Review of Crispin Fletcher-Louis, The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, & Civic Virtues (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023)
Divine Heartset is the largest book ever written on Phil 2:6–11, the so-called “Philippian Christ hymn,” just shy of half a million words. Because of that and Fletcher-Louis’s bold claims in it, this volume is too big to describe and discuss in detail, as is my habit in book reviews. Therefore, I will provide only a short summary of the work and interact with Fletcher-Louis’s main theses about the passage.
Divine Heartset’s goal is to provide a “comprehensive interpretation” of Phil 2:6–11 (1), a goal that Fletcher-Louis attempts to accomplish by walking the reader through his intellectual journey of his interpretation of the passage (xix). In the first chapter, “Philippians 2:6–11 in Modern Scholarship: Agreements, Uncertainties, Questions and Possibilities” (1–59), he explores in detail the current state of scholarship on Phil 2:6–11 not only among English speaking scholars but also among those on continental Europe. The second chapter, “Christ the Ideal ‘Divine’ Ruler and Emperor?” (60–105), examines the argument, popular today, that the “hymn” draws on language from imperial divine honors, more commonly but erroneously known among New Testament scholars and clergy as “the imperial cult.” Fletcher-Louis concludes that Phil 2:6’s reference to Jesus having equality with God and his exaltation to the heavenly throne in Phil 2:9–11 do not reflect an adoption of divine honors for rulers.
Chapters three–nine, “Popular Religion and the Hymn’s Primary Narrative: Divine and Human Transformation” (106–64), “Τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ “The Being (That Is) in a Manner Equal to God” (Phil 2:6c) (165–205), “The Divine Being That Has Become: Christ and Philosophy” (206–64), “Against the Behavior of Sexual Predators (Phil 2:6b: οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν) (265–316), “Divine Desire and Love after Christ (Phil 1:8–10, 23; 2:6–8; 3:12–14; and 4:1), including a long excursus on the interpretation of ἁρπαγμός (317–412), “The ‘Name above All Names’: Κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς (Phil 2:9–11) (413–57), and “LORD Jesus Christ”: Divine Cult Name with ‘Biographical’ Epithets” (458–517), are the book’s load-bearing technical chapters in which Fletcher-Louis provides a comprehensive interpretation of Phil 2:6–11 focusing on its syntax and meaning and providing linguistic and historical evidence supporting his arguments.
In these chapters, he sets forth three bold proposals. First, the language of equality with God (τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ) in Phil 2:6 is taken, not from the Bible or Hellenistic and Roman propaganda about kings and emperors, but from Greek and Roman philosophical language about the nature of the divine. To this end, Phil 2:6 speaks of the preincarnate Messiah’s equality with God in an absolute, ontological sense, demonstrating its true meaning by the Messiah becoming a fully human obedient slave who suffered death on the cross (Phil 2:7–8).
Second, Fletcher-Louis translates the term ἁρπαγμός in Phil 2:6, which the NRSV renders, “as something to be exploited,” the NIV as “something to be grasped,” and the ESV as “a thing to be grasped,” as “erotic abduction,” “kidnap marriage,” or “bridenapping.” Thus, according to Fletcher-Louis, “Christ, before his self-transformation, reckons that the God-equal manner of being is not one defined by such an aggressive means to erotic satiation or conjugal union” (315). His justification for this translation is the lexical use of the term, ἁρπαγμός, in Greek texts. For Fletcher-Louis, it is the preincarnate Messiah’s rejection of bridenapping, which he contends was a popular pagan belief, that demonstrates his “servant-hearted disavowal of the usual mechanisms of power [of the pagan gods], in the gift of himself” (315).
Third, the name that is above every name in Phil 2:9–11 is not “Lord” or “Jesus” as many scholars claim, but “Lord Jesus Messiah,” which identifies the human Jesus with the divine king of the cosmos, YHWH the Lord.
Returning to the summary of Divine Heartset, in chapter ten, “Genre and Source: A Traditional, Para-Philippians, Hymn” (518–79), Fletcher-Louis explores the genre of Phil 2:6–11 and the issue of whether St. Paul is quoting some kind of liturgical text with which his audience is familiar. He concludes that Phil 2:6–11, along with Phil 3:20–21, is a “hymn” that dates to St. Paul’s Christian lifetime. He does not attempt to speculate on its origins, however.
Chapters eleven–thirteen as well as nine, “Glory, Honor, and Praise: Celebrity Life in This Metaphysic” (580–751), “Incarnation and Empathy” (752–88), and “Persons: Divine and Human” (789–818), investigate the passage’s place and function in the letter to the Philippians and offers Fletcher-Louis’s own proposals about them as well as discussing the divine nature of the Messiah in Phil 2:6–11. In short, Fletcher-Louis argues that the “hymn” is didactic and provides believers in Philippi with a reminder of the true way of life grounded in the ontology of the empathetic incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and ascended Messiah Jesus. Moreover, St. Paul’s original audience would have understood the passage to reveal that the God of Israel exists in two divine persons, the Father and the Son.
