GakuseiDon

What "Christ the deity"? Who was expecting Christ to be a deity? You are still reading this through Christian apologetic eyes.

It was Christ the king, Christ the warrior, who unexpectedly came in the form of a servant. Using Doherty-logic, why stress that Christ came in "the form of a bondservant", "in the likeness of men"? What other form did people think that Christ would come? In the form of a vacuum cleaner?

GakuseiDon

The "Christ" -- who was expected to be a king, a great warrior -- humbled himself and came as a bondservant. Remember the context I gave earlier. In Phil 2, Paul is encouraging people to be like Christ: humble. As Paul writes: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus... Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, the sons of God without fault". Paul is not encouraging people to be pre-existent and take on human form.

dog-on

Your own response actually shows the problem with your proposed interpretation.

GakuseiDon

Fantastic! Then no need for you to respond any more then.

jakejonesiv

Because from the author's perspective Christ wasn't a man. He was a divine being who took on the form, semblance, and appearance of a man, and thus humbled himself.

Jake

jakejonesiv

The fantastic thing is that dog-on makes a very good point.

Unless you actually think that Jesus was Christ the human king, Christ the warrior, then how in the heck did he humble himself?

Solo

I disagree with this, Don. In the traditions, the shepherdic king was to be anointed through his bloodline which itself was to be the guarantor of the covenant's fulfilment. Davidic king was just because he was anointed, not the other way around. This point is crucial in evaluating both the dogfight (yes, it was that) that Paul had with the Jerusalem messianists, and the later formulas by which the two strands reconciled and landed on Paul's Christ with Davidic pedigree.

Quite so. But this idea also Messiah's royal bloodline superfluous. When I read the key teaching of Paul, 1 Cr 1:18-31 (which I call Sophia Christi and use as litmus test in gauging genuinity of a passage), it seems to me that Paul could not have thought of Christ as one who was pedigreed. If Jesus was Christ through the fulfilment of contract he had with God - as someone who overcame the base nature of self that separates men from God, then his Messiahship could not have been identical or even parallel, to the traditional title of a military leader who restores and maintains Israel. Paul's teaching hinged in the last instance on the viability of the imitatio. If you imitate Christ (his covenant with God) you will become like him in the resurrection. Or so we pray. I do not think Paul thought of Christ even as the priestly Messiah figure of the Qumran sectarians. Christ was simply a phenomenon, a new model of spiritual commitment that was available to anyone through Paul's gospel, regardless of their social standing, education, sex, nationality, or previous religious affiliation.

1 Cr 1:23-28 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,

but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth;

but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.....

....surely Christ was not a Davidic king in Paul's thinking.

This passage was likely post-Pauline manifest of his church.

All right, the phenomenon of Christ (Christ, for short ) pre-existed, as did Paul's mission to reveal it (Gal 1:15-16), but Jesus and Paul came in flesh. The spirit descended on both, revealing their respective functions in God's play pen.

The problem however is that Carmen Christi (Phl 2:6-11) is a higher Christology than Paul's and more formulaic. Sophia (1 Cr 1:18-31) speaks of Christ as every man's divine potential, whereas Carmen seems focused on nomenclatura as the mechanics of salvation. In the latter, Jesus' is name is glorified as unique mark of a specific character - and is markedly separated from the function of the believer's faith. It is for this reason I believe the passage is later, from a time when Paul was gone and his church was defending its conception of Christ against the messianists from Palestine, asserting Jesus' Davidic line of the 'real McCoy' against them. The Carmen formula shows the weakening of confidence in imitating Paul (imitating Christ) and placing theological justifications in their stead.

Best,
Jiri

archibald

You appear to have damaged your forehead there for an inexplicable reason?

I'm not following you logic.

It appears to be...in general we are pretty sure that the texts were tampered with..

so..


therefore.......what?

I thought we were reading verses from Paul? And in particular, (recently) one relating to a pre-pauline hymn?

Sorry, is there a specific connection between that and your post above?

Is it just a sort of general.....the extant text could mean .....anything, nothing...what?

If you were just making a general statement about texts, no prob. But you didn't need to bang your head about that. It's readily accepted. :]

(Btw, Gdon and I are not on the same point, so you will have to multitask. Just clarifying that) Cheers,

A.

jakejonesiv

:redface:

aa5874

Once you ADMIT the texts were TAMPERED with then you are admitting the texts are UNRELIABLE and MUST first be externally corroborated BEFORE accepted for historical purposes.

All we have are MYTH fables of a character called Jesus, the Lord from Heaven who was RAISED from the dead on the THIRD day in the Pauline writings.

No FURTHER EXPLANATION is needed.

"Paul" ALREADY explained he was NOT the Apostle of a Man and did NOT get his gospel from man but from the Sent Son of God in Galatians.