Chapter V Addendum – Aorist Expansion

As you are now aware, in the prior article, we discussed the aorist tense. It is argued – without grounds – that the beginning of this passage, concerning Christ being inherently in the form of God, should be interpreted as to take place at the end of the passage, conveniently somewhere between Phil. 2:8-9, so that Christ’s place at the beginning of the universe can be dismissed.

For starters, such an opinion is so emphatically wrong, that if anyone is genuinely telling you this with a straight face, you may have every reason to dismiss their future expositions, since they are so clearly disagreeable and unknowledgeable concerning the Greek language. With all boldness and love, I say that such an argument frustrates me (Stephen) quite a bit, especially if a believer in Paul’s evangel is genuinely claiming it. It is baffling, and so unequivocally incorrect that I do not trust myself to refute it without discarding social niceties, as my apostle did on many occasions (Gal. 3:1, 2 Cor. 11:12-15, Phil. 3:2, 1 Tim. 6:3-5, and others.)

As I understand that many in the body of Christ are quite liberal-minded – i.e., if you say something that personally offends their sensibilities, they will discard anything you say because their emotions drive them as opposed to facts – I will step aside here and instead copy an article written by our brother Thijs Amersfoort on this very topic. In the article I am sharing, Amersfoort highlights the different verb forms in the present passage, and, using facts from the Greek, demonstrates how fallible it is to move Philippians 2:6 to a later part of the text.

Please note that I am not making any money from this, and seek not to plagiarize Amersfoort. This is his writing, and he has given me written permission to share his work, in grace.

*   *   *

Recently, our brother André Piet spoke about Philippians 2 in one of his Bible studies. This is a text normally regarded as one of the clearest texts that speaks of the pre-existence of Christ. Not only believers, particularly those who believe in the Trinity read the text this way, even an unbelieving New Testament scholar like Bart Ehrman, who has no reason to defend "traditional doctrine," points to the text as one that speaks of Christ this way. The text then speaks of how Christ was once in the form of God, and from there emptied Himself into man. André does not necessarily deny that the text can be read that way, but has many questions and difficulties with the idea of His pre-existence, and sees another possible explanation of Philippians 2, which in view of those questions and in his view a lack of evidence elsewhere he prefers over the usual explanation.

In that talk, he explained that other possible explanation. According to him, the "being in the form of God did not regard it as a robbery" did not refer to the time before He became man, but to His later exaltation. Then He came in the form of God, and did not consider it a robbery. After an initial email exchange, he put his analysis of the Greek verbs a little more sharply in a blog. With the explanation leaning so clearly on Greek verbs and Greek grammar, the discussion from which I had previously kept aloof entered the territory that I consider my specialty. And because I felt that he overlooked one more important fact which in my view makes his explanation impossible, we had an interesting discussion on the email about it, some of which I am happy to share with you.

The text portion

One of the beauties of Greek is that it can indicate information very precisely with an elaborate verb system, but that also makes it somewhat complicated, especially for those who don't know Greek, to see exactly what is meant. Let's look at the text portion.

5 For let this disposition be in you, which is in Christ Jesus also, 6 Who, being in the form of God, deemed being equal to God no robbery, 7 nevertheless emptied Himself, having taken the form of a slave, come to be in the likeness of humanity, 8 and, being found in fashion as a human, He humbled Himself, having become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore, also, God highly exalted Him, and graced Him with the name that is above every name… (Fil 2 – CV, changed)

There are three verb forms involved here, each of which I have indicated with its own color. The most important is the well-known aorist, which I have indicated with red. In narrative texts, the aorist always indicates the main points of a story. So too here. Just look at the red words, which are the main events in this story. Then here we also have the participle or participle of the aorist, indicated with orange. This form gives the fact that forms the antecedent background for the verb in the main clause. You can see this nicely in this piece of text as well. As background to "He empties himself" we read what that meant: "having taken the form of a slave and having become in the likeness of man." And it did not stop there. This, the "having been found in the form of man" is again the background to the sequel. Having done so, He humbled Himself even unto death. And finally we find here the participle or participle of the praesens, shown in blue. That participle gives the background that takes place at the same time as the main verb. So while He was in the form of God, He did not consider it a robbery to be like God. I sometimes marvel at how the Greek can put it so sharply with its verbs, distinguishing foreground from background and indicating precisely what is background from what, what is preceding and what is concurrent.

Progress 

To understand my objection to André's explanation, I need to explain one more property that belongs to the aorist: progression. In short, if you place several aorists in succession, they indicate progression of time, a chronologically ordered narrative in which each subsequent action follows the previous one. If this is also true of Philippians 2, then the “being in the form of God, not esteeming being equal to God a robbery” is something that precedes “made Himself empty,” meaning that He was thus already equal to God before His emptying and incarnation, and not only after His resurrection and exaltation. This would make André's theory incorrect.

For those who are interested, I will substantiate it a little more below. If you don't like grammar, you can stick with the brief rendering above and skip the rest of this and the next heading.

