A political reading of the Kenotic Hymn of Philippians 2:6-7

 

This week I went to a conference which had a gem of a session tucked in the elective part of the programme. The speakers were Dr Stephen Backhouse and Dr Graham Tomlin of St Mellitus College and their exegesis of the language of power and leadership in the NT blew me away for two reasons. First of all it was very good, and I’ll give an example below of part of Stephen’s paper, but secondly I was blown away that I heard this theology at that conference – and that for me is a very hopeful sign!

So Backhouse looked at the familiar kenotic hymn of Philippians 2 which has a case for being the oldest piece of Christian writing, as Paul was clearly citing a work known to the audience before AD 62. Here is the whole piece in the NIV

5In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

8And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

The traditional interpretation of this passage take it as a proof text for a metaphysical understanding of the incarnation of the pre-existing second person of the Trinity. Against this view James Dunn has argued that the hymn is another example of Adam / Christ contrast that we see in other places in Paul, with the Adamic reference implied throughout. For me the Dunn hypothesis has always been preferable to the rather anachronistic attempt to find Chaledonian categories in the first century text, but it has never quite satisfied. I think Paul telegraphs his OT allusions more clearly and the pre-Philippian existence of the text suggests it pre-dates Pauline “in Adam” theology.

Backhouse showed how two phrases in particular in v6 have been stripped of their loaded first century meanings, as guys like Richard Horsley and Neill Elliott have done across the Pauline corpus and others such as John Crossan and Ched Myers have done in the Gospels. (And of course in applied theology Wink has done throughout the NT). The two phrases Backhouse honed in on were ἴσα θεῷ (isa theo) and ἁρπαγμὸν (harpagmon). Isa theo is a word which the first century audience would have recognised from the Roman Imperial cult, which would have been particularly pertinent in a colonial outpost like Philippi whose elite citizens were proud of their Roman citizenship, something Paul picks up on in another much misunderstood verse, Phil 3:20.

The Roman system which concentrated wealth and power in the hands of between 0.5% and 5% of the population has to be held together by the twin factors of the overwhelming threat of cruel force by the legions, backed up by a propaganda that maintained that the elite were more honourable and worthy of honour than the masses they ruled over and that the gods themselves ordained it so. The designation “honourable” seems to have been used, at least in some cities, with the more extreme form “of divine honours”. Augustus, adopted the title Son of God, and thereafter the title isa theo, or “equal to the god(s)”, was reserved for the Imperial family.

So how did a Roman acquire these political honours? Well, all good politics really with murder, assassinations, armies and organised mobs to project the physical force, and displays of wealth and largesse with public games, bread distribution, “good works”, giving sacrifices to the gods, building temples, commissioning public art and other public displays of their own greatness. What was the name for this two pronged accumulation of power? Well it was harpagmon. The word speaks of the effort to grasp power and status through force and the propaganda of honour.

What does the kenotic hymn do? It deconstructs the propaganda of power and places value in the one who rejected the honours and titles of the 1%, and sought to build influence by serving, by foot-washing, by touching the leper and dining with the hated and the unclean. The culture of honour is propped up by the poor thinking it is divinely ordained that others rule them and by the upwardly mobile, who see it as a way to achieve their own ambitions. Jesus came along to undo both aspects. In his nonviolence Jesus rejected the seizing of power through hard force and in his choice of friends he rejected the softer route to power through connections and compliance.

Verse 5 says “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus”. If the kenotic hymn was about the metaphysical ontology of the second person of the Trinity then this would be a nonsense, who could have that mindset? But if instead it is talking about a concrete reality, a way of being in the political economy of the Roman Empire, then it becomes a fresh and vibrant invitation. Imagine a collective of people who didn’t buy in to the system of honour. Who were not ultimately afraid of the power of the legions and who did not participate in the honours system of bread and circuses, sacrifices and statues. That’s dangerous theology leading to liberating praxis. That could catch on like wildfire and could create a problem for the regional governors of the Empire whose main function was to keep the grain and taxes moving Rome-wards and to make a nice living off the side.

