Off the Wall

Off the Wall; The Kenosis of Jesus and the Bab

By John Taylor; 12 September, 2005

I had the task -- distressing to every book lover -- of disposing of
four boxes of Hungarian books lately. My Magyar is too rusty for them
to offer any prospective benefit but one I hung onto, a translation of
a work left over from the 1970's originally entitled "Your Graffiti
Handbook." Since the original wall scrawling is reproduced as found,
with a Magyar translation below, I was able to benefit from the often
strikingly original street philosophy within. One I like because I
thought just that very often as a student, as I am sure every student
does during the decades of excruciating, ghastly inefficient
preparation for life that we call schooling:

"Man was born to live, not to prepare for life."

The following graffito made me laugh long and hard, starting off as it
does seemingly straight from a situation actually described in the
Gospel of St. John,

"Jesus said to them: `Who do you say that I am?' and they replied,
`You are the psychological manifestation of the ground of our being,
the kenygma of which we find the ultimate meaning in our interpersonal
relationships.' And Jesus said, `What?'"

Again, a student's protest against pompous teachers who imagine
themselves greater than the Source of knowledge that they have been
honored with the service of passing on to the next generation. Now
that I think of it, since Jesus did not speak Greek but Aramaic He
might well have reacted that way had John or Peter given him that
answer. Swallowing my pride at looking up a word taken off a toilet
stall wall, I found the definition of Kenosis in my trusty Shorter
Oxford Dictionary,

"(theology) The self-limitation of the divine power and attributes by
the Son of God in the Incarnation."

The dictionary points to its origin in a Greek phrase translated by
"emptied himself" in the following letter of Paul:

"Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing
in the form of God, didn't consider it robbery to be equal with God,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the
likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God
also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every
name; that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow, of those in
heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every
tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God,
the Father." (Ph 2:5-11, World English Bible)

Evidently what Paul had in mind by "emptying himself" was the
contemporary scientific axiom that "nature abhors a vacuum." Air,
seeing a vacuum, rushes in to fill the empty space as soon as it
occurs. Nor is this as simplistic a concept as it seems at first
blush. Galen a few centuries after Paul quotes Erasistratus as saying:
"there cannot be a perceptible space which is entirely empty." In view
of what Twentieth Century science discovered about black holes, this
is a surprisingly astute observation. Even now we cannot detect black
holes directly since they suck in all light and EM radiation. We do
observe their gravitational effects on stars and other interstellar
matter around them, so we know that they exist.

The older and usually less accurate King James Version of the Bible
translates Kenosis not by "emptying himself" but "made himself of no
reputation." This, it seems to me, hits the nail on the head, being
much closer to the psychological reality of Kenosis. The KJV has Paul
say,

"Jesus Who, being in the form of God ... made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant..." (1 Philippians
2:4-8, KJV)

Kenosis, emptying oneself, means entering into the power born of
sacrifice, giving up all that people value most, life, self,
self-esteem, fame, good repute. Jesus Christ attained victory by
emptying himself, taking all suffering upon his head, defeat, hatred,
all the marks of powerlessness and failure in worldly eyes. This
sacrifice became a sort of black hole, a vacuum from which nothing
meaningful leaves. So in the end His name and life attained the summit
of reputation, they are remembered while the whole Roman Empire and
all its dominions are now a dead letter. He thus emptied Himself into
the most attractive, self-effacing, power in the universe, the Holy
Spirit. The essence of Spirit is the fact that it constantly renews
itself. A king is not a king without a kingdom; God has un-eclipsed
dominion, just as the sun never extinguishes itself.

The Bab seems to offer commentary upon Paul's understanding of Kenosis
at the start of a tablet He wrote to a Muslim divine. He points out
that the idea that all divine revelation ended with the sealing of the
revelation of Muhammad is what is obscuring his vision, since that
very belief contradicts the grounds of spirit, renewal. The power of
the words of Jesus, of Muhammad, of the Bab, is that they came from
unlearned, unqualified minds, yet they won out over the most learned
of their age. These illiterates started real, lasting revolutions.
"For who else but God can reveal to a man such clear and manifest
verses as overpower all the learned?" The Bab then sums up the full
implication of Kenosis, that emptying out is of all but God, so as not
to stand empty handed before God on the Day of Judgment:

"The essence of these words is this: Were We to bring thee to a
reckoning, thou wouldst prove thyself empty-handed; We in truth know
all things..." (The Bab, Selections, 31)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com