Kenosis, from the Greek kenoo, to empty, takes its name and its classic statement from Philippians 2:6-7, where Paul, likely quoting an early Christian hymn, describes Christ as one who, existing in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. The passage became the anchor text for a whole strand of Christian reflection on how the eternal, divine Word could become genuinely, fully human without ceasing to be God. Patristic theology generally read the emptying as a matter of what the Son set aside in manner of existence, the outward glory and prerogatives of divinity, rather than as a literal subtraction from his divine nature, since orthodox Christology after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 required Christ to remain fully divine and fully human at once, two natures in one person, without the human birth diminishing the divine nature itself.
Kenosis therefore names not a change in what Christ is but an act of self limitation in how that nature is expressed in history, taken as the theological key to a life culminating, in the hymn's own continuation, in death on a cross. The hymn's final lines, describing God exalting the obedient, self emptied Christ and giving him the name above every name, are read by most interpreters as confirming that kenosis is not a diminishment but a path culminating in exaltation.