The Emptied Christ of Philippians. John P. Keenan
- Тип: Текст
- Автор:
- Издательство: Ingram(2020)
- ISBN: 9781498221320
- Язык: Английский
- Описание
- Фрагмент
Before the Gospels were written, long before the creeds of the Church were hammered out, Christ followers in Philippi sang a hymn of the Christ who, «although he was in the form of God . . . emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born as are all humans.» But this emptied Christ never fit neatly into later theologies of the church, shaped by Greek thought, concerned with being and essence. <br/> In Philippians, Paul struggles, stumbling over his own awkward words to express his hope, his eschatological faith, that he might «gain Christ and be found in him . . . and participate in his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if in some way I may reach to what goes beyond the resurrection from the dead.» <br/> Might we better comprehend Paul's inchoate, even mystical, faith in Jesus Christ with aid from a less empirical world of thought than our western heritage offers? Might the thinking of Mahā[set macron over a]yā[set macron over a]na Buddhism guide us toward an awareness of a truth in the Christian faith that is more profound than anything reducible to historical «facts,» or even to human language?
