Ehrman challenges Dunn’s Adam interpretation of the Philippian hymn, opting instead for a great angel incarnation model. I did a short blog post partially defending Dunn and wonder what others think? Ehrman says he would actually prefer a low Christology interpretation if it is possible to argue it, he just doesn’t currently see how. My post is ** you do not have permission to see this link **
I only skimmed, so apologies if I missed something obvious; I saw a lot of discussion of morphe, but where do you deal with en homoiomati anthropon genomenos?
Are you just taking that to mean, he acted like a slave, as is becoming to a mere man?
That seems to lose the contrast drawn by the poem.
Which is to say, it seems to be as your are interpreting it, being in the “form of God” (i.e., having a profound moral understanding) and being “made in human likeness” (being obedient and receptive to the divine will) aren’t really opposed but are deeply complementary and almost mutually demanded. That seems at odds with the plain sense of the poem.
Btw, I do think the reversal of Adam’s fall is obvious in the text. But I agree with Bart in not seeing a way around the idea of some sort of super-human preexistence.
…and it completely saves the big problem of Christology that people have, namely, that here in a Pre-Pauline poem there is a high Christology, whereas one would expect that high Christologies would come only later in the tradition – not prior to any of the writings of the New Testament! So I and others have real incentive to want this interpretation to be right.
A Pre-Pauline High Christology is not a problem. For decades scholarship has been revealing how thoroughly Hellenized was Second Temple Judaism. The texts of Jewish apocalypticism were brimful with divine beings and heavenly fauna. Go investigate Metatron and the “Two Yahwehs”. Not to mention the Son of Man. The architecture was there before Jesus.
The two stories are essentially the same. Because of his nature and his actions Jesus was exalted to Heavenly status by God. You can see where the intellectuals would have seized on their literary traditions and fit Jesus into a theological framework that was pre-existent (pardon the pun). The regular type believer, who probably made up the bulk of early believers, just thought Jesus was chosen because he was a really good man.
There are no systematic theologians in the NT. At some point adoptionism and incarnationism melt and flow into one another.
BDEhrman
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