Jewish Annotated NT

[quote]

CHRIST-HYMN (PHIL 2:6–11)
This concise, formulaic listing of chief statements of shared Christian beliefs perhaps functioned as a memorized component of early worship (see 1 Cor 15:3–7). Its uncharacteristically rhythmical, poetically elevated style, and the balancing of vv 6–8 and 9–11 suggest an earlier hymn incorporated by Paul to buttress admonitions to the Philippians. Speaking against Pauline authorship is the lack of a key motif: the redemptive significance of Christ’s death.
This is the earliest extant material underpinning later Christology and the New Testament’s most explicit exposition of the nature of Christ’s incarnation. Closest approximations are Col 1:15–20; 1 Tim 3:6; 1 Pet 3:18–22; see Jn 1:1–5. It portrays the preexistent Christ as graciously laying aside his extraordinary position of equality with God, emptying himself by incarnation—taking on the form of a slave. For this humility, God exalted Christ by giving him the divine “name,” not in the modern sense of a generally arbitrary label but in the biblical sense of what truly expresses character, power, and status (e.g., Ps 8:2 [HB 8:1]; 20:2 [HB 20:1]). Paul interweaves this hymn with his exhortation to humility, thereby challenging the Philippians: if the one in the “form of God” humbly abdicated the dignity of his original status in obedience to the divine will, surely the Philippians can follow his conduct in humility and obedience.
The hymn may afford a glimpse not only of earliest Christians’ worship but of how they interpreted Christ between Jesus’ resurrection and the composition of this letter, and appears related to a variety of earlier Jewish sources:
• Contrasts between the first Adam (Gen 2:15–3:24) and imagery concerning a last (Rom 5:12–21; 1 Cor 15:20–22, 45–49): the Adam of Genesis, created in God’s image, but by ambitiously trying to go higher went lower through his sin (and so death); whereas Christ, the last Adam, the very image of God, chose to go lower and, so dying, thereby became exalted (see Mt 23:12; Lk 14:11).
• Isaiah’s suffering servant who (Isa 53:12) “poured out himself to death” (see 45:22–23; broadly, 52:13–53:12).
• The preexistent figure of divine Wisdom created by, or proceeding from, God who came down to dwell among humans and offer them knowledge of the Divine (Prov 1:20–33; 8–9; Wis 7:22–10:21; Sir 24).
If akin in function to the liturgical use of Hebrew biblical psalms and other poetry, the Christ hymn could presuppose a Christian cultus practicing religious devotion (perhaps being set at baptism or at the Eucharist). Attesting to early Christian use of hymns are Lk 1:46–55, 67–70; 2:14; Acts 16:25; Eph 5:19; Col 3:16. Likewise the Christ hymn lent itself to responsive singing; see Pliny, Letters 10:96–97 (here, to Emperor Trajan): Christians “were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.”
Regarding whether the hymn reflects a pre-Pauline church development of ideas about the nature of Christ and his incarnation, we must discount the passage’s modern printing—set apart in ch 2 in verse form as if vv 6–11 entered the letter as a discrete entity even now readily detachable. We would also need to factor in whether, if the hymn were indeed pre-Pauline, Paul preserved its particulars in pristine form or, instead, added modifications: e.g., introducing v 8 (“and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”), or blending the transitions of v 5 to vv 1–4 at the opening, and 12a with 12b–16 at the closing.
Could not Paul here have risen to the occasion by spontaneously crafting and introducing this hymn as his own creation? The Christ hymn seems pre-Pauline because its superlative style renders difficult envisioning Paul composing it, extemporaneously, amidst the flow of dictating the wider epistle. On the other hand, might this unit be less a hymn than a pre-Pauline kind of creed: a concise, systematic, formulaic listing of chief statements of shared Christian beliefs? Against this is the component’s uncharacteristically rhythmical, poetically elevated style, uncommon vocabulary, and balancing between vv 6–8 and 9–11.

Michael Cook, “The Letter of Paul to the Philippians,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, Second Edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 402.

