Spiritual Intersections: Nietzsche’s Aphorisms, Jesus’s Words, Related Quotations — plus Commentary
{An Annotated Nietzschean Breviary with Afterword, References, and Aphorism List at end}
Lon Clay Hill, Jr.
“For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” (Attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 16:18)
TWELVE QUERIES
Twelve Queries with Annotated Aphorisms and Sayings by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and others p. 7
I. What is man and what is he becoming?? p. 7
II. What is the connection between nature and spirit?? p. 10
III. Who is the noble man and what is love?? p. 12
IV. Who is the overman and how is one true to the earth?? p. 13
V. What is truth and what is error (philosophical focus)?? p. 16
VI. What is truth and what is faith (existential focus)?? p. 18
VII. Faith and hypocrisy. p. 21
VIII. The reality and/or unreality of God?? p. 23
IX. Who was Jesus (Ecce Homo-I)?? p. 25
X. What is Christianity (from Paul forward)?? p. 27
XI. When does it end? [Eternity, Salvation] p. 28
XI-Sup. Does it end in Fire? [The Hell fire] p. 31
XII. Who was Nietzsche (Ecce Homo-II)?? p. 35
Twelve Queries with Annotated Aphorisms and Sayings
by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and others
I, who cannot fly, must reach the distant mountains!!
QUERY I. What is man and what is he becoming??
#1a “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome... (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, part 3).
#Ib “Man is a rope, tied between the beast and the overman — a rope over an abyss.” (Zarathustra, Prologue, section 4)
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche declared that each individual should strive to become an overman (Übermensch) — a person who continually strives to reach beyond himself. Nietzsche believed that humans are an essentially unfinished product. We cannot be understood and do not live apart from the stars we reach for — nor, for that matter, can we be understood or live apart from the simple ocean life from which we have evolved. As the Psalmist says, God has made man a “little lower than the angels.”1
#Ic “Life must overcome itself again and again.” [Zarathustra, II, On The Tarantulas.]
Nietzsche constantly refers to the human need to continually strive for improvement and self-transcendence. Indeed, Nietzsche seems to see the self as a self which is to be improved just as a mountain climber seeks to climb higher and higher mountains and an astronaut would want us to explore more and more distant planets. Now to be clear, Nietzsche himself would object to the term of ‘improving’ the self because of various moralistic and epistemological overtones. Nietzsche would rather say that ‘one should become who one is’ or speak approvingly of a ‘higher’ or ‘more noble’ man. Still, at some level, Nietzsche presents an existential demand that one should continually strive to become who one really is, i.e. one should improve or perfect oneself. In other words, even as Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which in heaven is perfect”, Nietzsche is saying that human should continually be perfecting themselves.
#Id “But it is with Man as it is with the tree. The more he aspires to the height and the light, the more strongly do his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep — into evil.” (Zarathustra, part I, On the Tree on the Mountainside)
No facile progressivism here. With every opportunity for progress there is a concomitant temptation. Important and breathtaking inventions and discoveries such as the printing press, the structure of the atom, and the helical structure of DNA are rife with potential mishaps and hubris that humans almost invariably explore until ‘wisdom comes to by the awful grace of God.’ The beginnings of religious freedom with genuine toleration were preceded by two centuries of religious wars. Even today, religious and ideological freedom are still precariously honored in most of the world. We shall see what comes of our still new knowledge about the atom and DNA.
#Ie. “You should love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long.” (Zarathustra, I, On War and Warriors.)
One could read this as a simple piece of militaristic rhetoric. And indeed Nietzsche’s comments on war are sometimes rather adolescent and shallow — if not immoral. However, it is usually more fruitful and more accurate to see it and similar passages as expressing an exuberant acknowledgement that humans make more progress in striving towards objectives than by passively accepting a stagnant status quo. Most Christians do not believe that songs such as “Onward Christian Soldiers” or “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” are calls to arms. Of course, Christians have had their ‘fair share’ of militaristic adventures, some of them in the name of God and religion, but they are not unique in this. Currently, a number of Arab terrorists have called their own unholy terrorist deeds expressions of a “Jihad.” However, other Muslims think of a jihad as primarily a spiritual struggle, a struggle which explicitly rejects the murder of innocents for any goal.
To be sure, in the book of Matthew Jesus enjoins his listeners to “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors” [Matthew 5:44]. However, only a few chapters later we find:
“You must not think I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring not peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law; and a man will find his enemies under his own roof” [Matthew 10:34-36].
Similar passages are found in Luke, Chapter 12. In the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas we even find the following:
“Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes” [Thomas #10 , Five Gospels.]
There is no question that some metaphors are more appropriate than others, but it simply cannot be gainsaid that a universal consensus is that ethical, moral, psychological, personal and/or religious progress invariably contains an admixture of personal struggle. Both Jesus and Nietzsche constantly emphasized this essential component of the spiritual life.
