speculation’.[35]
The
all-important perspective
What
is crucial in defining the theological focus of the text is the question of
‘narrative perspective’. From what perspective does the hymn speak about its
hero? What experiences underlie it? There can be no doubt that at the heart of
this hymn lies the experience of the crucified Jesus Christ, who has been
exalted and thus is present through God’s Spirit as Kyrios. So it is clear that
the one perspective from which this text speaks is that of post-temporality.
The author looks back as it were from the experience of the risen and exalted
Lord who is at work in the present to the earthly life of Jesus in humility and
his former being with God. In other words, as for the Aramaic-speaking Jewish
Christians, so too for this early Greek-speaking Jewish Christianity, humbling
and exaltation are the focal point for this confession of Christ. The focal
point, then, is not a Jesus who is divinely ‘before time’ and his allegedly
divine being which goes with this, but his humbling which leads to the cross
and his exaltation to be Kyrios and Lord of the worlds. So according to this
hymn, Jesus Christ is not primarily a divine figure of the heavenly world of
light, a pre-existing divine being who left the world, took the form of a
servant, and then ascended into heaven again (thus Bultmann), but its primarily
the crucified and exalted man who came from God.
Thus
this statement about the ‘divine form’ of Jesus must to some degree be
interpreted ‘after the event’, in the light of his humbling himself and his
exaltation; it does not stand at the beginning of Christological reflection but
at the end of a process of interpretation in the light of the exalted Christ.
In
other words, statements about Jesus being ‘in the form of God’ are ‘to be
understood as an extension of statements about the passion and exaltation’[36], and
have their significance in the qualification of the lowliness of Jesus as the
mode of God’s revelation. What is said about the ‘form of God’ to some degree
denotes the ‘depth dimension’ in which the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus must be seen.[37]
This
narrative perspective brings out the distinctive Christological temporal
structure of this hymn – an eschatological interweaving of time which from now
on we shall meet more frequently in the New Testament. Only from a later
period, that of the experience of the exalted Christ brought about by the
Spirit is reference made to a twofold prior existence of Christ: his earthly
life and his life before that with God. This prior existence is thus a function
of the later period and is qualified by it. So it would be a great
misunderstanding to think that this hymn displayed as it were a linear
time-structure with three equal ‘ways’ or ‘stages’ pre-existence – existence –
post-existence; as though anyone could observe a drama of salvation history as
an onlooker and reflect in tranquility, from a detached standpoint, on the
beginning, middle and end of the divine activity. This would be to devalue the
distinctive and paradoxical interweaving of times so that it became a ‘belief’
in three ‘saving facts’ which take place one after the other. These are not the
theological conclusions to be drawn. But what conclusions are?
We
have understood the breadth and depth of this hymn only when we stop being
spectators and stand within the sphere of experiencing the exalted Christ
ourselves, when we feel quite personally the power and presence of the exalted
Christ brought about by the Spirit. Only this experience allows us to say
anything about the depth of the history of this Jesus of Nazareth, which
evidently was not just the depth of his humbling himself but also the depth of
his divine origin. So we cannot achieve an adequate relationship to such a hymn
by reflecting on it as onlookers; we too have to be seized by the Spirit. Even
the scholarly historical reconstruction of the form and content of this hymn
that I am attempting has its limitations here. We translate a hymn into
scholarly prose; reflect ‘on’ it again in so doing stand right outside it.
Scholarly prose can at best open up access, prevent misunderstanding and create
presuppositions with which even the 20th century reader can breathe
the spirit of this text without the fragrance of fashion or a stifling
atmosphere.
So
the decisive point is that the author of this hymn and the community which
sings it are under the inspiration of the Spirit of the exalted Christ.
