3. God Has Exalted Him as Lord of All (2:9-11)
3. God Has Exalted Him as Lord of All (2:9-11)
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the1 name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
wand every tongue confess2 that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The basic paradigmatic concern of this "Christ story" has been expressed in vv. 6-8.3 But neither the narrative nor Paul's overall concern for the Philippians in this context is finished. Thus he concludes on this note of exaltation, affirming that Christ's self-emptying and death by crucifixion revealed true equality with God. In so doing, Paul both affirms the rightness of the paradigm to which he has called the Philippians and keeps before their eyes the eschatological vindication that awaits those who are Christ's,4 a concern that runs throughout the letter and the note on which this whole section (from 1:27) concludes (2:16). For a suffering community whom Paul repeatedly reminds regarding the absolute centrality of Christ in everything — both present and future — here is the necessary concluding word. Believers in Christ, suffering though they may be, are in Christ both "already" and "not yet." Already they know and own him as Lord of all; not yet have they seen all things brought under his subjection. Here, then, is the eschatological reminder of who, and whose, they are: glad followers of him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, before whom at God's eschatological wrapup every knee shall bow to pay him the homage due his name.
Although the passage has the ring of doxology to it, it lacks the poetry that has preceded, which was abetted primarily by the participial constructions.5 Indeed, everything has changed. In Part I, Christ is the subject of all the verbs and participles; here God is the subject and Christ the object, who is recipient both of the divine "name" and of the worship offered by "every knee" and "every tongue," all to the glory of God.6 If this is part of a hymn, it has no known parallels, either in Judaism, Hellenism, or in Paul.7 The parallelism that does exist (in vv. 10-11) is the direct result of another piece of "intertextuality" in this letter;8 indeed, the whole has been formulated to echo the oracle in Isa 45:18-24, where Yahweh (LXX, the "Lord"), Israel's savior, declares his exalted status over all gods and nations.9
9 With an inferential "therefore also"10 Paul draws the preceding narrative to its proper conclusion. Although he mentions neither the resurrection nor the ascension,11 these two realities are presupposed by what he does say.12 Paul's immediate interest lies elsewhere. Nor is what follows to be understood either as a reward for Christ's previous action13 or as an assertion of his victory over the powers.14 Rather it asserts the divine vindication of Christ's emptying himself and humbling himself in obedience by dying on a cross. As God's "yes" to this expression of "equality with God," God the Father "exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name." Although expressed as a twofold action, most likely Paul intends the two verbs to point to a single reality: that God highly exalted Christ by15 gracing16 him with "the name." Both parts of the sentence, however, raise issues that need closer examination.
First, in asserting that God has "highly exalted"17 Christ, Paul uses a compound of the ordinary verb for "exalt" with the preposition hyper, whose basic meaning is "above." On the basis of a certain understanding of v. 6 (what Christ did not "seize" was something not previously his), some see Paul as stressing that Christ has been rewarded for his humiliation by having been given a higher "position" than he had heretofore.18 Others see an emphasis on his victory over the powers, although that concern is foreign to the narrative and must be inferred on the basis of an (almost certainly) incorrect understanding of "in heaven and on earth and under the earth." But the verb "highly exalted" implies neither of these. Paul virtually holds the copyright on hyper compounds in the NT, and in the vast majority of cases they magnify or express excess,19 not position. No one would imagine, for example, a positional interpretation for the similar compound in Rom 8:37 ("we are more than conquerors [probably Pauline coinage] through Christ"). Likewise here, God has "highly exalted" Christ, meaning exalted him to the highest possible degree.