Query II: What is the connection between nature and spirit??
#2a. Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own agony it increases its own knowledge. [Zarathustra, II, On the Famous Wise Men.]
“Geist ist das leben, das selber ins Leben schneidet; an de eignen Qual mehrt es das eigne Wissen.” (Z, II, Von den berühmten Weisen.)
Any serious contemplation of both human life and life in general must confront the problem of pain — we were born screaming as we came into this world and as we were being born most of our mothers experienced approximately as much pain as humans can endure in a single dosage. Those of us who eat meat continue to live partially because other we wrest life from other forms of painfully reluctant life. Even the vegetarian is here today only because countless ancestral fish, reptiles, and mammals did kill and consume living and conscious prey. Humans, of course, experience additional pain and suffering because other humans often and invariably stray from the milk of human kindness that we sometimes experience. Modern warfare and conflict with atomic bombs, genocide, public execution and secret torture are all too frequent reminders that as Job put it:
“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.”
It is sometimes true that perpetrators of evil sometimes ‘pay’ for their misdeeds. Yes, it is sometimes true that:
“Those who live by the sword die by the sword.”
But is also true that many of those who suffer, whether from nature or from man, are essentially innocent with respect to the deeds that mark their lives.
Indeed, nature itself is very problematic for those who would look for some dominant gentleness in the essential order of things. There are those, of course, who would justify the ways of God or the cruelty of evolution. However, I believe that—in terms of trying to understand suffering as part of ‘The Big Picture’ — the religious person has no magic words to explain the inexplicable and seemingly arbitrary dispensations of pain in the world we behold. For me, the words from William Blake’s poem The Tyger run true:
“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry
...
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp?
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
...
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”
Songs of Experience (1794)
All of us can and do attempt to make personal sense or even to make more general philosophical and/or religious sense of life’s pain, sorrow, and suffering. Be that as it may, none of us can stand outside our biological-and-spiritual station for we are embedded within a process that contains pain and struggle as well as joy at its very Heart.
Query III: Who is the noble man and what is love??
One reason that Nietzsche called himself an ‘immoralist’ is that - as he put it - all creators are called ‘immoral’ by both the many and the leaders. After all, Jesus was crucified as a common criminal. To be sure, sure Nietzsche sometimes takes a perverse pride in being misunderstood, but he still says much that can enlighten us all. Some of his statements about love are Biblical in tone and need little by way of explanation.
#3a Whatever is done from love occurs beyond good and evil. (Beyond Good and Evil, part 4, epigrams and interludes, #153)
#3b Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants—love God as I love him, as his son! What are morals to us sons of God!” (Beyond Good and Evil, part 4, #184)
Paul says that “the written law condemns to death, but the spirit gives life.” (2nd Corinthians 3:6) Jesus, of course, reserved his sharpest criticism not for the ‘sinners’ (those who more or less knew they were miserable), but for the hypocrites — those who insisted upon their own goodness and paraded their ‘virtues’ before others. Today, in my own country of the United State, some of those who call themselves religious are among the strongest defenders of the death penalty and of American imperialism. Among the most prominent of these ‘leaders’ (e.g. the most dangerous) are those who never raise their voices or show any other ‘untoward’ emotion in public .
#3c That which doesn’t destroy or kill me, makes me stronger. (Twilight of the Idols, I, 4)
“Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.” (GD, I, 4.)
Nietzsche asserts here and elsewhere that any non-fatal experience presents an opportunity for growth. Similarly, Shakespeare wrote “Out of this thistle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.” And, of course, religious authors sometimes testify to growth emerging out of the most terrible experiences of both war and/or personal tragedies. Saying that one will profit from any experience, of course, is not the same as actually managing to consistently do it. However, it is a useful pespective to keep in mind as we all experience non-trivial problems.
Query IV: Who is the overman and how is one true to the earth??
“Earth is just a stopping place; Heaven is my home.”
[from a Christian Hymn.]
#4a “Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, part 3).
According to Nietzsche religion has taken our eyes away from the world we live in and away from our actual lives. In Nietzsche’s view the noble soul or the truly ethical person should consecrate the the earth. Now it is quite true that in the book of Genesis the Lord looks at Creation and says, “This is Good!!” However, it is also true that many ‘believers’ tolerate wars, environmental degradation, and injustice in the name of God. Today [early 21st Century] countless self-described ‘Christians’ and ‘believers’ ignore global warming, beglut themselves on fossil fuels, defend fool’s science, and in countless ways use their ‘faith’ as blinders to ignore the reality of the [created] world.
