RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Kenites Kenosis
KENOSIS.
Scriptural Basis of Kenosis (§ 1).
Modern Rise of the Doctrine (§ 2).
Early Orthodox Exegesis not Kenotic (§ 3).
Concreteness of Early Christology (§ 4).
Foreshadowings of Kenoticism (§ 5).
The Antiochian School and Tertullian (§ 6).
Kenotic Undercurrent (§ 7).
The Problem Ignored by Scholasticism (§ 8).
Calvinism not Really Kenotic (§ 9).
Luther's Christology (§ 10).
Early Post-Lutheran Doctrine (§ 11).
Summary (§ 12).
English and American Treatment (§ 13).
Ever since the middle of the nineteenth century, it has been usual among Protestant, and especially Lutheran, theologians to find the basis for a special doctrine of what is called the kenosis or self-emptying of Christ in the passage (Phil. ii.
i. Scrip- 6-8) where Paul says that Christ tural " being in the form of God, thought it
Basis of not robbery to be equal with God, but
Kenosis. made himself of no reputation (Gk. heauton ekenosen) and took upon him the form of a servant." Although this doctrine is now of little influence among dogmatic theologians, the popularity which it enjoyed and its relation to the older dogmatic development makes a detailed treatment of it useful for the knowledge of the present condition of the Christological problem (see Christology, IX., X.).
The regular Lutheran orthodoxy had seen in the
phrase quoted an aphorism relating to the historic
Christ, partly because the subject of the verb,
" Christ Jesus," is a term usually so applied, and
partly because " a kenosis properly so called can
not be predicated of the Logos apart
2. Modern from the flesh, of the abstract Deity,
Rise of the who is immutable and invariable "
Doctrine. (J. Gerhard, Loci, IV., xiv. 294). The application of the expression to the preexistent Christ was made first, among modern Lutheran theologians, by Ernst Sartorius, tentatively in 1832 and then more fully in his Lehre von der heiligen Liebe (ii. 21 sqq., Hamburg, 1844). In the same year Johann Ludwig Konig expressed similar ideas in Hegelian phraseology; and in 1845 began to appear Thomasius' Beitrdge zur kirchlichen Christologie, which inaugurated the triumph of the modern conception of the kenosis. Here, appar-, ently, the perfect oneness of the person of Christ1 was assured, since it was the divine Logos himself who laid aside the fulness of his divine Nature in all the relations in which it manifests itself exter-\ nally, bringing himself down to the level of a human individual; the possibility of a real human development of Jesus was assured, since the Logos determined to subject his divine being to the forms of human existence, under the laws of human development, retaining the use of his absolute power only so far as it was required for his redeeming work; the Calvinistic theory of the union of Godhead and manhood so that the whole of the former still existed outside the latter was avoided; and the doctrine of the Communieatio Idiomatum (q-v.ju was preserved. Substantial assent was given to the teaching of Thomasius by Lutherans like Kahnis, Luthardt and Delitzsch, by United theologians like
Gaupp and J. P. Lange, and by some Reformed writers, especially Ebrard and later Godet in his commentary on John. Thomasius took heed of criticism so far as to attempt, in his most important work, Christi Person und Werk (part ii., Erlangen, 1855), to avoid the alleged Apollinarianism of his Beitrage by a distinction between the essential attributes of God (absolute power, truth, holiness, love) and the merely relative attributes affected byi the kenosis (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence), thus meeting the charge that he had taughtj a mutability of the divine nature. He maintained, however, that his doctrine of the kenosis was the necessary outcome of the whole previous dogmatic development. He did not deny that the view of the early Church had in general been a different one, but he was convinced that Lutheran Christology, in which the Incarnation was more deeply realized, required his conclusion.
The passage in Philippians was used as early as Marcion; but the important phrase for him was " the likeness of man ": for his Docetic position the ekenosen phrase could be nothing more than a general indication of the apparition of the Logos in the lower world. The work ekenosen is quoted first by the Gnostic Theodotus, Clem- 3. Early ent of Alexandria, and Tertullian, to all Orthodox of whom it seems to be nothing more Exegesis than an expression designating the not Incarnation. As long as the estimate Kenotic. of the person of Christ took its departure from the historic Christ (which, apart from Gnosticism, was the case down to the apologists), no reflection was likely to be made upon the kenosis of the preexistent Logos. It is only after the beginning of Catholic theology with Clement, Irenaeus, and Tertullian that the text in Philippians belongs to the passages regularly used to describe the Incarnation; Origen, in fact, understands the official doctrine to assert that the Son of God " emptying himself (se ipsum exinaniens) and becoming man was incarnate." With scarcely an exception the early writers saw the subject of ekenosen in the logos asarkos, the Word apart from the flesh. Only Novatian, Ambrosiaster, Pelagius, and the commentary based on him which goes under the name of Primasius of Hadrumetum understand the subject to be the Word made flesh. An exegetical predisposition was therefore extant in the early Church for a theory similar to the modern kenosis-theory. But that is the most that can be said. For the usual exposition of the text sees in the " self -emptying " of the Logos merely an equivalent for the " taking the form of a servant," and that again is merely an equivalent for " becoming incarnate . ' ' Origen asserts that the rule of faith lays down that the Logos " being made man remained that which he was before "; and Augustine, echoing the voice of the older tradition, says: " Thus he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, not losing the form of God; the form of a servant was added, the form of God not subtracted." Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa, while admitting that the Word so far emptied himself as to appear not in his native majesty but in the humility of human nature, yet insist on his unaltered substan-
Kenosis