»Yes, I am a Catholic, the worst kind – a convert«

Abstract The article examines the significance of the Incarnation of Christ for the development of Marshall McLuhan’s media theory. McLuhan’s Catholicism was already a topic of debate in the 1960s and 70s, albeit often in a less than benevolent manner. More recently, however, scholars from the English-speaking world have approached McLuhan’s religious convictions and their possible influence on his media-theoretical considerations in a more nuanced way. Building on this research, the article argues that McLuhan’s understanding of media and their effects, summarized in the famous phrase »The medium is the message«, can hardly be separated from his belief in the Incarnation, which has often been neglected by German scholars. If one takes a closer look at a variety of sources, e. g. letters and essays written from the 1930s onwards, it becomes clear that McLuhan considered human creativity to be the result of the total remaking of human nature by the ›medium of all media‹, i. e. God incarnate, and that it is precisely these christological and anthropological principles that underlie his media theory.