In the Form of a God

Book excerpt: The central question addressed in this book is whether Paul thought that Christ Jesus pre-existed in heaven, “in the form of God,” through whom all things were made, before being sent into the world to be born of a woman, in the likeness of sinful flesh. A significant body of scholarship these days, both conservative and critical, supports the view that he did. Andrew Perriman examines the assumptions and reasoning that underlie this consensus, and makes a thorough and innovative case for reading the relevant texts from the narrow and distinctive perspective of the gentile mission. How would pagans and post-pagan believers have heard and retold the back-story of the one whom they knew only as the exalted Lord who would one day rule the nations? Such an angle of enquiry sheds fascinating, and sometimes quite startling, new light on the many exegetical difficulties that attend this aspect of Paul’s Christology—not least in respect of the opening lines of the extraordinary Christ encomium in his letter to the Philippians. But it also yields compelling insight into the significance of Jesus for the Pauline mission and, indeed, for the ancient pagan world.