Pieper, Francis. Christian Dogmatics: Volume 2. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1968.
“False Views of the Humiliation of Christ” (Loc. 6699).
On one level Pieper acknowledges that the Incarnation is a humiliation. However, “this cannot be called a humiliation in the proper sense, for then Christ would have had to lay aside His human nature in the state of exaltation” (Pieper 1968, Loc. 6699). Pieper discusses various groups of “kenoticists” who take Jesus’ emptying himself to various degrees. The reasoning is that if Jesus maintained his deity he could not be a real man or that the deity would destroy the humanity. Jesus, however, asserts his eternity, his power, and his omniscience (Ibid., Loc. 6716). Pieper continues to make an argument that the kenoticists overthrow the Trinity as they deny one person of the Trinity divine attributes (Ibid., Loc. 6728). The conclusion then is that Jesus, in emptying himself, did not lose divine attributes but chose not to use them (Ibid., Loc. 6750).