A text which embodies some Christian themes which Nietzsche criticises is found in 1st John, Chapter 2:
“Do not love the world or the things in this world. The love of God is not to those who love the world: for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing the way, but those who do the will of God despise the world.” [1 John 2: 15-17]
This is sometimes read as a passage which simply despises the world and universe as an inconsequential place to be. In this perspective Christians should ‘wait upon the Lord’ and they will be rewarded in Heaven. Some criticise and ridicule such beliefs as the hope for “Pie in the Sky.’ Before evaluating this critique, let us look at a slitely different translation found in The New English Bible [NEB].
“Do not set your hearts on the godless world or anything in it. Anyone who loves the world is a stranger to the Father’s love: Everything the world affords, all that panders to the appetites, or entices the eye, all the glamour of its life, springs not from the Father but from the godless world. And the world is passing away with all of its allurements, but he who does God’s will stands for evermore.” [1 John 2: 15-17 {NEB}]
With the second translation it is perhaps easier to translate the text as being a relative simple injunction not to overevaluate the ‘things’ of this world as any merely physical or societal pleasure is doomed to be short-lived in any truly long term approach, e.g., when we consider periods significantly longer than a human lifetime. For this reading to be valid, however, we would have to read the phrase ‘love the world’ as meaning, sensu strictu, as ‘loving covetously [e.g., ‘overloving’] our human pleasures with more passion than they merit.’
Cosmically speaking, any lasting validity for our lives, pleasures, and efforts in themselves is nonsense. For me literature is the best point of departure for thoughtful discussion of such themes. In the book of Ecclesiastes it is written:
“Vanity of Vanities... There is no new thing under the sun.”
In Shakespeare’s MacBeth King MacBeth declares:
“Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Such passages remind us that our lives and all their fortunes and pleasures are painfully short. One does not need to be able to read and write to recognize this. This briefness is a primary existential datum for human beings true virtually independent of our own metaphysical, religious or philosophical perspectives. The pertinent question is: What do we do and what do we make of this short, but very dear life of ours? So, for myself, I would read the passage from 1st John as exhorting us to aspire to see and live our lives sub species aeternitas. Others are free, of course, to read the text differently. However, I would like to suggest that the spirit with which one reads a text -especially, a religious text- is as important a spiritual matter as the text itself. In any case, there is no necessity for anyone to defame or desecrate the earth. Whether one believes in the finality of death, the transmigration of souls, the resurrection of the dead, or eternal recurrence are separate issues.
To make sure I am not misunderstood let me add the following. If I and other Christians or other believers do not honor our present obligations on this earth, it is clear to me that the secular citizens who do respect the natural world will ‘be more pleasing in God’s eye’ than those believers who prefer to speculate about ‘The Hereafter’ while failing to tend to their Here-and-Now responsibilities.
#5&6. Truth is the lie which serves us best!
The above sentence, as far as I can determine, was never written by Nietszche, but it fairly paraphrases — I believe — a Nietzschean leit motif. There are two related, but distinguishable thoughts contained within this single sentence. One, all human ‘truths’ about the world are necessarily incomplete and in the final analysis false. In less antagonistic terminology, all human truths are approximations and, at the very least, not quite true. Two, all or almost all proclamations about religious and phlosophical ‘truths’ have been and continue to be false— usually demonstrably and/or harmfully and/or hypocritically and/or crudely false. And, furthermore, according to Nietzsche, this is particularly true of Christianity. We shall examine these two themes separately. The first theme is primarily an epistemological or philosophical theme with somewhat indirect religious implications; the second theme is primarily a historical argument with utterly obvious religious implications.
Query V. What is truth and what is Error?
#5a. “Every word is a preconceived judgment.”
#5b. “What are mankind’s truths. They are the irrefutable errors of man.” [Gay Science, #265]
Nietzsche believed that all ideas and even the very words which we use to describe the world are simplifications which contain inevitable and inextricable errors. This idea is not new. Approximately 2,500 years ago the greek philosopher Heraclitus of Epheseus is recorded as saying “We cannot step twice in the same river.” And, of course, whether we are speaking of inorganic entitities such as rocks, rivers, and stars or living things such as apples and people everything in the universe changes. Indeed, everything is always and inevitably changing eventually into something distinctly different from what it was either moments or eons before. And, it is not merely that things change in time. We can also use a single word to describe different entities in space—apples or stars or individuals, even identical twins. However, these different entities, too, are always different at some level. This is, of course, not in itself a particularly novel or threatening idea. But Nietzsche develops some interesting implications. Of course, he says, our words and ideas may describe similarities which are useful or even necessary for life. If we need to warn another human about a tiger we don’t care whether the tiger is somewhat or even significantly different from all other tigers including its identical twins. The similarities are all that immediately matters. But it is important, thinks Nietzsche, that we be honest with ourselves about the limitations of our terms and our ‘truths.’ Similarities are never identities!