Chapter 14, “Conformity to Christ and Salvation” (819–55), serves as the capstone of Fletcher-Louis’s book contending that the “hymn’s” purpose is to explicate the divine identity of God as two persons, the Father and the Son, and it is this God to whom St. Paul and the Philippian Christians are being conformed. Hence, the letter’s purposes are to reveal the “complete formation” in the Philippians of an “identity,” a “spirituality,” and “virtuous mortal facilities” that are “conformed to the divine and human person who is (the incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and exalted) LORD Jesus Christ” (854; emphasis his).
In the Postscript, “On the Origins of the Hymn,” (856–60), Fletcher-Louis argues that Phil 2:6–11 + 3:20–21 is not a pre-Pauline “hymn” but one that is most probably para-Pauline in that it was composed during St. Paul’s Christian lifetime. Fletcher-Louis sees its composition as arising from what he calls a “creative Christological development” from the engagement of Christians with Greco-Roman culture for the purpose of evangelism, what he refers to as a “missiological accommodation.” Thus, the “hymn” “tells an existing and settled story of Christ using language and concepts that its author was at home with and to which the [Christian] young movement found itself exposed, as it moved out from its birthplace in Palestine and Jerusalem . . . [and it exists because] some Greek-speaking Christ-follower(s) decided . . . to tell their Savior’s story in ways intelligible to family, friends, and neighbors” (858).
Fletcher-Louis provides three appendices: one on translating the hymn “Translating the LORD Jesus Christ and God the Father Hymn” (861–62) (for his translation see the end of this review), one on the use of the concept of divine equality in ancient Greek texts, “An Inventory of Divine-Equality Texts, from Homer to the Third Century CE” (863–82), and one on statistics related to the second appendix, “Statistical Observations on the Six Syntactic Types of Divine-Equality Statement” (863–82). Finally, he provides a complete bibliography and indices, the latter of which is available in a downloadable PDF.
This work is big and bold. Regardless of whether one agrees with Fletcher-Louis’s conclusions, it is clear that he has conducted a great deal of research and included it in this volume. For that alone, one should give thanks to him!
Fletcher-Louis has convinced me that the name that God bestows upon the ascended Jesus is “LORD Jesus the Messiah” (Phil 2:9–11). Thanks for your hard work there and for pointing out that for ancient Greeks and Romans more names are better in that they demonstrate more honor!
I am sympathetic with his argument that the background of equality with God in Phil 2:6 is found in ancient Greek myths about the pagan gods. As readers can see, I agree with Fletcher-Louis that Phil 2:6’s framework cannot be divine honors for ancient Greek kings and Roman emperors.[i] Therefore, this alternative is compelling and one that I will continue to think with and that scholars should explore. If Fletcher-Louis is correct about the concept of equality with God in Phil 2:6, then I see no way around the conclusion that Phil 2:6–11 presents the divinity of Jesus as ontological, not functional, as many scholars claim today.
Fletcher-Louis makes a compelling case for the translation of ἁρπαγμός as “erotic abduction,” “kidnap marriage,” or “bridenapping.” To be honest, for some reason I find myself pushing back against this proposal. It may be my faith and my conservative Anglican theological perspective, or it may be my modern Western sensibilities. I don’t know. I will have to consider this point further.
Finally, I too contend that Phil 2:6–11 is not Pauline, and I agree that it could easily be para-Pauline, or composed after the apostle was called to be a Christian. However, I am uncomfortable with the conclusion that the passage is a “hymn” because it does not look like any ancient Greek or Jewish hymn that we possess.[ii]
In sum, this work is a necessary tool for anyone conducting research on Phil 2:6–11. My hope is that Fletcher-Louis will publish his findings in a shorter, abridged, and more accessible version so that non-scholars and clergy can read and interact with it!
Fletcher-Louis’s translation of Phil 2:5–11:
“Think this way among yourselves, which also you think in Christ Jesus,
who being in God’s form,
considered not bridenapping
the God-equal mode of being,
but emptied himself,
taking a slave’s form,
in human likeness becoming
and in human figure found,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient unto death
–death, even, by a cross.
Wherefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
‘LORD Jesus Messiah!’
for the glory of God, the Father” (Phil 2:5–11).
I am grateful to Cascade Books for this gratis copy of Divine Heartset, which in no way prejudiced my review of it.
[i] D. Clint Burnett, Paul & Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024), 62–63.
[ii] D. Clint Burnett, Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand and Its Greco-Roman Cultural Context, BZNW 242 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 113–16.