There are two videos summarising chapter 1
After brief comments on date, location of authorship, Chapter 1 sets out agreed and disputed issues in the interpretation of Phil 2:6–11. Whilst some deny the passage is a “hymn” and that it is a traditional, pre-Pauline, piece, this volume includes a chastened argument in favour of both those modern judgements (see further Chapter 10). But the passage certainly needs to be interpreted in its present literary context, with which it has many literary and thematic connections. These are most prominent at 3:20–21, which has rightly been judged another liturgical fragment that probably followed on 2:6–11 in the version of the “hymn” already known to Paul’s readers.
There are good reasons to think that in 2:6–11 and 3:20–21 there is a reworked “Christological monotheism” in which Christ is included in the identity of the one God of scriptural revelation. Biblical monotheism is affirmed (through the midrashic citation of Isa 45:23 in 2:10–11), but is rendered complex. The divine Christology is clearest in the second half of 2:6–11, where the exalted Christ is identified with the Yhwh-Kyrios of Isa 45 and so receives a worshipful proskynesis. Matters are less straightforward in the first half (vv. 6–8), given the difficulties in translating and interpreting verse 6. However, pre-existence is clear (pace J. D. G. Dunn) and the expression ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων most likely identifies Christ with the visible, outward, form of God’s glory seen by Israel’s prophets (Isa 6:1–3; Ezek 1:26–28, cf. 1 Enoch 14:8–24). The presence of that Christology in both halves of the hymn in chapter 2 is confirmed by details of 3:20–4:1, where Christ plays the role of Yhwh-Kyrios in Psalm 8:7 (LXX).
Whilst there are other features of this letter that support a fully divine Christology in the hymn (see, e.g., Tilling’s Paul’s Divine Christology), there are also weighty objections to that conclusion. Firstly, the “he highly exalted (ὑπερύψωσεν)” of v. 9 suggests that Christ is exalted to a new, and higher, divine identity or status after death than he had in pre-existence. Secondly, the meaning of the difficult οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ (v. 6a–b) might be that Christ refused to grasp after an equality with God that he did not yet possess and that he waited, humbly and obediently, to be given him after death (vv. 9–11). Thirdly, the last phrase of the hymn (εἰς δόξαν θεοῦ πατρός) looks suspiciously like a theocentric final word, that ensures exalted claims for Christ do not threaten the singular identity of the one God. Fourthly, the many ways in which the praise of Christ portrays him as an ideal Greco-Roman ruler (see Chapter 2) suggest that his “divinity” is of the kind ascribed to kings and emperors; he has a divine status (after posthumous exaltation) and he is the “Lord,” but not LORD.
To clear the ground for the proposals I make in Chapters 3–14, in the rest of Chapter 1 and in Chapter 2, we review influential but problematic alleged “backgrounds” or interpretative keys to the Christ Hymn. There are some points of contact between the passage and extant versions of an early narrative about Jesus’s life and death. The coming from pre-existence, the serving as a slave (δοῦλος, cf. John 13:3–7), the fraught issue of equality with God (Phil 2:6b–c, cf. John 5:14), the obedience (v. 8, cf. Mark 14:35–36), death on a cross, followed by exaltation to continued life and universal authority, can all be compared with elements of the gospel tradition, especially in its Johannine form. However, it is striking how much of the Christ Hymn has no parallel in the four gospels and several of its puzzles (the rare word ἁρπαγμός, the unusual expression ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων, and the posthumous gift of the supreme name) have no straightforward or obvious basis in preserved Jesus traditions. The passage also lacks much of the content that evidently defined the earliest traditions about Jesus (his healings, exorcisms, baptism, and resurrection, for example). Equally, although there are possible echoes of early Jesus material in the rest of the letter (e.g. 1:8, 19b; 3:18) these are relatively opaque, and it is not obvious how they serve the letter’s principal themes. So, it is not surprising that modern scholarship has searched for other “backgrounds” that might explain the peculiar features of Phil 2:6–11
Firstly, there is the once-popular reading according to which Christ is a new Adam, or heavenly man, from before his taking on a human life. With the majority of contributors in the last two decades, I agree this thesis is problematic and for the pre-existent phase of Christ’s biography it is implausible, given, especially, the possible semantic range of μορφή θεοῦ (v. 6a) and the lack of clear scriptural language from Gen 1–3 in Phil 2:6–8. However, caution is urged because the language of Ps 8 appears in 3:21, which is likely the climax of the story begun in 2:6. Furthermore, I put forward new evidence for additional, until now unnoticed, allusions to Ps 8 in 3:20–4:1. That evidence suggests one point of 3:21 is to say that Christ in subjecting all things is identified with—not just God, but also—the ideal, glorious, and crowned, humanity of Ps 8. If the end of the story told in 2:6–11 + 3:20–21 is one in which Christ fulfils the role of the ideal humanity of Ps 8 (to which believers will be conformed) then perhaps that exalted humanity is present also in the third phase of Christ’s biography (in 2:9–11). Perhaps also the obedience and death of Christ in the second phase signify that, already, during his earthly life Christ so identified himself with humanity that he took on the identity of a “second Adam,” both as truly obedient one (contrast Gen 3) and as one who suffers the supreme penalty of the first couple’s sin, namely, death. In this chapter, these possibilities are sketched, but neither confirmed nor rejected.
