I’ve just come back from a business dinner, where I helped reduce the amount of adult beverage lurking on the table. As such I’m not tracking well the stanza numberings. I see an extra spacial gap between stanzas 3 and 4.
stanza:
1 – who in the form
2 – but he himself emptied
3 – and in schema being found
[extra space]
4 – therefore and God
5 – in order that in the name
6 – and every tongue confess
I want to make sure I have my arms around that numbering before I try to ascertain what might be the next structural issue. Am I seeing that correctly?
I’ll accept the scholarly view that the passage is pre-Pauline. My questions are all of interpretation. And this after thirty years of reading commentaries.
What does “in the form of God” mean?
What does “a thing to be grasped” mean?
What did Paul mean by “born in the likeness of men”?
Does “and being found in human form” sound as odd in the Greek as it does in English?
And just out of curiosity, how can anyone get Trinitarianism out of this passage?
OK, I cannot read the Greek, but using the English of the more 1:1 version you translated, I can bend the meaning of the “first half“ (the condescension) by making the structure be couplets of these lines (rather than triplets), or by making the couplets then into singlets.
It makes the subject (Jesus) of first part read more elevated at the start than does this triplet structure.
But I’m probably mangling it.
An interesting quirk in the history of translation.
I noticed for Philippians 2:6 the RSV has
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped
but the NRSV has
though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited
This nicely sets off the parameters of at least one debate over this passage. Did Jesus already have quality with God or not? If we read the subsequent exaltation language as a genuine increase in Jesus’ status it’s hard to go with the NRSV reading since if he was already equal with God how could be exalted?
Has there been another Greek passage whose meaning is as elusive? Probably so but here we seem to bump up against our presuppositions. An orthodox Trinitarian simply can’t read it the way the RSV does. But on the other hand why should we expect consistency in Paul?
wrong to speak of ‘equality’ with God in an ontological sense…
Ok so would you say the subsequent exaltation language does NOT mean that Jesus is being made equal to God in an ontological sense?
…allusion to Adam or Satan, who did seek to become equal to God.
But NOT in an ontological sense?
To clarify a bit, I do think the ontological sense of a divine being, a god with a small ‘g’, is implied even in the first strophe, but it is not denoted specifically with the words ‘to be (acting/behaving) as a god (would be expected to act’).
The possible faint allusion to Adam or Satan is to light to try and make a judgment about ontological implications.
In the final strophe, Jesus is indeed hyper-exalted and given the name Lord, probably to be understood as at least functionally comparable to Yahweh, so this is more easily understood as ontological, though Paul is not attempting to define doctrine in the sense that later church councils would do a few centuries later.
Yes I appreciate the distinction you’re making. I’m not sure there is an ontological sense here for Paul. Maybe all Paul is saying is that the King is honoring one of his generals for services rendered by giving him command over the entire army. I don’t know. I’m trying to get all the Trinitarian rubbish out of my head so I can at least pretend to see this passage with fresh eyes.
I do think the idea of Satan, although certainly not explicit, is important here. Who else being in the form of God thought equality with God was worth grasping after?
Robert do you ever have the haunting feeling that we’re completely misinterpreting Paul because he is making assumptions unknown to us because it simply never occurred to him to write them down?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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