It
is not reflection and speculation, but our own deep experience brought about by
the Spirit which makes it possible to relate properly to this hymn. In earliest
Christianity, from the start hymns and the experience of the Spirit could not
be separated. According to Martin Hengel, ‘the first community in Jerusalem was
stamped in a very elemental way by the primal event, the appearance of the
risen Christ and the eschatological experience of the Spirit. Therefore the
worship of the early community logically emerged as the work of the Spirit, who
inspired the Christian prophets to admonitions, “revelations”, visions, but
also glossolalia [speaking in tongues].’[38]
There is no doubt that in the Philippians hymn we do not have visions in the
style of apocalyptic, ebullient hymnody in the style of the wisdom literature,
or glossolalia, but an experience of the depth of the Christ-event brought
about by the Spirit.
No
Christology of pre-existence
What
does all this mean for the question of the pre-existence of Christ? To sum up,
we can now say that if we take note of the linguistic subtleties, the dynamic
of inner movement and the poetic form of the text, this hymn does not contain what numerous interpreters
seek and find in it: an independent statement about pre-existence or even a
christology of pre-existence. The text does not provide what Rudolf
Schnackenburg once called the ‘description of pre-existence’[39];
quite the contrary. Moreover, other Catholic (and also Protestant) exegetes are
significantly more restrained here. Thus Joachim Gnilka was quite right when in
his 1968 commentary he saw the difference, say, from Johannine Christology in
precisely this question: ‘So this temporal element is alien to the Philippians
hymn. There is no stress on what is before time, as is the case, say, in the
prologue to the Gospel of John.’[40] In
1977 the Freiburg exegete Anton Vogtle also came to a similarly somber
conclusion: ‘No pre-existence of Christ before the world with an independent
significance can be recognized even in Phil.
2. There is just as little interest in the substance and nature of the
pre-existent Christ, beyond the mention of his equality.’[41] And
in 1988 the Protestant exegete Nikolaus Walter could still stress in his
exegesis of the Philippians hymn:
‘So
here pre-existence does not already have independent, saving significance in
itself…The saving significance of Christ is not grounded in his pre-existence
but in the way that he takes, which necessarily includes a consistent humbling
of himself. God then responds to this with the exaltation at Easter’.[42]
In
other words, with this hymn the early Greek-speaking Jewish Christianity which
came from Jerusalem ventured for the first time to express the notion of a pre-earthly
mode of Jesus’ existence, but was so little interested in its form that it made
this existence a mere function of the process of humbling and exaltation.
Christ’s being with God is mentioned basically as a prelude to this hymn, but
there is no dwelling on it in meditation or reflection, mythically, poetically
or in a visionary way. On the contrary, it is mentioned ‘only as an incidental
thought’,[43] and
immediately taken up into the great dynamic of the history of Christ’s humbling
himself which ends in a history of exaltation. Moreover the first lines may
have a completely ‘concessive sense’, as Gerhard Schneider rightly conjectures,
and in this way already introduce the dynamic movement: ‘Though being in the
form of God…’[44] It
follows from all this that in a hymn like that of Philippians neither the form
nor the historical context nor the basic theological statements indicate a
christology of pre-existence which reflects or even speculates on the being or
nature of Christ. The statement about personal pre-existence is a mere function
of the statement about humbling and exaltation: the background, or better the
depth-dimension, of the event of humbling and exaltation the subject and object
of which is the crucified Jesus of Nazareth.
So
the findings are sobering and call for theological caution. I ask a last time:
if this is the case – if this hymn is somewhat restrained in what it says about
pre-existence, if the humbling and exaltation of Jesus are the focal point, if
in this interpretation of Jesus we have a combination of primal Jewish motives
(Adam, servant of God, wisdom, righteous sufferer) – can we not, indeed must we
not, ask whether the christology of the early Greek-speaking Jewish
Christianity is so far removed from that of Aramaic-speaking Jewish
Christianity? Here we take up an important insight of those who a priori could not see any statement
about pre-existence in this hymn and could see only Old Testament motives at
work. Our question is: is the Philippians hymn really the document of a radical
paradigm-shift, a leap into another culture and thus another religion, as
Bultmann and the exegetes who followed him still assumed? Can there be such a
radical shift of perspective if the only argument cited for it, the statement
about pre-existence, has to be interpreted completely within Judaism? Can there
be such a change if even the Christology of, say, the Sayings Source still has
the features of Jewish wisdom?
