2. The stages of Christ’s humiliation

We may distinguish: (a) That act of the preïncarnate Logos by which, in becoming man, he gave up the independent exercise of the divine attributes. (b) His submission to the common laws which regulate the origin of souls from a preëxisting sinful stock, in taking his human nature from the Virgin,—a human nature which only the miraculous conception rendered pure, (c) His subjection to the limitations involved in a human growth and development,—reaching the consciousness of his sonship at his twelfth year, and working no miracles till after the baptism. (d) The subordination of himself, in state, knowledge, teaching, and acts, to the control of the Holy Spirit,—so living, not independently, but as a servant. (c) His subjection, as connected with a sinful race, to temptation and suffering, and finally to the death which constituted the penalty of the law.

Peter Lombard asked whether God could know more than he was aware of? It is only another way of putting the question whether, during the earthly life of Christ, the Logos existed outside of the flesh of Jesus. We must answer in the affirmative. Otherwise the number of the persons in the Trinity would be variable, and the universe could do without him who is ever “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3), and in whom “all things consist” (Col. 1:17). Let us recall the nature of God’s omnipresence (see pages 279–282). Omnipresence is nothing less than the presence of the whole of God in every place. From this it follows, that the whole Christ can be present in every believer as fully as if that believer were the only one to receive of his fulness, and that the whole Logos can be united to and be present in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills and governs the universe. By virtue of this omnipresence, therefore, the whole Logos can suffer on earth, while yet the whole Logos reigns in heaven. The Logos outside of Christ has the perpetual consciousness of his Godhead, while yet the Logos, as united to humanity in Christ, is subject to ignorance, weakness, and death. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:153—“Jehovah, though present in the form of the burning bush, was at the same time omnipresent also”; 2:265–284, esp. 282—“Because the sun is shining in and through a cloud, it does not follow that it cannot at the same time be shining through the remainder of universal space, unobstructed by any vapor whatever.” Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 21—“Not with God, as with finite man, does arrival in one place necessitate withdrawal from another.” John Calvin: “The whole Christ was there; but not all that was in Christ was there.” See Adamson, The Mind of Christ.

How the independent exercise of the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence can be surrendered, even for a time, would be inconceivable, if we were regarding the Logos as he is in himself, seated upon the throne of the universe. The matter is somewhat easier when we remember that it was not the Logos per se, but rather the God-man, Jesus Christ, in whom the Logos submitted to this humiliation. South, Sermons, 2:9—“Be the fountain never so full, yet if it communicate itself by a little pipe, the stream can be but small and inconsiderable, and equal to the measure of its conveyance.” Sartorius, Person und Werk of Christ, 39—“The human eye, when open, sees heaven and earth; but when shut, it sees little or nothing. Yet its inherent capacity does not change. So divinity does not change its nature, when it drops the curtain of humanity before the eyes of the God-man.”

The divine in Christ, during most of his earthly life, is latent, or only now and then present to his consciousness or manifested to others. Illustrate from second childhood, where the mind itself exists, but is not capable of use; or from first childhood, where even a Newton or a Humboldt, if brought back to earth and made to occupy an infant body and brain, would develop as an infant, with infantile powers. There is more in memory than we can at this moment recall,—memory is greater than recollection. There is more of us at all times than we know,—only the sudden emergency reveals the largeness of our resources of mind and heart and will. The new nature, in the regenerate, is greater than it appears: “Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). So in Christ there was an ocean-like fulness of resource, of which only now and then the Spirit permitted the consciousness and the exercise.

Without denying (with Dorner) the completeness, even from the moment of the conception, of the union between the deity and the humanity, we may still say with Kahnis: “The human nature of Christ, according to the measure of its development, appropriates more and more to its conscious use the latent fulness of the divine nature.” So we take the middle ground between two opposite extremes. On the one hand, the Kenosis was not the extinction of the Logos. Nor, on the other hand, did Christ hunger and sleep by miracle,—this is Docetism. We must not minimize Christ’s humiliation, for this was his glory. There was no limit to his descent, except that arising from his sinlessness. His humiliation was not merely the giving-up of the appearance of Godhead. Baird, Elohim Revealed, 585—“Should any one aim to celebrate the condescension of the emperor Charles the Fifth, by dwelling on the fact that he laid aside the robes of royalty and assumed the style of a subject, and altogether ignore the more important matter that he actually became a private person, it would be very weak and absurd.” Cf. 2 Cor. 8:9—“though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” = he beggared himself. Mat. 27:46—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” = non-exercise of divine omniscience.

