Donkey Work vs AI

Two Word Studies from Phil. 2:6-7

While I am amazed by what AI can do, I must admit I prefer a world without it. I have become the old man on the porch telling his grandkids how far he used to walk in the snow to get to school every day. In Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, he wrote about GRAMCORD, a program developed in the 1970s that reached its peak in the late 1980s. The program could tag any grammatical construction and retrieve it upon the user’s request.¹ Almost fifty years before the emergence of AI systems as we know them, Carson said that GRAMCORD eliminated the “donkey work” of data retrieval, leaving more energy for analysis.² AI has certainly eliminated the donkey work, and that is why we love it.

I used Microsoft Copilot for the first time to answer this week’s discussion prompt. Microsoft Copilot responded, “The best tools for NT Greek word studies include BDAG, Daily Dose of Greek, and online concordances and lexicons like Blue Letter Bible and BibleHub.” Copilot named BDAG as the first go-to, which Blomberg and Markley call the “heavy hitter” among lexicons.³ However, I think Copilot lacks discernment, conflating popular devotional aids with peer-reviewed lexical resources. I would not want to say too much about BibleHub, not having used it or even known of its existence until now, but it seems to rely on Strong’s for basic definitions of original words. While that is fine for many purposes, using only Strong’s to complete a Bible word study could easily result in definitional fallacies.

In contrast, Logos Bible Software’s Bible Word Study tool (which I use regularly) aggregates data from lexicons in one’s library. In my library, that includes BDAG, Louw–Nida, and TDNT. Logos then displays morphological relationships, semantic domains, and the occurrences of words throughout Scripture. While Logos uses tagging and search algorithms, the Bible interpreter must still apply critical reasoning to determine the most probable meaning. Like Carson, Logos is my go-to resource because it removes much of the “donkey work” of tagging and searching the “heavy hitters,” while still requiring critical thinking.

μορφή (Philippians 2:6)

BDAG gives a range of meanings and a general sense as “form, outward appearance, or shape.” Philippians 2 is explicitly mentioned, showing the contrast between “the expression of divinity in the pre-existent Christ” and “the expression of servility in the incarnate Christ.”⁴ μορφή appears again in verse 7, giving a deliberate contrast between the essential nature of God and the status of a servant. Because Paul follows μορφή with σχῆμα, it is clear that his usage is more than the general sense, but a mode of status that defines Christ’s divine nature. I would conclude that Paul’s particular nuance is to say that μορφή expresses the essential nature of who Christ is. He possesses the divine nature yet also assumed the status of a servant, not merely a physical appearance.

σχῆμα (Philippians 2:7)

BDAG defines σχῆμα as “the generally recognized state or form in which something appears, outward appearance.”⁵ Louw–Nida defines it as “appearance as an element of outward form—‘appearance, form.’”⁶ TDNT lists several uses of σχῆμα outside the New Testament, noting that “σχῆμα always denotes the outward form or structure perceptible to the senses and never the inward principle of order accessible only to thought.”⁷

In comparison with μορφή, both share a general sense of “form”; however, Paul intentionally uses them for their distinct nuances. μορφή affirms Christ’s deity and servanthood, while σχῆμα refers to the perceivable likeness of Christ’s humanity. While the words share overlap, they cannot be exact synonyms in Philippians 2:6–7. The words together mark the distinction between God and man in Christ’s incarnation.

1. D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1996), 85.
2. Ibid.
3. Craig L. Blomberg and Jennifer Foutz Markley, A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 125.
4. Frederick William Danker, ed., A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “μορφή.”
5. Ibid., 981.
6. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 586.
7. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., “Σχῆμα, Μετασχηματίζω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 954.