Phil. 2:5-11, God’s Form & Novatian

 “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11 New International Version (NIV)

“who, existing in the form of God (en morphe theou hyperchon), did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.” Christian Standard Bible (CSB)

“And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness (eikona… homoiosin), and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the flying creatures of heaven, and over the cattle and all the earth, and over all the reptiles that creep on the earth. And God made man, according to the image (eikona) of God he made him, male and female he made them.” Genesis 1:26-127 LXX

“This [is] the genealogy of men in the day in which God made Adam; in the image (eikona) of God he made him: male and female he made them, and blessed them; and he called his name Adam, in the day in which he made them.” Genesis 5:1-2 LXX

“He that sheds man’s blood, instead of that blood shall his own be shed, for in the image (eikoni) of God I made man.” Genesis 9:6 LXX

“For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image (eikon) and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man.” 1 Corinthians 11:7

“and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image (eikona) of the One who created him—” Colossians 3:10

“With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness (homoiosin) of God.” James 3:9

“For God knew that in whatever day ye should eat of it your eyes would be opened, and ye would be as gods (hos theoi), knowing good and evil… And God said, Behold, Adam is become as one of us (hos eis ex hemon), to know good and evil, and now lest at any time he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life and eat, and [so] he shall live forever” Genesis 3:5. 22 LXX

One suspects that reaction against the notion that Phil. 2.6-11 reflects an early christological hymn has occurred because an increasing number of commentators (especially British commentators such as J. D. G. Dunn and M. Hooker) have been arguing that Christ is portrayed in this material as a second Adam, and Adam was certainly not an object of worship in either early Judaism or early Christianity.⁷²

There are, however, severe problems with this “Adamic” line of approach to this christological material: (1) As Novatian said long ago (On the Trinity 22.2), Christ is said here to be in the very form or nature of God, not merely in the image of God. There is a considerable difference. (2) Adam did not make a choice to become a human being, but that is precisely what the beginning of this hymn is about, the choice of a preexistent person to take on human form. (3) Harpagmos does not refer to grasping after something that one does not yet have. It refers to clutching to oneself or taking advantage of something one does already have. The choices signaled here are not of the same ilk as the choice Adam had to eat or not to eat of the tree of knowledge. The person in this hymn is said to have the status of “being equal with God.” He did not have to strive to “be as gods.” (4) The first Adam-last Adam synkrisis in Rom. 5.12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15 is a contrast. The last Adam is not like the first in essential ways. As W. Hansen reminds us, “besides the word `God’ not one word from the Greek text of the Genesis story of the creation and temptation of Adam can be found in this hymn.”⁷³ What status or glory could Christ have had and given up that was not available to other human beings? That is the question this hymn prompts.⁷⁴ (Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary [William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Co., Grand Rapids, MI 2011], pp.147-148; emphasis mine)

These Pauline discourses were meant to be read out during worship, so the quoting of familiar hymnic material could serve to reinforce the arguments Paul wanted to make. B. Thurston, building on the earlier work of M. Hengel,⁷⁸ argues that wisdom literature, particularly the personification of Wisdom in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon (cf. Proverbs 1, 3, 8, and 9; Wisdom 6-9; Sirach 1 and 24) provided some of the language to characterize the divine Son of God. One can also point to a background to Phil. 2.5-11 in the Servant songs of Isaiah 45 and 52-53.⁷⁹ Thurston concludes, `By the late 40s, Christians were singing `Jesus Wisdom hymns’ in their worship, and those hymns served the dual purpose of worship and catechesis. Hymns were teaching tools, the expression of earliest Christology.”⁸⁰ Thurston goes on to stress that the point of the christological hymn is not primarily to offer systematic theological reflection on Christ, though some of that happens in passing. This is a piece of music, lyrics for a hymn, and so is a vehicle for praising Christ. Paul Minear reminds us that music is not exactly where to look for theological precision, though the language must be taken seriously, as Paul intends it to provide the necessary warrant for the ethical exhortation to follow the pattern of Christ’s stepping down and serving others.⁸¹…

