Kenosis vs Kenotic Christology

The Purpose of Handouts and the Scope of Tonight’s Lesson

Handouts kind of allow you to keep up with what I'm saying, but also they keep me on track because I do have a tendency at time to sort of chase a rabbit here or there. And time is not something that's ever my friend.

And so in an attempt to try to maintain some cohesion, I provide you with these outlines. And I do wanna say my goal tonight was to come in and to give a lesson on kenosis and hypostatic union. But I'm gonna go ahead and say, based on time and my notes, we might not make it to the letter K in kenosis.

I'm just saying, so make sure you keep your handouts. We will go through as much as we can tonight and we will revisit the rest of the material next week. Now, if you look at your handout, you'll notice at the top, it says our categories for Christology.

Now, just in case you are new or you haven't been with us, or maybe you haven't taken systematic theology before, systematic theology is the systematization of major biblical doctrines. And they fall into subcategories.

The major category is theology. And then you break that down into subcategories. Theology proper is the study of God and his nature and his attributes and his being. That was our first series that we did was theology proper.

We talked about God's nature. Then we move on to a subset called Christology. And as theology is the study of God and his nature, Christology is specifically a study of the second person of the Trinity, who is Jesus Christ, God the son.

In this study, we have already looked at the pre-existence and the eternality of Jesus. The fact that the word, we know that's what John calls Jesus in John chapter one. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

The word pre-existed Bethlehem. In fact, the word is eternal. He is the second person of the triune God and he has always existed. It doesn't say in the beginning, the word became. It said in the beginning, the word already was.

He has always existed as the second person of the Trinity. So we looked at the pre-existence of the son. We looked at the eternality of the son. The fact that he is eternal, both backward and forward.

And when we think about eternal, that's really not the right way to think about it because that's how we think about time. But time itself is something that God is outside of. God is outside of time. So when you talk about backward and forward with God, that's not really how it works, but it's how we have to explain it because we always speak of everything from how we understand.

We talk about it from our perspective. We do not have a divine perspective. All we can do is relate to God from our perspective. And a lot of the Bible is just that. We talk about anthropomorphic terms.

That means man form, speaking in the terms of man. And God often speaks to us in man language because it's the only language we know. God wouldn't speak to us in a way that we wouldn't understand. And so he condescends.

He steps down, as one theologian said, God lisps. In the sense that he speaks lower so that we can keep up. And so God is speaking to us and we talk about eternality, things like that. That's understanding it the best way we know how.

Christology: Truly God and Truly Man

Now the second on your list, and you'll notice there's a little asterisk next to it on the list. And that is the subject of God, or rather Christ as truly God and truly man. Truly God and truly man. Well, I found which ones don't work.

Let's see.

Here we go.

Truly God and truly man. This is the subset of Christology that we are now in. And I'm not trying to confuse. I'm trying to keep us in a category, right? That's what science is. That's what studying is.

It's putting things in a categorization. Understanding things in relation to their category. So under the subject of truly God and truly man, we have looked at the incarnation. That was the subject that we looked at prior to our exit for the holiday.

Does anybody remember what the word incarnation means? Means to become? Flesh.

Okay, yeah.

The word carne, the root of incarnation is the word carne, which means flesh. We think about that like there's, what is it, Spanish? Carne for steak or whatever. So we think of that. But in Greek, carne flesh, so incarnate means to become flesh.

John 1 .14 says, and the word did what? Became flesh. He took on flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So we looked at the incarnation, and then we looked at the virgin, what?

Nope, conception.

Sorry.

Yeah, we looked at the virgin conception. And the reason why I make the distinction is because the virgin birth is true in one sense, but the Roman Catholic Church teaches that when Mary had Jesus, that she did not give birth in the traditional way that Jesus essentially moved from the womb to the room without transferring through the area of her body, which would have ceased her to be a virgin because they believe in what's called perpetual virginity.

And so we don't identify the virgin birth because we believe Jesus had a natural birth. We believe he had a virgin conception. It was the conception that was the miracle, and the birth was natural. That make sense?