Secondly, quite a few have recently followed Samuel Vollenweider in arguing that the hymn relies on an older, Jewish Christian, angel Christology, in which Christ is a pre-existent heavenly being with an angelic “form” who comes to earth in disguise, in a way similar to the pagan gods’ veiled visitations.[1] He is then exalted and receives the divine name (the Tetragrammaton) (Phil 2:9–10) in a way that is analogous to (and intelligible by comparison with) the Angel of the LORD’s possession of that same name (Exod 23:20–23, cf. Iaoel in Apocalypse of Abraham and Enoch-Metatron in 3 Enoch). Although some parts of this thesis are intriguing and not impossible, its principal components are flawed, both methodologically and in substance. There are no traces of an angelology or of an angel Christology in either Phil 2:6–11 itself or its current literary setting.
Finally, Chapter 1 sets out some matters which ought now to be beyond debate and which guide the approach I take in the rest of this volume. The language and imagery of the hymn in 2:6–11 (and its reflex at 3:20–21) is Greco-Roman, especially in the first half, and only in small part biblical and Jewish. Preliminary comments are offered on ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων, ἁρπαγμός, τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ, and the unusual expression ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων (v. 10c). I press some questions about the purpose of this Greco-Roman language, which is combined with some scriptural and Jewish tradition only in the second half. We can at least say it is a feature of the hymn’s Christology which accords with the rest of the letter, that also lacks scriptural citations and attention to the kind of Jewish issues that occur in Paul’s other letters. In this, both hymn and letter seem to reflect the absence of Jewish Christ believers among the letter’s recipients.
One of the ways in which Paul’s communication strategy is tailored to his non-Jewish audience deserves special attention, namely his adoption of the language of ancient philosophy. Wayne Meeks’ oft-cited view that the letter’s “most comprehensive purpose is the shaping of Christian phronēsis, a practical moral reasoning that is ‘conformed to [Christ’s] death’ in hope of his resurrection” has been bolstered by more recent findings.[2] Paul’s opening prayer (1:9–11) employs the language of popular philosophy, that was concerned with the individual’s moral development and training for effective responses to life’s practical problems. Abounding love, knowledge and perception in order δοκιμάζειν τὰ διαφέροντα “to test, or determine, the differences between things, such as truth and error, or to determine or approve what is pre-eminent, best, not just good” (v. 10) sounds like the task of making distinctions and directing people’s attention to what really matters (sometimes with the verb διαφέρω), that was one of the aims of ancient philosophy. In 4:11–13 Paul endorses the general philosophical ideal, dear not just to Cynics and Stoics, that the wise man be αὐτάρκης “self-sufficient, content”. In 4:8 he provides an ethical list that is characteristic of Greek moral philosophy, but unparalleled in his other letters. Then there is a potentially philosophical sounding προκοπή “progress” in 1:12, 25 as well as echoes of Socrates’ reasonings on his suicide in 1:21–23.
The presence of philosophical language in Philippians has often been minimized, with little consideration for the possibility that it might connect to the Christ Hymn and its peculiarities. But there are various reasons to suppose it is integral to the central parts of the letter’s argument.
[1] Esp. S. Vollenweider, “Die Metamorphose des Gottessohns: Zum epiphanialen Motivfeld in Phil 2,6–8,” in Horizonte neutestamentlicher Christologie (WUNT 144. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2002), 285–306, cf. P. Holloway, Philippians: A Commentary (Hermeneia: Fortress: Minneapolis, 2018).
[2] W. A. Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians,”in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (ed. B. Pearson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 329–336 (333).