A different approach

[quote]

PHILIPPIANS 2:6–8 EXEGETICALLY UNPACKED

What the hymn describes in nuce are three different states of God the Son, namely, his preexistence as God, his state of humiliation on earth, and his enthronement/session in heaven. The context that immediately precedes in Philippians 2:1–5 sets up the Christ-hymn to apply as an ethical-relational paradigm. With all of its marvelous Christology compactly presented, Paul not only meant for the hymn to reinforce or inform Christians about the character and grand story of Christ, but especially to inform the believing community on what being like Christ means in their relations with one another—i.e., to “have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had” (Phil 2:5 NET). On that basic point concerning Paul’s purpose of the hymn virtually all biblical scholars agree: Christ is portrayed as the exemplar for the Christian community in their interpersonal relationships, although opinions vary in notable ways on how all this is carried out at both the spiritual and practical levels of the Christian life.32
The grammatical and interpretive challenges pertaining to our text are widely acknowledged and debated. “[M]ost of the difficulties with interpretation,” states Fee, “lie with the first of the two sentences (Phil 2:6–7), where the ideas are profound and full of theological grist, and the language not at all simple.” These ideas are expressed in a sequence of difficult wordings whose meanings we will respectively unpack. The wordings at issue in verse 6 are the following:

v. 6a—ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων
v. 6b—οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἲσα θεῳ

The relationship of the present participle ὑπάρχων (“being”) in verse 6a to its verbal connection in verse 6b is debated. Although these translations each nuance the participial phrase differently, the basic meaning with which the hymn starts off remains the same, namely, a confessional statement about Christ’s preexistence as God. G. Walter Hansen sets out how the hymn grammatically presents this in its flow of thought through verse 7:

In this narrative sentence existing in the form of God comes before the actions described by the verbs, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and becoming in the likeness of men. This temporal relation of the present participle to the aorist finite verb and the two aorist participles points to the preexistence of the one existing in the form of God before he emptied himself, took the form of a slave, and became in the likeness of men.

This understanding represents the consensus view, which affirms that the hymn begins with Christ as preexistent in eternity and then proceeds to describe his incarnation. In this light the phrase μορφή θεοῦ (“the form of God”) denotes not merely that which characterizes God’s “form” or “shape” in terms of his external appearance or features, but rather here “form” denotes that which truly characterizes a thing’s reality—that reality being Christ’s preexistence in the essential nature and character of God. As Peter O’Brien puts it, “On this view the μορφή θεοῦ does not refer to external appearance alone since possession of the form implied participation in its nature or character.” From an aesthetic angle this affirms that here form (Gestalt) and content (Gehalt) are perfectly united (i.e., the nature of God within the form of God is one divine essence that is one life).
From texts like John 17:5 and Hebrews 1:3, a number of commentators make the connection that if “being in the form of God” implies being/participating in the divine nature, then the μορφή θεοῦ is tantamount to the δόξα θεοῦ. In my view this connection is indeed correct. The criticisms brought against this view cite as problematic the following: (1) μορφή and δόξα are not synonymous or equivalent terms, and (2) δόξα does not apply equally to the parallel phrase in verse 7 to render the words by δόξα δούλου. I will address the second point of criticism below when dealing with verse 7, but the first criticism simply “misses the point that verse 6 refers to Christ’s eternal δόξα not because μορφή equals δόξα but because the μορφή θεοῦ is δόξα.” Hansen derives the same conclusion from the biblical connection between form and the perception of God’s manifest glory-presence: “If we conclude that the form of God means the glory of God and that the glory of God is intimately related with the being of God, then we will also conclude that the phrase existing in the form of God points to Christ being in very nature God.” Our work earlier in considering theologically the glory of God in the light of the total biblical testimony pays forward here in validating this meaning of “the form of God” in verse 6. To recall, the immanent glory of God comprehends all God’s attributes—all that is essential to his nature and character—and is thus identical in meaning to the altogether perfection of God. This coincides well with our claim here that the phrase μορφή θεοῦ refers to Christ’s preexistence in the essential nature of God.
Verse 6b essentially expands on what Christ “being in the form of God” means in set up for verse 7. In the syntactical structure of verse 6b, the infinitive phrase εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ (“to be equal with God”) at the end of this clause serves as the subject of an implied “to be,” with ἁρπαγμὸν at the front operating as the predicate noun. “Put into ‘ordinary’ English word order,” states Fee, “it would thus read, ‘[He] considered the being equal with God [to be] not harpagmon.’ ” The Greek term ἁρπαγμός is not used anywhere else in the New Testament or the Septuagint (and only rarely in Greek literature), so settling its meaning has posed a challenge for scholars. Notwithstanding, the definition that has become generally accepted now denotes something to be selfishly exploited that is already possessed. Thus, looking at verse 6 altogether, its meaning follows this line of thought: “in the situation of ‘being in the form of God,’ [Christ] chose not to exploit for his own advantage the equality with God that was involved.” The issue pertaining here, then, is not whether Christ gains equality or keeps it. Rather, it pertains to that which characterizes his essential nature, namely, quintessential selflessness. For one so designated as being in the form of God, the meaning of verse 6 stands in diametric contrast to the rapaciousness for prerogative, power, and glory that human rulers (and the deities in the Greco-Roman pantheon), who so often assumed the status of demigod, exploited for their own advantage.
With the preceding in mind, we will segue now to an examination of the sequence of clauses in verse 7, which is given as follows:

