Anyway, She state that Paul did not claim that Jesus was God and therefor believed him to be a human with a special relationship to God (like David). She references Philippians 2:6-11.
“A human with a special relationship to God,” to me, insinuates the assumption that Jesus was a mere “spiritual guru” not unlike many others in various religions or philosophies, and I think this assumption, itself, is built upon a definition of God which drastically differs from the orthodox Christian view of Him.
Of course, I’m not going to go into, at length, a rebuttal of that idea here, but suffice it to say that, when we assume such things, we will project our assumptions onto all manner of things, and not least of which is Scripture. We will colour our interpretations of Scripture with our own, personal perceptions of what reality is composed of and, disregarding concepts like authoritative teaching of Doctrines and Dogmas, it is no surprise that we would arrive at conclusions which differ drastically from traditional ones. But where do such assumptions originate? Usually, it is in the intuition and in the perception that each individual can, for himself, arrive at ultimate truth without the need to appeal to any other individual; and that no one can say whether or not another person is “right” or “wrong” on these points, but only whether or not they themselves submit to their own conscience and reason.
That is, the interpretation you refer to is based upon the idea that all spiritual truth is relative to individual minds; that truth has a variety of “masks” which it wears, all of which are “valid;” and that, above all, the God of Orthodox Christians cannot possibly exist as Christian theists state he does.
Given such a context, perhaps it is somewhat understandable that a person who holds such views could interpret the following in the way that you have described:
"Have in mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who,* though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped**, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men."
*Catholic teaching states that the above should be interpreted using the view point of Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, “emptying himself” of his full Divinity and glory, to humbly approach a life of a mere servant, one who is “born in the likeness of men,” and accepting upon his shoulders the burden of men, not least of which is death.
The contrary interpretation will attribute to the thought that “…though he was in the form of God…” a meaning that Jesus was “merely a bit like” God in some sort of obscure way, perhaps in the way a guru might be. The Catholic will state that truth dictates that this instead be interpreted to mean that “form” is an outward sign of inner nature, and that thus, Jesus was that visible sign of invisible God: the Word made flesh.
Likewise, the idea that Jesus “…did not count equality with God something to be grasped…” will be interpreted by the mistaken that Jesus could not have equality of nature with God. The Church, of course, states that the “equality” here refers to rights and privileges, and that it speaks of the fact that Jesus did not take upon himself the full glory of his Divinity, but rather cloaked himself in humility and humanity as a suffering servant come to redeem humankind.
The difference in the two interpretations, again, depends on the definitions an individual ascribes to God, and how they interpret the relation of man to God.