Would a people who were inspired by such a gospel invite the former Chief of the General Staff (GCB, CBE, BC, DL, Baron) to their conference and give him a place of honour? Would a people who were inspired by such a gospel be much impressed with Chairmen of Investment Banks, CEOs of Fortune 500 Outsourcing Companies? Would a people inspired by such a gospel participate in such a system with garden parties at Buckingham Palace, stained glass windows celebrating that last Royal visitor, and grandly celebrated letters patent?

Interestingly Paul’s take on the way of Jesus with respect to the pomp and circumstance of Empire was (i) at all costs NOT to join in, or seek to support it, but (ii) neither to try to bring it down by force, but rather (iii) to mostly ignore it, in an act of collective and subversive ignorance, celebrating and honouring those whom the system does not honour and giving the nonsense of state little thought really as we get on with the great hospitality of he heavenly kingdom and worship of the one true King.

Indebted as I am to Dr Backhouse’s fine talk, my own faulty recollection of it and the flawed conclusions I have drawn from it are mine alone. Next post I shall look at Graham Tomlin’s paper on the language of Christian leadership.

What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown

What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown.

Defining sin for adolescents

Reblogged from Mercy not Sacrifice:

I'm on our church's confirmation retreat. For the last three years, we've framed our retreat around a discussion of the three questions you get asked when you join the United Methodist Church in tandem with three verses Ephesians 4:14-16. The first question asks us whether we "renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of our sins," while Ephesians 4:14 in the NIV talks about humanity being "like infants tossed back and forth between the waves." So I've gone with the metaphor of sin as a "sea of wrath." This year, a kid was asking but what about sins that the Bible doesn't talk about, how do we tell what they are?

Read more… 728 more words

Try to understand my Thatcher. I’ll try to understand yours.

Reblogged from sturdyblog:

I am most definitely not a child of Thatcher. Perhaps few people can claim that, but, through a strange combination of timing and circumstance, I can. When I first came to the UK in 1990, the bulk of the debate on her central policies of privatisation and deregulation, had already taken place here.  It was very much in its infancy back home and didn’t really become the vogue on the rest of the continent until the following decade.

Read more… 934 more words

This!

Jesus, the Cross and Another Way … a response

Over at Homebrewed there is a great guest post by Ken Alton , who blew us all away with his take on Bo’s John 3:17 challenge. There’s not room on the comment box there to post a full response, so I have pasted the post and my full comment below.

Did God send Jesus to die on a cross? Did God send Jesus to die for our sins?

My reaction is to say no. God sent Jesus to save us.

And I want to say that there was a possibility, even way back in biblical times, that Israel, responding in human freedom, could have realized just who this Messiah was and got behind and between and caught up in the kin-dom, such that all nations would have been drawn to that light, that human flourishing and the kin-dom be proclaimed to the ends of the earth without there being a cross in the story.

I want to say that even with the Sanhedrin being all caught up in shoring up their hierarchy and religiosity, then Pilate and Herod could have responded, in human freedom, to the invitation of God in their ears at that moment, to the invitation of God standing right in front of them, and set Jesus free, not only set him free but got behind and between and caught up in the kin-dom and taken it to the ends off the earth in a different way, also without there being a cross in the story.

Jesus could have lived to a ripe old age, teaching thousands of brew-babies brought to him from miles around, sitting on a swing hanging from a tree to fulfill the prophecy. And after he died in his sleep, God still could have raised him from the grave and the lesson of new life could have been learned, and the giving of the Spirit could all have happened without a cross.

If none of that was a real possibility on Christmas morning, then something is wrong in how I understand our human freedom to say yes to Sophia’s divine wisdom whispered in each and every ear. I know we live in a world where the cross did happen. Thank God that cross is not the end of the story. Maybe if we spent less time focused on Jesus having to die for us, we could open ourselves to being able to live into that kin-dom that is always coming near, so near that it is among us even now.

Thoughts?
Questions?
Concerns?
Comments?

Tripp and I called it a ‘hat-trick’ and a ‘home-run’. What do you think?