v. 7a—ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν
v. 7b—μορφὴν δούλου λαβών
v. 7c—ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος
v. 7d—καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἂνθροπος

Verse 7a translates simply, “but he emptied himself.” This clause begins an extended description that illuminates what is divinely entailed in Christ being in the form of God and choosing not to exploit for his own advantage his equality with God. The obvious question here is—of what exactly did Christ empty himself? Hansen is again instructive in briefly setting out the three main views of Christ’s kenōsis (as it is referred to) that have sustained attention and adherents: (1) The kenotic theory, (2) The incarnation view, and (3) The servant of the Lord portrait. The kenotic theory, to which the animadversion “incarnation by divine suicide”49 aptly applies, has little theological merit, in my view, and does not warrant further discussion here. The servant of the Lord portrait pertains to the debate that persists regarding the hymn’s connections to the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42–53 and is not critical to our constructive argument. The incarnation view in my judgment offers the soundest interpretation, which I now present.
While the verb κενόω in verse 7a is translated as “emptied” (metaphorically, in context), it can also carry another sense of emptying, “to make void or of no effect; to deprive.” In either case what has often been assumed is that κενόω requires a genitive qualifier, which would mean for interpreting our present text that Christ “emptied himself” of something. According to the incarnation view, this understanding of κενόω is mistaken. It is not that Christ emptied himself of something, but that he poured himself out, as it were; perhaps the better picture is that he emptied himself into something. And what Christ emptied himself into is given in the extended description that follows—his taking the form of a slave, coming in the likeness of human beings, and being found in appearance as a man. We need not be confused terminologically by language of the Son’s “emptying himself” and language of his “assuming humanity,” which sounds more like the Son’s taking humanity up into himself than emptying himself into humanity. While the referent is the same for both, the former is associated with the Son’s act of kenōsis and the latter is associated better with the Son’s hypostatic union as the God-man, Christ Jesus. What the incarnation view of the kenōsis means, then, is that “the self-emptying of Christ is the incarnation in the form of a slave of the one existing in the form of God.” Or to put it in pithier terms, the Son condescended to descend, and descended by condescending.
By way of contrastive metaphor, verse 7b specifies the form that Christ took in his condescension from “being in the form of God” to his kenōsis in becoming incarnate, namely, that of a slave. There is no reason to suppose that μορφή carries any different sense here than it does in verse 6a. Indeed, its parallel use in the hymn is far from incidental. The phrase μορφὴν δούλου thus does not refer to Christ merely having the external appearance of a slave, but implies his participation in the nature or character of a slave. “The combination μορφὴν δούλου here,” states Fee, “probably means something close to the corresponding verb in Gal 5:13 (= ‘perform the duties of a slave’).” Implied in this, then, is the fundamental disposition of Christ’s self-emptying wherein he participates in our humanity for the purpose of serving humanity, just as he himself declared—“the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This shows how bound up Christ’s taking the form of a slave is with his mission to give his life as a ransom for many. The rest of the Christ-hymn affirms as much. And as Hansen observes, “Whether or not this hymn reflects the tradition of the incident in the life of Jesus, where Jesus takes the role of slave and washes his disciples’ feet (John 13), that incident illustrates the meaning of this line in the hymn” (cf. Luke 12:37; 22:27).
