Kenosis — The Self-Emptying
The Teaching
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant. Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit. — Philippians 2:5–7; John 12:24
Commentary
Kenosis, from the Greek for emptying, is the move Paul ascribes to Christ: the divine renouncing its own powers to enter the finite. Watts read the whole teaching as a single instruction in letting go. The clinging to immortality, to status, to the preservation of the valuable things, is the disease. The release is the cure.
This is the structural opposite of the effort the commandments seem to demand. You do not reach the divine life by the will achieving the divine act. You reach it by the will abandoning itself, so that what acts through you is no longer the separate self straining to be good. The grain held above the ground stays whole and stays alone. Dropped, broken, given up, it becomes a field. The self that will not fall remains exactly one seed.
Themes
Connections 14
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Hinduism while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Taoism while these teachings took shape. The Church of the East reached Chang’an in 635 and described itself in Taoist and Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781), long after both took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Taoism while these teachings took shape. The Church of the East reached Chang’an in 635 and described itself in Taoist and Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781), long after both took shape.
Unsure
Christianity and Hermeticism were in contact, but no influence of Christianity on Hermeticism is documented. Tertullian named ‘Mercurius Trismegistus’ (c. 200–210), Lactantius (c. 300) quoted Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet. Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum for the Medici (1463).
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Hinduism while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Travelled
Ram Dass read and drew on Christianity.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Hinduism while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Taoism while these teachings took shape. The Church of the East reached Chang’an in 635 and described itself in Taoist and Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781), long after both took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Hinduism while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Travelled
Ram Dass read and drew on Christianity.