> The belief that one's deity chose to assume the physical form of a man: isn't that about as anthropomorphic as you can get?

In my opinion, no.

Anthropomorphism (as commonly understood) means to ascribe human characteristics to things not human; we don't talk about anthropomorphizing your grandma, but we do talk about anthropomorphizing a constellation.

Now if you believe, like the Rawlsians suggest, that there are pre-incarnate spirits floating around and these then decide to inhabit specific bodies according to a lottery, then this is also not an anthropomorphism, but is rather a creation account of how humans come to exist.

You may not believe it's accurate, but it's still a creation account. It is no more an anthropomorphism than saying that man was molded into being from a piece of clay into which God blew his breath. That is not an attempt to anthropomorphize clay.

Finally if you believe that God literally became a man, then this is yet another origin account of a specific man. It's only if you don't believe that he became a literal man that you can speak of anthropomorphizing. Suppose he was an angel that only looked like a man, but wasn't really a man. Then anthropomorphism would be correct. But if he really was a man, and not just like a man, then it's not anthropomorphizing.

So the miracle of incarnation describes a creation account of one specific man, much like the creation of Adam from dust is a creation account of another man. If you are extending the label of "anthropomorphizing" to one, then you should also extend it to the other, at which point you've left the commonly understood meaning.

That's an interesting point of view. Thank you for sharing a well reasoned argument.

My pleasure - it's an interesting question!