A
Jewish hymn – continuity with the earliest communities
With
some justification, the Protestant exegete Eduard Schweizer has therefore
recently raised the question whether the Christologies of Phil. 2.6-11 and the Sayings Source, which
have been shaped by wisdom, ought not to be seen more closely together than has
previously been the case.[45]
Certainly, according to Schweizer, in Phil.
2.6-8 the descent of the pre-existent Christ is the decisive statement and
the lowliness of the one who has become man is to be understood, only in
paradoxical unity with the one who is like God. Q knows nothing of this. But on
the other hand, can one deny that in Q, as in the hymn, cross and resurrection
do not have a central theological place (the emphasis on the cross in the hymn
is a Pauline addition) but are a function of the statements about lowliness and
exaltation? Can one deny that in both cases there has been an identification of
the earthly Son of Man with the coming judge? Can one deny, therefore, that
both traditions have no real christological concern with the overcoming of
death, but are concerned with the beginning of the Lordship of the exalted
Christ?
In
addition Schweizer is concerned to stress that for all the differences (Q knows
no pre-existence), there are similarities in Christological structure here. For
is not the striking thing about the hymn that it asserts two things at the same
time: that the one who lived in ‘the form of a slave’ had previously been in
‘the form of God’? And is not the structure similar in the Sayings Source? To
quote Shcweizer: ‘the charge that Jesus is a glutton and winebibber becomes
important (in Q) solely because in deed and truth he is the messenger of God’s
wisdom: in his person wisdom is insulted.
Similarly,
the homelessness of Jesus is that of the Son of Man, and his death in Jesus is
qualified only by being understood as the conclusion to a long series of
murders of prophets…The anchoring of the proclamation of God in the fact that
the earthly Jesus is in the being of God, in the figure of Wisdom which dwells
from eternity with God which now speaks in the man Jesus and his words, may
well thus have been developed further by the structure of Phil. 2.6-8.’[46]
If
Schweizer’s theory is right, two conclusions need to be drawn: one in terms of
the history of tradition, the other theological. In terms of the history of
tradition the Philippians hymn is a hymn on the frontier between Judaism and
Hellenism. For the first time – in contrast to the Christology of
Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christianity – it attempts to make a statement about
Jesus’ mode of being with God before his humbling himself, but with its focus
on humbling and exaltation it is to be interpreted in complete continuity with
the proclamation of the Palestinian Jewish-Christian community. This
traditio-historical community is matched by a theological continuity. And this
theological provocation is no less clear than that of the Aramaic-speaking
Jewish Christians.
For
can we overlook the fact that whole this hymn can be explained in terms of its
Jewish-Hellenistic presuppositions, yet – precisely because of its paradoxes –
it is also full of provocations for this environment? Can we overlook the fact
that despite the way in which it has been pre-shaped by the history of
tradition, at its heart it breaks through all that could also be said in terms
of wisdom theology? The crucified slave Jesus, in the likeness of God, is here
proclaimed the Lord of the worlds. Would wisdom theology have dared to say
that? Hardly; Wisdom certainly goes into captivity and misery with the
righteous (Wisdom 10.14), but nowhere does it identify itself with one of the
righteous. By contrast the Philippians hymn ventures to think the unthinkable
and to proclaim that God’s wisdom is identical with the crucified Jesus of
Nazareth.
The
political origin of the statement about pre-existence
To
proclaim the crucified Christ as ruler of the world is at the same time to put
old powers, rules and authorities radically in question; it means propagating a
new form of rule in the name of Christ. So we cannot estimate too highly the
element of political dynamite in such a Christology, and here too there may
have been some continuity with the Christology of the earliest community and of
the Sayings Source.
