the Christ Hymn
Yes, it's the Tuesday after, but I am still taken with our Second Reading for last Sunday, what we call the Christ Hymn in Paul's letter to the Philippians:
Philippians 2:5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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Kajillions of words have been written, and sermons preached, about this passage and the various ways it can be understood theologically. I'm only going to comment on, witness to, my favorite of the interpretations I have read and considered thus far.
It is from the writings, or maybe I heard it from him in a lecture, of Bart Ehrman, PhD and professor of NT studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Along the scholars of the Jesus Seminar, Dr Ehrman is my NT scholar of choice.
His thesis is that Paul, a monotheist Jew, would not have put Jesus on par with God the Father; trinitarian Christianity developed after Paul's Time. That the hymn may have been an existing acclamation that Paul appreciated and used to complete his foregoing exhortation that Christians be humble as Jesus was humble as exemplified in the hymn.
That the hymn (which we may reasonably say reflected what Paul believed about Jesus or Paul would not have quoted it) suggests that he was preexisting as a heavenly being - - not descending from equality with God in Paul's understanding, but Ehrman uses the word "angel" as I recall - - whom God sent down from heaven to Earth, to become the human Jesus. That as a result of his obedience here on Earth, humility and obedience even unto death on a cross, God was so pleased with him that God then exalted him, promoted him so to speak, to be Jesus Christ Lord above all.
This understanding of the Christ Hymn sees Paul as saying that Jesus Christ was not exalted until his obedience on the cross; not, as Gospel John does, Jesus Christ as God the eternal Word, the prime mover in bringing creation into existence; not as Mark has it, at Jesus' baptism; not as Matthew and Luke have it with their Nativity stories, at Jesus conception. But exalted in his death, resurrection and ascension.
Paul's letter in the 50s AD is obviously not the Christian orthodoxy that Gospel John wrote around the end of the first century AD and that was codified by early church fathers under the chairmanship of the Roman emperor Constantine in the Nicene Creed of 325 AD; of Jesus Christ as the eternally begotten Son of God, God from God &c.
For myself, I appreciate Ehrman's thoughts, which I entered with an open mind, avoiding being defensive with any preconceived notions or certainties of my own; with Paul's Christ Hymn meaning to say what Paul understood at the Time, and serving to show Christian orthodoxy evolving over the Church's early centuries.
In the Church today, Pope Francis I may be the greatest possible example of self-effacing humility.
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That's enough to get the one point across.
RSF&PTL then
T89&c
art pinched online under search title "He Emptied Himself (Philippians 2:5-11)". It's obviously not Paul but the foot washing in Gospel John's account of the Last Supper, isn't it! But the it means to show washing someone else's feet as the epitome of humbling oneself, so, fair enough, eh?
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now I'll see if I can quit fooling with it and press Publish and leave it alone!