Kenosis

Kenosis, from the Greek kenoo, to empty, takes its name and its classic statement from Philippians 2:6-7, where Paul, likely quoting an early Christian hymn, describes Christ as one who, existing in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. The passage became the anchor text for a whole strand of Christian reflection on how the eternal, divine Word could become genuinely, fully human without ceasing to be God. Patristic theology generally read the emptying as a matter of what the Son set aside in manner of existence, the outward glory and prerogatives of divinity, rather than as a literal subtraction from his divine nature, since orthodox Christology after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 required Christ to remain fully divine and fully human at once, two natures in one person, without the human birth diminishing the divine nature itself.

Kenosis therefore names not a change in what Christ is but an act of self limitation in how that nature is expressed in history, taken as the theological key to a life culminating, in the hymn's own continuation, in death on a cross. The hymn's final lines, describing God exalting the obedient, self emptied Christ and giving him the name above every name, are read by most interpreters as confirming that kenosis is not a diminishment but a path culminating in exaltation.

Nineteenth century German and British theologians developed a more technical kenotic Christology, asking with new precision what, if anything, the Son gave up at the incarnation, some proposing that divine attributes such as omniscience or omnipotence were genuinely, if temporarily, set aside so that Christ could live a fully limited human life, a stronger claim than most patristic writers had been willing to make and one that drew significant theological criticism for risking the Son's full divinity during the incarnation.

The term also migrated beyond strict Christology into wider Christian ethical and spiritual vocabulary, where kenosis describes a general pattern of self emptying love, service that sets aside status or advantage for the sake of another, modeled on but not restricted to the specific claim about Christ's nature. Some Christian theologians have also used kenosis constructively in dialogue with other traditions, including comparisons, contested and partial, to self emptying or self transcending states described in Buddhist and other contemplative literatures, though the comparison requires care since kenosis in its original sense is a claim about a unique incarnation rather than a repeatable spiritual technique.