When was Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter from Nazareth, ever “rich,” if not in his pre-existent life in Heaven as the divine Son, before He assumed the poverty of our human condition in the Incarnation?
Part 40: Though He was Rich, yet for Our Sake He Became Poor
By Robert Stackpole, STD
In this weekly web series, Dr. Robert Stackpole, emeritus director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, leads us step-by-step through the life of the Founder of Christianity, from Bethlehem to Galilee to Jerusalem. Along the way, we pause to consider in-depth the historical debate over the gospel stories of the virginal conception and Nativity of Jesus, His message of the Kingdom, His embrace of persecution and death on the Cross, and His glorious bodily Resurrection from the dead. Finally, we plunge into the great mystery of the Incarnation, and show how it actually shines through the whole gospel story from beginning to end. Read the series from the beginning.
Perhaps the most revealing New Testament passage of all in St. Paul’s writings regarding the deity of Christ appears in his epistle to the Philippians, 2:5-11, written about 60-62 AD. Many scholars believe that here he is quoting a hymn or canticle familiar to his readers, which means that this passage probably expresses the faith of Christians much earlier than the writing of the epistle itself.
There has been much scholarly debate over what St. Paul meant in the first half of this passage:
Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
Form means nature
When St. Paul writes that Jesus was originally in the “form of God” and later assumed “human form”’ the Greek word used here is morphe, which legitimately can mean “having the precise nature of.” That would make this a hymn or canticle first of all about the Incarnation, telling us that the Son of God in his divine form pre-existed his earthly life, but then he humbled himself to assume all the limitations of human nature “and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”
Also, the phrase translated by the RSVCE (above) as “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” legitimately can be translated (as the Jerusalem Bible did): “[He] did not cling to equality with God”— which would mean that the Son was fully divine, but as an act of selfless generosity he was willing to let go of his equality with God the Father in some way in order to be “born in the likeness of men.” The Greek word translated “he emptied himself” (ekenosen) comes from the Greek word kenosis, which was used to refer to the pouring out of water from a jug or pitcher until it was empty. Here it is used to express the fact that the Son poured himself out in total, sacrificial love for us by assuming our human condition, taking the form of a “servant.”
The second half of the passage is equally revealing:
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The Divinity of Christ
There can be absolutely no doubt that this half of the canticle expresses faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. The name he is given at his exaltation (that is, after his resurrection and ascension into heaven) is “the name which is above every name”— namely, the divine name, Yahweh. Moreover, when the canticle says “at the name of Jesus very knee should bow ... and every tongue confess,” this marks a direct allusion to the words of the Lord God in Isaiah 45:23: “To me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear.”
Since neither the early Christians who recited or sang this canticle, nor St. Paul who records it, can possibly have meant that Jesus was originally a mere creature, a human being, who was later raised somehow to fully divine status, equal to the infinite Father and Creator of all, then the first half of this canticle must, by default, refer to the fact that Jesus originally had a divine nature equal to that of God the Father, and after His human life and crucifixion, His true identity was declared and made manifest in Heaven, and one day all humanity will come to acknowledge this truth: Jesus Christ truly was and is the divine Lord.
Rich or poor?
Finally, this passage in Philippians has a parallel-in-miniature in St. Paul’s writings in 2 Cor 8:9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”
When was Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter from Nazareth, ever “rich,” if not in his pre-existent life in Heaven as the divine Son, before He assumed the poverty of our human condition in the Incarnation?
Other passages in the Pauline epistles also state or imply the divinity of Jesus Christ: Galatians 4:4 (from the mid-50’s AD) and Colossians 1:15-18 and 2:9 (probably from the early 60’s AD).
No debate
One other consideration remains: notice that in all of these passages and books in the New Testament (including all the ones discussed in the previous article in this series), all written in the mid-first century, there is no sign of any debate at all about the divine identity of Jesus Christ. Saint Paul does not try to convince skeptical readers that Jesus Christ (whom some may have thought was a mere human Messiah) was really a divine person after all, and that it is therefore OK to ascribe to Him divine titles and to pray to Him.
It seems that faith in the full divinity of Jesus was taken for granted by most, if not all Christians, no matter how far back into the first century we go — even if the theological details still needed to be unpacked, and the full implications of all this for a Trinitarian understanding of God still needed to be worked out and articulated.
Saint John’s gospel written later, ca. 85-90 AD, does indeed play a crucial role here — but only because he helps to further clarify what the mainstream of the followers of Jesus believed, both implicitly and explicitly, from the very beginning.
Next: Part 41: The Witness of Jesus to His own Divine Identity.
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