Adventist Teaching: Yes
Biblical Teaching: No
The Adventist Church affirms and teaches which is historically known as the Kenosis heresy, derived from a faulty interpretation of Philippians 2:6-7. It is the belief that by “emptied himself” the Apostle Paul was saying Jesus set his divine nature aside while on earth and was only a man. This is precisely the interpretation found in the SDA Bible Commentary as well as on their website.
This is not what the Bible teaches nor has the Christian church ever readily accepted this understanding of the text. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), commenting on this passage, lays out perfectly what is being said.
‘He is said to have emptied himself’ in no other way than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God. For that nature by which he is equal to the Father in the form of God remained immutable while he took our mutable nature, through which he was born of the Virgin. He did not take on his humanity in the simple way that a person puts on clothes, as something exterior to him. Rather he took on human form in a manner inexpressibly more excellent and more intimate than that. The apostle has made it sufficiently clear what he meant ‘He was made to appear in human likeness.’ He was not exhaustively reduced to being a man. He rather assumed the true human estate when he put on the man.
Comments on Philippians 2:6-7
The grammar and context of the passage is speaking to Christ’s function as the divine savior, not to him shedding himself of his divinity in exchange for a sole human form. Rather, Christ added unto himself a human nature while retaining His true divinity.
Furthermore, Paul tells us in Colossians 2:9 that Jesus is the “fullness of the Godhead bodily” which means, while on earth, He possessed all the divine attributes of God.
