“God did not, as the Bible says, create man in his own image; on the contrary, man created God in his own image.” Ludwig Feuerbach dropped this theological bombshell three years before Friedrich Nietzsche’s birth. Feuerbach, a name forgotten by most, but who influenced Nietzsche, wrote these words in his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841). He argued that human beings project their own attributes and desires onto an imagined deity, creating God in their own image. This for Feuerbach, is the essence of Christianity (and indeed all religions), the deification of our human ideals. “What man wishes to be, he makes his God… God is the outward projection of a man’s inward nature.”
The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor would come to call our world downstream of Feuerbach and Nietzsche the “immanent frame”—a world lived partitioned off from the transcendent. Do you remember the bubble Truman was confined to in the movie “Truman Show”? This is a helpful analogy to the “immanent frame” – a secular world that is closed off and limited to the natural and material.
Feurbach’s philosophical grandchild, the world we inhabit, stands in contrast to the world of the Bible.
John begins his gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)
This is an enchanted world, a world that cannot be domed off from the transcendent One. It is his world, after all.
The manger confronts us with this challenge: do we live in Feuerbach’s world or John’s? Is our frame immanent or transcendent?
If John is true, then the incarnation itself speaks a theological language. The fact that God became flesh speaks to us some of the most foundational truths about who God is (and who we are).
Theologian Karl Barth said, “The grace of God is revealed precisely in history, in his acting and speaking toward men, in his presence among them as man” (Church Dogmatics, IV.1). In other words, God’s character cannot be understood apart from his actions, particularly the incarnation. Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate self-disclosure. If we want to know the nature of God, we must begin in the manger. John Frame agrees. He says, “In Christ, God showed his willingness to come down and dwell with humanity, not to remain distant but to be known, loved, and trusted” (Systematic Theology).
The fact that God became a human being speaks volumes about who God is. If we are to know God, we can look to philosophy, creation, and the cross and the empty tomb, but let us not forget to look to the manger.
The story of the birth of Jesus Christ is more than just warm feelings, a nostalgic glow of fuzzy spirituality. The incarnation draws us into the profound things of God and invites us to think and pray deeply, considering what the unthinkable miracle of God becoming flesh demonstrates about God’s nature. In the coming weeks we will explore this more.
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Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash