But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man.
Gregory of Nyssa
The one who says that he "took the form of a slave"—and this form is flesh—is saying that, being himself something else according to his divine form, something else in his nature, he assumed the servile form.
He says of the Son that he has "come to be in the likeness and form of men." If he "came to be" in this likeness, this obviously implies that he was not invested with it from the beginning. Before coming to be in that likeness he was not fashioned according to some corporeal pattern. For no embodied form could become the pattern for what is previously not embodied.
Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.