In condensed strokes, the rest of verse 7 and verse 8 illuminate what Christ taking the form of a slave entailed. As verse 7c spells out, he did so by “coming to be” (γενόμενος) in the “likeness” (ὁμοίωμα) of human beings (or men, ἂνθρωποι). As compared to the present participle ὑπάρχων in verse 6a, which indicates Christ always already having existed as God, the aorist participle γενόμενος indicates an “inception” to his humanity, that is, his “becoming” a human. Expressing the truth of Christ’s always being and his historically becoming, Bavinck puts it simply, “The incarnation is the unity of being (ἐγὼ εἰμί, John 8:58) and becoming (σὰρξ ἐγένετο, John 1:14).” As to the meaning of ὁμοίωμα, the idea carried here is “likeness” in terms of “commonality of experiences” and “similarity of appearance.” Although ὁμοίωμα does not contradict or deny that Christ took on the form of a slave possessing a true human nature, it still begs the question regarding the degree of similarity between Christ and human beings. Concerning this we need look no further than within the context of the hymn itself. On the one hand, the whole thrust of verses 7–8 depicts Christ’s identification with humanity in total self-surrender to accomplish in perfect obedience his mission from the Father. In this essential way of fully identifying with even the least and lowliest, Christ’s “likeness” to human beings is the deepest similarity. On the other hand, he remained “in the form of God,” fully divine in every respect, and thus he was not just human, he was and is evermore the God-man. Moreover, Christ remained sinless from birth to death, in perfect obedience to the Father who exalted him to the superlative (Phil 2:9–11; cf. Heb 4:15). “The ambiguity of the phrase in the likeness [thus] preserves both the similarity of Christ to human beings in his full humanity and the dissimilarity of Christ to fallen humanity in his equality with God and his sinless obedience.”
As the last of the clauses in this line of the hymn, verse 7d serves to complement or reinforce by way of repetition the authentic nature of Christ’s humanity. The phrase σχήματι ὡς ἄνθρωπος carries a distinct accent on the “externals” or outward appearance of Christ’s human form, though no mere simulacrum of a man is in view.62 The Greek term σχήμα (“appearance”), in hymnic fashion, links with μορφή (v. 7b) and ὁμοίωμα (v. 7c) “to form a threefold reiteration of the one fundamentally important idea: Christ in the incarnation identified himself with humanity, while he retained his distinctiveness as appearing in a form that could offer obedience to God.” The point extended in verse 7d is simply that Christ looked like an ordinary man in every way and to everybody. He was God living out a genuinely human life, albeit appearing so in his state of humiliation while he fulfilled his mission.
The state of humiliation that Christ lived out in fulfillment of his mission is all summed up in verse 8. His condescension from existence in the glory of God to his incarnation in the form of a slave is depicted now as reaching its full depth—a depth out of which radiates his glory. The perfect constancy of Christ’s character is reflected over the extended description given in verses 6–8—that is, his not exploiting for his own advantage his equality with God but instead “emptying himself” is reaffirmed in his not exploiting for his own advantage his divinity as the man Jesus Christ “humbling himself.” Hansen captures affectively the text and subtext of the hymn’s first half:

