Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, and on the Religious Questions of the Day.Guizot, François
Religion
Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, and on the Religious Questions of the Day.
Guizot, François
Christianity -- Essence, genius, nature; Philosophy and religion
It is also St. John who relates the testimony of the Forerunner,
St. John the Baptist, answering to those who had said to him that
all men come to Jesus Christ: "Ye yourselves bear me witness,
that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.
... He that cometh from above is above all. ... He whom God hath
sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by
measure unto him. ... The Father loveth the Son, and hath given
all things into his hand" [Footnote 10] St. Paul is more
systematic, and enters more fully into the questions and
principles of the Christian doctrine, and he regards the divinity
of Jesus Christ as the first of these principles. He writes to
the Philippians: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it no
usurpation to be equal with God: but made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made
in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death
of the cross." [Footnote 11]
[Footnote 10: John iii. 28, 31, 34, and 35.]
[Footnote 11: Philippians ii. 5-6. I have given this verse in
Osterwald's translation, which is also that of the Vulgate;
but my son Guillaume, who is following out a careful course
of study of Latin and Greek philology in sacred and profane
literature, reminds me that the text of this passage presents
a difficulty which furnished a field for the labours of
Erasmus, Cameron, Grotius, Méric Casaubon, in the sixteenth
century, as well as many others before and after them. The
Greek word [Greek text] admits of two meanings, an active and
a passive sense--it may designate the _action of
ravishing, of carrying off by force,_ or the _object
carried off_--the act of depredation, or the spoil.
Substantives derived from verbs frequently waver between
these two acceptations, and the word [Greek text], which is
merely another form of [Greek text], is unquestionably a case
in point. Æschylus, Euripides, Herodotus, have employed it in
the first sense; Æschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, and
Polybius in the second sense. Now, in the passage of St.
Paul, accordingly as one or the other sense is adopted, these
words must either be translated thus: "He did not consider it
a usurpation to be equal to God;" or thus, "He did not
display as a trophy his equality to God;" that is to say: He
did not display His equality with God as the conquerors of
the earth display the spoils and booty which they have
amassed; He did not make use of His divinity to reign, to
triumph, to pride himself in it; He was not the Messiah whom
the carnal Jews expected, a visible king and victorious in
arms; but, on the contrary, "he humbled himself, and took
upon him the form of a servant," etc., etc. This second
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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