Of course, we don’t just coin words and verbal ejaculations. We combine our words into sentences — complex assertions about the world. Or, in a more Nietzschean mode of description, we continually use and make hypotheses about the world. Occasionally, we are conscious of what we are doing, but most of our working hypotheses are unconscious and hidden. And this is as it should be. It is better to live with ‘error’ than to while away our lives with bootless refinements.
#5c ... and societal, philosophical, and religious myths...!!??”
Furthermore, human beings do not merely live in and describe the natural world. Human beings are social creatures dependent in complex ways upon their families, societies, religions, and nations — and it is in these socializing contexts that all of us acquire language. Both consciously and unconsciously language is used to support our social groupings and our grandest thoughts. Our societal beliefs, including our patriotic and religious, beliefs are inevitably colored by our associations and our standing within those associations, and by conscious and unconscious interests. They are, in one way or another, almost always intrinsically and inevitably both partisan and parochial.
VI. What is truth and what is faith (existential focus)??
#6a. One repays a teacher poorly if one always remains a pupil. [Zarathustra, I, On the Gift-giving Virtue.]
“Man vergilt einem Lehrer schlect, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt.”
(Z, I, Von der schenkenden Tugend, part 3.)
Nietzsche believes that one’s philosophical or spiritual outlook should be — like one’s scientific ideas — continually improved and refined. Furthermore, any truly good idea has additional implications that the first person to articulate the idea would not have realized. This is counter to more common beliefs that the ‘truths’ of a religous sage or prophet are set in stone — and that a ‘faithful’ adherent cleaves to the letter of the words and beliefs of their earliest religous. I think this point is well taken. As a matter of fact religous ideas do evolve. Indeed, according to Mark, Chapter 7, Jesus initially was unwilling to heal a (non-Jewish) Samaritan woman’s child because he thought his mission was for fellow Israelites only.
However, genuine religious teachings are not, strictly speaking, merely about ideas. Indeed, religious or spiritual teachers are revered for the consistency of their character -- consistency viz-a-viz the perennial problems of humanity. The particulars of oppression, ideology, and hypocrisy are in a state of continual flux - the value of the ideas-and-example of a Jesus, Martin Luther King, Karl Marx, Thomas Paine, George Fox, Susan B. Anthony, or Mahatma Gandhi is precisely that they can be adopted to new situations.
#6b. “Faith means not wanting to know the truth!
[AC, #52.]
“Glaube” heißt Nicht-wissen-wollen, was wahr ist.
There is a widespread belief among many Christians that Christians are to be known and judged primarily by their beliefs (e.g., the Apostles Creed or similar credos). Indeed, some Christians even declare that their particular beliefs about God, Jesus, the Bible and/or the Church are necessary both to obtain eternal salvation and to avoid the hell fire of everlasting damnation. Put otherwise these Christians believe that Christians are to be judged by their beliefs - or, as they put it, ‘They will be judged by their faith’. I still remember being told in revival meetings fifty years ago that ‘I would either believe in Jesus Christ and his Word — or burn in hell!’ At my high school’s fiftieth reunion, a fellow classmate once again warned me of the same said ‘peril’ to my soul. Part of this general set of beliefs is the notion that in said ‘matters of faith’ one must frequently (even proudly) ignore reason. These beliefs are in the main contrary to the recorded teachings of Jesus on those subjects. In Matthew [chapters 7 &12] and elsewhere Jesus is recorded as saying that his followers will be known ‘by their fruits’ (e.g., their deeds). A careful reading of Jesus’s sayings suggests that he considered religous hypocrisy to be much more harmful than either doubt or unbelief. We shall consider these issues in more detail below. For now, I remark first that while we can certainly agree that Christians are identified (‘known’) by their beliefs, we can also state that Christians are judged (‘known’) by their deeds. Furthermore, to get at some of the underlying issues, it is helpful — I believe — to distinguish between belief and faith. Beliefs are primarily intellectual notions which are potentially, at least, either true or false or somewhere in between. Faith, on the other hand, is primarily about the existential stance and actions which we must make in a world and life in which we almost never have complete knowledge and information. It is quite true, to be sure, that our ‘Faith’ is mediated by our belief, but the distinction between belief and faith is absolutely critical for spiritual life. Belief is in the conscious mind; faith comes from the only partly conscious heart, our deeper self.
When the prophet Jeremiah complained that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt” (Jeremiah Ch.17, v. 9) he was not complaining about the beliefs of his contemporary Israelites. From a religious perspective, believers are always at risk of idolatry (or Bibliolatry or Mariolatry...) or otherwise glorying in their own beliefs and practices. From a secular perspective, these ideological misdeeds are usually characterized as superstitious or irrational rather than as idolatrous. It is instructive, however, that even the atheist John Paul Sarte characterizes the inauthentic life as an instance of ‘bad faith’ (mauvais foi).
