Kenosis

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Kenosis (κένωσις, Greek for “emptying”, “ emptying ”), also kenose , is the noun for the verb ἐκένωσεν ( ekenosen ) used by Paul in his letter to the Philippians , “he emptied himself” (Phil. 2, 7). Proposed about Jesus Christ , the term means the renunciation of divine attributes in the incarnation . In addition, it can denote the “emptying” of the individual believer in order to receive divine grace . The Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas related the idea of ​​kenosis to the “self-emptying of the creative spirit in the beginning of things”.

origin

In Phil 2.5–11  LUT, Paul possibly quotes a hymn that was already available to him (here after the revised Luther translation from 1964):

“(5) Let everyone be of the same mind as Jesus Christ was: (6) whoever was in divine form did not take it as a robbery to be equal to God, (7) but emptied himself [ heauton ekenosen ] and assumed the form of a servant, became like another man [...] "

Discussion in Protestantism

The question of how the relationship between the divine and human nature of Jesus is to be thought of to one another was discussed in particular in Protestant theology of the 16th and then the 19th century and answered differently.

In the 16th century:

  • Martin Chemnitz was of the opinion that Jesus Christ largely renounced his divine qualities when he became human. This kenotic Christology was then mainly represented at the University of Giessen.
  • On the other hand, there was the cryptic Christology, which was based on Johannes Brenz and was mainly represented at the University of Tübingen, namely “that Jesus Christ not only [...] possesses the divine qualities [...], but that he actually uses them [...] have".
  • This resulted in the Kenosis-Krypsis dispute between the two faculties , which was decided in the Decisio Saxonica .

In the 19th century a school of kenotists was formed :

  • Wolfgang Friedrich Geß (or Gess) also argued that Jesus did not possess these immanent qualities either, nor did he even have the awareness that he had always been God. "You have to ask Geß whether there is anything left of a presence of God in the person Jesus." ( Paul Althaus )

Catholic criticism

The doctrine of the Protestant "Kenotics" was condemned by the Catholic Church. Pius XII. declared in the encyclical Sempiternus rex Christ 1951:

“Completely incompatible with the Chalcedonian Creed is also a rather widespread view among non-Catholics that a frivolous and misinterpreted passage from the Philippians of St. Paul (Phil 2: 7) offered a handle and a semblance of authority - the doctrine of the so-called 'kenose' - according to which one assumes in Christ an 'alienation' of the divinity of the word. This truly blasphemous fiction, like the opposite error of docetism , is to be rejected because it devalues ​​the whole mystery of the incarnation and redemption to a bloodless and vain shadow. 'In the intact and perfect nature of a true man,' says Leo the Great impressively , 'the true God was born, completely according to his character, completely according to ours. ""

- Ep. 〈Brief〉 28, 3rd PL 54, 763

The kenosis conjecture in Hans Jonas

“In the beginning, from an unknowable choice, the divine ground of being decided to give in to chance, risk and the endless variety of becoming. In fact completely: Since she entered the adventure of space and time, the deity held nothing back from himself; no unspoiled and immune part of her remained in order to direct, correct and ultimately guarantee the indirect shaping of her fate in creation from beyond. The modern mind insists on this unconditional immanence. It is his courage or his desperation, in any case his bitter honesty, to take our being-in-the-world seriously: to see the world as left to itself, its laws as not tolerating interference, and the rigor of our belonging as through no otherworldly providence tempered. [...] In order that the world might be and be for himself, God renounced his own being; he undressed his deity in order to receive it back from the odyssey of time, laden with the chance harvest of unpredictable temporal experience, transfigured or perhaps distorted by it. In such a self-surrender of divine integrity for the sake of unconditional becoming, no other prior knowledge can be granted than that of the possibilities that cosmic being grants through its own conditions: God delivered his cause to these very conditions, since he gave himself up in favor of the world. "

Hans Jonas thus followed up on the idea of ​​the tzimtzum that arose in Jewish mysticism in the 16th century .

Modern resumption of the kenosis performance

The theologian Klaus Berger speaks of a double kenosis in the 21st century:

“The father [...] [so Paul in Rom and 1 Cor] went down twice out of himself and into the human desert. This can also be called a double kenosis (self-humiliation). God is not afraid to become human in a Palestinian girl , and he is not afraid to dwell in the heart of every Christian as the Holy Spirit . In this kenosis he is each new recognizable as himself. He delivers himself twice. Why is he doing this? Paul would answer: Because he loves people. "

Also Botho Strauss used in "Lights of fools" (2013) quite often the concept of kenosis.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Jonas: Spirit, Nature and Creation. Cosmological finding and cosmogonic assumption , in: Hans-Peter Dürr , Walther Christoph Zimmerli (Ed.): Geist und Natur. On the contradiction between scientific knowledge and philosophical world experience , Scherz, Munich 1989, pp. 61–77, especially p. 72.
  2. ↑ Wolfhart Pannenberg : Grundzüge der Christologie , 6th edition, Gütersloh 1982, p. 318.
  3. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz:  Gess, Wolfgang. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 235-236.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  4. ↑ Pius XII .: Encyclical Sempiternus Rex Christ , para. 29.
  5. ↑ Hans Jonas: Der Mythos von Gottes In-der-Welt-sein , in: ders., The concept of God after Auschwitz. A Jewish Voice (1984) , Suhrkamp, ​​14th edition, Frankfurt / M. 2013 (1987), p. 15 ff.
  6. ↑ Christoph Schulte: Zimzum. God and World Origins , Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2014, p. 405 ff.
  7. ↑ Klaus Berger: Is God a Person? A way to understand the Christian image of God , Gütersloh 2004, p. 161.