It must be recognized that Jewish Christian worship patterns owed much to synagogue practices, which included the chanting of psalms, only now interpreted and interpolated christologically in the Christian meetings. To such practices they added the singing of christological hymns and “spiritual songs,” which likely refers to songs spontaneously inspired by the Spirit. What most distinguished non-Christian Jewish worship from Jewish Christian worship was prayer to, praise of, and in general worship of Christ. Phil. 2.6-11 probably provides us with one early glimpse of what that looked like, a glimpse that confirms that the earliest christology was a very high christology indeed.⁸³ (Ibid., pp. 148-149; emphasis mine)

By contrast, morphe normally connotes an outward form that fully expresses the real being or substance that underlies it – essential or characteristic attributes that are manifested.¹⁰⁹ When applied to Christ it most likely means he manifested a form that truly represented the very nature and being of God, hence the translation “being in very nature.” Fee is surely right that morphe should not be seen as a cipher for glory, much less God’s glory. Were Paul thinking along those lines he would have avoided referring to the morphe of a slave, which was inglorious at best.   “The being equal to God” is added for rhetorical clarification and is just another way of saying the same  which is typical of such rhetorical and poetic material.

Morphe theou in v. 6 stands in deliberate contrast with morphe doulou. In a helpful study, D. Steenburg has shown that morphe and eikon should not be equated or seen as synonyms. The former connotes something more than the latter. That Adam was created in God’s image does not mean he had God’s form or essence.”‘   Whenever in the LXX humanity is referred to as in God’s image it is always with the use of eikon and never with morphe. These two terms are not synonymous. (Ibid., p. 153; emphasis mine)

The apostle Paul says that “Christ Jesus . . . was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”^[151] As Tuggy rightly observes, “Many interpreters see in this passage a teaching about the Incarnation doctrine,” according to which “the second person of the Trinity became a human while not ceasing to be divine. Laudably, he admits, “If this in fact is something that Paul is assuming and/or asserting here . . . [it] would single-handedly refute theories on which the idea of Incarnation developed over many decades or centuries.”^[152] Indeed, careful exegesis of the text reveals just that, but it may help to first rule out Tuggy’s interpretation.

Tuggy thinks Paul is contrasting Jesus with Adam, the first man, who Tuggy alleges was likewise in the form (morphē) of God. He argues that Genesis 1:26 “says that Adam and Eve were made in God’s image and likeness. The Septuagint translators”—that is, those who produced the Greek translation (LXX) of the Hebrew Old Testament often quoted in the New Testament—“don’t use the word ‘form,’ morphē, but they might have.”^[153] Actually, they would not have done so, for as Ben Witherington explains, “Whenever in the LXX humanity is referred to as in God’s image it is always with the use of eikōn and never with morphē. These two terms are not synonymous.”^[154] Neither is morphē synonymous with homoiōsis, the word for “likeness.” Together, eikōn and homoiōsis are used to say human beings bear God’s image and likeness about six times in the LXX, thirty times in Philo, and five times in the New Testament, four of them by Paul himself.^[155] By contrast, morphē is never used for the concept.

Tuggy goes on argue that “Paul is contrasting Jesus, the second Adam, with the first Adam . . . [who], made in the form of God, tried to get a kind of equality with God.”^[156] Marvin Vincent debunked this view over a hundred years ago, observing that it is “forced at the best” and that “it is nowhere asserted or hinted in Scripture that Adam desired equality with God in the comprehensive sense of that expression.”^[157] Whereas Paul uses the word isos, translated “equality,” the LXX translates Genesis 3:5 and 22 using hōs, meaning “like.” Adam did indeed try to become like God in a certain way—in knowing good and evil—but he did not try to achieve equality with him. As Thomas Glasson sums it up, “One can only express surprise that a matter . . . so forcefully scotched in 1897, should have been revived.”^[158]

Thus, Gordon Fee observes that, while this Adamic interpretation is intriguing, “there is not a single linguistic parallel to the Genesis narrative.”^[159] This is not insignificant. It is not simply that Paul, if Tuggy were right, would be using unusual language to describe the divine image (morphē) and what motivated human-kind’s first sin (a desire for equality with God). He would be failing to use the only language used by everyone else, opting instead for wholly unprecedented language that no one else would recognize in this context. Tuggy’s reading is, quite simply, untenable.

