KENOSIS. A term used in Christian theology. The word is Greek, and means " emptying." The verb occurs in the Epistle to the Philippians (ii. 7). The whole passage (vss. 5-11) is as follows: " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be snatched to be equal with God, but emptied himself (heauton ekenosen), and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father." Hilary of Pictavium (A.D. 350) explained this passage to mean that although the Divine Logos had entered into Christ he did not at once make full use of it, but willed to remain in a state of humiliation (just as he could will not to sin) until his exaltation. A later explanation was that Christ, although he knew that his nature was divine, would not make use of the divine majesty (as a thing to be snatched at). A modern idea of the Kenosis is that Christ identified himself with humanity (apart from the fact that he willed not to sin) so entirely that he shared its infirmities even as regards human knowledge.
His knowledge does appear to have been limited. To take only one subject, it must be frankly admitted, as Prof. W. Sanday says (I.), " that even when deductions have been made, as some deductions must be made, on critical grounds, there still remains evidence enough that our Lord while upon earth did use the common language of His contemporaries in regard to the Old Testament; that He did speak—if not of Daniel as the author of the book which bears his name. yet of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, and of David as the author of one of the later Psalms; and that He did apply to His own day some part at least of the story of Jonah and the story of Noah as literal narrative." Conseqently, " many of the most reverent and most careful of our theologians" have been forced to conclude " that }imita tions of knowledge might be and were assumed along with other limitations by Him Who was in all things made like unto His brethren, though without sin." See J. B. Heard, New Wine in Old Bottles, 1802: C. Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891; W. S. Swayne, Our Lord's Knowledge as Man, 1S91; Bodington, Jesus the Christ, 1892.