Chapter 13

The Christ of the Dake Bible

What Dake says the Son laid aside when He became a man, and what Philippians says He took

Every Christmas, churches sing a line that Charles Wesley wrote in 1739. In the text of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), it reads, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see / Hail, the Incarnate Deity!”¹ The hymn asks you to look at the baby in Bethlehem and see God. His deity was hidden under human flesh, and none of it was missing.

The church put the same faith into careful words at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Jesus Christ is one person with two complete natures, one divine and one human. The council said the two are joined “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably,” with “the property of each nature being preserved” in the union.² The Son of God became a man by adding a human nature to the divine nature He already had. Nothing that makes Him God was given up.

Finis Dake taught something else. In Lesson Twenty-One of God’s Plan for Man, which he called “The Truth About Jesus Christ,” he explains the self-emptying of Philippians 2:7 this way.

The kenosis of Christ means that Christ emptied Himself. The Greek word for “made himself of no reputation” in Phil. 2:7 is kenao, meaning to empty, evacuate, become nothing, to divest one’s self of native dignity and power, and to descend to an inferior position or condition. Finis Jennings Dake, God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 384³

A few lines later he adds, “God emptied Himself! What a strange idea in connection with God!” Two pages on, he says that the Son divested Himself of “His divine attributes, or at least power to use them,” and the summary at the end of the lesson says that Christ “laid aside His natural and divine attributes or at least limited their use,” and so became an example of yieldedness to God.⁴

Dake’s teaching about Christ goes wrong in two ways. The first is the frame. His Son is one of three separate divine beings, each with His own body, soul, and spirit. That is the heresy of tritheism documented in Chapter 6, and it runs through everything he says about Christ. The second is the self-emptying itself. A Son who sets aside His divine attributes, or keeps them with no power to use them, has changed in what He is as God. Chalcedon confessed that the Son became man without change. Dake’s kenosis is a serious error against the church’s confession of Christ, and Philippians 2 does not teach it.

Why it matters who was in the manger

Paul says of Christ that “in Him all things consist,” and Hebrews says He is “upholding all things by the word of His power” in the same sentence that tells of the cross.⁵ Both writers are speaking of the Son who came among us. If the Son set down His divine power when He became a man, then for thirty-three years He was not upholding anything. Someone else was holding the world together, and Scripture names no one else for that work.

The cross is at stake as well. Paul told the elders at Ephesus to shepherd “the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” The price has no measure because of who paid it. Dake agreed, writing that “because He is God His atonement has infinite value and effect,” and I agree with him.⁶ A payment of infinite worth needs a Person who is fully God while He pays. If the Son had laid aside His divine attributes before He went to the cross, the One who died would be God in name, with the powers of God set down somewhere else. Dake did not draw that conclusion, but his kenosis leaves it open.

One of three separate beings

Lesson Twenty-One opens by sending the student back to Lesson Four, where Dake set out his doctrine of God.

The facts in Lesson Four about God apply to the Lord Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate state as a Spirit Being, for He is one of the three separate and distinct Spirit Beings making the Deity or Godhead. Until about nineteen hundred years ago the second person of the Deity had the same kind of Spirit body, personal soul, and spirit that the Father and the Holy Spirit still have. At that time one of the three divine persons of the Trinity took human form to redeem the world. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 370⁷

Before He came to earth, Dake’s Son had a spirit body of His own, as the Father and the Spirit still do. Chapter 6 documents this teaching and Chapter 7 answers it from Scripture, so I will not repeat their work here. It matters for this chapter because every later sentence Dake writes about Christ is written about one of three separate beings. When he says the Son emptied Himself, part of what he means is that one divine being left his own spirit body and took a human one.

What Dake says the Son laid aside

Dake comes to the question under the heading “Of What Did Christ Empty Himself?” He first lists what “the various doctrine books” teach: that Christ kept omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, and immutability during His earthly life. He gives the Scriptures they use for each one, and then he answers them.⁸

Upon examination of these passages it can be seen that not one passage teaches that Christ had or used these attributes of Himself while on Earth. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 386⁹

He says those passages describe Christ before He came, Christ after He was exalted, or the Spirit’s anointing at work in Him. None of them, he says, shows Christ acting of Himself as God. Then he gives his own view.