The first three stanzas do not lift up our eyes to the heavens to see the wonders of creation; they do not even lift up our hearts by showing us wonderful miracles of healing and deliverance; they take us down, down, down to the deepest, darkest hell-hole in human history to see the horrific torture, unspeakable abuse, and bloody execution of a slave on a cross. This hymn celebrates the death of a slave on cross because, although he is forever the one existing in the form of God, he is on that cross by his own deliberate choice to empty himself and humble himself.

As verse 8 reads, the obedience “to the point of death, even death on a cross” epitomizes Christ’s self-humbling, which artfully anticipates in juxtaposition his being “highly exalted” by God in verse 9. That his obedience was rendered to God the Father is implied in the hymn’s second half, but not solely to the Father. As we saw above, Christ participated in our humanity in the form of a slave for the purpose of serving humanity. “Christ’s acceptance of death, therefore, was … his ultimate act of obedience to God in his self-giving service to people.” Not to be missed here, the narrative of the first half of the hymn is framed for rhetorical effect with the sharpest imaginable contrast between that of the glory of Christ being in the form of God and the ignominy of his death on a cross.

THE UNMITIGATED BEAUTY OF CHRIST WHILE IN THE FORM OF A SLAVE

Building on the exegetical groundwork of Philippians 2:6–8, I wish to address now the matter mentioned at the beginning of this section that the beauty of Christ while in the form of a slave (i.e., during his earthly career) is an aspect of his glory, which itself involves a dialectic of revealing and concealing. But what does it mean to say that Christ’s glory in this form was revealed or, conversely, concealed? And how should we view the aesthetic dimension pertaining to this? That is the focus of our theological interpretation pursued here.
In regard to the incarnation view of Christ’s kenōsis presented earlier, I argued that the extended description given in Philippians 2:6–8 reflects the perfect constancy of character of the person of Christ who humbled himself in perfect obedience to the Father. O’Brien puts it this way in reference to the Christ-hymn: “Not that he exchanged the form of God for the form of a slave, but that he manifested the form of God in the form of slave.” In Christ God is fully and truly with us as fully and truly one of us. And thus the self-emptying in the incarnation of Christ of the one who was in the form of God is the full embodiment (literally and figuratively) of the heart of God. This means that any ostensible dissonance between the self-revelatory nature of God’s actions in Christ during his earthly career and the essential nature of God in himself is not an actual dissonance. Speaking to this same point, Bauckham rightly states, “The identity of God—who God is—is revealed as much in self-abasement and service as it is in exaltation and rule. The God who is high can also be low, because God is God not in seeking his own advantage but in self-giving. His self-giving in abasement and service ensures that his sovereignty over all things is also a form of his self-giving.”68
With the above discussion in mind, then, I propose that the beauty of Christ is qualified by the fittingness that corresponds to the respective forms of his life in the states of his: (a) pre-incarnate existence, (b) humiliation, and (c) exaltation. In regard to his economic identity, the respective forms of Christ’s life in the states of his humiliation and exaltation each radiate the glory of God with perfect fittingness even though mediated in apparent outward difference. Concerning the state of his humiliation, we must bear in mind that “the incarnation was not the capping or crowning of an incomplete structure; it was a rescue operation. The Son’s coming was to save the world (John 3:17; 12:47).” What Christ’s state of humiliation involved, writes Balthasar, is “that the God of plenitude … poured himself out, not only into creation, but emptied himself into the modalities of an existence determined by sin, corrupted by death and alienated from God.”71 Christ’s humanity in the form of a slave was no mere guise, though; it was the assumption of form that was most befitting for him to take in accordance with his role as the Messiah, “born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal 4:4–5). It would not have been as fitting, in other words, for Christ to have assumed any form in his earthly career other than that which the undertaking of his role as the Messiah called for, namely, the form of a slave. Given how the Messiah was to identify himself with humanity—with even the least and lowliest—while appearing in a form that could offer perfect obedience to God, one discerns the fittingness of the Son rather than the Father or the Spirit undertaking the role of the Messiah in the form of a slave. Yet in that form was nonetheless the radiance of his glory, and expressed naturally by that, the radiating quality of his beauty—a beauty reflective of and dramatized in the self-giving love of God.

THE REVEALING AND CONCEALING DIALECTIC OF CHRIST’S GLORY

We have spoken in this chapter about Christ’s glory during his earthly ministry as operating in a dialectic of revealing and concealing, although we have not yet presented if anything else was determinative besides the eyes of faith to “see” his glory. Regarding this, a commonly held view or at any rate a widely purported one is that Christ’s actual glory, that is, his divine glory, was hidden or veiled beneath his humanity during his earthly career. In short, Christ’s “flesh” acted as a reverse shield to prevent his real glory from being openly seen. Calvin’s comments on this are representative:

[Christ] showed that although he was God and could have set forth his glory directly to the world he gave up his right and voluntarily “emptied himself.” He took the image of a servant, and content with such lowness, allowed his divinity to be hidden by a “veil of flesh.” … [So] for a time the divine glory did not shine, but only human likeness was manifest in a lowly and abased condition.