But what does Paul intend by "the name that is above every name"? Here the options are basically two,20 "Jesus" or "Lord." On the one hand, there is much to be said for "the name" to refer to his earthly name "Jesus."21 That, after all, is what is picked up in the next phrase, "at the name of Jesus." If so, then Paul does not mean that he has now been given that name, but that in highly exalting him, God has bestowed on the name of Jesus a significance that excels all other names. Moreover, "Jesus" is in fact a name, whereas "Lord" could be argued to be a title.22
On the other hand, most believe that the bestowing on him of the name "Lord," as the equivalent of Yahweh, is how Jesus has been exalted to the highest place.23 Indeed, were it not for the phrase "at the name of Jesus" in the next clause, this would be the universal point of view. In favor of it is the second part of the result clause (v. 11), that every tongue will confess that "the Lord is Jesus Christ." But what favors it the most is the clear "intertextuality" that is in process here.24 The twofold result clause that makes up our vv. 10 and 11 is a direct borrowing of language from Isa 45:23, where Yahweh (the Lord) says that "before me (the Lord) every knee shall bow and every tongue will swear (LXX, confess)" that "in the Lord alone are righteousness and strength." This emphasis on Yahweh, "the Lord,"25 as the one unto whom all shall give obeisance, seems to certify that what Paul has in mind is none other than the name, Yahweh itself, but in its Greek form of "the Lord," which has now been "given" to Jesus.26 On the meaning and significance of this name, see on v. 11.
We should note finally that this declaration of Jesus as "Lord" would probably not be lost on believers in a city whose inhabitants are Roman citizens and who are devotees of "lords many," including "lord Caesar." Paul well knows to whom he is writing these words, especially since he is now one of the emperor's prisoners and the Philippians are suffering at the hands of Roman citizens as well.
10 The result27 of God's exaltation of Jesus is expressed in two coordinate clauses taken directly from the LXX of Isa 45:23,28 both of which stress that the whole creation shall offer him homage and worship, presumably at his Parousia. Thus the narrative covers the whole gamut: It begins in eternity past with Christ's "being in the 'form' of God," then focuses on his incarnation, and finally expresses his exaltation as something already achieved (v. 9), thus presupposing resurrection and ascension; now it concludes by pointing to the eschatological future, when all created beings shall own his lordship.29
First, then, "at30 the name of Jesus31 ," the Lord, "every knee shall bow." The whole created order shall give him obeisance. The "bowing of the knee" is a common idiom for doing homage, sometimes in prayer, but always in recognition of the authority of the god or person to whom one is offering such obeisance.32 The significance of Paul's using the language of Isaiah in this way lies with his substituting "at the name of Jesus" for the "to me" of Isa 45:23, which refers to Yahweh, the God of Israel. In this stirring oracle (Isa 45:18-24a) Yahweh is declared to be God alone, over all that he has created and thus over all other gods and nations. And he is Israel's savior, whom they can thus fully trust. In vv. 22-24a Yahweh, while offering salvation to all but receiving obeisance in any case, declares that "to me every knee shall bow." Paul now asserts that through Christ's resurrection and at his ascension God has transferred this right to obeisance to the Son; he is the Lord to whom every knee shall eventually bow. There is in this language no hint that those who bow are acknowledging his salvation; on the contrary they will bow to his sovereignty at the End, even if they are not now yielding to it.
Also in keeping with the Isaianic oracle, but now interrupting the language of the citation itself, Paul declares the full scope of the homage that Christ will one day receive: every knee "of those in the heavenlies and of those on earth and of those under the earth" shall bow to the authority inherent in his name.33 In keeping with the oracle, especially that "the Lord" is the creator of the heavens and the earth (45:18), Paul is purposely throwing the net of Christ's sovereignty over the whole of created beings.34 Those "of heaven" refer to all heavenly beings, angels and demons;35 those of earth refer to all those who are living on earth at his Parousia, including those who are currently causing suffering in Philippi; and those "under the earth" probably refer to "the dead," who also shall be raised to acknowledge his lordship over all.
11 Second, not only shall every creature bend the knee and offer the obeisance that is due Christ's name, but "every tongue"36 shall express that homage in the language of the confessing37 — but currently suffering — church: Jesus Christ is Lord. In its Pauline occurrences this confession always takes the form, "the Lord is Jesus," to which he here adds "Christ." For Paul this confession is the line of demarcation between believer and nonbeliever (Rom 10:9). Such confession, he argues in 1 Cor 12:3, can come only by way of the Spirit; hence the crucial role of the Spirit in conversion. This confession in Rom 10:9 is linked with conviction about the resurrection of Jesus; that same combination is undoubtedly in view here. When at the End all creation beholds the risen Jesus, they will on that basis declare that Kyrios is none other than the Jesus who was crucified and whom Christians worship. But the confession will not then be that of conversion, but of final acknowledgment that "God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36).