In order to understand how aorists can indicate progress, we need to define a little more clearly what the meaning of the aorist is. It is sometimes said that the aorist indicates an action in the past, present and future, but that is not (always) correct. It is more accurate to say that the aorist in itself does not give any information of time at all. It is sometimes said that the aorist represents an action mainly as fact, which is already closer to the truth, but still not always correct. The accurate description of what the form means is perfective aspect. In short, it represents the action as a whole, whereas the praesens form, on the contrary, zooms in on the course of an action. You could say, if in a city there is a parade, the aorist would be like watching the parade from a helicopter. You would not be watching the movement of the parade, but seeing the parade as a whole, from beginning to end. The praesens would be more like the reporter along the side, watching athletes run faster or slower, and mainly seeing the progress of the parade, but not the beginning or end. If we think of an action as something that has a beginning, a progression and an end, like a thick line, you could represent the difference as follows:

*Illustrations inspired by similar ones in Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, by Daniel B. Wallace

The fact that an aorist itself does not indicate time does not mean that the context cannot indicate the time in which an action took place. And by far the most frequent use of the aorist is for acts that are simply in the past, in as many as 80% of occurrences. But this is because the aorist represents an action as a whole, often thus as fact. And usually something is a fact because it happened in the past, and is therefore fixed. So indirectly, the most logical tense that fits with the aorist is indeed the past tense, even though it is not part of the basic meaning of the form itself. More precisely, since an action as a whole is in view with the aorist, usually the "end point" of the action is also in view, so that an action has already been completed, and is therefore in the past.

These properties of the aoristus automatically lead to another essential difference in meaning compared to the praesens: progression. If you place two aorists in succession, for example as the main verb in two consecutive main sentences, the actions will automatically signify progress in the story. Of the first action, the end point is in sight through the aorist before a new action is started in a subsequent main clause. Thus, the acts are ordered chronologically; they are sequential. Therefore, the aoristus is the form of choice in Greek for telling a story. It is eminently suitable for lining up chronological events. This is also by far the most common use of the aorist: a series of aorists representing successive actions.

The rule in the Greek of the NT

We can formulate this as a rule:

-       If aorists are used in successive sentences as the main verb of the main sentences, those aorists form a chronological series of successive actions. But, this sequence may be interrupted by certain conjunctions, prepositions, by parallelism, repetition or fixed expressions.

To give an example of conjunctions, parallelism, etc., Rom 1:21-23 is interesting.

-       ... 21 because, knowing God, not as God have they glorified or thanked Him, but vain have they become in their reasonings, and darkened is their unintelligent heart. 22 Alleging themselves to be wise, they are made stupid, 23 and they change the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of a corruptible human being and flying creatures and quadrupeds and reptiles

Here we find a series of aorist indicatives, and they clearly state facts, but chronology does not seem to be involved here. This is largely explained by conjunctions and parallelism. The "or" between the two aorists makes them appear not one after the other but side by side as options, and similarly "not ..., but ..." prevents chronological sequence. In the rest of the aorists, the nuance of progression is prevented by the use of parallelism, expressing the same thought in multiple ways.

If this really is a hard rule, then it is interesting for Philippians 2 because it may say something about the chronology of the facts there. But since I know André is not easy to convince (which I say with a wink), and it's just good to be sure, I checked this rule in half the NT. In all the epistles and in Matthew. And what turns out? All the series found therein are either directly chronological, or are easily explained by conjunctions and parallelism in a manner similar to Rom 1.

The discussion

So I haven't found an exception to the rule, not one. Certainly not one where the first verb of a series indicates an action that takes place only after the rest of the series. Although André eventually accepted this rule, he was not convinced that this must mean that his explanation of Philippians 2 was incorrect. Let's look at the text again.

5 For let this disposition be in you, which is in Christ Jesus also, 6 Who, being in the form of God, deemed being equal to God no robbery, 7 nevertheless emptied Himself, having taken the form of a slave, come to be in the likeness of humanity, 8 and, being found in fashion as a human, He humbled Himself, having become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore, also, God highly exalted Him, and graced Him with the name that is above every name,

(Fil 2 - CV, changed)

It is clear that verses 7 to 9 describe successive actions: He emptied Himself, humbled Himself to death, therefore He was exalted and the name above all name was given to Him. But what about verse 6? I pointed out to André that verse 6 also simply belongs to the series, and thus by the chronologically consecutive acts Christ was in the form of God before His emptying, not after.

To this André raised the question of whether here, as in Rom 1, you don't have a "not ... but ..." structure, here in the translation "no robbery ... nevertheless". That would then be an exception to the rule. To that I replied that if this is like in Rom 1 also a "not ... but ..." structure, still the chronology is not immediately abandoned. This is easily illustrated with a short story: "He walked in. He did not hang up his coat but put it down. He sat down." The order is still "walked in" > "laid coat down" > "sat down." And the hanging is not separate from the chronology either, because otherwise it would have taken place where the laying down now takes place. The same is also true of a series of aorists in Greek, as you can see beautifully in Gal 1:15-18. There, in the middle of a story, there is also a "not ... also not ... but ..." structure, but the whole thing is still part of a chronological narrative.

