Did Paul Think Jesus Was a New Adam, Not a Divine Being?

In my last post I started talking about Paul’s “understanding of Christ” – that is, his Christology. It will take several posts to fill out the picture, and in this one I need to return to the Christ Poem that I talked about last week, expanding my discussion of it from what I said then. Just so you don’t have to flip back through to find the former post, here is what the poem says, set in poetic lines. It comes from Phil 2:5-7.

It is introduced by Paul’s exhortation to his readers to “Have...