Despite an occasional demurrer, there can be little question that this confession arose in the early Jewish Christian community,38 as the Aramaic "Maranatha" in 1 Cor 16:22 bears striking evidence. Thus, in the very earliest Aramaic-speaking communities, the language that belonged to God alone is now being addressed to Christ in corporate invocation. One can scarcely gainsay the christological implications of this confession in the present passage. On the one hand, in the Jewish synagogue the appellation "Lord" had long before been substituted for God's "name" (Yahweh). The early believers had now transferred that "name" (Lord) to the risen Jesus. Thus, Paul says, in raising Jesus from the dead, God has exalted him to the highest place and bestowed on him the name of God — in the Hebrew sense of the Name, referring to his investiture with God's power and authority.39 On the other hand, Paul's monotheism is kept intact by the final phrase, "unto the glory of God the Father."40 Thus very much in keeping with 1 Cor 8:6, where there is only one God (the Father, from whom and for whom are all things, including ourselves) and only one Lord (Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him), so here, this final sentence begins with God's exalting Christ by bestowing on him "the name" and concludes on the same theological note, that all of this is to God the Father's own glory.41
In the light of the grandeur of this passage (all of 2:6-11), one can easily forget why it is here. Paul's reasons are twofold: first, as throughout the letter, to focus on Christ himself, and thus, second, in this instance to point to him as the ultimate model of the self-sacrificing love to which he is calling the Philippians.42 That Paul himself has not forgotten where he is going becomes evident in the application that immediately follows, where the Philippians are called upon to "obey," just as the self-abasing One "obeyed" the will of his Father. But we should note further that both of Paul's concerns transfer fully into the ongoing life of the church and the believer.
First, whatever else the Christian faith is, and whatever Christian life is all about, it finds its central focus ever and always on Christ. Here we have spelled out before us in living color both the what and the why of Paul's affirmation, "for me to live is Christ." This narrative puts it into focus: Paul believed that in Jesus Christ the true nature of the living God had been revealed ultimately and finally. God is not a grasping, self-centered being, but is most truly known through the one who, himself in the form of God and thus equal with God, poured himself out in sacrificial love by taking the lowest place, the role of a slave, whose love for his human creatures found its consummate expression in his death on the cross. That this is God's own nature and doing has been attested for all time by Christ Jesus's divine vindication; he has been exalted by God to the highest place by having been given the name of God himself: The Lord is none other than Jesus Christ. This is therefore why for Paul "to live is Christ." Any faith that falls short of this is simply not the Christian faith.
But second, Paul's point is, in the words of the poet, "'Tis the way the Master went, should not the servant tread it still?" That Christ serves for us as a paradigm for Christian life is not, as some fear, a betrayal of Paul's gospel.43 On the contrary, it reinforces a significant aspect of his gospel, namely that there is no genuine life in Christ that is not at the same time, by the power of the Holy Spirit, being regularly transformed into the likeness of Christ. A gospel of grace, which omits obedience, is not Pauline in any sense; obedience, after all, is precisely the point made in the application that follows (v. 12). To be sure, the indicative must precede the imperative, or all is lost; but it does not eliminate the imperative, or all is likewise lost.
The behavioral concern of this passage is precisely in keeping with the Pauline paraenesis found everywhere. Paul's gospel has inherent in it that those who are in Christ will also walk worthy of Christ (1:27). Thus, in Pauline ethics, the principle is love, the pattern is Christ, the power is the Spirit, and their ultimate purpose the glory of God — all of which has been provided for in the death and resurrection of Christ. The appeal in the present passage is to a unity in Christ that for Paul was a sine qua non of the evidential reality of his gospel at work in his communities. The bases of the appeal, Christ, God's love, and the Spirit, are set forth in v. 1. The Christian graces absolutely necessary for such behavior are selflessness and humility, in which one looks not only to one's own interests but also — especially — to those of others (vv. 3-4). Here is where the example of Christ comes in. Those who are Christ's (v. 1) must also have his "mindset" (vv. 5 — 11).