Inasmuch, however, as the passage Phil. 2:6–8 is the chief basis and support of the doctrine of Christ’s humiliation, we here subjoin a more detailed examination of it.

Exposition of Philippians, 2:6–8. The passage reads: “who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”

The subject of the sentence is at first (verses 6, 7) Christ Jesus, regarded as the preëxistent Logos; subsequently (verse 8), this same Christ Jesus, regarded as incarnate. This change in the subject is indicated by the contrast between μορφῇ θεοῦ (verse 6) and μορφὴν δούλου (verse 7), as well as by the participles λαβών and γενόμενος (verse 7) and εὑρεθείς (verse 8) It is asserted, then, that the preëxisting Logos, “although subsisting in the form of God, did not regard his equality with God as a thing to be forcibly retained, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, (that is,) by being made in the likeness of men. And being found in outward condition as a man, he (the incarnate son of God, yet further) humbled himself, by becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (verse 8).

Here notice that what the Logos divested himself of, in becoming man, is not the substance of his Godhead, but the “form of God” in which this substance was manifested. This “form of God” can be only that independent exercise of the powers and prerogatives of Deity which constitutes his “equality with God.” This he surrenders, in the act of “taking the form of a servant”—or becoming subordinate, as man. (Here other Scriptures complete the view, by their representations of the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit in the earthly life of Christ.) The phrases “made in the likeness of men” and “found in fashion as a man” are used to intimate, not that Jesus Christ was not really man but that he was God as well as man, and therefore free from the sin which clings to man (cf. Rom. 8:3—ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας—Meyer). Finally, this one person, now God and man united, submits himself, consciously and voluntarily, to the humiliation of an ignominious death.

See Lightfoot, on Phil. 2:8—“Christ divested himself, not of his divine nature, for that was impossible, but of the glories and prerogatives of Deity. This he did by taking the form of a servant.” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:287—“Two stages in Christ’s humiliation, each represented by a finite verb defining the central act of the particular stage, accompanied by two modal participles. 1st stage indicated in v. 7. Its central act is: ‘he emptied himself.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘taking the form of servant’; (2) ‘being made in the likeness of men.’ Here we have the humiliation of the Kenosis,—that by which Christ became man. 2d stage, indicated in v. 8. Its central act is: ‘he humbled himself.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘being found in fashion as a man’; (2) ‘becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.’ Here we have the humiliation of his obedience and death,—that by which, in humanity, he became a sacrifice for our sins.”

Meyer refers Eph. 5:31 exclusively to Christ and the church, making the completed union future, however, i. e., at the time of the Parousia. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother” = “in the incarnation, Christ leaves father and mother (his seat at the right hand of God), and cleaves to his wife (the church), and then the two (the descended Christ and the church) become one flesh (one ethical person, as the married pair become one by physical union). The Fathers, however, (Jerome, Theodoret, Chrysostom), referred it to the incarnation.” On the interpretation of Phil. 2:6–11, see Comm. of Neander, Meyer, Lange, Ellicott.

On the question whether Christ would have become man had there been no sin, theologians are divided. Dorner, Martensen, and Westcott answer in the affirmative; Robinson, Watts, and Denney in the negative. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:236; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 327–329; Westcott, Com. on Hebrews, page 8—“The Incarnation is in its essence independent of the Fall, though conditioned by it as to its circumstances.” Per contra, see Robinson, Christ. Theol., 219, note—“It would be difficult to show that a like method of argument from a priori premisses will not equally avail to prove sin to have been a necessary part of the scheme of creation.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 101, objects to the doctrine of necessary incarnation irrespective of sin, that it tends to obliterate the distinction between nature and grace, to blur the definite outlines of the redemption wrought by Christ, as the supreme revelation of God and his love. See also Watts, New Apologetic, 198–202; Julius Müller, Dogmat. Abhandlungen, 66–126; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512–526, 543–548; Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 340–345. On the general subject of the Kenosis of the Logos, see Bruce, Humiliation of Christ; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:138–150, 386–475; Pope, Person of Christ, 23; Bodemeyer, Lehre von der Kenosis; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:610–625.