BBI II-D #6 Preexistence & “Kenosis” in the Earliest Christian Writings
The distinction which divided Apostolic Christianity from all forms of Gnosticism was “preexistence” of Jesus, whether the divine Person of Logos (Word) actually “became flesh,” (a total transformation of ontological nature), that the Son of God literally “emptied Himself” of His equality with God by “becoming in the likeness of men,” “being made like unto His brethren.” All forms of Gnosticism denied that the Man Jesus preexisted and denied the possibility of a divine being “emptying Himself” (kenosis) to be transformed into a human being. On this basis the earliest Christians writers defined these Gnostic sects as “heretics.” The earliest Christians who had direct links to the Apostles fought to maintain Jesus’ complete transformation to full humanity against the Gnostic Cults.
Yet opposition to Christianity from pagans also arose in the latter half of the 2nd century. Antagonists attempted to refute “kenosis” based on the Greek philosophical principle that what is divine is incapable of change. In response, certain Christians invented the Incarnation 2.0, that the divine Son merely clothed Himself in flesh rather than literally becoming flesh. This view was then absorbed into Trinitarianism because it could answer this alleged philosophical problem and thus appeal to intellectuals.
The ‘Biblical’ Unitarian attack on preexistence and the incarnation deals only with the Incarnation 2.0 (which is easy to refute on logical and biblical grounds), but they give no attention to the earlier view (kenosis) which takes Scripture literally and can easily be linked to those who knew the Apostles. Thus the ‘Biblical’ Unitarian argument against the “incarnation” is a straw man.
The ORIGINAL view, “kenosis,” (Incarnation 1.0), has been suppressed by Rome ever since the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Here is Pope Pius XII “anathematizing” of “kenosis” in his Encyclical on the Council of Chalcedon, Sempiternus Rex Christus (1951).
“There is another enemy of the faith of Chalcedon, widely diffused outside the fold of the Catholic religion. This is an opinion for which a rashly and falsely understood sentence of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (ii, 7), supplies a basis and a shape. This is called the kenotic doctrine, and according to it, they imagine that the divinity was taken away from the Word in Christ. It is a wicked invention, equally to be condemned with the Docetism opposed to it. It reduces the whole mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption to empty the bloodless imaginations. ‘With the entire and perfect nature of man’—thus grandly St. Leo the Great [wrote] —’He Who was true God was born, complete in his own nature, complete in ours.’ (Ep. xxviii, 3. PL. Liv, 763. Cf. Serm. xxiii, 2. PL. lvi, 201).”
Pius XII clearly admits that “kenosis” was widely held by Christians outside of Roman Catholicism. What he fails to admit is that this was what was taught by the earliest Christians who had direct linkage to the Apostles and the apostolic churches.