The true Biblical teaching of the kenosis of Christ is that in taking human form He divested Himself of His divine attributes, or at least power to use them, having laid aside His God-form and voluntarily given up His glory which He had with the Father before the world was and become limited in knowledge, wisdom, power, glory, and in every way that man was, and that He retained His deity or His divine nature. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, pp. 386–387¹⁰

Dake keeps the divine nature and lets the rest go. “It could not be that Christ laid aside His divine nature,” he writes, “for then He would cease being God.”¹¹ What the Son gave up, by his account, was His knowledge, His wisdom, His power, and His glory. Two pages later Dake names more.

He could not have retained immutability, nor immortality bodily; else He could not have laid aside His God-form to become a mutable and mortal man to die upon the cross. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 389¹²

On the same page he says, “If He had not laid aside His equality as God, then He could not have been unequal with God as manifested in the days of His flesh.” He sums up his proofs with a question: “Could such things be said of a God who had not emptied Himself of His glory and the free use of His attributes and powers?”¹³

The phrases “or at least power to use them” and “the free use of His attributes” have to be weighed with the rest. Dake left room for a Christ who still had the attributes of God but could not use them. He did not think the difference mattered, as the passage in the box below shows. Either way, his Christ did nothing on earth by His own divine power. One of his numbered proofs says that “Christ Himself claimed no power or exercised no personal attribute of deity apart from the full anointing of the Holy Spirit,” and he gives his Scriptures for it. Another says that the signs of deity in His life were gifts of the Spirit “which Christ possessed to the full.”¹⁴ His closing summary says that Christ “did His works solely by the anointing of the Spirit and not by the free self-exercise of the attributes of His deity while becoming man,” citing Acts 10:38.¹⁵

Earlier in the lesson Dake draws the application he wants the believer to take from all this.

Just as Christ was perfectly helpless in Himself and acted, spoke, worked, lived, and did all things through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the believer to the extent that he becomes like Christ becomes God-inspired and God-energized and God-operated. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, pp. 372–373¹⁶

His booklet on the baptism in the Holy Spirit is blunter: “Apart from the baptism of the Spirit, Christ was as helpless as any human being.”¹⁷

The same teaching in his Study Bible

The notes in Dake’s Study Bible teach what the course book teaches. Beside Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the classic setting of the Study Bible asks Dake’s question again and answers it with a list.

Of what did Christ empty Himself?
It could not have been His divine nature, for He was God not only from all eternity (Mic. 5:1-2; Jn. 1:1-2; Heb. 1:8; Rev. 1:8-11), but God manifest in flesh during His life on earth (Isa. 7:14; 9:6-7; Mt. 1:18-25; Jn. 1:1-2, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16)
Christ emptied Himself of:
1 Equality with God (Phil. 2:6-7; Jn. 14:28; 1 Cor. 11:3)
2 God-form or God-body, the spirit body that He lived in from eternity, to take human-form (Phil. 2:6-8; 3:21; Mt. 1:18-25; Lk. 1:35; Jn. 1:14; Lk. 24:37-40; Zech. 13:6; Gal. 4:4; Rom. 8:3)
3 Immortality of body (1 Cor. 15:3; Ps. 16:10; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18)
. . .
6 His divine attributes and outward powers that He had with the Father from eternity. He had no power to do miracles until He received the Holy Spirit in all fulness (Jn. 2:11; 3:34; Isa. 11:1-2; 42:1-7; 61:1-2; Lk. 3:21-22; 4:16-21; Mt. 12:28; Acts 10:38). He could do nothing of Himself in all His earthly life. Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, classic setting, N.T. p. 218, “The ‘kenosis’ of Christ (2:7)”¹⁸

The note denies that Christ emptied Himself of His divine nature. A few lines later it lists “His divine attributes and outward powers” among the things He did empty Himself of. Item 2 is the three-beings frame again, since the Son left “the spirit body that He lived in from eternity.” The newer typeset edition carries the same note. Its outline of Philippians 2 gives the second step in Christ’s humiliation as “Laid aside His divine form (v 6).”¹⁹ Its note on verse 6 rewrites Paul’s sentence so that the Son “emptied Himself of it, so as to assume the form of a servant and become like man,” where “it” is His equality with God. Paul’s Greek has no such word.²⁰ Dake’s note on Luke 2:52 states the result. Christ, he says, “retained His divine nature, but limited Himself to human attributes and powers during the days of His flesh,” so that He could be an example of a sinless man overcoming sin.²¹

One person with one will

Dake knew the church’s teaching on the two natures, and he summarized it fairly.

