Why did God become man?

In Geertgen's dark night there is no moon, no torch, no angelic glow from above. The single source of light is the Child Himself. From Him, as He lies in the manger, a radiance streams forth, and in that radiance faces emerge: the bowed face of Mary, the muzzles of the ox and the ass, the coarse features of the shepherds, the wings of the angels. The light travels not from heaven to earth, but from the lowest point of the earth—from a feeding trough for cattle. This is the theology of the Incarnation, painted in pigment: God enters the world not as a force from above, but as a light from below, out of weakness.

The Apostle will call this by the word kenosis—self-emptying: "Who, being in the form of God… emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men." The eternal enters the temporal and consents to become finite. The boundless becomes an infant who can be swaddled. He who cannot be conceived becomes one who can be taken into the arms. God makes Himself vulnerable not as a stratagem, nor as a means to future glory—vulnerability is itself the very manner of salvation.

And the first to come to the light are the shepherds. Here, for the first time, they are granted faces: the light streaming from the Child snatches them out of the darkness. Thus, from the very first scene, the theme of the whole drama is announced—the restoration of a face to those from whom it had been taken. The darkness of self-will, in which the old paradise slammed shut, is not dispelled by new thunder. Within it a light is born—defenseless, and for that very reason invincible.