St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, explicitly portrays Jesus as the Second Adam, the Last Man whose life unto death represents the obedient antithesis to that of the first Adam. Adam's sin of disobedience is both his own ‘Fall’ as well as that of humanity as a whole. It initiates a cycle of sin which perpetuates and broadens in type through each generation. The juxtaposition of chapters three and four of the Book of Genesis helps to express the generational transmission of our fallen nature in Adam. Literary critic René Girard has established a burgeoning framework which proves particularly useful for interpreting the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, the struggle of Cain over-against his brother Abel, and many other passages throughout the Old Testament. Moreover, this hermeneutic also proves agile in straddling much of the New Testament when Christ is understood to be the unveiler of this perpetual underpinning in human social sin. Jesus’ words, actions, ministry, life, passion, and death all function consistently to bring into the light this debilitating motif which sets brother against brother.
From birth to death, Jesus stands and functions in opposition to what Girard describes as mimetic rivalry, which springs from mimetic desire and fosters the continual identification of and persecution of scapegoats—the “scapegoat mechanism.”Footnote 1 Christ transforms and redeems mimesis in such wise that Paul can take the life of Christ as a unifying rather than divisive example to both imitate and propose for imitation. Nowhere is this better expressed than in his letter to the Philippians. Christ's obedience in particular contrasts with Adam's disobedience and moves in the opposite direction against the cycle initiated by it. Philippians 2:6–11, also known as the ‘Christ hymn’, articulates well the foundational nature of this sentiment as an inherent element in the mission of Jesus. This hymn helps us to understand not only that Christ came as the Second Adam, but when viewed through a Girardian lens, provides us one perspective of the way in which Christ's life served as a counterpoint to that of his predecessor-in-the-flesh. Paul uses the hymn in the letter to the Philippians to serve as the central motif for exhorting the church in Philippi to “go and do likewise”—to imitate Christ.
Girardian Analysis
If Jesus then is the Second Adam whose role is the fulfillment of God's program which Adam failed to accomplish, let us first consider the application of Girard's thought to that primordial Fall before we address Christ's particular remedy. Central to his schema is imitation and desire: “All human learning, and especially the acquisition of language, takes place through imitation. What Girard insists has been neglected is an understanding of imitation which is expansive enough to include desire.”Footnote 2 Girard distinguishes between needs or appetites which are natural (the lower end of Maslow's hierarchy of needs) and desire, “which is much more conditioned by culture and social interaction.”Footnote 3 We first identify in someone else a model which we are inclined to imitate—parents, mentors, professional elite. Desiring to be like them, we adopt their desires whether for a particular object or a general goal (status, acclaim, level of competence).Footnote 4 Girard refers to these two variants as “acquisitive mimesis” and “metaphysical mimesis.”Footnote 5 The upshot of imitated desire is well understood by economists who observe its effects according to the nature of supply and demand. Michael Kirwan articulates just how mimesis generates rivalry:
[If] the object is cordoned off from [the] possibility of shared enjoyment, as is the case with sexual relationships, or jockeying for social prestige, mimesis will lead to competition. Once the desiring subject wants to possess the object for him or herself, the person who first brought the desired object to recognition becomes a rival and an obstacle. One word which Girard uses to describe the model who has become a rival is the biblical Greek word skandalon, scandal, or ‘stumbling block’.Footnote 6
Kirwan distinguishes Girard's mimetic rivalry from the philosophies of Hegel and Hobbes contrasting ‘desire for recognition by the other’ (Hegel) and ‘glory as a principal motive for strife’ (Hobbes) with desiring the object desired by the other.Footnote 7 The commonalities between these perspectives do serve however to highlight that the violence of human rivalry has deep roots in the pursuit of self-glorification.
So it is that we look first to Genesis 3 and find self-glorification lurking behind the temptation of the serpent. It (the serpent) seduces Eve into eating the forbidden fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden saying, “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God who knows what is good and what is bad” (Gen 3:4–5). This primordial mimetic desire is directed towards God who becomes the Girardian model for Eve and Adam.Footnote 8 She recognizes the fruit as “desirable for gaining wisdom” (Gen 3:6) yet the wisdom she desires is not for its own goodness’ sake but as a means of imitating God in His omniscience. Discord ensues following the forbidden meal and we find a struggle to identify a scapegoat. When questioned by God, Adam is notably the first to redirect blame away from himself and toward Eve. The progenitor of humanity is identified as the progenitor of sin in this way even though the logical order of sins in the previous passage is the reverse of the interrogations. Adam was given the first chance to repent and refuses responsibility for his own contribution to the nascent disorder. Next Eve blames the serpent. Ultimately, Adam and Eve find themselves in tension with God (Gen 3:22) and set over-against each other in a mimetic rivalry: “Your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master” (Gen 3:16b). In typical Girardian fashion, this rivalry is characterized by pain (Gen 3:16a), suffering (Gen 3:17b, 19a), and death (Gen 3:19b).