The orthodox theory holds that the two natures of Christ were both complete in themselves yet so organically and indissolubly united that no third nature is formed thereby. It forbids us to divide the person and confound the two natures of Jesus Christ. Being truly divine He is a true representative of God, and being truly human He is a true representative of man. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 372²²

He calls it “the orthodox theory,” and a few lines later he gives his own account of the union.

Just as any father and mother impart certain traits to the offspring, making a single person with characteristics of both parents, so the human and the divine were united in the one person of Jesus Christ—with one body, soul, and spirit and with one consciousness and one will. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 372²³

The comparison shows how Dake was thinking. A child takes traits from a father and a mother and comes out one person with one set of faculties. In the same way, Dake says, Christ had “one consciousness and one will.” He goes on to explain that God made man with the same kinds of faculties God has, only finite, so the divine and the human in Christ could fold together into one set.

The church settled this question at the Third Council of Constantinople in 681. A complete human nature has a human will, so Christ has a human will and a divine will, and the human will freely submits to the divine will without ever opposing it.²⁴ The Gospels show that human will at work in Gethsemane: “not as I will, but as You will.”²⁵ If Christ had one will, made of the divine and the human blended together, that prayer would record a will agreeing with itself. Dake’s “one will” is a smaller error than his kenosis, but it grows from the same root. In his system God and man are the same kind of being in different sizes, and that makes the two natures easy to blend.

Dake then admits that teachers disagree about how far the Son’s limits went, and he argues that the disagreement does not matter.

Before answering the question, notice how Dake frames it. He treats a Christ who laid His attributes aside and a Christ who kept them “without power to use them” as the same Christ. At the end of the lesson he says the same of teachers who hold that Christ kept all the attributes of God and gave up only their independent use. Those teachers, he writes, “teach, in substance, the same that we do,” and he quotes them as saying that “the Godhead narrowed itself down to a point that is next to absolute extinction” when the Son became man.²⁷ If they describe a Godhead that gave up its powers, he is right to call them allies. The church’s confession lies outside his choice of two, because it says the Son gave up neither the attributes nor their use.

When the Son became the Son

Between the two natures and the kenosis, Dake has a section titled “The Theory of Eternal Sonship Discussed.” It opens with his position.

The word Son in connection with Jesus does not refer to His Deity, but to His humanity. AS GOD, Christ had no beginning, was not begotten, was not the first-born, was not born, and therefore, was not a Son; but AS MAN HE had a beginning, was begotten, was the first-born of God, was born, and therefore became the Son of God. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 381²⁸

Three pages later he reaches his conclusion.

There is, therefore, no such doctrine in Scripture as the eternal sonship of Jesus Christ or that He was God’s Son from all eternity. There is no excuse to teach some theory that is not stated in Scripture, even if it is commonly accepted as orthodox teaching. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-One, p. 384²⁹

On this account the second person of the Godhead was always God, but He was not the Son until He was born. Before that there were “three distinct and eternal persons unbegotten of each other from all eternity,” who had agreed which part each would take.³⁰ The Study Bible teaches the same thing in its note on Luke 1:35: “Sonship with Christ always refers to humanity, not to deity.”³¹ Its note on Matthew 1:1 applies the rule to the title Christ: “Like the name ‘Jesus’ it has no reference to deity, but to the humanity of the Son of God,” who became the Christ thirty years after His birth.³²

The Nicene Creed confesses that the Son was “begotten of the Father before all worlds,” before time began.³³ Dake set that confession aside as a theory. Denying eternal Sonship is a different thing from denying Christ’s deity, and Dake was clear that the second person was always God. Some writers who hold the historic faith have questioned eternal generation, so the denial alone would be an error to argue over.³⁴ In Dake’s system it does more harm. His three divine persons are already separate beings. If the Father was never eternally the Father of the Son, nothing joins them but an agreement about who would play which part.

