The Humility of the Son (Croall Lecture #6 - Part 1)

St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile

Bruce L. McCormack's sixth lecture in the 2011 Croall Lectures tied together the many elements he had been discussing over the two week series, and bridged this series on the atonement and Jesus' death in God-abandonment with his 2007 T.F. Torrance Lectures on Reformed kenoticism.  Up to this point in the series McCormack has diagnosed a problem (or set of problems) in the traditional doctrine of penal substitution and in the classic typology of atonement models (as either juridical, ontological, or moral/subjective).  He has then gone on to outline a new typology over the second, third, and fourth lectures, a typology oriented around the question of the dogmatic integration of Christ's person and work.  McCormack suggests that his "post-metaphysical" typology seeks to do justice to the model of penal substitution in a way that the older theories haven't, while also and at the same time allowing for the best contributions of the ontological and exemplarist models.

In the penultimate lecture, he engaged the biblical text directly -- specifically the cry of dereliction in Mark and Matthew's account of the crucifixion, asking after its significance for how our view of the atonement is shaped.  (The printed version of these lectures, you may be happy to know, will include an extra chapter dealing with Paul.)

In this final lecture Professor McCormack did what I think is a great deal of historical and dogmatic contextualizing of the foregoing material.  This included: 1) an historical analysis of the defects of the kenotic theology of the nineteenth century; 2) some exegetical observations on the famous Christ hymn in Phil. 2:6-11 (the central text for kenoticism, Christology based on the idea that Jesus "emptied himself" in the incarnation); 3) a return to the challenging issue of violence in atonement theory, including where the criticisms do and do not stick; and 4) the ethical component of women and men's "being in correspondence" with Jesus Christ, the true human.

Rather than attempt to summarize a very dense amount of material, let me offer a bird's eye view of what I think are some of the more critical points under each subheading.  I'll cover parts one and two here, and three and four in a separate post tomorrow.

The older kenoticism of nineteenth century Lutheranism is most commonly represented by Gottfried Thomasius (1802-1875).  These conservative Lutherans wished to hold together the Formula of Concord (the seminal Lutheran document of the late sixteenth century) with challenges made by modern historical Jesus research.  Classical Lutheran Christology had suggested that, in the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ, the divine shares its attributes directly with the humanity itself (the genus maiestaticum).  Jesus research in the nineteenth century, however, stressed the very real human life of Jesus, who was a man in Palestine who lived like any other man.  How can theologians responsibly speak of this subject of historical inquiry as possessing divine powers?

In the light of modern concerns, in other words, the genus maiestaticum had become an increasingly heavy burden on Lutheran theology.  What Thomasius and the other kenoticists suggested was that the divine Son of God divested himself of so-called "relative" attributes of His divinity -- omnipresence, omnipotence, and the like.  After all, it was argued, these do not speak of who God is in God's own inner being but only of God in His relation to us.  Thus they are "relative" and not essential attributes, and the Son can temporarily set them aside while he lives that human life (in a different mode of relation to us).  On Thomasius' account this divestment is, in fact, a precondition of the possibility of the Incarnation.

Waverly Station

Thomasius and his allies were subjected to criticism that was immediate and thorough-going, so much that by the end of the century kenoticism was widely disregarded on the Continent.  But their opponents were still left with the original problem they perceived as posed by historical Jesus research.  One such man, Isaak A. Dorner (1809-1884) - also a Lutheran - suggested instead that the Incarnation is best described as a gradual and progressive "hypostatic uniting," so that the Son never ceased to be fully Himself and His union with humanity was never fully complete until the ascension.  In this way Dorner tried to make room for some measure of divine attributes in the historic figure of Jesus.