Immersed in their new existential turmoil, the arrival of the next generation is born out of and into this same rivalry. “[Eve] conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord” (Gen 4:1). John Sailhamer highlights a critical nuance in the Hebrew: “Her words, however, can be read in a less positive light: e.g., ‘I have created a man equally with the Lord.’ In this sense Eve's words are taken as a boast that just as the Lord had created a man, so now she had created a man.”Footnote 9 Based on the parallel between Eve and Sarah—each of whom bear two sons, one of blessing and one not—and the contrasting responses to the birth of Cain versus that of Seth, Sailhamer considers the second interpretation of Gen 4:1 (Eve boasting) to be the more probable.Footnote 10 In a way then, from his conception, Eve objectifies Cain as a means to her own self-glorification—the ‘product’ of her own handiwork.Footnote 11 This serves as a transitional rivalry between the first generation and the second.
Traditionally the firstborn son would receive a double share of the inheritance (Deut 21:15), and be consecrated to God under the Mosaic Law (Ex 13:2, 22:29b; Num 3:13), to carry on the patriarchal lineage. We would expect then that the son of privilege would be Cain and that Abel would be the ‘jealous one’. “The Hebrew common noun hebel means “puff, vanity.”Footnote 12 As the story unfolds, the tables are turned and Cain becomes jealous of Abel since the Lord looks with favor on Abel's offering and not on that of Cain (Gen 4:4b-5). Cain's mimetic rivalry then with his brother Abel falls under the Girardian category of metaphysical desire and is the source of his murderous vengeance in verse 8.Footnote 13 When questioned about the whereabouts of Abel, Cain parallels his parents’ evasive responses in the Garden and becomes subject to a parallel curse. Adam and Cain both receive a curse related to the tilling of the soil (Gen 3:17–18; 4:11–12). Adam and Eve are banished from Eden (Gen 3:23) and Cain is banished from soil to wander in the desert (Gen 4:14) both of which actions represent banishment from the presence of God.Footnote 14
These parallels point to the tradition of sin passed from each generation to the next as do just two further examples. The first is Gen 4:23b-24 in which Lamech, four generations after Cain, kills again. Only this time “the spirit of vengeance has increased” even beyond the measured divine retribution in Gen 4:15.Footnote 15 The second is the birth of Jacob and Esau in Gen 25. If mimetic rivalry is Girard's original sin,Footnote 16 then surely here is a text in which our fallen nature is transmitted first and the effects are subsequently manifested by the quarreling brothers who, not yet parted from the womb are set over-against each other in an attempt for glory (Gen 25:23). Jacob and Esau, yet unborn typify Girard's concept of ressentiment. Neither brother is as yet the firstborn, and so each is effectively on equal footing with the other. Adopting Thomas Hobbes, description of ‘diffidence’, Michael Kirwan's description of Girard's ressentiment aptly articulates the dynamic of this pericope: “[P]recisely because they are of equal ability, with no one noticeably stronger than the others,” the siblings joust in self-assertion, “since each desires the esteem or recognition of the [other].”Footnote 17 The slavish desire for superiority exemplified by Jacob's grip on Esau's heel as they were born is played out in Jacob's usurpation first of Esau's birthright and then later in Gen 27 of Esau's blessing.
While many more examples could be adduced, these should suffice to show that since the beginning, the sin which Adam commits passes in a mimetic form from generation to generation. If we look then at the Christ hymn in the letter to the Philippians and find that indeed Christ serves as a Second Adam figure, we may also then examine the hymn for characteristics which show how Christ defies this mimetic cycle which so significantly colors Adam's disobedience.
Christ as Second Adam
Many scholars have seen in Philippians 2:6–11 the basis for the presence of a three-stage Christology in the faith of the earliest Christians. In a three-stage Christology, Christ's kenosis would begin from pre-existence as divine logos, transition to the incarnation, and only then descend to the shame of the cross. Since the argumentation for a two-stage, Second Adam Christology is extensive and compelling, as well as open to the organic theological development of the three-stage Christology early in the history of the Church's doctrinal faith, I will focus here primarily on that evidence which illumines the hymn as emblematic of Second Adam theology.