My thoughts:

I love this piece of theological imagination but I find it hard to imagine Jesus dying of a ripe old age in bed. If it wasn’t the conspiracy of Caiaphas and Pilate one Passover leading to a Roman cross, then perhaps one of the disciples would have killed him for his betrayal of their messianic hopes – giving Christians for centuries the symbol of the dagger and the phrase "for our sins he was stabbed in the back". Maybe a zealous proto-Pharisee like Saul of Tarsus would have stoned Jesus for blasphemy, so we all wear pebble necklaces in memory of the one who was stoned for us. Pushed off a cliff, a la Luke 4:29 "he took our fall…"

In all of these examples it is not to say that God or "Fate" had a death plan that was going to get Jesus one way or another, but more that the powers have their way of dealing with prophetic individuals, and it always ends in violent death (Gandhi, MLK jr, Romero …).

We know enough about Jesus to imagine that if the provocative acts on Palm Sunday and the demo in the Temple were not enough to make the powers snap into action to crush this annoyance, then there would have been something else, he wouldn’t have stopped there with his defiance of the unjust combination of imperial, religious and economic might, and with impudent humour and insightful critique there would have been more times when the local elders would have had him beaten up, or a Centurion would have had him flogged, leading eventually to a public discrediting of the rebel movement, the imprisonment and execution of its ringleaders, and potentially some legislative change to outlaw their customs.

All of this says a lot about how the world works and from which we could build up the same theology of the powers as we see in Paul and the evangelists. Of course we still know enough about God to realise that the community that suffered this setback, could still experience the resurrection event, and subsequently make sense of the violence and suffering of Jesus through the narrative frame of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The powerful have no need of eschatology – they have already had it.

Events of the last twenty four hours have taken me to thinking about eschatology. If you take a realist theology then eschatological matters are always something of an embarrassment. I have found it helpful to understand the Maccabean roots of one strand of our eschatology – that the supernatural hope beyond death is a function of squaring the justice of a God who does not act, with the righteousness of the martyrs who die as victims of the powers, whether it be by the direct swords and crosses of persecution or the grinding Imperial yoke that crushes the life out of communities.

We see this in the Lukan couplet at 6:20 "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." And 6:24 "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort."

I can see how the eschatological hope functions for the poor, the downtrodden and the victims of the powers. Psychologically there has to be more than this, if your life is made miserable by the combination of the cruel selfishness of the few, coupled with the institutional brutality of a class of lackeys acting under orders out of either fear or the desire to make things a little better for their own families. If God is just then there must be resurrection – if the tables are not turned in this life, then surely God will work his great reversal in the age to come.

So it is with this in mind that I come to Twitter and Blogs where there is a collective letting off of steam at the death of widely hated former leader. The following example is not untypical.

… Maggot Thatcher snuffed it today … so .. its all together now, and in her own words … “Rejoice ! – rejoice … ! “
They will be singing and dancing tonight – from the Falls Road in Belfast .. to the streets of Brixton… and the decimated communities of Yorkshire, Durham, Nottingham, Wales and Scotland and beyond …
But no singing & dancing from the bereaved families of the brave Marines & the Welsh Guards on the Sir Galahad .. cold-bloodedly sacrificed by Thatcher to win an election
… the Darkest Witch that the Devil and the English establishment ever imposed on the hard-working innocents of the nation has finally been cleansed from the land … rejoice .. rejoice … ! The She-devil is no longer amongst us
… and The Fires of Hell are welcoming one of their own …
Tomorrow is a bright new dawn, and the air will taste fresher and cleaner ….

This is an interesting blog post, because the anonymous writer instinctively reaches for the language of eschatology and super-nature. We see the "fires of hell", "a dark witch" and "she devil", we also see the eschatological New Earth, dawning brightly with fresh clean air. What are we to make of this reach for the strong and dark language of eschatology when evil rulers die in their beds, un-deposed by God, without the vindication of justice?

Equally interesting over the past twenty four hours has been the moralistic reaction against those expressing the relief of such a symbolic passing. This of course comes in two forms; the crude version is simple sectarianism – those who quietly happily deride the passing of Hugo Chavez, or Osama Bin Laden but object when it is their own camp’s champion whose evil is being called into question. These can be safely ignored. The other is the more pious condemnation against the celebration of the death of any individual. This one is psychologically more interesting, especially if the function of eschatology is to give vent to powerful emotional forces which if repressed in the cultural pressure-cooker would result in violence.

