2. As Man He Humbled Himself (2:8)
2. As Man He Humbled Himself (2:8)
8And being found in appearance as a [human being],1
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
The narrative that began in v. 6 is continued by this sentence,2 whose close connection — and narrative quality — is highlighted by the paratactic "and."3 Apart from the "not/but" contrast in v. 6, it is identical in form to the preceding sentence. It begins (1) with a participle emphasizing Christ's present "mode" of being, in this case "as a human being," followed (2) by the main clause ("he humbled himself"), precisely as in v. 6, followed (3) by a participial modifier, again modal, which spells out how he did so ("by becoming obedient unto death"), which in turn (4) is brought to rhetorical climax by specifying the kind of death ("the death of a cross").
8 The opening phrase ("and being found4 in appearance as a human being") picks up the flow of the narrative by reiterating the essential matter from the final phrase of the preceding sentence. At the same time, as with the opening participle in v. 6, it serves to specify the "mode of existence" for Christ's action in this clause. "In the form of God" he emptied himself; now "in the appearance of a human being" he humbled himself.
The word "appearance"5 is yet another of the troubling words in this passage (vv. 6-11). Most likely the usage here is stylistic pure and simple, in which Paul picks up the idea from the preceding phrase ("in human likeness") but says it in a slightly different way. The primary sense of the word has to do not with the essential quality of something, but with its externals, that which makes it recognizable. Thus, having said that Christ came in the "likeness" of human beings (v. 7b), Paul now moves the narrative on to its next point, by saying he "appeared" in a way that was clearly recognizable as human. Together the two phrases accent the reality of his humanity, just as the first two phrases in the preceding sentence accent his deity.6
As a human being "he humbled himself"; that is, in his human existence he chose, in obedience, to "take the lowest place" (etapeinōsen). This word deliberately echoes "in lowliness of mind" (tapeinophrosynē) in v. 3; at the same time it anticipates by way of contrast his being "exalted to the highest place" in v. 9. On the place of "humility" in the life of Christ and the believer see on v. 3.
The ensuing participle functions in the same modal way as its counterparts) in the preceding sentence, narrating how his humbling himself found expression, in this case "by becoming obedient unto death." Although Paul does not often speak of Christ's death in terms of "obedience" (cf. Rom 5:19), the language in the present instance is in keeping with the reason for the passage in the first place — to call the Philippians to "obedience" regarding the appeal in vv. 2-4.7 In any case, such language fully reflects Paul's theological perspective. In keeping with the rest of the early church,8 he understood Jesus' death not from the perspective of those who "crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor 2:8) — who acted on the basis of human "wisdom," in sheer ignorance of God's "mystery" revealed by the Spirit, that God chose to redeem our fallen race through the weakness (and therefore scandal) of the cross — but from the perspective of one who saw his death as an act of "obedience" to the divine will. "Obedience unto9 death," therefore, points to the degree to which obedience took him, the readiness of him who, as one of us, chose the path that led to a death10 "decreed before the ages for our glory."11 Which is quite in keeping with him who, as God, impoverished himself by taking on the role of a slave.
The final phrase, "death of a cross," which concludes Part I of the narrative, fits the alleged "hymn" so poorly that many scholars have seen it as a Pauline "addition." On the contrary, its rhetorical effect, both in its present clause and as concluding the whole, is so forceful that it is hard to imagine it to be a mere "tack on."12 In its own clause its effect lies in the repetition of "death" back to back: "unto death, death, that is, of a cross." At the same time it combines with "in the 'form' of God" (v. 6) to frame the narrative to this point with the sharpest imaginable contrast: God and the cross.
Here is the very heart of Pauline theology, both of his understanding of God as such and of his understanding of what God has done and is doing in our fallen world. Here is where the one who as "equal with God" has most fully revealed the truth about God: that God is love and that his love expresses itself in self-sacrifice — cruel, humiliating death on a cross13 — for the sake of those he loves. The divine weakness (death at the hands of his creatures, his enemies) is the divine scandal (the cross was reserved for slaves and insurrectionists). No one in Philippi,14 we must remind ourselves, used the cross as a symbol for their faith; there were no gold crosses embossed on Bibles or worn as pendants around the neck or lighted on the steeple of the local church. The cross was God's — and thus their — scandal, God's contradiction to human wisdom and power: that the one they worshiped as Lord of all, including Caesar, had been crucified as a state criminal at the hands of one of Caesar's proconsuls;15 that the Almighty should appear in human dress, and that he should do so in this way, as a "Messiah" who died by crucifixion.16 Likewise, this is the scandal of Pauline ethics: that the God who did it this way "gifts" us to "suffer for his sake" as well (1:29):
This is our God, the Servant-King,
Who calls us now to follow him,
To bring our lives as a daily offering,
Of worship to the Servant-King.17
——————————
1. Gk. άνθρωπος; while it is true that Jesus was in fact male, thus a man, this word does not point to his being male, but to his being human. On the other hand, against all the rules of inclusive language I have mantained "man" in the title of the section for the sake of poetry. Hence the two clauses in Part I: "As God he emptied himself; as Man he humbled himself." Although the use of "man" is generic here, and therefore against the "rules," let the reader understand it to mean "a man."
2. In some ways, therefore, one can scarcely justify commenting on this verse as a distinct entity. I have chosen to do so in order to highlight the three parts of the narrative and their significance for the argument. This is also a place (cf. 2 Cor 13:14[13]) where the versification of the English Bible (which has it correctly!) does not match the Greek (which has v. 8 begin with the main clause, "he humbled himself").