For
the challenge to the Jewish establishment was evidently that as a result of the
recourse to wisdom theology,[47] now
– according to Martin Hengel – ‘Christ had taken the place of the Torah/Hokhmah
understood in ontological terms…It is impossible for us nowadays to evaluate
the boldness of the break with the ritual regulations of the Torah in the
Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian communities.’[48]
Indeed,
the sociological attribution of the statement about pre-existence to
Greek-speaking Jewish Christians, as those among whom it was handed down, and
its traditio-historical attribution to the wisdom Christology familiar to these
Jewish Christians, has considerable significance for any analysis of the
concrete function of the statement about pre-existence. Hitherto exegetes have
described the emergence of the confession of the pre-existent Christ only very
vaguely and with intellectual categories like a ‘consequence of consistent
theological thought’,[49] or
the ‘inner necessity’[50] of
Christological reflection. Rudolf Schnackenburg stands for a widespread
conviction when he states: ‘Wisdom and pre-existent christology cannot be
derived either from wisdom logia of Jesus or from direct reflections on the
risen and exalted Lord, but probably rest on earlier post-Easter reflection on
the eschatological mission of Jesus.’[51]
All
this sounds as though in the early Christian communities people primarily
‘reflected’; as though statements about pre-existence were above all products
of intellectual effort. Against this, Helmut Merklein has suggested another
approach which allows us to give the statements about pre-existence a firm
foundation in a specific political and social situation. He concludes that the
specific occasion for the formation of the confession of pre-existence of
Christ was not very vaguely and generally ‘the Easter experience’, but quite
specifically Jesus’ criticism of Temple and Torah, the conflict of the Nazarene
with the Jewish establishment. As we heard, this establishment had its own idea
of who was pre-existent: the wisdom of God embodied in the Torah, which had
‘settled’ in the Temple at Jerusalem. Temple and Torah were the decisive divine
authorities with which Jesus himself had already come into conflict. And the
political powers behind Temple and Torah had been responsible for Jesus’ death.
These were powers with which the Greek-speaking Jewish Christians of Jerusalem
may also increasingly have come into conflict. Indeed, if we can trust the
account in Acts, it was criticism of the Temple and Torah which drove the
‘Hellenists’ out of Jerusalem (Acts
6.11, 13, 14).
So
it is easy to understand that it will have become increasingly clear to these
Jewish Christians that in the long term they were faced with two irreconcilable
claims to absoluteness, and a decision had to be made between them. Merklein
may have reconstructed this conflict precisely. ‘If Jesus’ death embodied
eschatological salvation, the existing Temple was no longer the place of
election and presence of God, and the Torah of Moses was no longer the
revelation of God for human salvation, but Jesus himself – in a paradoxical way
precisely in the lowliness of his death. The confession of the saving death of
Jesus inevitably led to a crisis among the Hellenistic Jews of Jerusalem for
whom wisdom was a focal point, whether by taking over the confession and thus
critically relativizing the Temple and Torah, or by declaring war on this
confession and those who made it. Both things happened among the Hellenistic
Jews of Jerusalem.’[52]
This thesis in fact makes it possible to remove the origin of the statement of
Christological pre-existence from the merely intellectual sphere.
Behind
these statements there is political dynamite; there is the experience that
Jesus of Nazareth had had to go to the cross for religious and political
reasons and that those who dared to put the crucified Jesus at God’s side had
to expect persecution. So the question of pre-existence cannot be detached from
the politically relevant problem of the Law.
