This is a brief re-examination of Thomas’ famous declaration “My Lord and my God” in John 20:28. I looked at this some years ago, noting the common argument that the wording of the confession reflects the “custom,” recorded in Suetonius and Dio Cassius, of addressing the emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) as “our master and our god.”

Probably, for most people interested in biblical studies, “historicism” is a bad word, associated either with a positivist historical-critical methodology that hammers the theological life out of a text or with a certain mode of nineteenth century German historical idealism that culminated in the racist teleogies of Nazism.

I did a couple of podcast episodes recently with David Capes for The Stone Chapel Podcasts, talking about my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul.

It is easy to visualise the traditional interpretation of Philippians 2:6-11 as a downward parabola or u-bend: Christ existed in heaven from eternity “in the form of God”; he descended into the world, becoming man and dying on the cross; then he is raised from the dead and restored to his position in heaven. Here again is that “cosmograph” for the who missed it the first time round.

This is a dull, and frankly unnecessary, technical note on the genitive construction with a preposition en morphēi theou (ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ) in Philippians 2:6. I’ve had to look at this a bit more closely following a rather disjointed conversation with someone on Twitter who had different grammatical objections to John Baumberger to my translation “in the form of a god.” The following summary is based on Daniel Wallace’s Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics (1996).

John Baumberger has a question about my translation of en morphē theou in Philippians 2:6 as “in the form of a god.” He takes issue with the indefinite construction on a couple of grounds:

1. The word theos ‘without the definite article almost always refers to God himself (and not “a god”) throughout scripture.’

2. The article with theos in verse 9 refers back to the theos of verse 6; therefore, en morphē theou in verse 6 must be translated “in the form of God.”

The famous passage about Christ in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually described as a “hymn,” and is usually taken to celebrate the inverted parabola of Christ’s descent from heaven, his incarnation as man, the nadir of his death on the cross, followed by his return to heaven and exaltation to a position equal to or perhaps higher than the one he left.