Why God Had to Come Down

As I've said before, Kierkegaard believed that the only thing you had to accept to be a Christian was that God became man and died because He loves us. However, this raises the question of why God would do such a thing. The simple answer is that God had to become man so that He would be equal enough to humans so that humans could love Him back. If this seems complicated, which it did to me, I invite you to read my paper of the subject below:

Why God Came Down- A Broken Love and Deep Despair

Søren Kierkegaard wrote Philosophical Crumbs to clear up what he saw as a widespread misunderstanding of Christianity. Within the work, Kierkegaard pays special attention to the central act of Christianity, or the coming of Jesus. In this paper, I will argue that God’s coming to Earth as a human logically follows from His deep desire to repair the broken love between Himself and Man.

In Philosophical Crumbs, Kierkegaard argues that every human suffers a fractured relationship with God, such that no man can truly love God. To understand the extent of the quandary however, one must understand that Christianity changes the meaning of words. Man’s love flows from a need that is a part of his being. For God, love itself is his nature, and the love He has for His creation is an expression of its overflowing abundance. Therefore, His anguish and despair are also different, because they come from a desire for communion with His creation, rather than any need. Kierkegaard explains this with an analogy that compares Man’s relationship with God to that between a peasant girl and the king, though even he admits that this analogy is in many ways wrong. He even qualifies that, “there is no perfect analogy among Earthly relationships.” (Kierkegaard, 101)*

To understand God’s coming to Earth as a human, one must first understand the broken nature of the relationship between Man and God. While God is a perfect being, Man is by nature imperfect, which leads to him choosing sin. This leads to an unequal balance of love, where Man is more caught up in admiration and respect for God, rather than true love, which relies on a deep relationship. From his analogy of the peasant girl and the king, Kierkegaard explains it by explaining that the king, by loving the peasant girl, was, “doing this girl a favour for which she will never, in her whole life, be able to thank you (Kierkegaard, 102)*.” This poses a problem for the king, because he will always have to wonder whether the peasant girl truly loves him or if she is only caught up by his affections towards her, given who he is.

The broken love between human beings and God then leads to a deep despair within God, which I have already qualified as being different than the despair of a human. That the despair belongs to God might seem odd, as one would assume that Man would be the one to suffer from being separated from this love, as it is he who needs God. However, God’s suffering is different from Man’s, and sharper in a way, because he is aware of what causes it, while Man suffers unknowingly. In fact, Kierkegaard argues that God’s (or the king’s) suffering is worse, stating, “this infinitely more profound grief belongs essentially to the superior one, because only he understand the misunderstanding (102).” Kierkegaard further explains by saying, “One might think the god would not care about this, since he does not need the learner. One forgets though . . . that the god loves the learner. The god thus reserves this sorrow, this unfathomable grief, for himself (103-104).” In short, God suffers more because He knows what separates Him from His creation, which He dearly loves, while Man simply does not understand. Thus, God is in great despair over the broken relationship between Himself and Man.

God, in his perfection, thus decides to do something about this broken relationship, as only He is capable of mending it by abolishing the inequality of love. To make things equal, however, God must change the station either of Himself or of Man, His first option being to elevate Man so that he is worthy of God. This posed an issue though, for Man might see God lavishing him as a sign of his own greatness, as Man has a tendency to be vain. Thus, God’s only option is to “show himself equal to the most lowly (106).” In this way God decided to “reveal himself in the form of a servant (106).” Or, in other words, God came down not only as a human, with all the weakness of human flesh, but came down with the lowest status so that he could create equal love even with the lowest of his creation.

In this paper, I have argued that God came down as the logical mending of his broken relationship with Man. By coming to Earth in human form, God bridged the gap between himself and Man so that Man could properly love Him. For Kierkegaard, this is the critical moment in Christianity, and thus must be understood before anyone can truly call themselves a Christian.