said of Christ that “though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor”; in Philippians ii. 5-7 this is expanded into the explicit declaration that “being in the form of God He counted it not a prize (?) to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.” Each phrase of the passage is of great significance, but it is also of great uncertainty of meaning: the main points of uncertainty are (1) whether the subject of the sentence is the incarnate or the pre-incarnate Christ; (2) what is implied by the phrase “in the form of God,” and what is its relation to the phrase “to be equal with God,” some thinking that it implies an identity, others an inferiority of status; (3) what is meant by the word here rendered “prize” (ἁρπαγμόν), some thinking that this is the right rendering, and that the meaning is “He did not tenaciously cling to His divinity but surrendered it,” others thinking that it should be rendered “an act of robbery,” and that the meaning is “He did not think it a usurpation to assert His divinity”; (4) what is meant by “emptied Himself,” whether He only divested Himself of the outward semblance of divinity, or whether He reduced Himself to the bare consciousness of personality in becoming incarnate; this last question, that of the nature of the kenosis, has bearings of especial importance on the general doctrine of the Person of Christ.
Discussions of these questions from various points of view will be found not only in commentaries on the passage (e.g., Lightfoot) and works on New Testament theology (e.g., Weiss), but more particularly in Baur, Paul, E. T., vol. ii. p. 45 (who thinks that the conceptions are gnostic and un-Pauline); Ernesti, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1848, p. 889, and 1851, p. 602 (who thinks that ἁρπαγμόν refers by way of contrast to the first Adam, who tried to seize what was not his own); Hilgenfeld, in the Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1871, p. 192, and ibid., 1873, p. 178; Grimm, ibid., 1873, p. 33; Hinsch, ibid., 1873, p. 59; R. Schmidt, Paulinische Christologie, 1870, p. 163 (whose explanation deserves especial consideration); Pfleiderer, Paulinism, E. T., vol. i. p. 146; and more recently Weitfenbach, Zur Auslegung der Stelle Phil., ii. 5-11, Karlsruhe, 1884. For the question as to the nature of the kenosis, see Gess, Die Lehre von der Person Christi, Basel, 1856, pp. 81, 294.
The best modern editions of the epistle are those of B. Weiss, Der Philipperbrief ausgelegt, Leipsic, 1859, and Lightfoot, The Epistle to the Philippians, 3d ed., London, 1873.
- (E. HA.)
PHILIPPICUS, or Philepicus, emperor of Constantinople from December 711 to June 713, was the son of the patrician Nicephorus, and became distinguished as a soldier under Justinian II. His proper name was Bardanes. Relying on the support of the Monothelete party, he made some pretensions to the throne on the outbreak of the first great rebellion against Justinian; these led to his relegation to Cephalonia by Tiberius Absimarus, and subsequently to his banishment, by order of Justinian, to Cherson. Here Bardanes, taking the name of Philippicus, successfully incited the inhabitants to revolt against a prince who had made them the objects of one of his most vindictive expeditions, and on the assassination of Justinian in Asia Minor he at once assumed the purple. Among his first acts were the deposition of Cyrus, the orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, in favour of John, a member of his own sect, and the summoning of a “conciliabulum” of Eastern bishops which abolished the canons of the sixth general council, and restored to the diptychs the names of Sergius and Honorius. Meanwhile Terbelis, king of the Bulgarians, attacked Constantinople, burning some of its suburbs and carrying off many prisoners and much booty, while shortly afterwards the Saracens made similar inroads from the Asiatic side. The short reign of Philippicus was brought to a close through a conspiracy headed by two of his generals, who caused him to be blinded in the hippodrome in June 713. Of the remainder of his life nothing is known. He was succeeded by his secretary, Artemius, known as Anastasius II.
Plate XI. PHILIPPINE ISLANDS (Span. Islas Filipinas), or Philippines, an archipelago in the south-east of Asia, extending from 4° 40′ to 20° N. lat., and from 116° 40′ to 126° 30′ E. long. On the west and north-west it is separated by the China Sea from China and the Indo-Chinese peninsula; towards the east lies the Pacific; on the north a number of smaller islands stretch out towards Formosa; and on the south, while a double connexion with Borneo is formed by the lines of the Palawan and Balabac and the Sulu Islands, the basin of the Celebes Sea, with a central depth of from 1000 to 2600 fathoms, extends, for a distance of 300 miles, between its southernmost island (Mindanao) and Celebes. As the number of the Philippines is believed to exceed 1400, and the larger islands are in several cases only beginning to be properly explored, it is impossible to give a definitive statement of their aggregate land-area. A measurement on Domann's map (1882) resulted in 114,356 square miles. Nor is it in regard to the area alone that our knowledge is defective. Though for three centuries the greater part of the territory has been nominally in Spanish possession, the interior of some of the larger islands has never been surveyed; several of the native tribes, especially in Mindanao, are altogether independent; the geology of Luzon, the best known of all the archipelago, is to a large extent matter of conjecture; and the visit of a passing botanist or naturalist is enough to add facts of primary importance to the register of flora and fauna. While none of the summits, with the exception perhaps of Apo[1] in Mindanao, exceeds 9000 feet—the loftiest probably being Halcon in Mindoro (8865 feet), Malindang in Mindanao (8685 feet), Mayon in Luzon (8275 feet), and Malaspina in Negros (8190 feet)—all the islands may be described in general as mountainous and hilly. The principal ranges have a tendency to run north and south, with a certain amount of deflexion east or west, as the case may be, so that the orographic diagram of the archipelago as a whole would have a certain similarity to a fan with northern Luzon as its centre of radiation. The geologist finds his task in the Philippines exceptionally difficult, owing to so much of the surface being covered with a dense vegetation, which often obliges him to be contented with no better indication than the pebbles of the alluvium. Nowhere, almost, are there cuttings or excavations to open up the records of the rocks. It seems certain, from the frequency not only of large tracts of coral reef along the coasts but of raised beaches at a considerable distance and elevation inland, containing shells similar to those of the adjacent seas, that much of the archipelago has been heaved from below the sea-level within comparatively recent times. As the neck of land between the Bay of Sogod and the Bay of Ragay or Guinayangan and that between this latter bay and the Bay of San Miguel consist of alluvium, tuffs, and marls, with modern shells, it appears probable that the southern parts of Luzon were at no very distant date separate islands. According to Drasche, southern and central Luzon comprises (1) a group of chloritic slates and gneiss; (2) diabases and gabbros; (3) Eocene limestones; (4) volcanic minerals and tuffs; (5) recent formations with marine fossils—tuffs, limestones, clays, and marine and fluvial alluviums. In his travels through the more northern parts of the island the same geologist verified the existence of (1) diorite, gneiss, protogenic and chloritic slates; (2) an extensive system of stratified conglomerates and sandstones; (3) modern volcanic rocks (quartzose trachyte, amphiboliferous and sanidinic
- ↑ According to the Spanish hydrographic maps, the height of this mountain is 8813 feet; but the barometer of Kajal and Montano's expedition (which ascended to the top in 1880) indicated 10,270 feet, and that used by Schadenberg and Koch in 1882 no less than 10,827 (see Bull. Soc. de Géoge., Paris, 1881, p. 566).
