Issues in the Philippian "Hymn" 1

2:2-5 ... fulfill my joy so that you think the same thing, having the same love, are like-souled, thinking in common, nothing from strife or for vainglory but in humility considering one another more important than yourselves, each looking not on the things of yourselves but also on the things of others.

Think this way among yourselves that also [was] in Christ Jesus:
The similarity between Jesus' attitude in the verses that follow is so similar to the attitude Paul has just asked the Philippians to have that it seems impossible not to see Paul making an explicit comparison: Have the same attitude that Jesus also had. This is the ethical interpretation, the traditional understanding of the "hymn" that follows.

However, Ernst Käsemann and Ralph Martin have favored a kerygmatic interpretation: Think the way that is appropriate for a person in Christ Jesus. The hymn then goes on to teach us about Christ with no real connection to what leads up to it.

Nah, I don't think so. It's pretty clear that Käsemann had Lutheran issues that made it hard for him to see Paul making any ethical comparison between Jesus and us (he had the same issues with Hebrews 2). Paul means for the "mind of Christ" to be an example of the mind we should have.

2:6 ... who... existing in the form of God
Since Ernst Lohmeyer in 1928, it has been conventional to speak of Philippians 2:6-11 as a hymn. Until recently, it was a foregone conclusion. The standard reasoning is 1) the clearly poetic quality of what follows, 2) the formulaic use of "who" to introduce the material about Christ, with participles following, 3) the fact that these verses are self-contained and distinct from the surrounding verses, 4) some unusual vocabulary and wording for Paul.

Lohmeyer of course not only thought these verses were originally a hymn, he thought it was a "pre-Pauline" hymn. The tell tale sign was the fact that Paul had added the line, "even the death of a cross." He offered an analysis of the poetic structure that consisted of 6 stanzas of three lines each.

Yet a number of very significant voices have questioned whether we have a hymn here at all. Gordon Fee, for example, considers these verses exalted Pauline prose at best (commentary, BBR article). Several of his arguments are significant.

First, he questions the word hymn because ancient hymns sung praises to a god while these verses are about Christ. Second, the structure at many points is prosaic rather than any normal poetry of the day. Conjunctions like "in order that," "therefore," and "that" would not normally be in a poem, especially a Semitic one. And it is none to easy to get the lines to be roughly the same length.

Indeed, there are about five different prominent analyses of the poetic structure of the hymn, each with different ideas of lines that Paul might have added to an original hymn on one thing or another. Joseph Fitzmeyer and others have tried to identify a Semitic original, but such attempts seem little more than speculation.

N. T. Wright has further argued against Pauline expansions and thus, along with I. Howard Marshall and others, thinks of Paul entirely as the author. If it were a hymn, he suggests, the congregation would not sit well with Pauline insertions here and there. Stop talking; I'm singing.

The question of whether to call it a hymn or a poem is perhaps not too significant. More interesting is whether Paul has modified an earlier poem, a question that boils down to whether we can identify clear Pauline additions. Certainly as Fee, Wright, and others have noted, Paul clearly agrees with the whole poem as it stands or else he wouldn't have left the material here.

2:6-7a
In the form of God existing,
Not plunder he considered the to be equal to God,
But he emptied himself,
Form of a servant having taken.

Lohmeyer analyzed the "hymn" in terms of six stanzas of three lines each. Thus the first two stanzas for him were:

I. In form of God existing,
Not plunder he considered
The to be equal to God,

II. But he emptied himself
Form of a servant having taken,
In likeness of mortals having become.

I personally find preferable Jeremias' idea of three stanzas with two line couplets. For him the first stanza was thus as I have in bold above, with each set of two lines forming couplets. Where things get problematic is in the so called third "stanza." More on that when we get there.

Perhaps at some point this afternoon I will get into the thick of it. The "first stanza" is the one that has engendered the most debate and variety of interpretation.