However, to insist that in context the basic thrust of this passage is "Christ as paradigm" of a certain mindset does not mean that there are no other agenda, including paradigmatic ones. Both the length and pattern of the passage suggest that Paul is laying a much broader theological foundation, probably for the whole letter. In the first place, the mention of Christ's death on the cross as paradigm at the same time reminds them of the basis of their faith in the first place. It is that death, after all, that lies at the heart of everything. To put it another way, the appeal to Christ's example in his suffering and death makes its point precisely because it presupposes that they will simultaneously recall the saving significance of that death.
Moreover, there is also an emphasis in this letter on imitatio with regard to suffering (1:29-30; 3:10, 21). Those who are privileged to believe in Christ are also privileged to suffer for him; indeed to share in those sufferings is part of knowing him. Hence, this passage, with Christ's humbling himself to the point of death on the cross, will also serve as the theological ground for that concern. That, indeed, seems to make the best sense of the otherwise unusual emphasis in 3:10 that knowing Christ includes the "participation in his sufferings, being conformed44 to his death." Thus Christ's death once again serves as paradigm.
Finally, the note of eschatological glory in vv. 9-11 is also struck more than once in this letter (1:6; 1:10-11; 1:21-24; 3:11-14; 3:20-21). For this, too, Christ serves both as exalted Lord and as example or forerunner. His vindication, which followed his humiliation, is found in his present and future lordship, to which both the Philippians and (ultimately) their opponents bow. But that vindication also becomes paradigm. Those who now suffer for Christ, and walk worthy of Christ, shall also at his coming be transformed into the likeness of "the body of his (present) glory" (3:21).
Thus the narrative summarizes the centrality of Christ in Pauline theology. His death secured redemption for his people; but at the same time it serves as pattern for their present life in the Spirit, while finally we shall share in the eschatological glory and likeness that are presently his. And all of this "to the glory of God the Father."
In the final analysis, therefore, this passage stands at the heart of Paul's understanding of God. Christ serves as pattern, to be sure; but he does so as the one who most truly expresses God's nature. As God, Christ poured himself out, not seeking his own advantage. As man — and not ceasing to be God — he humbled himself unto death on the cross. That this is what God is like is the underlying Pauline point; and since God is in process of recreating us in his image, this becomes the heart of the present appeal. The Philippians — and we ourselves — are not called upon simply to "imitate God" by what we do, but to have this very mind, the mind of Christ, developed in us, so that we too bear God's image in our attitudes and relationships within the Christian community — and beyond.
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1. The Western and later Byzantine traditions (D F G Ψ Maj; Clement Origen) omit τό, thus reading as the KJV ("a name above all names"). Although one could argue for an addition on the grounds of grammar (όνομα τό, without a τό preceding όνομα is awkward), both the external evidence and Pauline grammar argue for the article as original. The omission resulted either from an error of hearing (the τό immediately follows αύτω) or (more likely) from a lack of understanding of Paul, so that his definite "the name" (= the Lord) came to mean something closer to name = reputation.
2. The large number of MSS have changed Paul's original subjunctive (έξο- μολογήσηται) to a future indicative (-γήσεται). This is an understandable change, which makes v. 11 a final sentence on its own. But the second subjunctive (preserved in Ρ4 6 N Β Ψ 104 323 2495 pm) is to be preferred; it keeps the sentence with its chiastic structure intact (see n. 6) and represents Paul's ordinary style.
3. That is, the Philippians are to pursue the mindset of the one who as God emptied himself and as man humbled himself, even to death on the cross. On this whole question, see n. 14 on 2:5-11; cf. the discussion in O'Brien, 253-62, and the theological observations at the end of the paragraph (pp. 226-29 below).
4. The first to note this view of vv. 9-11 among English commentaries was Michael; most neglect it altogether, usually because by the time they come to this verse the context is forgotten in the interest of what Paul says about Christ himself. On the basis of his view of v. 5. Barth sees the vindication to come to the Philippians as a result of their being "in Christ." But such a view arose only for theological reasons — to be done with a kind of "imitatio Christi" that seems to imply personal effort and therefore to circumvent grace.
5. Cf. Silva (127) and O'Brien (232), who both recognize that this is a Pauline prose sentence and begin by describing its obvious parts, but who then continue to use the language of hymnody.