Yeah, I'm not saying if you say virgin birth, you're wrong. What I'm saying is if we're being technical, it's the conception that was the miracle. The Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and she became impregnated with the Son of God.

So we looked at that. Tonight, we are going to move to two new subjects on this same vein of talking about the person of Jesus Christ as truly God and truly man. And we're going to look at the subject of kenosis and the subject of the hypostatic union.

The Meaning of Kenosis and Hypostatic Union

On your sheet, you will notice that those two words have a long line beside them. And the reason for that is I wanted to give you, at least in the starting point, I wanted to give you a simple definition.

I'm imagining that most of you are probably not familiar with either one of those phrases. At least one of them is probably not familiar to you, and that is the word kenosis. It's not a word that comes up a lot in our normal times of conversation.

In fact, I would say these are phrases with which even learned Christians are usually not really well accustomed. Because they just don't come up in conversation a lot. Maybe hypostatic union more than kenosis, but kenosis is one that a lot of people just have never heard.

And so I wanted to take a minute and at least give you a short definition so at least you have an idea of what we're talking about. The word kenosis means to empty, to empty. And it deals with the question of what did Christ empty himself in becoming man?

If the word kenosis comes from the Greek word kenu, and the ekenousa is the way it's, ekenousa is the way it's used in Philippians chapter two. It says he emptied himself, right? So the question becomes of what did he empty himself?

If he emptied himself, which the text clearly says he did, of what was emptied, right? So that's the question. That's the question of kenosis. And so that's gonna be our subject for tonight. But just so that we can tie it together, I wanna give you the definition of hypostatic union because the two are essential to understanding each other.

If you don't understand at least what hypostatic union is, then you're not going to really grasp the subject of kenosis. The hypostatic union is the union of the divine and human natures in the one person of Jesus Christ.

It is the union of the divine and human nature. That is the hypostatic union. We get further into the lesson, I'll explain what the word hypostatic means, but that's the definition of the term. Now, some people might look at this and they might say, why?

Why in the world?

Well, why?

I mean, can we talk about 10 ways to have a better marriage? Can we talk about five ways to have a better bank account? I mean, why in the world in 2019, and that's where we are, we just crossed the threshold.

We're in 2019, which means all my checks have a little scribble mark on them. We have to check the little eight and write a nine in.

Right?

We're here in 2019.

Why does this matter?

It matters because it is essential to who we believe Jesus Christ is. The world is very confused about who Jesus is. And I would say this, the world is not just confused, the church, the visible local church is confused about who Jesus is.

I mean, there's a guy on television, I've mentioned him before. Jesus was a born again man, and I'm a born again man. So that means I can do anything Jesus can do. There's a Greek word for that. Baloney, that's right, that's it.

That's the Greek word. It's baloney. It's garbage theology, but it's out there. Jesus was not a born again man. That's foolishness. That's false theology. The reason for regeneration is that we are sinners.

Jesus was not a sinner. He's not born again. But there's so much more than just that. But the foundations of who Jesus is, and who Jesus was, and who Jesus will always be is foundational to what we believe as Christians.

And the church didn't spend 400 years having councils and sessions and conversations and dealing with heretics so that we could come along 2 ,000 years later.

And say all that was nonsense.

These things matter. These things are essential to the faith. Why is it when those two 10-speed riders come to your door on Saturday morning that when you see them coming, you know that's wrong? And it's not just the fashion statement.

It's something to do with how they see Jesus. When those folks come with that watchtower and they come up to your door, when you hear T .D. Jakes teaching oneness theology, and yes, he is not a Trinitarian.

At least he wasn't for a long time. He may have changed. When you hear him espousing false theology about Jesus Christ, would you know? Oh, now I got your attention.

I've heard of him.

Now you're listening. Theology matters. Jesus matters. Who Jesus is matters. These things are vastly important. A lot of questions regarding the full humanity and full deity of Christ come up, and I call them the well-why questions.

Well, why?

You say, what does that mean? Well, people say, well, if Jesus was God, well, why did he pray?

The well-why questions.