And
yet here we should beware of exclusive positions. Certainly, with Merklein we
can describe the Christological statements about pre-existence ‘as a
transformation of the wisdom speculation of the Hellenistic Judaism of
Jerusalem on the basis of the confession of the saving significance of the
death of Jesus’,[53] if
at the same time we see that the ‘saving significance of the death of Jesus’ is
credible only in the light of the experience of the resurrection. The Easter
experience indispensably became the qualification of the death of Jesus as
God’s mode of revelation. And to the degree that the Easter experience is
indispensable, it is also the primal ground for the statement about
pre-existence. So cross and resurrection belong indissolubly together as the
‘preliminary sign’ of the statement about pre-existence.
Footnotes
[1] For
the history of research see R. M. Martin, Carmen Christi. Phil. 2.5-11 in
Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, Cambridge
1967, 21983; W. Schenck, ‘Der Philipperbrief in der neueren
Forschung [The Philippian letter in
newer Research] (1945-1985)’, ANRW XXV.4, ed. W. Haase, Berlin and
New York 1987, 3280-313.
[2] J.
Gnilka, Philipper-Kommentar [Philippians Commentary], 146f.
[3] Cf. E.
Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus. Eine Utersuchung zu Phil 2.5-11 (1927/28), Darmstadt
1961; id., Die Brief an die Philipper, Kolosser und an Philemon [The letter to
Philippians, Colossians and Philemon] Gottingen 1930.
[5] "…Exegetes from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds,
who otherwise tend to diverge, agree over the question of pre-existence…"
[6] Cf. Gnilka, Philipper-Kommentar, 144-7.
[7] Hengel,
Son of God, 34.
[10] ibid.
[11] Cf.
similarly C. Colpe, ‘New Testament and Gnostic Christology’, Studies in the History of Religion 14,
1968, 227-49.
[12] K.
Rudolph, ‘“Gnosis” and “Gnosticism” – the Problems of their Definition and the
Relation to the Writings of the New Testament’, in New Testament and Gnosis, 21-37; 30.
[13] Schenke,
Die neuterstamentliche Christologie, 219.
[14] A short
time later Schenke modified his position and suggested that we must understand
‘the whole structure of the Philippians hymn in terms of wisdom’. But as here,
too, Schenke refers to Gnostic texts from the second and third centuries after Christ, these reflections too can
only count as speculation: H.M.Schenke, ‘Die Tendenz der Weisheit zur Gnosis’
[The Tendency of Wisdom in Gnosis], in Gnosis.
FS H.Jonas, ed. B.Aland, Gottingen 1978, 351-72.
[15] M. Hengel, ‘Between Jesus and Paul. The “Hellenists”, the
“Seven and Stephen”, in Between Jesus and
Paul, London and Philadelphia 1983, 1-29; id., ‘Christology and New
Testament Chronology’. A Problem in the History of Earliest Christianity’, in
ibid., 30-47; id., Acts and the History
of Earliest Christianity, London and Philadelphia 1979.
[16] For the problem of the chronology of Paul see R. Jewett, Dating Paul’s Life, Philadelphia and
London 1979.
[17] Hengel,
Acts and the History of Earliest
Christianity, 91; cf. similarly ‘Christology and New Testament Chronology’,
40-3.
[18] This
position is represented by J. Harvey, ‘A New Look at the Christ Hymn in Phil.
2.6-11’, Expository Times 76,
1964/65, 337-9; C. H. Talbert, ‘The Problem of Pre-existence in Phil. 2.6-11’,
Journal of Biblical Literature 86, 1967, 141-53; J. M. Furness, ‘Behind the
Philippian Hymn’, Expository Times 79,
1967/68, 178-82; Dunn, Christology in the
Making, 114-21; R. Brown, The
Community of the Beloved Disciple. The
Life, Loves and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times, New
York 1979, 45f. Among the German exegetes is H. – W. Bartsch…Frankfurt am Main
1974. More recently in Catholic American theology, T. N. Hart, To Know and
Follow Jesus, New York 1984, 93-100; L. Swidler, Yeshua. A Model for Moderns,
Kansas City 1988, 23-6.