In sum, what we see in practice is that the identification of Christian faith with Christian beliefs is a cesspool of opportunities for bigotry, prejudice and other reactive defenses for personal weaknesses and societal iniquites. Genuine Faith is accompanied by beliefs, but it is not belief as such which produces honesty charity and unfearing love, the markers of genuine faith. Other humans are not usually fooled by hypocritical believers and it is, by definition, impossible to imagine that a living God would be so easily fooled. I believe that God fully intended that there should be people of many faiths as well as a significant number of doubters and skeptics. Heretics and atheists are here to be an offense to the self-righteous hypocrisy so common in almost all religious groups.
Query VII. Faith and hypocrisy.
Nietzsche believed that religious leaders, whether consciously or unconsciously, almost always fabricated and mislead their followers. In my own opinion, he got carried away with himself at times, but he was often prophetic in his condemnation of conventional hypocrisy and cultural shallowness. Putting it in strictly non-Nietzschean terms:
God has placed atheists, agnostics, and heretics in the world to remind all of us of the weaknesses and hypocrisies of those who think they are the only ‘true servants’ of God or Allah or Jawveh. (LCHj)
As the prophet Amos declared to the chosen people of Israel:
“Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,
O people of Israel?” says the LORD.” (Amos 9:7 {RSV}.)
According to my understanding of the Biblical message, faith is not a priviledge of favoritism—but a call to responsibility. Rewards, if any, will come in their own due time.
More to the point, we will amplify here a short portion of statements attributed to Jesus in the 23rd chapter of the Matthew:
“Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel oversea and land to win one convert: and when you have won him you make him twice as fit for hell as you re yourselves” [Matthew 23:15 {NEB}]
“Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like tombs covered with whitewash: they look well from outside, but they are full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of filth. So it is with you: outside you look like honest men, but inside you are brim-full of hypocrisy and crime” [Matthew 23:27-28 {NEB}]
To get the full flavor of the prophets’ condemnations of Israel and/or Jesus’s words about hypocrites it is best to consult the relevant Biblical texts. However, it seems clear to me that the prophetic message consistently calls the ‘believers and faithful’ to be faithful to their own faith — any hypocritical condemnation of non-belivers is but ‘a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.’
#7a Insanity in something individuals is rare - but in groups, nations, and epochs it is the rule. (Beyond Good and Evil, part 4, epigrams and interludes, #156)
Humans are both most blind and most cruel when they do things for their own group — whether it is their own race, their own church, or their own nation. On making real sacrifices for their particular subset of humanity, they seem particularly blind to the outrageously narrow selfishness of their group. Just in the last decade or so, in a few hours Serbian Christians murdered 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Serbenizia, Indian Hindu mobs deliberately burned alive several hundred Muslims, and Al-Kaeda ‘Muslims’ have killed thousands of innocents in the United States, Iraq, Kenya, and elsewhere.
My own conclusion:
God fully intends for Heretics and Atheists to be a thorn in the side of religious hypocrites. [LCHj]
Query VIII. The reality and/or unreality of God??
#8a. “The Death of God”
Nietzsche’s most famous pronouncement was the parable of the the madman found in section #125 of Die Fröhiche Wissenschaft (1882). (translated as Joyful Wisdom [O. Levy] and The Gay Science [W. Kaufmann]).
The madman. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, “I seek God!” As many who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Why, did he get lost? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiing? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and perced them with his glances.
“Whither is God” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murders. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the cold of empty spacce? Has it not become colder? is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not yet hear anything of the noise of the gravediggers who are buring God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods tooo decompose? God is dead. God remains dead. and we have killed him. How shall we, the murders of all murders, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives....
{The Gay Science, #125}
From my own perspective Nietzsche’s parable expresses two profound realities about contemporary Christendom. First, the beliefs and practices of many Christians are quite shallow, reflecting a religiosity propounded on Sunday which is largely divorced from everday life. Furthermore, those who do ‘apply’ their Christianity to the workplace, politics, and the secular world seem inordinately conscious of their own supposed morality. Secondly, Christianity as a live option simply does not exist for a large part of the Western world (Whether they have a different faith or have more secular beliefs). This is particularly true in many intellectual circles. I belive that the work of Dietrich Bonhoffer is particularly germane here. Bonhoffer believed that that the Christian gospel had been so mangled by Western Christendom that, for many, many souls and during the present era, at least, the question of whether one was a Christian—even for those in so-called ‘Christian’ lands—was not an important spiritual issue.
For Christians who are familiar with spiritual history there is nothing unusally new here. Centuries ago, the medieval Christian Meister Eckhart wrote about the “God beyond God”— Eckhart’s term for his belief that God’s reality was always beyond his or any other believer’s capacity to comprehend and that God’s activity procedes quite apart from and independent the ken of the ‘faithful.’