Kenosis
Christ's kenosis has been considered primarily via two lines of thought: his incarnation and his death. For those who interpret his kenosis in terms of his death, what has been abdicated is not necessarily equality with God, but according to some viewpoints that state of perfection that had been attributed to Adam before the Fall. Much of what differentiates the two approaches is found in the interpretation of two words appearing in verse 6: morphe (form) and harpagmos (a difficult word which in this instance seems to connote some form of robbery or seizing). Let us first consider the objects of ekenosen as an act before determining a possible range of nuances for verse 6.
In Philo's De Ebrietate, he uses the active form of the verb in terms of humble submission: “For what is the meaning of the expression, ‘I will pour out my soul before the Lord,’ but ‘I will consecrate it entirely to him?’”Footnote 18 Gerhard Kittel tells us that the primary connotation used in the New Testament for the adjectival form is that of ‘hollow’ or ‘vain’. Citing 1 Cor. 15:10, 58; 2 Cor. 6:1; Gal. 2:2; Phil. 2:16; and 1 Th. 3:5, he notes that “All these passages express a strong sense of responsibility in face of the greatness of the divine gift and of the task thereby imposed, yet also a strong confidence in the gracious power of God which normally guarantees success.”Footnote 19 This reliance on God's providence plays itself out in the second half of the Philippians hymn particularly when a Second Adam hermeneutic is used. Kittel also translates the active verbal form used in Phil 2:7 as “to make empty” or “to deprive of content or possession” and finds a parallel use of ptochos in 2 Cor. 8:9: “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.”Footnote 20 In general, what we find is that Christ already possesses something (yet to be determined in our discussion) and of his own will obediently sets it aside or offers it either to-for God and/or to-for us. Determining what-it-is that he forgoes or offers is perhaps the greater difficulty.Footnote 21
We can distill the nature of the “object offered” by examining a pair of concepts from Phil. 2:6. The first is the morphe (form) which constitutes that state in which Christ is found to be in (hyparchon) at the start of the hymn. The second focus is ‘equality with God’ (to einai isa theo) and in what sense Christ did not consider it something ‘to be grasped’ (harpagmon). Denny Burk makes a robust case against presuming that ‘equality with God’ is something inherent in Christ's ‘form’.Footnote 22 He argues that to in to einai isa theo is only used to distinguish the accusative object (harpagmon) from its accusative complement (einai isa theo) and that the presence of an articular infinitive need not always be anaphoric to a subject. Thus ‘equality’ need not derive from the ‘form’. Whatever Christ possesses, such that he sets it aside in the context of the hymn, seems to be associated with his morphe in which he exists. If the pre-existence of Christ presumes equation of morphe with equality-with-God (to einai isa theo) then an argument can be made in favor of alternate positions starting with non-Aristotelian uses of morphe.Footnote 23
If we appropriate the semantics of the Old Testament, one of the difficulties that arise from attribution of the divine essence to Jesus is the “fundamentally alien and impossible thought that God should have a form open to human perception.”Footnote 24 Ralph Martin finds in Ezekiel 1:26–28 (“one who had the appearance of a man…surrounded with splendour…the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord”) the development in Jewish thought that “God cannot be seen in His essence…but only in His image.”Footnote 25 In spite of the distinctive nuances between the synonyms of morphe, J. Weiss, O. Cullman, and others find interchangeability between the Septuagint uses of morphe, eikon, and doxa.Footnote 26 This doxa or ‘glory’ of the Lord is manifested in His shekinah which Moses gazed upon and returned to the Israelites with face aglow and also around the heavenly throne as in the aforementioned passage from Ezekiel. The suggestion is that this doxa is what Jesus shares with God – a share in divine splendour instead of divine essence. Moreover, since doxa is interchangeable with eikon, a parallel comparison opens up between Jesus and Adam in virtue of Genesis 1:26–27.Footnote 27