[19] Cf. F.
– W. Eltester, Eikon in Neuen Testament,
Berlin 1958, who draws the parallel to 2 Cor 4.4 (133). Cf. similarly J. Behm,
‘morphe’, TDNTIV, Grand Rapids 1967,
742-52, esp. 751: ‘The morphe theou
in which the pre-existent Christ was simply the divine doxa: Paul’s en morphe theou
hyparchon corresponds exactly to John 17.5’
[20] J.
Murphy-O’Connor OP, ‘Christological Anthropology in Phil. 2.6-11’, Revue Biblique [Bible Revue] 93, 1976, 25-50:39.
[21] ibid., 49f. Against the theses of Murphy-O’Connor: G.
Howard, ‘Phil. 2.6-11 and the Human Christ’, CBQ 40, 1978, 356-76; I. H. Marshall, ‘International Christology in
the NT’, in Christ the Lord. Studies in
Christology presented to D. Guthrie, ed. H. H. Rowdon, Leicester 1982,
1-16; L. D. Hurst, ‘Re-enter the Pre-existent Christ in Phil. 2.5-11’, NTS 32, 1986, 449-57; C. A. Wanamaker,
‘Phil. 2.6-11: Son of God or Adamic Christology?’, NTS 33, 1987, 179-93.
[22] J.
Jeremias, ‘pais theou’, TDNT V, Grand Rapids 1967, 700-17; id.,
‘Zu Phil 2.7: heauton ekenosen’, Novum Testamentum [New Testament] 6,
1963, 182-88.
[23] All quotes: M. Rissi, ‘Der Christushymnus [The Christ
hymns] in Phil. 2.5-11’, ANRW XXV.4, ed. W. Haase, Berlin and New
York 1987, 3314-26.
[24] On this
see esp. Hofius, Der Christushymnus (n.5), who sees the hymn as
being completely constructed from Old Testament themes.
[25] K. Berger, ‘Hellenistische Gattungen in Neuen Testament’
[Hellenistic types in the New Testament], ANRW
XXV.2, ed. W. Hasse, 1031-1432, esp. 1179-84.
[26] There
is a great controversy among exegetes as to precisely how ‘form of God’ is to
be defined. Arguments and counter-arguments balance each other out. Anyone who
decides, say, for ‘appearance’ (thus O. Knoch…) runs the risk of reading into
the text a contrast between changing ‘external appearance’ and a permanent
‘inner being’. But there can be no question here of any kind of role-play on
the part of Christ (thus, above all, Bornkamm, ‘Understanding’, 115). Anyone
arguing that this is a statement about Jesus ‘can be misunderstood in
physical-real terms, as though the person of “Jesus Christ”, pre-existent
before the world, had a human or human-like form’…Anyone who argues for status,
position (thus Schweizer, Lordship and Discipleship, 113f.), will hardly find a
parallel in other New Testament writings (thus rightly Gnilka,
Philipper-Kommentar, 113f.). And anyone who argues for the ‘dignity of a divine
ruler’ or the ‘status of divine glory’ (thus Schnackenburg…) overlooks the fact
that according to the hymn the obedient one only received this status after the
humbling and not before. The most convincing interpretation still seems to me
to be that of E. Kassemann: the en morphe
‘denotes the sphere in which one stands and which determines one like a field
of force. That is the way in which Hellenism sees existence: on each occasion
it is put in a field of force and qualified by it’ (33). Thus Kasemann defines en morphe less as a statement about
personal nature and more as a statement about origin. So, too, G. Eichholz, Die
Theologie de Paulus im Umriss [The theology of Paul in outline],
Neukirchen-Vluyn 1972, 131.
[28] Thus
already Cullmann, Christology, 176: ‘This means that v.6 does not refer to
Jesus’ divine “nature”, but rather to the image of God which he possessed from
the beginning.’ Similarly again recently, Schenk, Philipper-Kommentar, 211…
[29] Oeing-Hanhoff,
‘”Der in Gottesgesalt war”’, 297.