What, then, does Paul mean? It begins to emerge upon a careful consideration of his use of the word harpagmos, which is typically translated into English in a way that suggests Jesus lacked something and refused to consider reaching for it: he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”^[160] However, this is a mistaken translation. Harpagmos is here the complement of an object-complement construction, and Roy Hoover demonstrates that, whenever it or its synonym harpagma is the complement to the object of a verb of thought or opinion, the construction is an “idiomatic expression [that] refers to something already present and at one’s disposal. The question in such instances is not whether or not one possesses something, but whether or not one chooses to exploit something.”^[161] For instance, in Heliodorus’s Aethiopica, the young and virile Theagenes turns away the romantic advances of Arsace, whose servant Cybele marvels that the young man does not take advantage of the situation; that is, he does not harpagma poieitai to pragma—“count the matter an advantage.”^[162] Thus, Jesus was both “in the form of God” and equal to God, the latter necessarily being at his disposal in order not to be exploited. Indeed, as Moisés Silva observes, the text indicates “that being ‘in the form of God’ is equivalent to being ‘equal with God.’”^[163] What Jesus refused to do is take advantage of that fact.

Instead, says Paul, Jesus “emptied himself” (v. 7). This he did by “taking the form of a servant,” which means the metaphor of self-emptying communicates that Christ, having theretofore known only glory and splendor in the form of God, thenceforth experiences “all the powerlessness and poverty of a slave.”^[164] Moreover, Paul says Jesus did this by also “being born in the likeness of men.” Although “being born” does not literally translate the word ginomai, this is how Paul often uses the word to describe the birth of Jesus, who he says “was descended [ginomai] from David”^[165] and “born [ginomai] of woman, born [ginomai] under the law.”^[166] And “likeness” (homoiōma) is the nominal cognate of the verb used by the Lycaonians after seeing Paul perform a miracle, who they therefore say has “come down to us in the likeness [homoioō] of men!”^[167] So, Paul is saying that the way Jesus emptied himself was by becoming a lowly human, thereby joining the ranks of those who owe him glory and servitude as their creator.

How does this fit in the context of Paul’s letter? He has been encouraging the Philippians to stand united in striving for the gospel,^[168] an exhortation he continues in the present pericope.^[169] Such unity, especially in the face of persecution, requires a degree of self-sacrifice that does not come naturally to sinful human beings, who are instead predisposed to selfishness and pride. So, Paul exhorts each reader to exercise humility by treating others as more important than him- or herself in verses 3–4. Of course, human beings are all bearers of the divine image and are therefore ontologically equal. Paul therefore offers the clearest possible example of someone humbly treating an equal as a superior: “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God [an advantage to exploit], but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”^[170] Just as the preincarnate Christ refused to take advantage of equality with his Father, to whom he instead humbled himself, so his followers are likewise to humble themselves before their equals.

Thus, Philippians 2:5–7 clearly teaches the historic Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. The Son exists eternally as God, but at a point in time, at the crux of history, he entered into his own creation and became a human being. The text does, therefore, “single-handedly refute” Tuggy’s theory that the doctrine developed over the first several centuries of church history. According to Paul, Jesus is human and divine. (Dale Tuggy & Date, Is Jesus Human and Not Divine?: A Debate (Essential Christian Debates) [Areopagus Books 2020], pp. 35-37; emphasis mine)