So, three questions and a thought…

1) Does a Christianity without eschatology lose something important in expressing the solidarity of God with the poor?

2) Can a community maintain an eschatology of hope – "blessed are the poor for yours is the kingdom of heaven", without an eschatology of woe towards those who are currently oppressing them, or benefiting from their oppression?

3) What happens psychologically and culturally if we, on grounds of "taste and decency" censor the resort to the eschatological?

Finally Revelation 21:24 has the "…the kings of the world will enter the city," Perhaps the answer to the tension of eschatological hope and eschatological condemnation is the Christian theology of eschatological universalism. If Jesus can even admit the enemies of God, the kings of the earth, into his new city, then perhaps there needs to be a liturgical space for communities to enact forgiveness towards Margaret thatcher in this life. Our liturgy needs to acknowledge the pain she caused and that goes on being meted out in her name. Our liturgy needs to give us words and actions to turn the tears of bitterness into the open hands of neighbourly love. Our liturgy needs to be a space free of hagiography and triumphalism (so the military funeral at St Pauls will be no place for this work). Our liturgy needs to become a place where we may release her soul from hell and so release our wounded hearts to the God who would not act. Our liturgy should empower us to become a community so enraptured with the story of love that we never allow another one such as this to arise again, yet always alert to the new guise in which the powers charm their way into dominion. Our liturgy will help us to remember, and to forgive.

The Homebrewed Christianity Easter Challenge

So @BoSanders has issued a great follow up to last year’s John 14:6 challenge over at Homebrewed http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/20/the-easter-call-in-challenge/. It basically goes like this;

We need to stop saying “God sent Jesus to die on the cross”.  The only place the New Testament even talks about God sending Jesus is in John 3:17 – Jesus was sent into the world, not to condemn it but to save it.

The danger of saying any more than John 3:17 says itself is that it distorts our image of God and our understanding of the mission of Jesus…

What would you say to that? Agree, disagree? Comments, questions, concerns?

Now I’m not in the running for one of the cool book prizes as I’m sure there are going to be some cool attempts to weave some Girardian memetic theory and some Foucauldian power-discourse theory that will leave me in the shallow end with my NIV Study Bible, Warren Carter’s John commentary and Bob Jewett’s Romans. Heck I don’t even know the right way to say Zizek, let alone spin his take on Paul into a funny little joke about Seamus from Derry.

So what I thought I would do  is lob my own little Johannine quote-bomb into the mix. Tripp started this one off with John 14:6 and I think we defused that one ok. Nobody got hurt, which in theology counts as a good day. Bo is now lobbing over John 3:17, which I heard he learned from reading some NFL player’s eye make-up, so I’m going to reach into the ammo box marked KATA IOANNHN and chuck one back. Duck and cover boys and remember there are no (a)theists in fox-hole, or a Vauxhall for that matter.

I understand Bo sojourned for a while in the lands of the Penties, which in my own experience were basically Fundamentalists with magical powers and Tripp knows an Evanjellyfish or two so they will both recognised the signifier “the completed work of Jeee-sus”. We used to hear it a lot, in songs, sermons, earnest (that means sweaty) prayers and passionate (that means angry) alter calls. We all know what people think they mean by that.

Ok hard hats on, here comes the quite bomb. John 17:4. Booooom.

I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given
Me to do. (John 17:4 NASB)

I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest
me to do (John 17:4 Jesus’ own KJV)

So when does John’s character of Jesus speak this prayer, “referring to the completed work of Christ”? John 17. That’s after the foot-washing, after the least evening meal with his students, after all the teaching and wonder-working, and after promising the comforter. There.

He has completed the work the Father gave him. And after that? Well after he had completed the work the Father gave him, after the completed work of Christ… the powers killed him. So we have a great tragic ending, but not one of mission interrupted, nor even one of a divine mission-to-die fulfilled, but perhaps a vindictive, unjust execution that narratively takes place AFTER the “completed work”.

That’s my John 17:4 quote bomb, now I just need to work out how to make this speak-pipe gizmo work.