Kenosis

From Invitation to Theology by Michael Jinkins, page 132:

"In 2 Corinthians 8:9 we read 'For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.' This is the good news of kenosis."

Above, on the same page, Jinkins wrote this: "Paul says in quoting this hymn [Phil 2:5-11], what Calvin also says centuries later, that the whole life of Christ was a sort of perpetual cross, a perpetual suffering, a perpetual humiliation from beginning to end. Or to use the biblical phrase, 'heauton ekenosen,' (from which we get the theological term kenosis) that is, Christ 'emptied himself' (Phil 2:7). This teaching is at the heart of the entire New Testament witness to Jesus Christ."

And now, skipping down and up onto page 133: "It is not too much to say that the fullness of God consists in God's self-emptying, God's power to give up God's very life for the sake of others, indeed of every other. It is this which we see in the incarnation: Christ empties himself for the sake of humanity, and in this act of supreme self-surrender Christ affirms the fullness of God's almighty love. ...

"Irenaeus says that the humanity we lost as 'Adam' has been recovered for us in Christ... Irenaeus provides his version of what Calvin would later call mirifica commutatio (the wonderful exchange): 'Our Lord Jesus Christ ... through his transcendent love, [became] what we are, that he might bring us to be even what he is himself.'"

[all emphasis his]

Bill Ford