I think this questions our understanding of verbal aspect. The common sense way to take an aorist participle is that it indicates that the action expressed by the participle happened before the action of the main verb. If that rule is applied here then the Greek indicates that both μορφὴν δούλου λαβών and ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος happened before the ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν.leonardjayawardena wrote:An interpretation which applies the clause ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν to a pre-existent Jesus has to take both the following clauses (μορφὴν δούλου λαβών and μορφὴν δούλου λαβών[that should read...ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος]) as adverbial clauses of manner (as NASB translators do, joining the two clauses with "and": "taking the form of a bond-servant and being made in the likeness of men").
Bear with me for a moment, as I tiptoe across the forum's constraints on discussing doctrinal issues for a moment to question our understanding of grammar. If as Leonard has suggested that the kenosis (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν) is held by most of Christendom to refer to a time before the incarnation (what he calls, "a pre-existent Jesus"), then perhaps that is a valid test of our understanding of aspect. Were the people who read this passage and concluded that μορφὴν δούλου λαβών and ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος happened after (or as part of) the kenosis (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν) Greek speakers? If these aorist participles suggested that to them, our understanding is quite wrong, and if they saw no problem with the fact that a concurrent action was expressed by the aorist, then that suggests the non-importance of aspect in some cases.
I personally think that the λαβών and γενόμενος are aorist to refer to the fact that the action of receiving and the description of becoming are things that happened in a very brief period of time. That is usually a distinction made for aspect in the finite rather than non-finite verbs (in which case it is said that they mark the relative sequence of events).