Philippians 2:5-8

F. ROBERT HALL ON Philippians 2:5-8. BAUR's THEORY

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 foundin 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 appearanceof 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, and actually contends for the view that it is written by one who had before him the developed Gnosticism of cent. 2, and was not uninfluenced by it. In the words of Philippians 2:6, 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 plerômaof Absolute Being and discovering only the more deeply in their effort this kenômaof 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. 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.