[31] A.
Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche [Jesus the Christ in the
belief of the Church] 1, 86; cf. the English text, Christ in Christian
Tradition, 20f.
[32] H.
Binder, ‘Erwagungen zu Phil 2, 6-7b’, ZNW 78, 1987, 230-43; 236. In his
interpretation Binder refers to Kasemann, and states convincingly: ‘So we may
move completely away from the notion of form and think with Kasemann of a
sphere, a field of force, at any rate of a spatial entity. This takes us out of
the constraints of the individual-personal approach: the term morphe from Phil. 2 does not mean
something distinctive to the person of Christ: the morphe contains him. Within the morphe
theou he is put with God, in the morphe
doulou he is among human beings. The morphe
theou is the field of reference in which the encounter between God and
Christ took place; the morphe doulou
is the field of the activity of the servant, the worldwide sphere of the
encounter between the serving Christ and the humankind whom he serves’ (235f.).
[33] For the
liturgical background and the hymnic form see R. Deichgraber, Gotteshymnus und Christushymnus in der
fruhen Christenheit. Untersuchungen zu Form, Sprache und Stil der
fruhcristilchen Hymnen [Examinations about form, language and style of the
Christian hymns], Gottingen 1967; K. Gamber, ‘Der Christus Hymnus in
liturgiegeschichtlicher Sicht’ [The
Christian Hymn in liturgy-historical view], Bibilica 51, 1970, 369-76; J. T. Sanders, The New Testament Christological Hymns. Their Historical Religious
Background, Cambridge 1971; K. Wengst, Christologische Formeln und Lieder
des Urchristentums, Gutersloh 1972; M. Hengel, ‘Hymns and Christology’, in Between Jesus and Paul, 78-96.
[34] Hengel,
The Son of God, 76. Similarly the
Catholic exegete F. J. Schierse, Christologie,
92: ‘In view of the breadth of variation of the basic narrative pattern it is
improbable that the author of the hymn had an individual literary model or a
particular religious model (whether Old Testament, Gnostic or other). He simply
started from what the Christian community knew of Jesus: from his awareness of
God and his obedience in suffering, in his death and exaltation to be Kyrios. That he made the career of Jesus
begin in his divine pre-existence was probably less the result of theological
speculation than the poetic expression of a liturgical intuition.’
[35] Blank, Paulus und Jesus, 266. ‘If this view
that the liturgy is the Sitz im Leben
[Sit in the life] for statements
about pre-existence and that they are to be understood as hymns is correct,
then their meaning will only really be completely understandable in that
perspective. They then belong to the praise of the saving act of God which has
taken place in Christ, which as an eschatological action arises in the depths
of God and the nature of which is therefore before time; this praise makes the
community prostate itself in thankfulness and joy. From this perspective it has
not merely “theological” but “religious” significance, because worship and
thanksgiving are included in it. On the other hand we would have to ask what
“theological speculation”, which belongs to another genre with another Sitz im Leben, would be doing in an
Christological hymn, the signing of which would be not without enthusiasm’
(267).
[37] Thus
the convincing formulation by E. Schweizer, Jesus,
Nashville and London 1971, 88: ‘Here, too, the statements concerning what took
place in “heaven” before Jesus’ birth and after his resurrection are meant to
describe the dimension of depth in which the life and death and resurrection of
Jesus took place.’
[38] Hengel,
Hymns and Christology, 91
[39] Schnackenburg,
Christologie des Neuen Testaments [Christology
of the New Testament], 315
[40] Gnilka,
Philipper-Kommentar, 145.
[41] Vogtle,
‘Der verkundigende und der verkundigte Jesus “Christus”’, 89; similarly
Schneider, ‘Der Ursprung’ [The Origin],
408f.; Ernst, Philliper-Kommentar [Philippian Coemmentary], 77.