That's a well-why, right? So, well, if Jesus is God, well, why did he say he didn't know when he was gonna come back? He said, no one knows the day or the hour except the Father, not even the Son. Well, why, right?

If Jesus is God, well, why did he say the Father is greater than me?

See, the well-whys are what divide the church. These people haven't thought these things through, and they haven't looked into the fact that for the last 2 ,000 years, the church has not been silent on this.

You're not the first one to say, well, why? You're not the first one to have these questions, you're not the first one to wrestle with this, and the problem with American Christianity is we think that we know it all, and we know nothing.

We think we are the first ones.

To really engage these things, and we're not. I love it when people do that. They think they're the first ones to,.

Well, have you thought about this?

Yes.

Sort of like when I'm talking about reform theology, you know, talking about the election, and somebody says, well, have you heard of John 3 .16?

Never heard of it.

I, you changed my life. I'm not being arrogant, I'm saying these things have been thought through, these things have been discussed, these things have been dealt with, and if we don't know history, if we don't know why the church has taken the positions that it has taken,.

If we don't know why the divides happened,.

And where the division was, we may find ourselves on the wrong side of history. You've heard that term, right? That's a big social justice thing. You're gonna be on the wrong side of history. You know what's more important than being on the wrong side of history?

Being on the wrong side of Jesus. That's so much more important than being on the wrong, because if you're on the right side of Jesus, you're probably gonna be on the wrong side of liberal history, secular history, but you're gonna be on the right side of what matters.

Philippians 2 and the Meaning of Christ’s Emptying

So tonight we're gonna look at kenosis. If we get to the hypostatic union, if we get past one, really, into two, I'll be surprised, but we're gonna break this down. So if you'll open your Bibles and turn with me to Philippians chapter two.

Philippians chapter two, beginning of verse five, we have something called the Carmen Christi, the song of Christ. It's the hymn of Christ, sometimes called the hymn of Christ. Philippians chapter two, beginning of verse five, many of you are familiar with it.

Some of you may have noticed when I prayed earlier, it was part of the prayer that I prayed. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You can stop there. That again, some people believe that that was actually a song that the early church would sing and that Paul included it in this particular text to remind them of who they knew Jesus was.

It fits together well that way. Do we know that for certain? No, that's partly conjecture based on how it's structured and how it fits in with the rest of the text, but we do know this. It is one of the high points of Christology in all the Bible.

In fact, if you've been in this study of Christology, we've already mentioned this passage a few times, but tonight we're gonna focus on one particular phrase and it is in verse seven. It is the phrase emptied himself.

And again, it's where we get this word, kenosis, because it comes ekinosin is the Greek, as I mentioned earlier, I think I said it wrong earlier, ekinosin from the root kino or kino, and it is the word to empty.

What does that mean? Well, sometimes the most appropriate thing to do when you're asking what something means is to say, what does it not mean? And you say, well, why would that be appropriate? Well, let's talk about eternity for a second.

If I said, what is eternity? You would say it has no end, right? Because you say what it's not, right? Sometimes that's the best way to explain something is to explain the adversative or the opposite.

That's what it's not, so we know what it is. Eternity doesn't have an end, right? Or a beginning. So it's not beginning, not ending, it's forever, right? And so that's how we explain it. So we talk about the word empty here.

We have to begin by asking the question of what was Christ emptied? Because the text clearly says he emptied himself. I don't think anybody would argue, actually, well, if you have a King James, maybe you would say it like this.

A King James, I believe, and I don't have it in front of me, so forgive me if I'm saying it a little incorrectly. Well, who has a King James? If you have a King James, I believe it says made himself of no reputation.

All right, would you read it to me, though, Laura? Would you read that, the verse seven? Thank you. That, okay, so made himself of no reputation. Okay, yeah, yeah, and no. Well, kenosis is making himself no reputation.

That phrase, making himself of no reputation, is what the translators of the King James are taking out for kinu or ekinosin. They're translating it that way. But let's talk for a second. I'm gonna get my board back here.

Let's talk just for a second about this idea of emptying. Because I want to say something right away, and maybe you know this. There is a heresy. Ooh, big word, dangerous, heresy. There's a heresy called the kenotic theory of Christology, or some might just call it kenotic Christology.