Tuggy insists that the “New Testament always and everywhere portrays Jesus as a real man, never as a ‘godman,’ never as ‘God incarnate,’ and never as ‘God the Son.’”^[296] In my opening, I demonstrated the New Testament does portray Jesus as God incarnate, for Paul says, “Jesus . . . though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God” an advantage to exploit, and that he instead “emptied himself” by becoming human.[297] Between these lines, Tuggy reads his assumption that Paul thinks Adam was created in God’s “form” and tried to become equal with God, even though there is no biblical or extra-biblical literature indicating that he was and did… (Ibid., p. 58)

But why, although we appear to hasten to another branch of the argument, should we pass over that passage in the apostle: Who, although He was in the form of God, did not think it robbery that He should be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking up the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore also God has highly exalted Him, and has given Him a name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should be bent, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, in the glory of God the Father? Who, although He was in the form of God, he says.

If Christ had been only man, He would have been spoken of as in the image of God, not in the form of God. For we know that man was made after the image or likeness, not after the form, of God. Who then is that angel who, as we have said, was made in the form of God? But neither do we read of the form of God in angels, except because this one is chief and royal above all — the Son of God, the Word of God, the imitator of all His Father’s works, in that He Himself works even as His Father.

He is — as we have declared — in the form of God the Father. And He is reasonably affirmed to be in the form of God, in that He Himself, being above all things, and having the divine power over every creature, is also God after the example of the Father. Yet He obtained, this from His own Father, that He should be both God of all and should be Lord, and be begotten and made known from Himself as God in the form of God the Father.

He then, although He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery that He should be equal with God. For although He remembered that He was God from God the Father, He never either compared or associated Himself with God the Father, mindful that He was from His Father, and that He possessed that very thing that He is, because the Father had given it Him. Thence, finally, both before the assumption of the flesh, and moreover after the assumption of the body, besides, after the resurrection itself, He yielded all obedience to the Father, and still yields it as ever.

Whence it is proved that He thought that the claim of a certain divinity would be robbery, to wit, that of equalling Himself with God the Father; but, on the other hand, obedient and subject to all His rule and will, He even was contented to take on Him the form of a servant — that is, to become man; and the substance of flesh and body which, as it came to Him from the bondage of His forefathers’ sins according to His manhood, He undertook by being born, at which time moreover He emptied Himself, in that He did not refuse to take upon Him the frailty incident to humanity. Because if He had been born man only, He would not have been emptied in respect of this; for man, being born, is increased, not emptied. For in beginning to be that which He could not possess, so long as He did not exist, as we have said, He is not emptied, but is rather increased and enriched.

But if Christ is emptied in being born, in taking the form of a servant, how is He man only? Of whom it could more truly have been said that He was enriched, not emptied, at the time that He was born, except because the authority of the divine Word, reposing for awhile in taking upon itself humanity, and not exercising itself with its real strength, casts itself down, and puts itself off for the time, in bearing the humanity which it has undertaken? It empties itself in descending to injuries and reproaches, in bearing abominations, in experiencing things unworthy; and yet of this humility there is present at once an eminent reward. For He has received a name which is above every name, which assuredly we understand to be none other than the name of God. For since it belongs to God alone to be above all things, it follows that the name which is that God’s who is above all things, is above every name; which name by consequence is certainly His who, although He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery for Him to be equal with God. For neither, if Christ were not God, would every knee bend itself in His name, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; nor would things visible and invisible, even every creature of all things, be subjected or be placed under man, when they might remember that they were before man. Whence, since Christ is said to be in the form of God, and since it is shown that for His nativity according to the flesh He emptied Himself; and since it is declared that He received from the Father that name which is above every name; and since it is shown that in His name every knee of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, bend and bow themselves; and this very thing is asserted to be a furtherance of the glory of God the Father; consequently He is not man only, from the fact that He became obedient to the Father, even to death, yea, the death of the cross; but, moreover, from the proclamation by these higher matters of the divinity of Christ, Christ Jesus is shown to be Lord and God, which the heretics will not have. (Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity; emphasis mine)