What Dake affirmed

The record has to include what Dake got right, and in this lesson that is a great deal. He opens Lesson Twenty-One with page after page of Scripture on the deity of Christ. He lists the divine names and titles given to Jesus, the divine offices He holds, and the divine character and works ascribed to Him. Angels and men worship Him, Dake writes, “but they both refuse all such worship for themselves,” and item 10 of his list says, “He is expressly called ‘God’ and ‘Lord,’” with the verses that prove it.³⁵ Dake affirmed the virgin birth, Christ’s real flesh and blood, His atoning death, and His bodily resurrection. His summary of the kenosis begins with three statements any Christian can sign: “That Christ was always divine,” “That He could not cease being God in nature,” and “That He retained His divinity when becoming incarnate in flesh,” each with its Scripture.³⁶ He also gave a clear short reason for the incarnation: “As God He can uphold the dignity of Deity, and as man He can be truly sympathetic and meet the needs of man.”³⁷ Those sentences are true. The trouble is that the rest of the lesson takes back much of what they give.

What Philippians 2 says

The passage Dake is explaining reads this way.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Philippians 2:5–8 (NKJV)³⁸

“Made Himself of no reputation” translates a Greek verb that means “emptied Himself.” The ESV now renders it that way, “but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,” which brings out Paul’s grammar.³⁹ The question is what He emptied Himself of, and Paul gives no list. The only object of the verb is “Himself.” Then Paul says how the emptying happened, with the word “taking.” The Son emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant and coming in the likeness of men.

That is an emptying by addition. The Son who was in the form of God took a second form, a servant’s, and Paul never says He left the first. Think of a king who moves into the servants’ quarters to care for his people. He has emptied himself of his comfort and privilege, and he is still the king the whole time. To make the Son empty Himself of His equality with God, Dake’s note on verse 6 has to add the words “of it,” which Paul did not write.

The purpose of the passage points the same way. Paul is urging the Philippians to have “this mind” among themselves, so that each looks out for the interests of others. His example is the Son who had every right to His glory, did not cling to it, and stooped to serve. That example works only if the One who stooped stayed all that He was. A Christ who had lost His divine power would teach the Philippians about loss, and Paul is teaching them about humility.

Who held the world together

Dake said that “not one passage” shows Christ having or using the attributes of God on earth. The New Testament speaks of the Son’s work in the present tense.

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth . . . And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. Colossians 1:16–17 (NKJV)

“Consist” means hold together. Paul writes it of the Christ he preached, the One who died and rose, and he does not limit it to the time before Bethlehem or after the ascension. Hebrews puts the upholding and the cross in one sentence.

. . . who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, . . . Hebrews 1:3 (NKJV)

The One who upholds all things is the One who “by Himself purged our sins,” and then sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The writer gives no hint that He let go of the world in order to die for it.

Jesus spoke the same way about Himself during His ministry. In the temple He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” His hearers understood the claim to the divine name and picked up stones. He told Nicodemus of “the Son of Man who is in heaven” while He stood on earth.⁴⁰ John says that Jesus “knew all men” and “knew what was in man,” and he gives no hint that this knowledge came to Jesus as a gift from outside.⁴¹ Then Paul says this of the risen Christ.

For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. Colossians 2:9–10 (NKJV)

All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, in the body He took and never laid down. Nothing in the verse suggests the fullness was stored away while that body walked the roads of Galilee.⁴²

Dake leans on John 17:5, where Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him with the glory He had before the world was. Glory is the shining out of who God is, and the Son could veil it without losing anything that He is. On a high mountain three disciples saw His face shine like the sun. That day His glory was shown, and it had never been taken away. The rest of the time it was veiled, as Wesley’s hymn says.⁴³

One person in two natures

The church’s answer rests on one rule. In Jesus there is one person, the eternal Son, and He has two complete natures, divine and human. Whatever is true of either nature is true of Him.

The rule lets every text stand. He got tired at a well, and He upholds all things. He slept in a boat, and He rebuked the wind. He wept at a tomb, and He called the dead man out of it. He grew in wisdom as a boy, and He knew what was in man. Each pair is true of the same Person, the first half in His human nature and the second in His divine nature. The council’s wording guards both sides: the natures are neither mixed nor changed, and the person is neither divided nor separated.