But, the structure in Phil 2 is different. The "not" does not stand in front of the verb, but in front of "robbery." The act is not denied, but robbery (I mean, it is not "not deemed," but "deemed no robbery"). Therefore, there is also no direct opposition between the acts, but rather it is "act 1, and yet/nonetheless act 2." "But" is more often used this way, see e.g. Rom 5:14; 6:5; 1 Cor 8:6; 9:2,12; 2 Cor 4:16; 5:16; 11:6; 13:4, translated as "niettemin" (Eng: "nevertheless") throughout the Dutch CV. What does "nevertheless" do to the progress of time then? To me, the "nevertheless" seems to indicate that despite the fact that He did not consider it a robbery, He nevertheless emptied Himself. For such a logical construction, the "deemed no robbery" must have been a fact before He emptied Himself. Or in other words, in my opinion, from "deemed no robbery" onward it remains a single chronological series of aorists.

The end positions

André was not convinced, however, and argued that the little word "but", translated here as "nevertheless," was the introduction to Paul's explanation of why Christ's mind is different, and thus separate from verse 6. The four facts that follow - He stripped Himself, humbled Himself, therefore God exalted Him and gave Him the name, that every knee may bow and every tongue confess to the glory of God - indicate why being "in the form of God" for Christ Jesus is not a robbery. So he sees a hard cut in the series of aorists, by the word "but".

While it sounds logical, that answer does not convince me at all. Indeed, the issue is whether this is also what the Greek says. And that is only possible if the "nevertheless" can indeed give a hard cut to the narrative, otherwise the rule still applies here to which I found no exception in all the epistles and Matthew, that actions must follow one another chronologically. I have already listed all the times that "but" occurs in a similar way above. If I check all those places, it appears that everywhere the preceding is already a fact before or simultaneously with what follows "nevertheless." You can see this quite clearly in Rom 5:14, where "nevertheless" appears in the middle of a series of aorists, and where the story simply continues chronologically. In none of the places does "nevertheless" give the hard cut that André sees here, and I don't think it does here either. The "nevertheless" says that even though Christ, being in the form of God, did not consider being like God a robbery, even though He emptied Himself. The explanation of why Christ's mind is different doesn't begin in verse 7, it begins as early as verse 6. On the contrary, it speaks even more clearly about this because Christ emptied Himself from that high position.

When I asked André how the "nevertheless" could give a contradiction when the "deemed no robbery" which preceded it did not take place until much later than the "emptying" which follows it, according to his position, he replied that it was NEVER Christ's disposition to "rob the form of God" in which He now is. He RECEIVED this position on the basis of emptying and humiliation. But again, as logical as that sounds, according to the Greek, that is not possible. For in that explanation, he separates "being in the form of God" from "deemed it no robbery." The one He did not receive until much later, the other always applied to Christ. But, as I told you above, the "being in the form of God" is a participial of the praesens, which represents an action always concurrent with the main clause. Or in other words, the "being in the form of God" must therefore be contemporaneous with the "deemed it no robbery."

Also, separating verse 6 from what follows would give the whole passage an incomprehensible message. What is the mind of Christ that we should also have? To consider being equal to God no robbery. After all, the four facts that follow all substantiate this one thing, that He did not consider it a robbery. But that can hardly be something we can imitate Him. No, His mind shows itself precisely in that He was first equal to God but did not consider this a robbery, and even in spite of that emptied Himself completely, became human, and humbled Himself to death.

Here it remained, so these are the two views:

• André does not deny the possibility of the standard reading, but presents another possibility. Since he further has several problems with the idea of Christ's continued existence, and this is the only text that he believes can be used as a proof, he considers his alternative reading more likely.

• I still believe that the Greek excludes his reading. For his explanation, verse 6 must be detached from the narrative, but the word that must do so, "but" in the sense "nevertheless," nowhere does so in other places. Indeed, it presupposes that the preceding is fact for what follows. Thus, it actually reinforces the chronological idea. André insists on an explanation of Greek grammar that nowhere else works that way, and thus it seems to me that this explanation is ruled out. If Pauls readers had read this section without prior knowledge, that is, without the "dogma of the pre-existence of Christ," but also without the difficulties and questions one might have with it, they would simply have read it as they do in all other places where there is a series of aorists: chronologically. If verse 6 was to be pulled apart, then it should have been much clearer from the context. And, when I think it trough, detaching verse 6 does not make sense at all, it leads to an incomprehensible message.

The whole question of Christ's pre-existence, by the way, requires the study of other texts that make the same suggestion (e.g. Col 1:15), and of the questions and difficulties that e.g. André has with the idea, but that is something for another time. In this discussion and in this article, I was purely concerned with what the Greek of this text says. Although we did not reach agreement in our discussion, we did look very precisely at the text and carefully considered all the facts. Therefore, I thought it could be instructive to rework this in an article. To the studying reader now to consider these facts for themselves.

- Thijs Amersfoort, GerudoKing