Reductio ad Absurdum: God Equal to Himself

Again we are referred to the following passage in proof of the proper Deity of our Lord. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”96 Assuredly the Trinitarian exposition of this text, is a mere reductio ad absurdum of the Apostle’s argument, since it makes him say that Christ, being God, thought it no robbery to be equal with himself! It would indeed be absurd to say that of any thinking being. St. Paul would hold up to the imitation and admiration of the church at Philippi, our Lord’s example of humility and obedience. “Be the same mind in you,” he says, “which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being as God, inasmuch as he was the brightest manifestation of God, His chosen messenger and Representative, the ‘beloved Son,’ the ‘only-begotten of the Father,’ did not think this glorious similitude a thing eagerly to be clung to or retained; but rather laid it aside, became a servant, assumed the condition of a man; and being in that condition, humbled himself and was obedient even unto death, the death of the cross.” Such I take to be the Apostle’s meaning, according to the idiom of our own language. And the whole life and history of our Lord well warrant what he says. Speaking the words of God—wielding miraculous power by His Gift, and thus doing the works of God—possessed of Divine wisdom and authority by the will of the Father, he did not eagerly grasp at the grandeur of his high office, or hold or use its great powers for personal advantage; but in the condition of an humble and faithful servant, labored on in poverty and contempt for the good of others;—in that of a man, though despised, rejected, reviled, insulted, persecuted, hunted down even to a cruel and ignominious death—yet through all and to the last, obedient and submissive to Him that sent him.

In this view, what follows is symmetrical and harmonious. “Wherefore”—because of this humility and obedience—“God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name.” Mark you: Jesus hath not that name of himself, but it is the gift of God; how then can he be that God? “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Had the Apostle intended to guard us against this very error, of supposing that he meant, when he said that Jesus was as our version reads, “in the form of God,” that he was verily God—or that when he said he had received “a name which is above every name,” he was verily the Supreme—how could he have done it better? He declares that his very “exaltation” is a reward; that his “name above every name” is a gift; that the homage he is to receive from all ranks of created beings, and the confession which is to be on their lips, are to be rendered and made to him as Lord and not as God, and expressly to or for “the glory of GOD the FATHER.”

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Author: Frederick A. Farley

Keywords: Trinity, Trinitarian, trinitarianism, Deity of Jesus, Deity of Christ, Jesus is God, Jesus is divine, Divinity of Jesus, divinity of Christ, Robbery, Equal with God, Jesus equal to God, form of a servant, Jesus humbled himself, took on the form of a servant, robbery to be equal to God, thought it not robbery

Bible reference(s): Philippians 2:6

Source: Unitarianism Defined (Boston: Walker, Wise & Co., 1935).

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