The same rule answers Dake’s question. He asked what difference there is between laying the attributes aside and keeping them with no power to use them. A God who cannot use His power has changed, whether His attributes are said to be gone or held in storage. Chalcedon confessed that the Son became man without change. In His human nature He lived by faith, prayer, and the Spirit’s anointing, as a true man must. In His divine nature He went on upholding all things. The one Person did both.

Dake’s sentence about keeping the divine nature does not rescue his view. God’s attributes are what God is. His knowledge is God knowing, and His power is God acting. A divine nature without the knowledge, power, and presence of God is divine only in name. Dake’s own Study Bible note shows the problem in one place. It says Christ could not have emptied Himself of His divine nature, and then it lists “His divine attributes and outward powers” among the things He did empty Himself of.

The price paid at the cross

. . . to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. Acts 20:28 (NKJV)

Paul calls it God’s own blood. The divine nature has no blood, and the human nature does. Because the man Jesus is the eternal Son in person, His blood is the blood of God, and its worth has no limit. That is why one death outside one city can pay for the sins of every age.

Isaiah’s God says, “I, even I, am the LORD, And besides Me there is no savior.”⁴⁴ The Savior on the cross is the LORD Himself, fully God while He saves. Dake wanted that conclusion, and he wrote it plainly. His kenosis and his three beings both work against it. A Son who has laid aside His divine attributes is not all that God is while He pays. A Son who is one of three separate beings is not the LORD who says there is no other Savior. Chapter 7 makes that second case from the Old Testament.

A High Priest who can help

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:15–16 (NKJV)

The writer gives two reasons to come boldly. Our High Priest was tempted as we are, so He can sympathize. He is also “Jesus the Son of God,” who “has passed through the heavens,” so He can help.⁴⁵ Dake’s Christ keeps the first reason, and Dake guards it well. The Christ of Chalcedon gives both, and He never stopped being able to help, even as a child in Nazareth.

But didn’t Jesus say the Father is greater than He?

The strongest objection comes from the Gospels. Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I.” Luke says that He “increased in wisdom and stature,” as boys do. Jesus said that of the last day “no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”⁴⁶ A Christ who kept every attribute of God, the objection says, could only pretend to those limits, and Dake’s reading takes them at face value.

The two natures answer each text without removing any of them. In His human nature Jesus really grew, really learned, and really did not know the day, because a human mind is finite. In the mission He took on as the Father’s servant, the Father was greater. In His divine nature the same Person upheld all things and could say, “before Abraham was, I AM.” The church’s reading keeps both sets of texts. Dake’s reading keeps the first set and has to explain the second set away. He moves each of those texts to the time before His birth, to the time after His exaltation, or to the work of the Spirit.

Isn’t the Spirit-anointed Jesus the Pentecostal treasure?

Pentecostal believers love the Jesus of Acts 10:38. God anointed Him “with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” He is their pattern for life in the Spirit. Some will think that Dake’s kenosis protects that pattern.

The pattern needs no emptied deity. Jesus did minister as a man anointed by the Spirit, and believers are called to follow Him in that dependence. I believe the gifts of the Spirit are for today, and I have no quarrel with that part of the Pentecostal heritage. A true human nature, filled with the Spirit and living in prayer and obedience, explains everything the Gospels report about how Jesus ministered. The doctrine of the two natures is what guarantees that His humanity was real, so it protects the pattern. Dake’s kenosis adds nothing to it, and it costs the believer a Savior who was fully God in all He did on earth.

Dake’s defenders make a wider case for his teaching as a whole, and Chapter 24 answers it.

The Godhead veiled in flesh

Dake taught that the Son is one of three separate divine beings, and that heresy runs through all he wrote about Christ. He taught that the Son, in becoming man, laid aside His divine attributes “or at least limited their use,” and that Christ on earth was “perfectly helpless in Himself” apart from the Spirit’s anointing. He also taught that Christ had one will and was not the Son before Bethlehem. That kenosis is a serious error. It contradicts what Philippians 2 says and what Chalcedon confessed: the Son became man without ceasing to be all that God is.

The true doctrine gives the believer a Savior who is wholly God and wholly man at once. The baby in the manger was upholding the world He had made. The man who wept with Martha and Mary was the God who raised their brother. The One who died was the LORD, and His blood bought the church. The Godhead was veiled in flesh at Bethlehem, as Wesley’s hymn says, and none of it was left behind. Chapter 14 asks the same questions about the Holy Spirit.