How many of you ever heard of that? Okay, so here we go. So we'll start there. The kenotic theory of Christology rose to popularity during the Enlightenment period, time of Enlightenment rationalism, mid -1800s.

And in fact, in our book that we're using for this course, the Moody Handbook of Theology, Mr. Enns, who wrote the book, Paul Enns, said this. He said, liberal theologians suggest that Christ emptied himself of his deity.

You understand what that would mean? By becoming man, Christ stopped being God. That's the kenotic theory of Christology, that the emptying was the emptying of deity. That is heresy. I wouldn't even say it's false.

I would say it's so false, you're right, it's false, Brother Mike, but it's heresy. The church has identified that historically as being that which causes the anathema of the church. You know what anathema is?

The curse or the removal from the church. If you believe that Jesus is not divine or that he gave up his divinity, you are anathema, you are removed, you are excommunicated, right? That's so false, it's deadly false.

Like, when we talk about things today, there are doctrines that we can be different about, right? Like Brother Andy, are we different on a few things? Yeah, and he giggles. Brother Jack, Brother Richard, yeah, and we've served together for what?

12 years, 10 years, eight years. We've served together now for a year or so as he's been coming to be an elder. We've served together in this church and there are things that we disagree about but they're not the foundational things, right?

And I know what everybody's thinking. Tell us what they are.

No, we're not doing that tonight.

Everybody's all excited. No, no, but there are things that we would say are secondary and tertiary in nature but the primary things, we have unity. And this is why going back to St. Augustine who said, oh, we even differ on that.

St. Augustine, that's how you say it right there. If you're Richard, you gotta say Augustine because St. Augustine who said, in essentials unity and non-essentials liberty and all things charity, right?

So we try to model that in essentials there is unity. And one of the things that there must be essential is who Jesus is. And the canonic Christology theory states that Christ stopped being fully God.

Now we've said from the beginning of this course, we believe Jesus is truly God, truly man, fully God, fully man, right? So I've tipped my hand.

You know where I'm at.

You know where we as a church are. From the foundation of the church history, we believe the church has stood that Christ fully God and fully man. But the canonic theory of the Christology says, no, Jesus gave up his divinity.

His emptying was of his divine attributes. If not all of them, at least some of them. And there are different levels of canonic Christology. There are some people who believe he gave up all of it. There are some people who believe that he gave up some.

And there are some people that believe that he had them, but they were not operational. They were sort of like a passive omnipotence. He knew everything, but he didn't. Now be careful, because we're gonna talk about a little later the hypostatic union and having two natures.

And there are some things that we have to kind of deal with. But this is canonic Christology says that he either gave them up or they were passive unused attributes. The relative attributes of God were set aside.

All of these different ways. In fact, Wayne Grudem, systematic theology, many people have read Wayne Grudem's systematic theology. He said this, quote, he said, "'It just seemed too incredible for modern rational and scientific people to believe that Jesus could be truly human and fully absolutely God at the same time.'".

The kenosis theory or the kinetic theory began to sound more and more like an acceptable way that in some sense, Jesus was God, but a kind of God who had for a time given up some of his God-like qualities and those that were most difficult for people to accept in the modern world.

That's from his, that's Grudem is not saying he believes that he's saying that's what these people believed. That's what the kinetic Christology proponents believed that he had to give up something to become a man.

He couldn't be fully God and fully man at the same time. He's got to give up something. As a result, the kinetic theory of Christology, we would identify as heresy. You say, but pastor, you're teaching kenosis.

That sounds like it's the same thing. Well, it's not. Kinetic theory says Christ had to give up divinity and that's what it meant to empty himself. However, in fact, Matt Slick, karm .org, Matt Slick wrote this.

He said the kinetic theory is a dangerous doctrine because if it were true, then it would mean that Jesus was not fully divine. If Jesus was not fully divine, then his atoning work would not be sufficient to atone for the sins of the world.

The correct doctrine is a hypostatic union, which we're gonna get to later, that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. And he did not give up any of his divine attributes while he was a man on the earth.

