Niebuhr’s realist approach to Christian ethics was deeply connected to the cross, which he identified as the heart of the Christian gospel. “If the divine is made relevant to the human,” Niebuhr claimed, “it must transvalue our values and enter the human at the point where man is lowly rather than proud and where he is weak rather than strong. Therefore I believe that God came in the form of a little child born to humble parents in a manger. . . .” This “life in the manger ended upon the cross . . . [and we] might end there if we really emulated it.”[12]