6. The whole, therefore, falls out into a kind of chiastic structure:
A God has exalted him to the highest place
Β by bestowing on him "the name" above other names
C at which name every knee shall bow
C' and every tongue confess (the name)
B' namely that the Lord is Jesus Christ
A' all to the glory of God the Father
7. The lack of a Pauline parallel is highlighted when contrasted with Rom 11:33-36, a doxologic passage, which appears in nicely balanced Semitic parallelism. Cf. the "addition" to the prescript in Galatians, where in v. 4 he says of Christ: who gave himself for our sins, in order that he might deliver us . . . , in keeping with the will of God, to whom (God) be glory forever." As with the present passage, this is the stuff of creed, not hymn, which is expressed in the exalted language of praise but whose "poetry" is incidental, not hymnic.
8. See above on 1:20 and on 2:14-16 below.
9. It is a cause for some wonder that this sentence could be considered by some to be pre-Pauline and thus not by Paul (e.g., Käsemann, Beare, Martin), in light of (a) the Pauline form that it takes, (b) the typically Pauline intertextuality which forms the heart of it (and the use of Isa 45:23 in particular; cf. Rom 14:11), (c) the Pauline language that abounds (the two main verbs; the confession of Jesus as Lord), and (d) the thoroughly Pauline outlook theologically. And all of this is an undisputed Pauline letter!
10. Gk. διό xαί; the conjunction itself (διό) is always inferential and never slips into modified expressions, such as resumption, which is so characteristic of οũν. Although it is possible that the xαί is correlative, functioning with the xαί at the beginning of the next clause to emphasize "both . . . and" with regard to God's activity of exalting and name bestowing, much more likely it is to be understood as intensifying the conjunction, which BAGD suggest "denot[es] that the inference is self-evident." For this usage in Paul, see 2 Cor 1:20; 4:13 (2x); 5:9; Rom 4:22; 15:22.
11. The absence of which some, therefore, consider to reflect non-Pauline authorship. But in fact many of these kinds of creedal statements, most of which in Paul are soteriological, do not mention the Resurrection.
12. G. Howard, "Phil 2:6-11," has taken the human Jesus view, which denies pre-existence in vv. 6-7 (see n. 41 on v. 6), to its logical conclusion, by arguing that this passage also speaks only of the human (albeit risen) Jesus. But this is to pile still further exegetical improbabilities onto a view that is already loaded with them. It is not surprising that he has found no followers.
13. E.g., Meyer, 99; Martin, 100; Houlden, 77; Silva, 127-28.
14. E.g., Lohmeyer, Käsemann, Beare, Caird, Martin.
15. Thus reading the xαί as epexegetic and the sentence as a hendiadys, where the second verb elaborates or fills out the meaning of the first. On this usage in Paul, see esp. 1 Cor 11:22 ("or do you despise the church of God by humiliating the have-nots"). So also Silva, 128-29.
16. Gk. έχαρίσατο, the verb formed from the noun χάρις ("grace") and a Pauline favorite; see the discussion on 1:29 above.
17. Gk. ύπερύψωσεν, found only here in the NT.
18. It might be in a sense that in the chronology of heaven as it intersects with earth Christ has assumed a "new role" as it were (as sympathetic high priest, for example, who knows our suffering from the inside). But it is doubtful that one can mine "positional" significance out of that kind of understanding.
19. See MHT, 2.326; as they point out, the English equivalent is our "over" compounds (e.g., overjoyed, overburden, overdevelop), or as many have put it, the emphasis is on the superlative, not comparative.
20. "Name" sometimes refers to one's character, or reputation, as in the first petition of the Lord's Prayer; but in light of the definite article with "name" that seems untenable here. So also with Lightfoot's "the title of dignity" (cf. Beare). Both of these miss the role of the Isaiah oracle in the passage as a whole. In this case the name, meaning "the well-known" name, probably reflects an OT phenomenon where "the name" was a periphrasis for Yahweh.
21. For this view, see Meyer, Alford, Eadie, Vincent, and more recently, Moule ("Reflexions," 270) and Silva.
22. So Meyer, 100.
23. So, inter alia, Kennedy, Plummer, Michael, Lohmeyer, Barth, Müller, Beare, Hendriksen, Collange, Bruce, Hawthorne, and most specialized studies on the passage.
