Yves Congar, O.P., has written that “The relationship [between God and us] is now
affected through God humbling Himself to come to us in the form of a Servant.” 1 We
understand God in a completely different way because of the Incarnation and the
Passion of Jesus. A God who is humble in relation to us is not the God that most people,
even Christians imagine.
St Thomas Aquinas affirms: “Paul commends Christ’s humility: first, as to the mystery of
the incarnation; secondly, as to the mystery of the passion (Phil 2:8).” 2
In this Feast of the Holy Cross, the reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:
6-11) speaks of the reasons for the Incarnation and the Passion and death of Jesus.
Paul begins this passage by saying that Christ was “in the form of God but did not
consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Thomas states: “He [Paul] mentions
Christ’s majesty first, in order that His humility might be more easily recommended. In
regard to His majesty he proposes two things, namely, the truth of His divine nature,
and His equality.”
Thomas explains that Jesus’ grasping was not like the devil’s seeking equality with God,
as described in Isaiah, “I will make myself like the Most High” (Is. 14:14) or like the one
the devil proposed to Adam, “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). Rather, Christ was
already “in the form of God” but did not grasp onto it in order to rectify Adam’s and Eve’s
attempt to be like God, “for which,” Thomas observes, “Christ came to make
satisfaction.”
Paul tells us that Jesus “emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human
likeness.” Thomas asks whether this emptying indicates that the Son ceased to be
divine. Thomas replies:
No, because He remained what He was; and what He was not, He assumed…
For just as He descended from heaven, not that He ceased to exist in heaven,
but because He began to exist in a new way on earth, so He also emptied
Himself, not by putting off His divine nature, but by assuming a human nature.
Thomas describes Jesus’ emptying Himself as “beautiful”:
How beautiful to say that He emptied himself, for the empty is opposed to the full!
For the divine nature is sufficiently full, because every perfection of goodness is
there. But human nature and the soul are not full, but capable of fullness,
because it was made as a slate not written upon. Therefore, human nature is
empty. Hence he says, He emptied himself, because He assumed a human
nature.
1 Yves Congar, O.P., Called to Life, trans. William Burridge, WF (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 19

Thomas is saying that Christ emptied Himself not by giving up His divine nature but by
assuming the emptiness of a human nature, vulnerable to all the human experiences.
Thomas notes that Paul “touches on the conformity of His nature to ours when he says,
being born in the likeness of men.” Thomas recalls the words of the Letter to the
Hebrews: “Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect” (Heb. 2:17).
Thomas considers that Paul’s words “being found in human form” apply to “His external
life,” “because He became hungry as a man and tired and so on.” He was as the Letter
to the Hebrews says, “One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet
without sinning” (Heb. 4:15).
Since Christ was a divine person, the taking of a human nature did not alter the divine
nature or create a person that was a hybrid, divine/human person. Thomas affirms:
“because it [the human nature] comes to the divine person without changing it, but the
[human] nature itself was changed for the better, because it was filled with grace and
truth… the person existing in the divine nature became a person existing in the human
nature.”
Paul states that the Son “humbled Himself” (Phil 2:8). Thomas reflects: “He was man,
but very great, because the same one is God and man; yet He humbled himself.”
Thomas thinks of the words of Sirach: “The greater you are, the more you must humble
yourself” (Si. 3:18); and the words of Jesus Himself “Learn from me, for I am gentle and
lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29).
Paul declares that Jesus “became obedient” (Phil 2:8). Thomas points out that “the sign
of His humility is obedience.” The proud seek their own will and seek greatness.
Thomas notes that “obedience is contrary to pride.”
Thomas teaches that Jesus’ obedience shows “the greatness of Christ’s humility and
passion… for obedience gives merit to our sufferings.” Thomas distinguishes, noting
that Christ was obedient not in His divine will, which was already one with the Father,
“but by His human will, which is ruled in all things according to the Father’s will:
‘Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt’ (Mt. 26:39).”
Thomas asserts that it was appropriate that Jesus heal the sin of the first parents
because their sin was disobedience: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were
made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).
Thomas maintains that “obedience is great when it follows the will of another against
one’s own.” A person seeks “life and honor” but Jesus surrendered Himself to a death
that was shameful.
In reward for His self-surrender, the Father rewards Him with the “threefold exaltation of
Christ. First, as to the glory of the resurrection (2:9a); secondly, as to the manifestation
of His divinity (2:9b); thirdly, as to the reverence shown by every creature (2:10).”

With regard to His divinity, He has the name He always had: “The Father gave Him this
name inasmuch as He is the Son of God; and this from all eternity by an eternal
engendering, so that this giving is no more than His eternal generation: ‘For as the
Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (Jn.
5:26).”
However, with regard to His humanity, Christ is established in glory: “In another way it
can refer to Christ as man; and then the Father gave that man the name of being God
not by nature, because God’s nature is distinct from the nature of man, but to be God by
the grace, not of adoption, but of union, by which He is at once God and man:
‘Designated Son of God in power’ (Rom 1:4).
Thomas says that the Father “bestowed on Him the name” “made manifest to the world,
that He has this name. This was manifested in the resurrection, because prior to it the
divinity of Christ was not that well known.”
Thomas affirms that all people will acknowledge Jesus’ glory: “It should be noted that
earlier he had said that, he was in the form of God, but here he says in the glory,
because it would come to pass that what He had from all eternity would be known by all:
‘Father, glorify me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the
world was made’ (Jn. 17:5).
Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.

Quotations from Thomas Aquinas are taken from Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on
Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, trans. F.R. Latcher, O.P., found on
dhspriory.org/thomas