For non-Christians of any sort, this particular essay is not an attempt to persuade you of the reality of God (e.g., this is not a Chritian ‘apology’). The author is not concerned primarily with what the reader believes to be the most important ethical, philosophical or religious realities of his or her life. To be true to your own self and to be as honest with yourself as possible is, I think, a primary ethical and metaphysical standard independent of religious and metaphysical beliefs and faiths. Where that leads the reader is for the reader to discover.
Query IX. Who was Jesus (Ecce Homo-I)?
#9 In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
(Antichrist, section 39)
“Im grunde gab es nur Einen Christen, und er starb am Kreuz.”
This statement always reminds me of Pascal’s statement:
“Jesus Christ will be in agony until the end of the world.”
Both statements remind us of the stark differences between the life of Jesus and his teachings as compared to the frequent spiritual mediocrity and hypocrisy of so much of Christendom. To be sure, in the statement above Nietzsche himself was not praising Jesus as much as he was damning Paul. Nietzsche thought Jesus was noble, but misguided — and thought Paul’s message was utterly contemptible. However, it is characteristic of Nietzsche's language that his language is suggestive even for those who disagree with him [In this case: me!!.]
For myself, I am content to say that for me Jesus is the primary human exemplar of how a human being should live. I also believe that the disciple’s experienced of a returning (“resurrected’) presence after Jesus’s crucifixion, the Pentecostal experience of the apostles and other early Christians, and Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus were, in fact, revelatory experiences (i.e., I do not believe these were delusional experiences). However, I do not pretend to know how literally true one should deem the Biblical accounts of these events. The written accounts seem to have been written years and decades later— the extent to which they were either first hand, second hand or third hand accounts is unclear to me. These then are my ‘Christian’ beliefs -- their origin is mediated (1) by childhood in which gospel stories about Jesus were told and expounded in both church and school and (2) by own life experiences. If I were brought up on stories about Buddha or if I were raised on a different planet, I’m sure my beliefs about exemplars and incarnations would be different. However, I have only vague ideas about how such beliefs would be different.
The reader may have impatiently discovered that I have not given a detailed answer to the original question (‘Who was Jesus?’). I am not being particularly reticent. The point is that for the reader to answer such a question the reader needs to make his or her own inquiries. The obvious point is that one can certainly consult the Gospels. For some people this has always been and continues to be a life-changing experience. Others might also be interested in scholarship about the historical Jesus. It appears that the accounts of Jesus were not gathered into a significant corpus for several decades — and it also appears that, strictly speaking, none of these accounts is a (completely) historically literal accounts. It seems reasonable to believe that many words of Jesus’s words are faithful paraphrases - and some perhaps are literally accurate. Some of the miracle stories seem to be later additions. In particular the Gospel of John was not primarily a literal accounts, but a theological account. There, of course, continue to be accounts of ‘personal encounters’ with Christ. Needless to say, absent some personal involvement for most of us our receptivity to such accounts is colored by our own worldview.
Continuing in this vein, the Gospel of John is not a literal account of Jesus’s. While one may believe — and I do— that historical deeds are found therein, the Gospel of John is primarily a philosophical meditation on the meaning of Jesus’s life. The words which John attributes to Jesus reflect John’s own view that Jesus was the definitive incarnation of the divine will revealing knowledge need for salvation. My own view is that many of these ideas are particularly useful for Christians and are consistent with the actual meaning of Jesus’s life. But, many of the teachings attributed to Jesus were not actually spoken by Jesus - they were almost certainly written by ‘John’ or a disciple of John. I certainly do not believe that Jesus went around saying:
“I am the logos. I am the Divine Son. I and the Father are ONE. Now, stop what you are doing. Record and memorize these novel gnostic phrases — and you will live 1,0000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 plus years.”
Rather, I think the authors of Mark, Luke, and Matthew got it right — Jesus was a master of parable, parabola, and cutting clarity.
Query X. What is Christianity (from Paul forward)??
As cited above, Nietzche believed that our ideas about Christianity were fundamentally the product of Paul’s interpretation of Jesus’s life—and represented a mischaracterization of both the life and teachings of Jesus. Of course, fundamental to assessing Paul’s importance is one’s perspective whether Paul’s vision of Christ on the road to Damascus was an actual or delusional event? In my own view neither traditional literal Christian accounts nor Nietzsche’s polemical account of Paul are particularly helpful. In lieu of a complete discussion, for now I would prefer to stipulate that Paul’s message does not consistently reach the standard of Jesus’s work. I personally find that Paul’s paean on the importance of love (Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthinans) one of the most important messages in the Bible and in the whole of western literature. On the other hand, some of his advice about citizenship, sexuality, and obedience are more obviously limited by the particular circumstances of his day than the more penetrating comments of Jesus himself.
