The Synod of Antioch (A.D. 269) records the testimony of Paul of Samorata :

`On which account the same God and man Jesus Christ in all the Church under heaven has been believed in as

God having emptied Himself from being on an equality with God, and as man of the seed of David according to

the flesh'.

The self emptying of the Son of God is directly linked with taking upon Himself the form of a servant. Bishop

Mowle says :

`The Greek positively involves the conclusion that the "emptying" whatever it was, was coincident in time with

taking the form of a servant. According to well recognized laws of Greek idiom the aorist verb ("He emptied")

and aorist participle ("taking") in verse 7 give us one fact from two sides "He made Himself void" not anyhow,

but thus "taking Bondservant's form". God has spoken His final message to us through a Son Who became also

Bondservant. So, the kenosis itself (as Paul meant it) is nothing less than a guarantee of infallibility'.

`This', comments W. S. Hooton, M.A., D.D., `is a startling turning of the tables'. But who shall venture to assert

it is not true! It says neither yes nor no to the question, Was the Redeemer as Man, in the days of His flesh,

Omniscient? It says a profound and decisive yes to the question is our Redeemer as Man, in the days of His flesh, to

be absolutely trusted as the truth in every syllable of assertion which He was actually pleased to make. `He Whom

God hath sent speaketh the words of God'.

Quoting from the report of the Scripture Research Society for April 1917, on a paper entitled `The Great

Kenosis; and the mind of the saints', one speaker said :

`We are not bidden to think of our Lord contemplating equality with God as a thing which He possessed and

would retain, but as a thing which He would lay hold of, so that He should possess it. Now with this explanation

of the words let the negative be restored; Jesus Christ never so contemplated equality with God. He never was

unpossessed of it. That was not what happened - on the contrary, He had got it, it was His own, and divesting

Himself of it was not simply refraining from taking. That is the thought given by the word "robbery". He did

not refrain from taking it, but had it and gave it up. He emptied Himself.

Now the horrible superstructure that has been placed upon that thought by some so-called interpreters of

Scripture is that He made Himself fallible and made mistakes, and that we can criticise Him like any other

human being. That thought has no place in Holy Scripture. Emptied Himself of what and how far? We do not

know. We know that it includes some loss of glory, for He said "Glorify Thou Me with Thine Own self with the

glory which I had with Thee before the world was". He emptied Himself of glory, He came down, and the glory

which He had while on earth was not what He had been enjoying in heaven. He emptied Himself of riches -

"Though He was rich yet for our sakes He became poor"; of knowledge, for "He grew in wisdom" as well as in

stature; but of what else did He empty Himself, or how far He emptied Himself of these three, we have no

dogmatic statement in Holy Scripture; and if we begin to make such statement, we are writing Scripture, not

learning it'.

Another speaker said :

`There is a peculiar fallacy in the minds of many people. They think that limitation of knowledge is inaccurate

knowledge. There are many children who have exact and retentive memories, and who remember exactly. They

will answer correctly the question that is put to them. Those children to that extent may, humanly speaking, be

called infallible, because they are correct up to the extent of their knowledge. If asked how much nine times

nine is, they would say eighty-one. If asked how much nine hundred and ninety-nine times nine hundred and

ninety-nine is, they might say that they could not tell, their knowledge did not extend so far. Limitation is not

inaccuracy; and this seems to be the silly mistake made by a great school, that because our Lord had limited

Himself therefore He would make mistakes. Infallibility and omniscience are totally different things'.

Finally, reverting to the problem raised by the words `He emptied Himself', the opening speaker said of one who

had taken part :