3. Gk. xαί. Parataxis has to do with joining sentences with an "and" as over against various forms of subordination. It is a regular feature of Hebrew narrative, picked up most noticeably in the NT in the Gospel of Mark. Parataxis is rare in Paul; where it does occur it is usually in narrative of some kind (e.g., 1 Thess 1:6, 9; Gal 1:14, 24; 2:2; Eph 2:1). It should be pointed out that it is also a feature of Hebrew poetry, although occurring with less frequency than in narrative.
Some see the xαί as joining the two participial phrases, rather than the two clauses, either as concluding the preceding sentence (Meyer, Loh-Nida, Hawthorne), or beginning the next (Jeremias, J. A. Sanders, Collange, and all who deny pre-existence [see n. 41 on v. 6]), or as an independent strophe (Martin, GNB). For the most part (Meyer excepted) this is the result of forcing strophic arrangements on the text rather than recognizing Paul's sentences. Apart from these prior commitments to strophic patterns, this has nothing in its favor: (a) it destroys the formal similarities of the two sentences; (b) it creates a nearly intolerable redundancy, whose purpose is difficult to fathom; indeed, viewed this way, the phrase interrupts the otherwise smooth flow of the narrative; (c) this kind of identical parallelism (where two synonymous lines say exactly the same thing) would not only be unique for this passage, but cannot in fact be found elsewhere in Paul; (d) it causes the xαί to create a strange relationship between these two phrases ( "having become in the likeness of human beings and being found in appearance as a human being" as either the conclusion of the prior sentence or beginning of the next makes very little sense); and (e) it creates unnecessary asyndeton for the middle sentence (v. 8), over against vv. 9-11. Finally, it should be noted that either of these creates an unnatural reading (and thus hearing) of the text for those who do not have the strophes before them (cf. Silva, 121). It is therefore understandable that the majority of interpreters (and translations) view the xαί as beginning the second sentence.
4. Gk. ευρεθείς (aorist passive), which ordinarily refers to an event antecedent to the main verb (= having been found); in this case the English present passive participle offers the same sense. On a spectrum ευρίσκω goes from "finding" by purposeful search, to "finding" in the sense of surprise or discovery, to its least purposeful sense, used here, where it means something close to "he was seen to be." Cf. 3:9 (which is probably more in the middle); 2 Cor 5:3; Gal 2:17.
5. Gk. σχήματι; cf. 1 Cor 7:31, the only other occurrence of this word in Paul, where it seems to mean, "this age in its present expression."
6. That is, his "being in the form of God" which means that he "was equal with God."
7. Thus in vv. 12-13 he applies this narrative to their situation, by reminding them that they have "always obeyed" —not Paul, of course, but God himself, just as Christ did by his having died for them.
8. Esp. the Gospel of John and Hebrews (see Jn 4:34; 5:30; 6:38-40; 7:17; 10:15, 17; Heb 5:7-10; 10:5-9).
9. Gk. μεχρί; the preposition for "until," which can denote "space," "time," or "degree." Here it clearly denotes "degree." Jesus' obedience took him to the nth degree, to death itself. The use of this preposition is what in part gives one pause as to whether this passage was written with Isaiah 53 consciously in the background, where the LXX twice reads είς θάνατον.
10. Contra those who suggest that it points to a life of obedience, which maintained obedience to the very end (as, e.g., Plummer [47]: "He became so by a life of absolutely perfect obedience in all things").
11. See 1 Cor 2:7 (NRSV); for this perspective elsewhere in Paul see also Gal 1:4 ("who gave himself for our sins . . . according to the will of our God and Father"); cf. Rom 1:2-4; 16:25-26; Eph 1:3-7, 11. Some have seen "obedience" otherwise: to the "powers" (Käsemann, et al. [see n. 86 on v. 7]; a view, one should note, that could only have arisen among those who comment on the "hymn" as though Paul had nothing to do with it); or to other human beings as well (Hawthorne); or simply to the fact that he obeyed (Barth, O'Brien). But the subject of the next clause, "Therefore God highly exalted him," seems to point to the view taken here, that his death is in obedience to the divine will.
12. One of the unfortunate by-products of seeing the alleged hymn as pre-Pauline, and then commenting on it as though Paul had nothing to do with it (e.g., Beare), is to view this final, climactic word as a Pauline addition to the "hymn," which breaks up its original strophic arrangement. On this matter Caird has rightly noted (122): "Lohmeyer's attempt to bracket the words even death on a cross as an intrusive gloss, is the reductio ad absurdum of his theory, since the words in fact constitute the climax to which the last three verses have been pointing." Similarly, Hengel, Crucifixion, 62-63, with regard to these words as providing the climax of vv. 6-8; in his view they are to be understood precisely in connection with his taking the "form" of a slave, since crucifixion was a slave's penalty, as everyone reading the letter well knew.
13. Cf. Cicero (Verr. 5.66; LCL 655-57): "To bind a Roman citizen is a crime; to flog him is an abomination; to slay him is almost an act of murder; to crucify him is — what? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed." Cf. Heb 12:2: "Who endured the cross, scorning its shame."
14. Nor anywhere else in the early church!
15. See esp. the accusation of the religious in Luke 23:2, where they knew that the only way they could get the state to do their dirty work for them was to trump up a political charge — sedition: "We found this man . . . forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king" (NRSV). On the whole question of Jesus' death by crucifixion, its Roman background and its theological significance, see M. Hengel, Crucifixion; for a brief, but helpful overview see J. B. Green, DPL, 197-99.
16. A form of execution, it should be further pointed out, reserved for non-citizens of the Empire. Cf. n. 13 above, to which one might add Cicero's further remark (Rab. Post. 5.16; LCL 467): "The very word 'cross' should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears."
17. From the hymn by Graham Kendrick, The Servant King (1983).