The common premise of most Christians has been that the life of Jesus of Nazareth was the embodiment of how a human being should live. Most Christians also believe that after the crucifixion he appeared before his followers, enjoining them to spread the ‘gospel.’ If Christians believe that the purported “Resurrection’ is an essential component of that gospel, then I believe that unless they also incorporate the wisdom and love of Jesus into their own lives — their ‘evangelical’ messages will deserve the scorn of ‘the world.’
Query XI. When does it end? [Eternity, Salvation, Judgment...]
To anticipate the themes of this section, it is important to realize that for both Jesus and Nietzsche, the “end” is always near!! In both Jesus and Nietzsche ‘eternity’ is not so much a very, very, very long time, but an important (and usually overlooked) dimension of our existence. We begin our discussion with “The Kingdom of Heaven” — and then move on to the issues of ‘Salvation and Judgment” as well as some pernicious Christian ideas about ‘Hell.’
Nietzche emphasizes that Jesus’s Kingom of heaven is a spiritual place. Indeed, the two short quotes above cound be read as a gloss on a short passage from Luke:
#11a The Kingdom of God is in you.
(Antichrist,#29)
Das Reiches Gottes ist in euch! (AC, 29)
This is the final sentence of a psychological portrait by Nietzsche of the ‘Redeemer’ [Jesus]. Just above this sentence we find:
“What are the ‘glad tidings’? True life, eternal life, has been found— it is not promised, it is here, it is in you: as a living in love, in love without subtraction and exclusion, without regard for station. Everyone is the child of God...”
(Antichrist,#29)
#11b The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart.
(The Will to Power, II, 161)
“Das ‘Himmelreich’ is ein zustand des Herzens.” (WM, II, 161.)
Here we have the first sentence of another sketch of Jesus from The Will to Power:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart (—it is said of children ‘for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’): Not something ‘above the earth.’ The Kingdom of God does not ‘come’ chronologically-historically, on a certain day in the calendar, something that might be one day but not the day before: it is an ‘inward change of the individual,’ something that comes at every moment and at every moment has not yet arrived—”
(The Will to Power, II, 161)
Thus Nietzche emphasizes that Jesus’s Kingom of Heaven is a spiritual place. Indeed, the two passages above cound be read as a gloss on a short passage from Luke:
”The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! For, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:20,21, KJV
If anything, Nietzche’s comments are even closer to Luther’s translation, the translation most familiar to Nietzsche:
”Das Reich Gottes kommt nicht so, dass man’s beobachten kann; man wird auch nicht sagen: Siehe, hier is es! Oder: Da is es!. Denn siehe, das Reiches Gottes ist mitten unter euch.”
Lukas 17:20-21
Suffice it to say here that the above comments by Nietzsche are not outside the bounds of contemporary scholarship.
Beyond the above remarks, there are other intriguing issues about early Christianity which are important for many interested students and observers. It seems quite clear that many of the earliest Christians thought that ‘The End of the Wolrd’ was coming soon—perhaps in their own lifetimes. Albert Schweitzer argued persuasively in his Quest for the Historical Jesus (1911) that this was probably because Jesus himself believed that a final and cataclysmic Judgment was to be expected within a few years or decades. While this opinion is not unanimous among scholars, it appears to me to be the most straightforward interpretation of the texts that we have.
Again, we have tackled some issues which are beyond our powers to resolve. Belief in a “Paradise’, ‘Heaven’ or ‘Nirvana’ is of course common thoughout the world; and doubters in any form of ‘afterlife’ are quite common as well. I was myself personally surprised when I discovered that the great theologian, Paul Tillich, had no firm belief in an afterlife. It is quite true that others besides the early Christians believe that they have had communications with the dead. Most of us, however, have not had such communications. So, I personally cannot hope to resolve such issues to the satisfaction of the averge reader. My only comment is the following:
Love is more real than death. (LCHj)
Following the discussion in Query VII, this is more a statement of ‘faith’ than of ‘belief.’ I might say more, but in truth I cannot adequately articulate the source of my stance. I can only hope that I will be faithful to its intent.
Query XIb. How does it end? [Personal reflections on the supposed Fires of Hell]
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water—but fire—next time!!"
[words from an African American ‘Spiritual’]
Most Christians believe that with the establishment of God’s Kingdom—whenever that might happen—there will be a ‘Judgment.’ Indeed, some will tell you, there will be a final and definitive judgment. Furthermore, some who call themselves Christians will provide you with detailed particular. Such interpreters of Christian belief often rely particularly upon The Apocalypse of John (or “Revelation”), the last book of the New Testament. A caveat: among those who claim to ‘believe’ in the sacred nature of the entire Christian Canon—there are those who are quite reluctant and sparing in describing, discussing, or predicitng the ‘end of days.’ So some of the beliefs and attitudes I am going to discuss below, criticize, and even condemn below are not necessarily held by Christians who are either literal and/or conservative in their beliefs.
