[It is not generally safe to differ from Augustin in trinitarian exegesis. But in Phil. ii. 6 “God” must surely denote the Divine Essence, not the first Person of the Essence. St. Paul describes “Christ Jesus” as “subsisting” (ὑπάρχων) originally, that is prior to incarnation, “in a form of God”(ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ), and because he so subsisted, as being “equal with God.” The word μορφῇ is anarthrous in the text: a form, not the form, as the A.V and R.V. render. St. Paul refers to one of three “forms” of God—namely, that particular form of Sonship, which is peculiar to the second person of the Godhead. Had the apostle employed the article with μορφῆ, the implication would be that there is only one “form of God”—that is, only one person in the Divine Essence. If then θεοῦ, in this place, denotes the Father, as Augustin says, St. Paul would teach that the Logos subsisted “in a form of the Father,” which would imply that the Father had more than one “form,” or else (if μορφῆ be rendered with the article) that the Logos subsisted in the “form” of the Father, neither of which is true. But if “God,” in this place, denotes the Divine Essence, then St. Paul teaches that the unincarnate Logos subsisted in a particular “form” of the Essence—the Father and Spirit subsisting in other “forms” of it. The student will observe that Augustin is careful to teach that the Logos, when he took on him “a form of a servant,” did not lay aside “a form of God.” He understands the kenosis (ἐκένωσε) to be, the humbling of the divinity by its union with the humanity, not the exinanition of it in the extremest sense of entirely divesting himself of the divinity, nor the less extreme sense of a total non-use of it during the humiliation.—W.G.T.S.]