Now, I agree with Matt Slick. He's a theologian, he's a writer. I agree, a pastor, I agree with him. But I'm gonna say this. We still have to ask the question, what did he empty himself of then? If he emptied himself and it wasn't of his divinity, then is Philippians two lying?

Well, of course that's not. Yeah, we wouldn't even accept that as a possible answer. We know Philippians two is telling the truth. We'll get asked the question of what did he, because it says he emptied himself, right?

Or that he made himself no reputation. Did he empty himself of his divine nature? The answer is no. Here's where it becomes kind of interesting. If you let the text speak for itself, it gives you the answer.

Because the emptying, the emptying was actually an addition, not subtraction. You say, what? The emptying was addition, not subtraction. You say, wait a minute, I've never seen something get emptied by adding something to it.

Well, listen to the text. Let's go back. Let's go back to verse five. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God. That, I mean, we can meditate on that.

Though he was in the form of God. And the Greek is actually even more explicit. The word though there could be the word because. Because he was in the form of God. It's stating the fact that this is truth.

He was God, but he did not count. And by the way, this is one of the times, and again, I love the King James, beautiful. But this is one of the times it really, really just is awful.

Yeah, I said it.

Come at me. Say what it says in the King James, verse six. Thank you. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

What?

Isn't that an odd phrase?

It is.

It is an odd phrase. I mean, in the culture and context, it would have sounded a lot differently than it does now. What do you think of when you think of robbery? Stealing, right?

Well, that's the idea.

But you have to understand what Paul is writing here. He says he did not come into the world and demand his equality with God, which he by nature possessed. He did not come into the world and demand which he by nature should have had.

What does Christ possess as God? All of the glory and all of the majesty and all of the right to worship that God possesses. That's why I do like where it says he did not count equality with God, something to be grasped.

He didn't come into the world demanding worship. Now, guess what? When he came into the world, worship happened anyway. All right, as soon as he came into the world, shepherds came and worshiped at the manger.

Short time later, three or however many wise men that were at Bible didn't tell us, the three gifts of the wise men came and wise men came and worshiped him. When his mother took him to the temple, the man came, it was Simeon, came and worshiped him.

And he says, now I can die in peace as I've seen the king. People worshiped him by nature because God would inspire their heart to do so, to understand who he was. But Jesus did not live in this world as a king, but instead he took the role of what?

A servant.

That's the point of the text. Not that he gave up his divinity, but that he added to his divinity what he did not have before, and that was humanity. He added something to the divinity that wasn't there.

The humanity was not there. And in adding the humanity, there was a debasing. There was a condescension. There was a humility in taking on this form of a man. So it's not that he had to give up being divine.

He added the human, and in doing so, there is a condescension. The Believer's Bible commentary says this. What he did was to empty himself of his positional equality with God and to veil the glory of the deity in a body of human flesh.

The glory was all there, though hidden. But it did shine forth on occasions, such as on the Mount of Transfiguration. What was so special about the Mount of Transfiguration?

Who Christ really was broke free.

And what did Peter, James, and John do? Lord, let's make three tents.

We don't gotta go anywhere else.

We have seen the glory of God, and it is you. And we'll make a tent for you, and a tent for Moses, and a tent for Elijah, representing the law and the prophets, by the way. So you have the law, the prophets, and the grace of God right there represented.

And we'll make three tents. No, that's not the purpose, not the reason. But listen to this again from that quote. There was no moment in his life on earth when he did not possess all the attributes of God.

There was no moment in his life where he did not possess that attribute, though it was veiled.

I'll read a poem.

Aside he threw his most divine array and hid his Godhead in a veil of clay. And in that garb did wondrous love display, restoring what he never took away. Never did he lose one iota of his divinity. He took on humanity.

He emptied himself by becoming, and just again, read the text. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not account a quality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by. Notice it says by.

By what?

By giving up divinity? No, by taking the form of a servant. By being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

It wasn't a subtraction, it was an addition. That's kenosis, the taking on of the human nature. The emptying of Christ, this is from our handbook, Moody Handbook of Theology says this. The emptying of Christ was taking on an additional nature, human nature with its limitations.

