It may be of some interest to note the position on kenosis taken by Orthodox Christians. Specifically, maybe I can offer something on the classic "hymn of kenosis" in Philippians 2:5-11, and then touch on some of the finer points of Christology as detailed by the great theologian, St. Athanasius. Forgive me if this a bit long, but there's a lot to cover.
Regarding the hymn of kenosis ("He emptied Himself, and took on the form of a servant..."): What does Paul intend by including this here? Is he talking about the Incarnation, about Christ's sufferings, or about something else? Well, to put it into context, if we look back at 1:27, “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ…stand in one spirit, one mind…” we can get a clearer picture.
Paul is not arguing about how one is to understand Jesus. What Paul is doing here is saying not who Jesus is, but rather they (the Philippians, and by extension, us) are to have this mind, and then he speaks about the one who was equal to God and emptied Himself.
When you count others better than yourself, have this mind. What he is saying is that human beings have a tendency to assert our equality as a thing to be grasped; but equality is actually emptying yourself; the expression of that is the unity of mind, the sameness of the thinking, the working side-by-side. In summary, the definition of what it is to be equal is in fact to empty oneself as Christ did.
Now, to get a bit more theological, we can still look at this in terms of Christology (although I don't think that's the main purpose of this passage.)
The whole issue centers on Christology:
It isn't so much that Jesus is "God and man"....rather, He is God become man. As God, He wills Himself to be limited as a human being is...rather than being a sign of weakness, this is a sign of great power.
St. Athanasius, struggling against the Arians, writes remarkably on this in his treatise On the Incarnation. Just to paraphrase some of St. Athanasius thoughts on this:
1. The Son is truly divine. Not by participation from the outside, but He is what it is to be God.
2. The Son is the guarantee of the presence of God in His Word. The locus of this is in the Incarnation.
3. St. Athanasius' entire argument (and this is where kenosis comes into play) hinges on the Cross. The Cross is apparent degradation, but Athanasius insists that the more Christ (on the Cross) is mocked, the more He is proclaimed divine. His degradation is actually a manifestation of His glory.
4. God proves His divinity by the works that He does. His death is not the death of another man, but it is the death of God as a man. It is a voluntary death, and by the Word coming into the body, it dies not out of necessity, but voluntarily.
St. Athanasius doesn't develop Christology as many Christians do today; many today tend to see Christology exclusively as a matter of "composition" (word and man, 2 natures, etc...) Athanasius sees the Incarnation not in terms of composition, but of attribution and predication. We know Him to be human by the things He does, and to be God (again) by the things He does.
In other words, to know that Jesus Christ is God become man, we don’t do it by “cataloging” His composition; it is by seeing the things He does – He eats/drinks/sleep; He is human. He heals/forgives/raises the dead; He is God.
Again, in regards to kenosis/self-emptying: By becoming flesh, the flesh has become “proper” to the Son. He appropriates the flesh, and makes it His own, and makes Himself known by it. Thus, all things that belong to the flesh now belong to the Word; but they belong to Him only in respect to that body which is His, not in respect to His divinity.
He is not God and man...He is God become man. What we're doing is applying human properties to a divine subject. So, when the Word becomes flesh, there is no diminution of the status of the Word; the Word doesn’t become less than what He was. He doesn’t become a servant; rather, He takes the form of a servant and transforms it. His taking of it is simultaneous with the transformation into a lordly form. Thus, it is in the form of a servant that He is shown to be Lord of all.
This is at a point at which he is here to just spread his heresy.
