Book Review: Submission within the Godhead and the Church in the Epistle to the Philippians By M. Sydney Park (T.&T. Clark, 2007) -- By: Alan G. Padgett

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 25:3 (Summer 2011)
Article: Book Review: Submission within the Godhead and the Church in the Epistle to the Philippians By M. Sydney Park (T.&T. Clark, 2007)
Author: Alan G. Padgett


Book Review: Submission within the Godhead and the Church
in the Epistle to the Philippians
By M. Sydney Park (T.&T. Clark, 2007)

Reviewed by

Alan G. Padgett

Alan G. Padgett is an ordained minister and professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His most recent book is As Christ Submits to the Church (Baker Academic).

This volume by Sydney Park started life as a doctoral dissertation in New Testament studies. The style of the work is very academic, and the price of the hardback means very few, if any, nonspecialists will read it. This review will be devoted primarily to explaining the author’s main argument, but I will indulge in just one critical comment toward the end.

The so-called Christ-hymn in Philippians 2:6-11 is one of the most widely studied passages in the whole Bible. Park does a good job of reviewing the research of the last three decades or so (mostly in English) and indicating those places where he disagrees with established scholars such as Ralph Martin, N. T. Wright, and James D. G. Dunn. This is a formidable task for a new scholar, and I admire his boldness in taking on these internationally respected figures. What I like about his proposal is that he has learned from the major interpretive models, but has refused to be drawn into a one-sided reading of the text. His major contribution is to provide a balanced and holistic approach to the question of the meaning of this key text and its place in the larger teaching of Paul in this letter.

There have tended to be three schools or models of the interpretation of this passage. One model, associated with Ernst Käsemann (a very famous German New Testament scholar) and Ralph Martin (formerly of Fuller Seminary), argues that the original meaning of this Christ-hymn has no ethical implications whatsoever—despite what we might think from reading Philippians 2:1-5. They focus particularly on the meaning of the passage prior to Paul’s using it in this letter. They argue that this is a fragment of an early Christian hymn to Christ, which Paul then uses in his letter later on and for his own purposes. The point of the passage is a kind of drama of salvation, not an ethical injunction we are called to imitate. Another model is developed over against this one by Dunn and Wright. They analyze the text against the background of an Adam Christology where the main point is the typological contrast between Adam (who fell, of course) and Jesus, who is the Second Adam (cf. Rom 5). Unlike the first Adam, Jesus is obedient to God and so is exalted to be the Lord of all human...

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