McCormack's critique of these two is insightful.  What Dorner failed to see (or, as a leader in the Lutheran church, was unable to escape) was that the problem here is not the historicality of Jesus' life, nor the timing of the realization of his divinity, but the genus maiestaticum itself.  Both schools were trying to answer a decidedly Lutheran problem.  In contrast, the Reformed (for all their faults) rejected the notion of a perichoretic union between Christ's natures (which made the maiestaticum possible), and stressed instead the communication of divine graces to Jesus.  These are divine gifts that are compatible with his humanity (sinlessness, for example), not attributes that are metaphysically at odds.  Vestiges of kenoticism remain, however, and even find harbor in Reformed quarters in Scotland, until D.M. Baillie's critique in the 1940s finally showed the position of 'divestment' to be untenable.

This is important background material for what McCormack ultimately wants to say about the divine and human in Jesus Christ, and McCormack's own account of kenoticism.  This is the kenoticism that Barth has in view when he criticizes it in the Dogmatics, and is very much what McCormack is seeking to avoid in his constructive project.

Turning to some exegetical observations of the Christ hymn in Philippians 2, the key text for kenoticism: McCormack asks precisely the right question, which is "Who is the agent who is acting here?"  Who is "making himself nothing" and "taking the very nature of a servant" (verse 7)?  Interpreters have roughly three options: 1) It is the Logos asarkos, the pre-incarnate Son who must divest Himself of something of what it means to be divine as a precondition of the Incarnation (Thomasius); 2) It is the Logos ensarkos, and the emptying simply speaks to the unity of both natures in Jesus (Erasmus); or 3) It is the man Jesus, full-stop (most moderns).  None of these is correct as it stands, though each have a truthful element.  It is good to make note of the conceptual relationship between Jesus and the pre-incarnate Logos, in terms of what must be true of the latter in order for him to be the former; but it is bad to make this Logos a metaphysical subject in His own right, apart from Jesus, as if the divine Son must undergo a metaphysical conversion (e.g. the divestment of attributes) in order to make the Bethlehem birth possible.

Philippians 2 doesn't seem to be pointing to a transformation (my word) of the Son from one sort of being (divine) to another (human, or capable of being made human), but (following Richard Bauckham here) to the inclusion of Jesus in the unique identity of God.  Paul's agenda, like that of the rest of the New Testament authors, is to illustrate that the Jesus worshiped by the first Christians is not other than God but is very God - without diminution or alteration - and is therefore able to be worshiped in the bounds of their Jewish monotheism. (If you'll forgive me, in the interest of keeping the post a reasonable length I'll skip over some fun exegetical work with Philippians 2 and Isaiah 45 here.)

How does this reading of the Christ hymn cache out for McCormack and his "Reformed kenoticism?"  If, when we speak of Jesus, we are speaking of God, then Philippians 2 demonstrates that Jesus' act of self-humiliation is proper to the being of God.  The advent of the Son in human flesh is a novum mysterium for us, Karl Barth says ... but not for God.  In humility God has determined Himself protologically for self-humiliation and obedience.  The Son's humanity is, in one sense (anticipation) or another (actuality), the way that He has always been.  Thus we do not have to choose between the Logos asarkos and the Logos ensarkos as the subject of Philippians 2's hymn; this act of self-emptying is true of both, since God is "essentially" humble (my word) and not merely humble in His acquisition of a humanity.

The attributes of divinity that Thomasius wished to excise from the Son in His status of humiliation do not simply go away, then.  McCormack favors the sixteenth century's answer to that question, which is that the incarnate Son chose not to make use of those powers that are proper to God.  Jesus does what he does - performing miracles, for example - not out of his divine power, but in the power of the Holy Spirit.  He lives his life in the Spirit and thus in a stance of receptivity to God, not actively displaying his own power as God.

Check back tomorrow for a look at the second two points in the final lecture.

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Croall Lectures: Series Index
Lecture 1: The 'Perils' of Penal Substitution
Lecture 2: The Incarnation As Saving Event
Lecture 2.1: T.F. Torrance and the Atonement
Lecture 3: 'Let Justice and Peace Reign'
Lecture 4: 'After Metaphysics'
Lecture 5: The Cry of Dereliction in Scripture

Lecture 6: The Humility of the Son (Part 1)