These words are none of them of frequent recurrence in the N. T., μορφη occurring there only twice (Mark 16:12; Phil. 2:6); but compare μορφωσις (Rom. 2:20; 2 Tim. 3:5); σχημα not oftener (1 Cor. 7:31; Phil. 2:8); and ιδεα only once (Matt. 28:3). Μορφη is ‘form,’ ‘forma,’ ‘gestalt’; σχημα is ‘fashion,’ ‘habitus,’ ‘figur’; ιδεα, ‘appearance,’ ‘species,’ ‘erscheinung.’ The first two, which occur not unfrequently together (Plutarch, Symp. viii. 2. 3), are objective; for the ‘form” and the ‘fashion’ of a thing would exist, were it alone in the universe, and whether there were any to behold it or no. The other (ιδεα==ειδος, John 5:37) is subjective, the appearance of a thing implying some to whom this appearance is made; there must needs be a seer before there can be a seen.
We may best study the distinction between μορφη and σχημα, and at the same time estimate its importance, by aid of that great doctrinal passage (Phil. 2:6-8), in which St. Paul speaks of the Eternal Word before his Incarnation as subsisting “in the form of God” (εν μορφη Θεου υπαρχων), as assuming at his Incarnation “the form of a servant” (μορφην δουλου λαβων), and after his Incarnation and during his walk upon earth as “being found in fashion as a man” (σχηματι ευρεθεις ως ανθρωπος). The Fathers were wont to urge the first phrase, εν μορφη Θεου υπαρχων, against the Arians (thus Hilary, De Trin. viii. 45; Ambrose, Ep. 46; Gregory of Nyssa, Con. Eunom. 4); and the Lutherans did the same against the Socinians, as a ‘dictum probans’ of the absolute divinity of the Son of God; that is, μορφη for them was here equivalent to ουσια or φυσις. This cannot, however, as is now generally acknowledged, be maintained. Doubtless there does lie in the words a proof of the divinity of Christ, but this implicitly and not explicitly. Μορφη is not==ουσια: at the same time none could be εν μορφη Θεου who was not God; as is well put by Bengel: ‘Forma Dei non est natura divina, sed tamen is qui in formâ Dei extabat, Deus est;’ and this because μορφη, like the Latin ‘forma,’ the German ‘gestalt’, signifies the form as it is the utterance of the inner life; not ‘being,’ but ‘mode of being,’ or better, ‘mode of existence’; and only God could have the mode of existence of God. But He who had thus been from eternity εν μορφη Θεου (John 17:5), took at his Incarnation μορφην δουλου. The verity of his Incarnation is herein implied; there was nothing docetic, nothing phantastic about it. His manner of existence was now that of a δουλος, that is, of a δουλος του Θεου: for in the midst of all our Lord’s humiliations He was never a δουλος ανθρωπων. Their διακονος He may have been, and from time to time eminently was (John 13:4, 5; Matt. 20:28); this was part of his ταπεινωσις mentioned in the next verse; but their δουλος never; they, on the contrary, his. It was with respect of God He so emptied Himself of his glory, that, from that manner of existence in which He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, He became his servant.
The next clause, “and being found in fashion (σχηματι) as a man,” is very instructive for the distinguishing of σχημα from μορφη. The verity of the Son’s Incarnation was expressed, as we have seen, in the μορφην δουλου λαβων. These words which follow do but declare the outward facts which came under the knowledge of his fellow-men, with therefore an emphasis on ευρεθεις: He was by men found in fashion as a man, the σχημα here signifying his whole outward presentation, as Bengel puts it well: ‘σχημα, habitus, cultus, vestitus, victus, gestus, sermones et actiones.’ In none of these did there appear any difference between Him and the other children of men. This superficial character of σχημα appears in its association with such words as χρωμα (Plato, Gorg. 20; Theoetet. 163 B ) and υπογραφη (Legg. v. 737 d); as in the definition of it which Plutarch gives (De Plac. Phil. 14): εστιν επιφανεια και περιγραφη και περας σωματος. The two words are used in an instructive antithesis by Justin Martyr (1 Apol. 9).
The distinction between them comes out very clearly in the compound verbs μετασχηματιζειν and μεταμορφουν. Thus if I were to change a Dutch garden into an Italian, this would be μετασχηματισμος: but if I were to transform a garden into something wholly different, as into a city, this would be μεταμορφωσις. It is possible for Satan μετασχηματιζειν himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) he can take the whole outward semblance of such. But to any such change of his it would be impossible to apply the μεταμορφουσθαι: for this would imply a change not external but internal, not of accidents but of essence, which lies quite beyond his power. How fine and subtle is the variation of words at Rom. 12:2; though ‘conformed’ and ‘transformed’1 in our Translation have failed adequately to represent it. ‘Do not fall in,’ says the Apostle, ‘with the fleeting fashions of this world, nor be yourselves fashioned to them (μη συσχηματιζεσθε), but undergo a deep abiding change (αλλα μεταμορφουσθε) by the renewing of your mind, such as the Spirit of God alone can work in you’ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18). Theodoret, commenting on this verse, calls particular attention to this variation of the word used, a variation which it would task the highest skill of the English scholar adequately to reproduce in his own language. Among much else which is interesting, he says: εδιδασκεν οσον προς τα παροντα της αρετης το διαφορον· ταυτα γαρ εκαλεσε σχημα, την αρετην δε μορφην· η μορφη δε αληθων πραγματων σημαντικη, το δε σχημα ευδιαλυτον χρημα. Meyer perversely enough rejects all this, and has this note: ‘Beide Worte stehen im Gegensatze nur durch die Präpositionen, ohne Differenz des Stamm-Verba;’ with whom Fritzsche agrees (in loc.). One can understand a commentator overlooking, but scarcely one denying, the significance of this change. For the very different uses of one word and the other, see Plutarch, Quom. Adul. ab Amic. 7, where both occur.
