Monday, August 17, 2015

Hippolytus on the Divinity of Christ in Philippians 2:5-11 Around 205CE

The word of prophecy passes again to Immanuel Himself. … For he means that He increased and grew up into that which He had been from the beginning, and indicates the return to the glory which He had by nature. This, if we understand it correctly, is (we should say) just “restored” to Him. For as the only begotten Word of God, being God of God, emptied Himself, according to the Scriptures, humbling Himself of His own will to that which He was not before, and took unto Himself this vile flesh, and appeared in the “form of a servant,” and “became obedient to God the Father, even unto death,” so hereafter He is said to be “highly exalted;” and … He “receives the name which is above every name,” according to the word of the blessed Paul.


But the matter, in truth, was not a “giving,” as for the first time, of what He had not by nature; far otherwise. But rather we must understand a return and restoration to that which existed in Him at the beginning, essentially and inseparably. And it is for this reason that, when He had assumed, by divine arrangement, the lowly estate of humanity, He said, “Father, glorify Me with the glory which I had,” etc. For He who was co-existent with His Father before all time. and before the foundation of the world, always had the glory proper to Godhead.

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