The idea one could naively draw from this, even if not considered implicit here, is that the veil of Christ’s flesh could be activated in a kind of “toggle switch” mode whereby his glory could be selectively revealed or concealed as he willed to do depending on the faith of those involved (and in accord with the will of the Father). Even if that idea is patently rejected (rightly so, in my view), the idea that Christ’s glory was hidden by the form of his own humanity does not square well with my claim argued earlier that Christ manifested the form of God in the form of a slave, and in so doing his life radiated the glory of God’s very nature most fittingly. But if Christ’s glory was actually concealed by his human form, then God the Son operated totally incognito as Christ in the form of a slave. Indeed, noted theologians have advocated just such a view. In his dogmatic study, The Person of Christ, G. C. Berkouwer entitles one of his chapters “Christ Incognito?” and cites Emil Brunner as one prominent exponent. He writes that for Brunner “God reveals himself in Jesus Christ but he does it in the total hiddenness of the flesh.… The main revelational category of Christ’s entire life is that of the incognito: revelation in absolute concealment.” More recently, Stephen Wellum, following Donald Macleod’s lead, states along similar lines that the three movements in Christ’s state of humiliation depicted in Philippians 2:7–9 altogether amount to krypsis, that is, total hiddenness or veiledness of his divine glory. “Taken together,” he writes, “these three movements of the divinely exalted Son into the humiliation of Christ become three layers of veiling that temporarily hide his God-equal glory. In this sense, then, we can say that the full kenōsis of Christ involved the near-complete krypsis (“hiddenness”) of his divine glory, but not the loss of his divine nature and attributes.”
As Christopher Holmes points out, however, there is good reason to question the assumption that the humanity of Jesus functioned as a veil, for that “suggests a competitive view of the relationship between the divinity of God and the humanity of God which detracts from the truth of God’s being as a being which includes humanity.” Holmes’ point is that God’s glory in Christ all during his earthly career is best appreciated not in an apophatic way—that is, as veiled by his humanity—but in a cataphatic way—that is, as revealed in and through his humanity, “which God includes in himself as the very form of his own self-witness.”76 On this view there is no compromise to the Chalcedonian axioms and the orthodox meanings attached to the hypostatic union. The humanity that Christ took on in the form of a slave is simply being affirmed here in the most robustly self-revelatory way. This is in line with our earlier point that Christ’s human form was no mere guise; his form was perfectly fitting in accordance with his role as the Messiah. Holmes expands on this:

God does not include a veil in himself. The humanity of Jesus, his lived life in obedience to his Father’s will in fulfillment of Torah, and the existence of all flesh in him, is what the divine Son elects for himself in obedience to his Father. It is not a veil; rather, God reveals himself in the humanity of the Son and accomplishes and fulfills his covenant purposes in him for all flesh.

God the Son, as such, was in no actual way operating incognito as Christ in the form of a slave because his true identity was not actually concealed by a “veil of flesh.” The self-revelatory nature of God’s actions in Christ during his earthly career means that the essential nature of God—and thus the glory of God—is in fact revealed. To reiterate Bauckham’s point earlier, this reveals God not in seeking his own advantage but in self-giving. Holmes is again incisive here:

If God’s glory and majestic splendor is equated with God’s propensity for self-giving, then what positive work is left for an account of divine hiddenness? Would it not be better to forsake categories of veiling and unveiling, primary hiddenness and secondary hiddenness, in favor of the glory of God which bespeaks God’s propensity for self-giving, for giving himself as he is, a self-giving which includes humanity as the place where God presents himself thus.