James D.G. Dunn prefers a two-stage Christological interpretation of the hymn challenging presuppositions of hyparchon and genomenos. He sees the timelessness of pre-existence and the human birth of the incarnation as projections onto the meanings of these two words in the hymn.Footnote 28 Paul's thought is replete with references to the First Adam and characterizations of Christ as the Second Adam (Rom. 1:18–25; 3:23; 5:12–19; 7:7–11; 8:19–22; 1 Cor. 15:21–22). Dunn sees not the earthly Jesus as the Second Adam but rather the risen Christ, who comes in existence (in his glorified state) at the resurrection.Footnote 29“If Christ walks in Adam's footsteps then Christ need be no more pre-existent than Adam….Christ's odyssey presupposes the plight of Adam, … [thus] the temporal order is clear: Adam first, Christ second – Christ is last Adam, Adam precedes Christ.”Footnote 30 Through a comparison with Psalms 8 and 110:1, Christ is identified as the one who fulfills the program established for the First Adam who failed to complete it. If we exchange morphe for eikon in Gen. 1:26–27, then Phil. 2:6 may be understood as Christ similarly participating in the fellowship with God which Adam enjoyed before the Fall but subsequently forfeited.Footnote 31 Ps. 8:6–7 provides a parallel description of that same pre-Fall state and describes the end goal ultimately realized by Christ in Phil. 2:9–11.Footnote 32 Ps. 110:1, (The Lord says to you, my lord: “Take your throne at my right hand, while I make your enemies your footstool”), identified with Christ early on in the Church, was often associated with Psalm 8 in reflections connecting Christ's redemptive work with the First Adam's program.Footnote 33 In Phil. 2:11 we see Christ receiving the title of Kyrios upon his exaltation thus completing the echo of Psalms 8 and 110:1.
Res Rapienda
To sum up briefly what we’ve considered thus far: the nature of Christ's kenosis is to be understood in terms of possessed rights or attributes which he set aside and which pertain to his specific role as the Second Adam. We will now consider what these rights and attributes are and in what manner they were given up. One of the distinctions that delineate the content of Christ's kenosis comes from the interpretation of ouch harpagmon egesato to einai isa theo. Multiple authors have staked out their positions along three main conceptions of harpagmon– that equality with God was a res rapta (“something already possessed, with the temptation to hold onto it, something seized or clung to”), res retinenda (“something already possessed, but not yet to its fullest advantage, with the temptation to exploit it to the full, something of which to take advantage”), or res rapienda (“something not yet possessed, but rather something to be snatched at, or to reach out and take hold of, something not yet in one's grasp but to be grasped at”).Footnote 34
In concert with the interpretation of the Philippians hymn which proposes Christ as the Second Adam, res rapienda becomes for Christ what it was for Adam. As has been said before, Paul compares and contrasts Adam and Jesus Christ throughout his letters and particularly develops this thought in the letter to the Romans. James Dunn summarizes Adam's failure in Genesis 3: “man's plight was that he had attempted to escape his creatureliness and to snatch at divinity, and thereby had forfeited the glory he already enjoyed and failed to attain the fuller glory God had intended for him.”Footnote 35 Early Jewish thought prioritized lust or desire as the foremost of the capital sins and so Christ's task in the hymn is precisely not to grasp after divinity in imitation of Adam.Footnote 36 This glory (doxa) which Adam enjoyed before the Fall, which has been shown to be synonymous with morphe and eikon, Christ too enjoys at the beginning of the hymnic “odyssey”.Footnote 37 In this scenario, Christ's humiliation is to enter into fallen humanity picking up where Adam left off and abandoning himself to death, the avoidance of which would have been his right even as a creature existing in preternatural glory. For death only entered the world—and this through sin on account of the Fall—subsequent to the original glory enjoyed in the Garden.Footnote 38 Christ then emptied himself of the fellowship with God which was present in the Garden at the beginning and assumed the role which Adam abdicated, that of the just and obedient one. E. Schweizer notes that in the post-Maccabean period, Judaic thought presumed that the righteous chosen by God would inevitably endure suffering and shame in order to ultimately be exalted.Footnote 39 He identifies Christ as the Just One par excellence. Old Testament literature presents myriad anecdotes of the suffering just: Dan. 3, 14; Is. 53; and 2 Macc. 7 for example. Likewise, early Christians had at hand a similar genre to prefigure Christ in the Wisdom literature (Wis. 2:10, 12–24; 3:1–8). “For God formed man to be imperishable, the image of his own nature he made him (Wis 2:23),” provides an additional backdrop for the Adamic typology of Christ. If Christ's role as the suffering, just One is in conjunction with his role as the Second Adam, then according to Dunn, his pre-existence is not a necessary condition of the hymn. Moreover, he considers the exalted Christ, at the time of the resurrection, to be the one who, only after completing his designated task, assumes the identity of the Second Adam.Footnote 40
Mimesis Redeemed