[42] N.
Walter, ‘Geschichte und Mythus in der urchristlichen Praexistenzchristologie’ [History and Myths in the Christian history
of Pre-existence Christology], in H. H. Schmid (ed.), Mythos und Rationalitat [Myths
and Rationality], Gutersloh 1988, 229f.
[43] Ernst, Philler-Kommentar [Philippian Commenatry], 67. Cf. there also the very convincing
summary of the ‘christology of the hymn’, 77f. The statements in v.6 are ‘not
descriptions of nature, for this is merely the characterization of that
position which proceeded from humility; the first step to the deliberate
interpretation of pre-existence has been taken’. Certainly the ‘presuppositions
for the christology of incarnation’ have been created. But here this is seen
from a ‘negative aspect’: ‘It is simply said that he (Christ) gave up
something. Evidently the renunciation of the position which he occupied
beforehand is the only perspective that is of interest. This emerges from the
different “descriptions of status” already indicated for his earthly existence.
There cannot yet be any question here of a positive interpretation of the
incarnation.’
[44] Schneider,
Der Ursprung [The Origin], 408
[45] E. Schweizer, ‘Die Christologie von Phil. 2.6-11 und Q’ [The Christology from Phil. 2.6-11 and Q],
TZ 41, 1985, 258-63.
[46] Both
quotations, 261-62
[47] Here I
am concentrating on the challenge to the Jewish establishment. The challenge to
the Hellenistic establishment was no less. In a world which believed itself to
be ruled by merciless powers and above all by a blind fate, a world in which
the longing was strong right through every level of society for ‘liberation
from the cosmic powers and participation in the divine world above’, the
message of such a ruler must have been offensive for some and liberating for
others! Indeed the crucified Jew Jesus from Nazareth was the new cosmocrator,
the one like God, who was exalted after voluntarily renouncing power, was the
radical Christian counterpart to all the divinized ruler figures of antiquity,
from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, who were similarly said to be ‘like
God’. For this whole question see G. Bornkamm, Paul, New York and London 1971,
54-7 (see III, n.5). Similarly E. Schussler-Fiorenza, ‘Wisdom Mythology and
Christological Hymns of the New Testament’, in R. L. Wilson (ed.), Aspect of
Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, Notre Dame 1975, 17-41. Also A. A. T.
Ehrhadt, ‘Jesus Christ and Alexander the Great’, Journal of Theological Studies
46, 1945, 45-51; L. Ross Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (1931),
reprinted Middletown, Conn, 1980; C. H. Talbert, ‘The Concept of Immortals in
Mediterranean Antiquity’, NTS 22, 1976, 418-39; id., ‘The Myth of a
Descending-Ascending Redeemer in Mediterranean Antiquity’, NTS 22, 1976,
418-39. There is a critical discussion of Ernts Bloch’s and Albert Camus’s understanding
of Jesus from the perspective of the Philippians hymn in H. Sierig, ‘Das Ende
der Revolte. Jesus Chistus in der Philosophie der Gegenwart, dargestellt unter
besondere Berucksichtigung von Phil 2, 5-11’ [The end of the revolt. Jesus Christ in the philosophy of the present,
presented by Berucksichtigung from Phil 2, 5-11], [in Human being and human son] Mensch
und Menschensohn. FS Bischof K. White, Hamburg 1963, 45-57. Similarly A.
Ziegenaus, ‘Die Praexistenz Christi als Messstab des christlichen Zeugnisses
angesichts der Verneinung Gottes’ [The
Pre-existence of Christ in point of the Christian certificate in view of God’s
negation], Munchner Theologische
Zeitschrift [Muncher Theological
Magazine] 33, 1982, 83-98.
[50] Hengel,
The Son of God, 71.
[51] Schnackenburg,
‘Der Urspung der Christologie’ [The
Origin of the Christology], 60.
[53] ibid.,
54.
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