As counterintuitive as it may at first seem, then, there is good reason to say that God the Son was not incognito as Christ in the form of a slave, nor was the form of his humanity concealing his divine glory. As I have argued the case, the aspect of Christ’s fittingness in accordance with his role as the Messiah is an essential element of the reasoning here. A parallel to the counterintuitive sense of God’s actions in Christ can be drawn from 1 Corinthians 1:18–25 concerning God’s wisdom and power manifest in Christ crucified. To those who are perishing, Paul says, the message of Christ crucified is simply foolishness and weakness to the extreme. Yet believers do well in recognizing that the divine wisdom and power identified there may seem counterintuitive to the natural mind, but in no actual way are these attributes incognito. It is the opposite case, for in Christ crucified God’s wisdom and power are openly revealed in theodramatic display at the cross. Our theological aesthetic sees the fittingness of God’s wisdom and power manifest in Christ crucified as being perfectly correlated with the fittingness that characterizes the beauty of Christ crucified. For in and through the form of Christ crucified is the radiance of his glory, radiating a beauty reflective of and dramatized in the self-giving love of God. Of course, there is also the matter of the event of Christ’s transfiguration, which ostensibly lends support to the idea that Christ’s glory indeed was hidden by the veil of his own flesh. I address the transfiguration in the last section of this chapter, but suffice it to say for now that the glory of Christ revealed at his transfiguration was likewise most befitting in accordance with the outworking of redemptive-history and the divine purposes at that particular point in Christ’s public ministry.
In understanding the respective forms of Christ’s life in the economy of salvation as each radiating the glory of God most fittingly, we can affirm without reservation that Christ lived in a real state of humiliation followed by a real change of state in his exaltation. Contra the view put forward by some, I am positing that there was a temporal transition of the forms of Christ’s life in the economy of salvation from a real state of humiliation to a real state of exaltation. At the same time, I submit that the revelation of the glory of God in Christ is not at all attenuated or compromised in Christ’s former state relative to his latter one, nor is there any aporia here. The temporal distinction between Christ’s state of humiliation and his state of exaltation involves a redemptive-historical progression that transitions from his culminating work on the cross to his vindication in the resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father. “The entire state of exaltation from the resurrection to his coming again for judgment,” states Bavinck, “is a reward for the work that he accomplished as the Servant of the Lord in the days of his humiliation.” Appreciating this through the aesthetic lens, the forms of Christ’s life in the economy of salvation are properly perceived in terms of the form befitting each state (humiliation or exaltation) with respect to its respective place in redemptive-history. The “beauty of the Lord” encompasses without dissonance the Christ-form of both together—Lamb of God and Lion of Judah—as each contributes most fittingly to the whole. Balthasar puts it like this: “We do not here have two images alongside each other, as in a diptych consisting of two complementary halves. Faith (especially Johannine faith) is able to see both aspects as a unity—God’s kenōsis in the Synoptics and the Pauline doxa of the Risen One.”
As the glory of God’s actions in Christ during his earthly career was glory revealed not glory concealed, it was the optics given through faith alone that determined whether or not someone rightly perceived him (cf. John 9:35–41). The dialectic of revealing and concealing rested critically on that. The work of the Spirit was required then just as it has been ever since to impart such optics to those who would “perceive” Christ in the form of his humanity for who he truly is—Lord and Savior over all (cf. Acts 9:1–20). We see Paul explain as much to the Corinthians: “But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.… These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:7–10; cf. Deut 29:4; Luke 23:34; John 16:13–15). Even at the stage of his infancy, the adoration offered by the Magi to the child Jesus presents a striking example of the eyes of faith perceiving him for who he truly is (Matt 2:1–11). Balthasar points likewise to the canticle of an equally notable infancy narrative: “When Jesus is presented in the Temple, there takes place for Luke the eschatological re-entry of the divine glory of Ezekiel’s vision into the sanctuary, for Simeon sings: ‘My eyes have seen your glory: light for illumination of the Gentiles, and glory of your people Israel’ (Luke 2:30–32).” And until he comes again, Christ in his heavenly exaltation will continue to radiate his glory and reveal himself through the work of the Spirit to all those who would rightly perceive him.87 The key difference between aesthetics and theological aesthetics is identified more plainly now. In the case of the latter, the work of the Spirit enables those with eyes of faith to perceive rightly the objective beauty of the person of Christ, the beauty of the work of Christ (redemption accomplished), and the beauty of Christ’s work ongoing through the Holy Spirit (redemption applied). That very same work of the Spirit, moreover, is also what enables all those faith-filled ones to subjectively experience and grow in delight of the beauty that they have perceived.

CONSPECTUS

We end this section having developed the christological contours of beauty with respect to Christ’s identity as taking the form of a slave. A fundamental aspect of the aesthetic dimension pertaining here is the theodramatic fittingness of the Son as incarnate Redeemer revealed in his assumption of that form. Any ostensible dissonance between the self-revelatory nature of God’s actions in Christ during his earthly career and the essential nature of God in himself is not a real dissonance. As I have argued the case, the form of a slave was most befitting for God the Son to take in accordance with his role as the Messiah, which itself is all in accordance with the nature of God’s self-giving love. An essential element of the reasoning informing our argument is that the glory of God in Christ while he was in the state of his humiliation was actually glory revealed not glory concealed. Figuring importantly in this is the point that the identity of God is revealed as much in his self-abasement and service as it is in his exaltation and rule. God the Son was thus in no actual way operating incognito as Christ in the form of a slave because his true identity was not actually concealed by a “veil of flesh.” Accordingly, the glory that no one can see and live has been made perceivable in and through the mediated form of Christ in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). We concluded that it was the optics given through faith alone by the work of God’s Spirit that determined whether or not someone rightly perceived (albeit weakly and incompletely) Christ in the form of his humanity for who he truly is. And in that form the radiance of his glory is expressed most fittingly such that his beauty is always from glory to glory.

Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), 154–172.