It has been remarked that if you were to make two lists: on one, write the ten most influential people in history, on the other, write people who have claimed to be God, that only one name would appear on both those lists: Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, it would be hard to overstate Jesus’s influence: much of art, politics, ethics, literature, music, and culture—in the west but also in large swathes of the east—has been influenced by his life.

And, of course, Jesus is the central figure of Christianity—making Christianity, uniquely, a historically grounded religion. Consider this: you could remove the founder of any other religion and that religion could still stand. Somebody else could have taught the system of thought that became Buddhism. The Qur’an could have been brought by somebody other than Muhammad. But Christianity is not a system of teaching taught by Jesus, in a very real sense, Christianity is Jesus Christ. Jesus’s personality, his character, his identity, are the heart of the Christian faith. Christianity stands or falls on Jesus.

For Christianity claims that “God” is not some mere abstract idea, some vague higher power, something “out there” like the Force in Star Wars, or a distant, remote deity, like the God of Islam, but a God who is very, very real. A God who took on human nature and, in Jesus Christ, walked and talked in history.