At the resurrection Christ shall transfigure (μετασχηματισει) the bodies of his saints (Phil. 3:21; cf. 1 Cor. 15:53); on which statement Calov remarks, ‘Ille μετασχηματισμος non substantialem mutationem, sed accidentalem, non ratione quidditatis corporis nostri, sed ratione qualitatum, salvâ quidditate, importat:’ but the changes of heathen deities into wholly other shapes were μεταμορφωσεις. In the μετασχηματισμος there is transition, but no absolute solution of continuity. The butterfly, prophetic type of man’s resurrection, is immeasurably more beautiful than the grub, yet has been duly unfolded from it; but when Proteus transforms himself into a flame, a wild beast, a running stream (Virgil, Georg. iv. 442), each of these disconnected with all that went before, there is here a change not of the σχημα merely, but of the μορφη (cf. Euripides, Hec. 1266; Plato, Locr. 104 e). When the Evangelist records that after the resurrection Christ appeared to his disciples εν ετερα μορφη (Mark 16:12), the words intimate to us how vast the mysterious change to which his body had been submitted, even as they are in keeping with the μετεμορφωθη of Matt. 18:2; Mark 9:2; the transformation upon the Mount being a prophetic anticipation of that which hereafter should be; compare Dan. 4:33, where Nebuchadnezzar says of himself, η μορφη μου επεστρεψεν εις εμε.
The μορφη then, it may be assumed, is of the essence of a thing.2 We cannot conceive the thing as apart from this its formality, to use ‘formality’ in the old logical sense; the σχημα is its accident, having to do, not with the ‘quidditas,’ but the ‘qualitas,’ and, whatever changes it may undergo, leaving the ‘quidditas’ untouched, the thing itself essentially, or formally, the same as it was before; as one has said, μορφη φυσεως σχημα εξεως. Thus σχημα βασιλικον (Lucian, Pisc. 35; cf. Sophocles, Antig. 1148) is the whole outward arry and adornment of a monarch— diadem, tiara, sceptre, robe (cf. Lucian, Hermot. 86)—all which he might lay aside, and remain king notwithstanding. It in no sort belongs or adheres to the man as a part of himself. Thus Menander (Meineke, Fragm. Com. p. 985):
πραον κακουργος σχημ' υπεισελθων ανηρ
κεκρυμμενη κειται παγις τοις πλησιον.
The use in Latin of ‘forma’ and ‘figura’ so far corresponds with those severally of μορφη and σχημα, that while ‘figura formae’ occurs not rarely (‘veterem formoe servare figuram’; cf. Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 32), ‘forma figurae’ never (see Döderlein, Latein. Syn. vol. iii. p. 87). Contrast too in English “deformed” and ‘disfigured.’ A hunchback is ‘deformed,’ a man that has been beaten about the face may be ‘disfigured’; the deformity is bound up in the very existence of the one; the disfigurement of the other may in a few days have quite passed away. In ‘transformed’ and ‘transfigured’ it is easy to recognize the same distinction.
ιδεα on the one occasion of its use in the N. T. (Matt. 28:3) is rendered ‘countenance,’ as at 2 Macc. 3:16 ‘face.’ It is not a happy translation; ‘appearance’ would be better; ‘species sub oculos cadens,’ not the thing itself, but the thing as beholden; thus Plato (Rep. ix. 588 c), πλαττε ιδεαν θηριου ποικιλου, ‘Fashion to thyself the image of a manifold beast’; so ιδεα του προσωπου, the look of the countenance (Plutarch, Pyrr. 3, and often); ιδεα καλος, fair to look on (Pindar, Olymp. xi. 122); χιονος ιδεα, the appearance of snow (Philo, Quod Det. Pot. Ins. 48). Plutarch defines it, the last clause of his definition alone concerning us here (De Plac. Phil. i. 9): ιδεα εστιν ουσια ασωματος, αυτη μεν μη υφεστωσα καθ' αυτην, εικονιζουσα δε τας αμορφους υλας, και αιτια γινομενη της τουτων δειξεως. The word is constant to this definition, and to the ιδειν lying at its own base; oftentimes it is manifestly so, as in the following quotation from Philo, which is further instructive as showing how fundamentally his doctrine of the Logos differed from St. John’s, was in fact a denial of it in its most important element: ο δε υπερανω τουτων [των χερουβιμ] Λογος θειος εις ορατην ουκ ηλθεν ιδεαν (De Prof. 19).— On the distinction between ειδος and ιδεα, and how far the Platonic philosophy admits a distinction between them at all, see Stallbaum’s note on Plato’s Republic, x. 596 b; Donaldson’s Cratylus, 3rd ed. p. 105; and Thompson’s note on Archer Butler’s Lectures, vol. ii. p. 127.
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1 The Authorized Version is the first which uses ‘transformed’ here; Wiclif and the Rheims, both following closely the Vulgate, ‘transfigured,’ and the intermediate Reformed Versions, ‘changed into the fashion of.’ If the distinctions here drawn are correct, and if they stand good in English as well as Greek, ‘transformed’ is not the word.
2 ‘La forme est nécessairement en rapport avec la matière ou avec le fond. La figure au contraire est plus indépendante des objets; se conçoit à part’ (Lafaye, Syn. Fran. p. 617).
Użytkownik mirek edytował ten post 2009-04-27, godz. 16:26