24. That the intertextuality is certain is verified by Paul's citation of this same passage from the LXX in Rom 14:11, where it appears to reinforce that all people, including believers, will appear before God's "judgment seat." This citation is especially noteworthy as demonstrating intertextuality in the present passage, for two reasons: first, Paul begins the Romans citation with words from Isa 49:18 ("I live, says the Lord"), which indicates that Paul has the larger context of these Isaianic oracles in view; and second, because in both instances he cites a form of the text with έξομολογήσεται rather than όμεΐται (see n. 28 below), indicating that in the present instance he is not "loosely reworking" or "alluding" to this passage, as Kreitzer (Jesus, 115-16), e.g., suggests. This is a primary example of intertextuality, in which Paul purposely picks up the language of an earlier text (in this case, Isa 45:23), bringing with it the basic contextual concerns of that text, and now reapplies it to his own situation. See the discussion on 1:20.
25. An emphasis, it should be pointed out, that runs through the whole of Isa 41-55 (see esp. 42:8, "I am Yahweh God [έγώ κύριος ò θεός], that is my name"!; cf. 41:17, 21; 42:5, 6, 13, 21; 43:3, 10, 12, et passim).
26. We might note further (1) that this interpretation removes the awkwardness of Christ's being "granted" a name he had already borne during the time of his incarnation; and (2) that it fits the Pauline view of things, in that the basic confession of believers is that Jesus is Lord (v. 11).
27. Gk. 'ίνα, which in classical Greek expresses purpose, and still does for the most part in the NT, including Paul. But there are several instances in Paul where the purpose seems to embrace result more than aim (cf. v. 2 above; see Fee, Presence, 434-37, on Gal 5:17); cf. O'Brien, 239. Most interpreters see it strictly as purpose.
28. Thus Paul: πάν γόνυ xάμψη [ ] xαί πάσα γλώσσα έξομολογήσηται Isa 45:23: κάμψει πάν γόνυ xαί έξομολογήσεται πάσα γλώσσα. There is a considerable textual variant in the LXX manuscript tradition, between έξομολο- γήσεται (A Q NC) and ομεΐται (Β N Lucian Catenae). The latter reading was almost certainly created by Origen in his Hexapla as a "correction" toward the Masoretic text. In any case, Paul is the certain evidence that this reading existed (in Tarsus?) in the first Christian century. That Paul cites it this way in two instances, once (Rom 14:11) precisely (verbally) as in Codex Alexandrinus (but with the transposition πάσα γλώσσα έξομολογήσεται), verifies that this is the reading he knows, not one that he created. Furthermore, the transposition, slight as it is textually, indicates that Paul was probably citing from memory, while at the same time it verifies that Alexandrinus is not an adaptation to Paul.
29. This seems so clearly the perspective of the whole, that one is caught by surprise that there has been debate as to the "time" of this event (see Martin, Carmen, 266-70). On this matter, Lohmeyer (97) surely had it right, that it speaks of the eschatological future from the perspective of "a present in God." This is nothing other than the "already/not yet" eschatological framework that informs the whole of Pauline theology. See the Introduction, pp. 50-52.
30. Gk. έν; some debate exists as to whether this is the object (so most interpreters) or medium (so Kennedy, Plummer) of worship (the language is Michael's, 96). Ordinarily one would think the latter; the context and structure of the sentence indicate the former, in the sense of "in honor of his name," is in view (as GNB, Loh-Nida, O'Brien). However, to use this preposition as a way of suggesting that the worship is not directed to Jesus, but through him to the Father (as e.g., Collange), seems to press for a fixed sense to a flexible preposition, while missing the point of the whole passage.
31. Most likely this genitive means "the name (= Lord) which has been bestowed on Jesus," not "the name Jesus itself."
32. See, e.g., Ps 95:6; Mark 15:19; Luke 5:8; 22:41; Acts 7:60; 9:40; Eph 3:14; cf. the discussions in NIDNTT, 2.859-60 (Schönweiss), and EDNT, 1.257-58 (Niitzel).
33. Some have argued for universalism on the basis of statements like this; but that flies full in the face of 1:28 (cf. 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 4:3; etc.).