If Jesus’ obedience to the Father involving kenosis and suffering remedies the disobedience of Adam and its effects, then Jesus’ life must be antithetical to mimetic rivalry. John Dadosky categorizes mimetic rivalry into two forms: horizontal (between human beings) and vertical (trying to be like God).Footnote 41 If as Girard states, “the Devil, or Satan signifies rivalistic contagion, up to and including the single victim mechanism,” then surely we find in Christ's temptation in the desert (Mt 4:1–11) a rejection of both the horizontal and vertical forms of mimetic rivalry.Footnote 42 Jesus rejects self-sufficiency in the form of bread just as Adam and Eve sought to “be like God”—to know good and evil independent of God.Footnote 43“The object [in this case, knowledge of good and evil] is only a means of reaching the mediator [e.g, God]. The desire is aimed at the mediator's being.”Footnote 44 Raymund Schwager associates Satan with self-deification which he says, “originates, in fact in an instinctive mechanism of reciprocal imitation, of anxiety and the quest for honor.”Footnote 45 Here in this first temptation, we see one example of how Jesus “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped (Phil 2:6b).” Schwager's observation applies to the second temptation also when Jesus refuses the use of manipulative religious power—at the peak of the temple—as a means to self-serving purposes. Finally, he rejects rivalry at its source turning down Satan's offer: the world in return for the worship due to God alone.Footnote 46 To take on the role of the victim rather than the vengeful victimizer is Jesus’ chosen path. James Alison describes how Jesus embodies the freedom of those liberated from mimetic rivalry whilst living in a society imbued with it: “Now the evidence is that Jesus taught, before, and on his way up to, his execution, exactly this sort of open-eyed freedom-towards-being-lynched, and indeed that this is the whole drift of his moral teaching.”Footnote 47 According to Petra Steinmair-Pösel, nothing less will redeem us than the playing-out of this freedom to its end in Jesus: “[T]he mere message of the merciful Father is not enough to correct the distorted image of God. Rather, people drag Jesus into their own, perverted notions of God; they consequently accuse him of blasphemy and finally kill him. In this situation of intensifying conflict, a correction of the image of God is only made possible by Jesus’ own way of acting.”Footnote 48
The self-glorification which was the goal of Adam at the Fall and which is the goal of metaphysical mimetic desire necessarily requires a distinguishing between and separation from those who are ‘lesser’. Jesus’ teachings provide a reversal of values which defy this rivalrous subordination. “It starts with the beatitudes, where the people chosen as exemplars of proximity to God are all marginal, dependent people.”Footnote 49 Jesus dines with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. In healing the sick and the leprous, he dares to touch them and obliterate the social barrier which provides a metric for station and stature. “But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:26–28). Pope Benedict XVI identifies Jesus’ foot-washing at the Last Supper (Jn 13:1–17) as the quintessential pedagogy of kenosis: “[T]his is rendered visible in a single gesture. Jesus represents the whole of his saving ministry in one symbolic act. He divests himself of his divine splendor; he, as it were, kneels down before us; he washes and dries our soiled feet, in order to make us fit to sit at table for God's wedding feast.”Footnote 50 He points out that the theme presented in the foot-washing is that of ‘purification’ which makes one ‘clean’ to return to the presence of God.Footnote 51 Jesus demonstrates the way back to God's presence and nullifies the banishment of Adam, Eve, and Cain. Jesus is Paul's transformed Girardian model for mimesis. Paul tells the Corinthians, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). He exhorts the Philippians to do the same and offers himself as their Girardian model (cf. Phil. 3:17). Contrary to self-glorification over-against others, Paul describes the kenotic program of self-abasement which rejects mimetic rivalry: “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but [also] everyone for those of others” (Phil. 2:3–4). To restate in Girardian terms, “All the heroes surrender their most fundamental individual prerogative, that of choosing their own desire.”Footnote 52 Epitomized in the Christ hymn, this sentiment is precisely what Paul desires will take root in the church in Philippi: “Have among yourselves [this] same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). “Choice always involves choosing a model, and true freedom lies in the basic choice between a human or a divine model.”Footnote 53 Jesus redeems mimesis by removing its sting. He provides a model which all can imitate without violent rivalry, and, thanks to the resurrection, without fear of death.Footnote 54
