KENOSIS. - From the Greek ἐκνῶσις (ἐκνῶς, “I empty”), it is equivalent to divestment, annihilation, and is the subject of a modern Christological theory, predominantly Protestant, which maintains, on the basis of a text of St. Paul (Phil. 2:7), a limitation or loss of Divinity on the part of the Word at the moment of the Incarnation. The full Pauline text reads as follows: “Who (Christ), subsisting in the nature of God, did not regard his equality with God as a prize, but emptied himself (ἐκνῶσις), taking the nature of a servant, made like unto men and outwardly recognized as a man.”
The Fathers understood this passage in a moral sense, reading in it the voluntary humiliation of Christ,
who, although truly being and remaining God (ἐν μορφή τοῦ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων... εἶναι ἴσαι θεῷ), humbled himself to the point of concealing his infinite greatness in the humility of our flesh, in order to appear as our brother. Thus St. Leo the Great gathers up the meaning of the tradition: “In each nature, therefore, it is the same Son of God, who assumes what is ours without losing what is his, renewing man in man, while remaining immutable in himself” (Serm. 7 de nat. Dōmini, 1). Among the Fathers, when the term k. occurs, it has no particular meaning, but is synonymous with Incarnation.
It was Luther who began to abuse it, explaining St. Paul’s text in the sense of a transfer of divine attributes from the Word to the human nature, which consequently remained as though deified (De libertate christiana and Defensio verborum Christi, vols. VII and XXIII, Weimar edition).
In the seventeenth century a controversy arose between the theologians of Tübingen and those of Giessen concerning the use of the divine attributes in Christ the Man: the human nature assumed from the beginning took possession (ἀτήσις) of all the divine properties of the Word, without, however, making use of them, as though it had divested itself of them (ἀγίωσις), maintained the theologians of Giessen; or else it made use of them only secretly (ἀρήψις), argued those of Tübingen.
In the last century people began to speak of k. in the technical sense of divestment, of a limitation of the Word. More precisely, Thomasius (Beiträge zur kirchlichen Theologie, Erlangen 1845) spoke of a limitation (Selbstbeschränkung), while Gess (Lehre von der Person Christi, Basel 1854) spoke of a true loss or complete renunciation (Entäusserung) of the divine properties through a kind of sleep or descent into unconsciousness.
But the kenotic theory soon moved to England, where it underwent extensive development. After some tentative essays by O’Brien and Rutten, there appeared a series of kenotic writings by the Anglican bishop Charles Gore, followed by numerous disciples who adopted and expanded the master’s ideas (Ottley, Moorhouse, Bright, Rashdall and, later, Garvie, D’Arcy, Forrest, Valentine and others). With more personal views, Forsyth, Mackintosh and Bethune-Baker took up the question anew.
Three forms of kenoticism may be distinguished in these authors: 1) the divine attributes are divided into physical (extrinsic-relative) and ethical (intrinsic-absolute); the incarnate Word divested himself of the former (e.g., omnipotence and ubiquity) and retained the latter (e.g., love and truth); during Christ’s earthly life the physical attributes remained outside the sphere of his potentiality (such was Faibairn’s view, following in the footsteps of Thomasius); 2) in becoming incarnate, the Word lost consciousness of his Divinity and felt himself to be a mere man, capable of erring and sinning; during his earthly life he no longer exercised the cosmic functions of Creator and Preserver of the universe (such was Clarke’s view, following Gess); 3) in the Word, two spheres must be considered, one divine and the other human; in the former he continues to enjoy the divine attributes, while in the latter he limits himself, laying aside the related physical attributes in order to adapt himself to the conditions of man (such is Gore’s opinion). The latter, despite the self-limitation of the Word, maintains the principle of the two natures, the two wills and even the two consciousnesses, while seeking to preserve Christ’s personal-psychological unity. But more recent and more unrestrained authors, such as Mackintosh, abandon the traditional metaphysical doctrine of nature and person and decisively adopt the psychological path in order to overcome abstract dualism through vital unity in Christ. By this route Anglican kenoticism slides into psychologism, whereby the divinity of Jesus Christ is asserted by virtue of his human consciousness, to which the divine manifests itself progressively. This psychological tendency, in which Anglican kenoticism is finally dissolved, was developed into a complete system by W. Sanday, who for this purpose exploited the theories of James and Myers concerning the subconscious. For Sanday, Christ is first of all man, in whom a clear consciousness must be distinguished
from an obscure or subliminal one (subconsciousness), which is the proper seat of the experience of the divine. Christ the man therefore felt the divine in his subconsciousness, from which the divine itself gradually emerged into clear consciousness, until it produced the conviction that he was the true Son of God, the eternal Word.
K., as it has been understood and explained by Protestant theologians, lacks biblical and patristic foundation; St. Paul would recognize in it nothing of his own beyond the word k., which, moreover, has been bent to eccentric meanings. But it represents a metaphysical absurdity, owing to its claim that an intrinsic limitation or mutation of divinity is possible, whereas divinity is necessarily infinite and immutable. From the theological point of view, the kenoticism of the first form, with its affirmation of a metamorphosis of the Word or of a deification of the human nature assumed by him, leads inevitably back to the positions of the old error of Eutyches (v. EUTYCHES AND EUTYCHIANISM). More recent kenoticism, with its psychological orientation, by insisting on Christ the man and on his human consciousness, in which experience of and contact with the divine are said to take place, recalls the old heresy of Nestorius (v.). Bethune-Baker, by the same psychological path as Sanday, logically arrives at defending the doctrine of Nestorius as an expression of the orthodoxy defined at the Council of Chalcedon. Kenoticism is therefore false in its origin, in its development and in its most recent outcome.