34. But it seems unlikely that the three words are neuter and intend to imply "the whole range of creation," including inanimate creation, as Lightfoot (115) argues, followed by Plummer, 49; Carr, Angels, 86-89; Silva, 133.
35. So most interpreters. Although this language will surely include "the powers," there seems to be no particular emphasis on them, nor is there any reason to suppose that all three designations refer to "spirit powers" (as, e.g., Dibelius, Käsemann, Beare, Cullmann, Martin [Carmen, 257-65], Gnilka, Traub [TDNT, 5.541-42], Niitzel [EDNT, 1.258]). This view, which has been thoroughly refuted by Hofius (Christushymnus, 20-40; cf. Carr, Angels, 86-89), is the direct result of faulty methodology, which (1) presupposes that the "hymn" is pre-Pauline (and therefore non-Pauline), (2) seeks to root its "background" in Gnostic or hellenistic cosmology, and (3) then reads that alleged "background" into its present Pauline usage. Against it, besides this metholodological weakness, are: (1) that although Paul understands the powers to inhabit the "heavenlies" (Eph 1:20-21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:12), there is no evidence that he understood them also to inhabit earth and Sheol (on the misreading of 1 Cor 2:6-8 in this way, see Fee, First Corinthians, 103-4); (2) that Paul's primary background is the OT, and the present language, though not found in the OT, thoroughly represents the cosmology of the OT (see, e.g., J. Guhrt, NIDNTT, 1.522-23); and (3) most importantly, there is not a hint in the present letter that the Philippians were distressed by the "powers"; their problem is with people, whose opposition is bringing them considerable suffering. Thus, if there is emphasis at all in such a broad throwing of the net (and there probably is), it would seem to be — for the sake of the Philippians — that it includes those who are currently responsible for their suffering.
36. Gk. γλώσσα. Although this word sometimes refers to languages, and BAGD think so here ("every language = every person, regardless of the language he [or she] speaks"), Paul is more likely picking up the sense of the LXX of Isa 45:23, that the "tongue of every person" shall confess — which is also in keeping with the parallel, "knee."
37. The δτι is a δτι-recitativum (used to introduce a quote), thus indicating, as elsewhere in Paul, that these are the actual words of the confession.
38. On this question see esp. the article on "Lord" in DPL, 560-69, by Hurtado; see also his One God.
39. Cf. Kreitzer (Jesus, 116), whose language I have here borrowed.
40. Cf. Kreitzer (Jesus, 161), cited also by Hurtado, DPL, 565. Cf. 1:11, where the fruit of righteousness comes "through Christ Jesus unto the glory and praise of God."
41. That is, this phrase goes with the whole narrative (from v. 6), not just the final clause (so Meyer).
42. Cf. Francis Bland Tucker's hymn, based on this passage (set to Ralph Vaughan Williams's Sine Nomine):
1All praise to thee, for thou, Ο King divine, 3Let this mind be in us which was in thee
didst yield the glory that of right was thine, who was a servant that we might be free,
that in our darkened hearts thy grace might shine: humbling thyself to death on Calvary:
allelujah! allelujah!
2Thou cam'st to us in lowliness of thought; 4Wherefore, by God's eternal purpose, thou
by thee the outcast and the poor were sought, art high exalted o'er all creatures now,
and by thy death was God's salvation wrought: and given the name to which all knees shall bow:
allelujah! allelujah!
5Let every tongue confess with one accord in heaven and earth that Jesus Christ is Lord; and God the Father be by all adored: allelujah!
As a wonderful experience of divine appointment (and perhaps humor, given my view that the passage is not a hymn), this was one of three hymns and contemporary choruses (including Graham Kendrick's "Servant King" [see n. 17 on v. 8]) sung in worship on the Sunday after I had finished this section of the commentary. The passage obviously sings, even if it was not originally a hymn!
43. See n. 14 on 2:5-11 above. As noted there, the tendency on the part of some is to rail against something of a "straw man," as though to see Christ as paradigm is to think that "all that a Christian has to do is to follow in the Master's footsteps" (Martin, Carmen, 289). That is hardly Paul's point, nor that of those who take the passage as Paul intends — as a paradigm to reinforce unity within the community.
44. Gk. συμμορΦιζόμενος, where Paul is surely intending them to hear the echo of Christ's μορφή from this passage.