His deity was never surrendered. And by the way, this is an important proof text for the deity of Christ. You say, well, how? Let me explain how. If Christ is not divine, then there's no sense in which taking on a human nature would be seen as emptying himself.

Let me say that again. We believe Christ is divine. Christ's divinity is proven in this text because it says he emptied himself by taking human nature. If he was already human, there would be no emptying and taking the human nature.

He's divine, and so by taking the human nature, he's emptying himself by taking it.

Does that make, am I missing it?

I see some eyes kind of going across,.

So let me say it again.

If I am human, which I hope I am, I think that's what I am. If I am human, and that's the way I came, and that's the way I've always been, then there was no emptying myself to become human because it's just who I am.

If God becomes a man, that's a form of kenosis because he is taking on this form, this person. He's taking on manhood, which was something, that's a degradation. That's stepping down. That's that lisp we talked about earlier.

He doesn't cease to be God, but he takes on something that's not God. Takes on something that's not divine. By the way, the flesh of Jesus, not divine. Blood of Jesus, it's human. Now, don't come email me when you say, you heard me just say the blood because the Bible does say that God purchased the church with his own blood.

So you say, well, the blood is divine. Yes, it's divine in the sense that it's Christ's blood, but what I mean, though, it's truly human. He didn't have holy hemoglobin in the sense that it was some kind of different type of blood like Jesus's blood was different than our blood in some kind of a substantial way.

He was fully, this is the whole argument of the early church. Was he really a man?

We talked about this last time, brother,.

About whether or not he has soul. That was a part of the whole argument of the church. Did he have a human body, mind, and spirit? And the testimony of the church has been that, yes, he had a human body, human mind, human spirit, and he had a divine nature.

And those two natures are joined in the one person of Christ. That's the hypostatic union. You have the full, he wasn't just God wrapped in flesh. You understand that? Because it's not like just, it's not like he's like a God possessing a man.

He's the God man with emphasis at that point on the full manhood. If Jesus would have just been flesh, he wouldn't have been fully man. He had a mind. He had a spirit. He had what men have, and he had what God has.

In fact, this goes back to an early, and we're gonna talk about this more next time because we're running out of time. The Council of Chalcedon, it was in the 400s. I don't remember the date right off the top of my head, but the Council of Chalcedon dealt with this issue because there was an argument that Jesus had one nature, and it was a mixture of God and man.

But that's not what we're saying. We're saying that Jesus has two natures and that they're not mixed, but they're joined in the person of Jesus Christ. They're distinct and yet present in him. The divine and human nature are together and yet distinct in his person.

And let me just very quickly, I'll finish with this because I'm out of time. All right, very quickly. The word hypostatic. All right, how many of you have ever seen this word? Kind of a weird word, usia.

Okay, if you've ever taken my Trinity course, you don't remember it, and that hurts my heart. Because in the Trinity course, I talked about how the early church's argument about God and his nature was the question of usia.

Usia means essence, right? So essence, right? And the argument for the Trinity is that God is one in essence, right? But three in person. He is one in nature, three in person. And those three persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The question becomes, and this was the question, was is Jesus of the same essence or usia as the Father? Is Jesus of a different essence than the Father, which would make him not God? Or is Jesus just of similar essence with the Father?

In fact, the three terms are homousia, homoousia, and heteroousia. And you're familiar with the word homo and hetero because it means the same and different, right? Homoousia means same substance. Heteroousia means different substance.

Homoi means similar substance. I don't expect you to write all that down. I'm just telling you because you've heard the phrase one iota, it's a difference of one iota. The difference between right and wrong on that is one Greek letter, the small i, the iota.

Because the difference between right and wrong is is Jesus the same substance of the Father or a similar substance? And Christian Orthodoxy had always said Jesus is the same substance of the Father, not just similar, but the same.

They share the same essence, the same that which is God they share, right? And so in this, the word usia was actually before the Council of Nicaea, the word hypostatic and the word usia were used the same.