Philippians 2:5-8

τοῦτο. Some documents (א*Acts, 17 and some other cursives, Cyril Al) connect this with the preceding verse;—τὰ ἑτέρων· ἕκαστοι τοῦτο φρονεῖτε. But there is no doubt of the correctness of the reading preferred here.

τοῦτο γὰρ is read by אcD2G2K2LP, most cursives, syr (pesh), Chrys Theodoret Damasc. Γὰρ is om by א*ABC, 17 and two other cursives, copt arm æth. LTTr Alf Ltft WH om γὰρ. Ell Wordsw retain. Ell remarks, “as Philippians 2:5 begins an ecclesiastical lection, and as the … force of the γὰρ might not have been fully understood, and have led to the omission …, the [retention of γὰρ] seems slightly more probable.”

φρονεῖτε. So אABCD2G2, 17, vulg syr (pesh and harkl) æth, Hilar Cyr Victorin. C3K2LP, most cursives, copt arm goth, Origen Euseb Ath Bas Chrys φρονείσθω. LTTr Alf Ell Ltft φρονεῖτε. Wordsw φρονείσθω. Ell remarks, “[φρονείσθω] is insufficiently attested by uncial authorities, and, on internal grounds, quite as likely to be a correction of φρονεῖτε (to harmonize with δ καὶ ἐν Χ. Ἰ.) as vice versâ.” Still the all-but unanimity of the cursives, and the Greek patristic evidence, give φρονείσθω a strong case.

F. ROBERT HALL ON Philippians 2:5-8. BAUR’S THEORY. (CH. Philippians 2:6)

THE Rev. Robert Hall (1764–1831), one of the greatest of Christian preachers, was in early life much influenced by the Socinian theology. His later testimony to a true Christology is the more remarkable. The following extract is from a sermon “preached at the (Baptist) Chapel in Dean Street, Southwark, June 27, 1813” (Works, ed. 1833; vol. vi., p. 112):

“He was found in fashion as a man: it was a wonderful discovery, an astonishing spectacle in the view of angels, that He who was in the form of God, and adored from eternity, should be made in fashion as a man. But why is it not said that He WAS a man? For the same reason that the Apostle wishes to dwell upon the appearance of our Saviour, not as excluding the reality, but as exemplifying His condescension. His being in the form of God did not prove that He was not God, but rather that He was God, and entitled to supreme honour. So, His assuming the form of a servant and being in the likeness of man, does not prove that He was not man, but, on the contrary, includes it; at the same time including a manifestation of Himself, agreeably to His design of purchasing the salvation of His people, and dying for the sins of the world, by sacrificing Himself upon the Cross.”

BAUR (Paulus, pp. 458–464) goes at length into the Christological passage of our Epistle, and actually contends for the view that it is written by one who had before him the developed Gnosticism of cent. ii., and was not uninfluenced by it. In the words of Philippians 2:6, he finds a consciousness of the Gnostic teaching about the Æon Sophia, striving for an absolute union with the absolute being of the Unknowable Supreme; and again about the Æons in general, striving similarly to “grasp” the πλήρωμα of Absolute Being and discovering only the more deeply in their effort this κένωμα of their own relativity and dependence.

The best refutation of such expositions is the repeated perusal of the Epistle itself, with its noon-day practicality of precept and purity of affections, and not least its high language (ch. 3) about the sanctity of the body—an idea wholly foreign to the Gnostic sphere of thought. As regards this last point, it is true that Schrader, a critic earlier than Baur (see Alford, N.T. III. p. 27), supposed the passage Philippians 3:1 to Philippians 4:9 to be an interpolation. But, not to speak of the total absence of any historical or documentary support for such a theory, the careful reader will find in that section just those minute touches of harmony with the rest of the Epistle, e.g. in the indicated need of internal union at Philippi, which are the surest signs of homogeneity.

E. CHRISTOLOGY AND CHRISTIANITY. (CH. Philippians 2:5)

“A CHRISTIANITY without Christ is no Christianity; and a Christ not Divine is one other than the Christ on whom the souls of Christians have habitually fed. What virtue, what piety, have existed outside of Christianity, is a question totally distinct. But to hold that, since the great controversy of the early time was wound up at Chalcedon, the question of our Lord’s Divinity has generated all the storms of the Christian atmosphere, would be simply an historical untruth.
“Christianity … produced a type of character wholly new to the Roman world, and it fundamentally altered the laws and institutions, the tone, temper and tradition of that world. For example, it changed profoundly the relation of the poor to the rich … It abolished slavery, and a multitude of other horrors. It restored the position of woman in society. It made peace, instead of war, the normal and presumed relation between human societies. It exhibited life as a discipline … in all its parts, and changed essentially the place and function of suffering in human experience … All this has been done not by eclectic and arbitrary fancies, but by the creed of the Homoousion, in which the philosophy of modern times sometimes appears to find a favourite theme of ridicule. The whole fabric, social as well as personal, rests on the new type of character which the Gospel brought into life and action.”