Original kenosis.
John Philip Newell quotes, writing of Celtic Christianity:
To me, this is self-evident; as a panentheist, there is nothing that is not God (though the material universe is not equivalent to God); the act of creation was a creation out of God’s own substance; “in the image of God” then referring to the universe as “the image of God”, a part of that-which-is-God in the same way as is “the glory of God” or, indeed, “the logos of God”.
Genesis then goes on to talk of Adam and Eve, and that story I consider to be a metaphor of the origin in humanity of the ability to self-reflect (and they saw that they were naked, and were ashamed). Created out of the very stuff of God, his children become self-aware, and have self-will.
In the manner of all good parents, God then permits them to exercise that free will without wholesale interference (and the Biblical record indicates this as reducing in extent as history progresses); he is thus permitting part of himself to become “other” than himself.
This, I see as the original act of divine kenosis (self-emptying), which is paralleled in Paul’s inspiration in Philippians 2:7 “but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”.
This brings me to a comment I recently shared on facebook:-
“After the crucifixion of Jesus you just can’t kill anyone with confidence anymore. You have to deeply question your motives for violence; to consider the possibility that the person you have so righteously nailed to the cross just might be God Incarnate.” (Richard Beck paraphrasing Heim)
For me, it is not merely a possibility. It is an actuality. When Jesus speaks in Matt. 25:31ff of our actions towards others being actions towards him, I take this entirely literally; Jesus speaks for (and is) God, and we are doing these things to God.
Incidentally, I recommend Richard Beck’s whole series “The Voice of the Scapegoat” from which the Heim quotation comes. It presents an understanding of the crucifixion which I can most thoroughly endorse.