For the purposes of my discussion, it is important to make a distinction. It is quite clear that human beings frequently suffer from the consequences of their own actions, actions which have involved their willing participation. Put somewhat crudely:
“Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”
I use the term ‘crudely’ because there is almost never a one-to-one correspondence between actions, —good, neutral, or evil— and their consequences. Furthermore, life also presents most of us with a complex tableau of both unearned joy and unearned misery. In some cases, we may feel so terrible and guilty about particular deeds that we might experience some kind of ‘Hell on earth.’ However, in the normal scheme, one can assign only a sketchy mixture of personal, societal, or natural causation to whatever good or evil we experience. It is, I believe, a form of madness to expect anything other than partial success from this kind of (usually) speculative analysis.
In this context, many humans with religious beliefs do indeed think that there will eventually be a truly final, fair, just and definitive judgment. Many Christians believe that there is a coming ‘Kingdom of God.’ Given the diversity of human souls upon the planet, it is not surprising that issues of certainty, mercy and forgiveness incorporated into these discussions and speculations vary considerably. Some Jews and almost all atheists do not believe in an ‘afterlife’ — and by definition do not believe in a final judgment in the above sense. To an outsider such as myself, much of Islam seems to be just as judgmental as the most judgmental of Christians. However, we have all heard Muslims state that “Allah is merciful.”
Again, however, in this essay I do not wish to speculate personally about ‘God’s Coming Kingdom.” Rather, I wish to discuss the beliefs and attitudes articulated by some Christians who declare that Christianity reveals the way to obtain eternal salvation and to avoid the hell fire of everlasting damnation. Occasionally,they even declare that it reveals that their particular Christian beliefs are necessary to obtain eternal salvation and to avoid the hell fire of everlasting damnation. I believe that it is clear that several authors of the New Testament shared this belief. This belief is most notoriously present in The Apocalypse of John. This book was apparently written during a period when many early Christians faced torments, tortures, and executions as horrendous as those which faced 20th Century German Jews in Dachau and Buchenwald. These circumstances help us to understand the vindictive tone which permeates John’s message, resulting in a book which is singularly lacking in either Christian charity or non-Christian charity. Furthermore, these vengeful beliefs are in the main countrary to the recorded teachings of Jesus on those subjects and absolutely contrary to the deeper meaning of the gospel of God’s love.
The belief that God will punish sinners with a ‘Hell” of everlasting fire and ceaseless torments for their misdeeds upon this planet is not only a foolish idea unworthy of any human being — believer or no — it is a blasphemous idea rooted in the very vengefulness that genuine prophets, mystics, and teachers have always tried to lift us above and beyond. To give us a specific example: The idea that, say, Nero, Ghengis Khan, or Adolf Hitler should have to suffer a trillion, trillion years for each minute of pain that he gave to each of the victims of their reigns is but a petty and foolish fable of revenge, a fable which only moves human beings backwards and down and does nothing to lead us forward.
Let me be clear. I have no factual knowledge about life after death — if such life exists. My own faith tells me that such life is not impossible, but I know of no tablets of gold in the public market place where such information is available. I do speculate on such matters. Indeed, I sometimes speculate that each of us might experience a spiritually painful and purgative journey of purification if some ‘day’ we were to pass on to the ‘other side’ of this very brief visible life which we live and experience on the planet earth. Speculation aside, however, there is nothing Christian about dreaming up schemes of divine revenge for any other human being.
Having made my own beliefs clear, it may be instructive to look at some of the texts in the New Testament which address such issues. As the notion of ‘Hell’ is found in many places, I will first discuss some passages about love which I find most helpful to my own understanding — and then discuss a small selection of interesting of often cited passage about God’s judgment.
In the “Sermon on the Mount” we hear that Jesus taught:
“Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors; only so can you be chidren of your heavenly Father, who makes his son rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and dishonest.” (Matthew 5:45-46.”
Similarly, we read in Paul’s “Letter to the Romans” that:
“It was through one man [Adam] that sin entered the world, and through sin death...
But God’s act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if one man brought death upon so many, its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ...
It follows, then , that as the issue of one misdeed was condemnation for all men, so the issue of just one act is acquital and life for all men.” [Boldface mine.] (Romans 5:12,15,18.
The clear implication of these passages is that nothing can separate us from the love of God. I add that this means that nothing that any of us— ‘believer’ or ‘nonbeliever’— do or will can permanently separate us from the love of God. If there is a Divine Judgment, we can trust that any justice or purgatory or excruciatingly painful self-knowledge is under the dominion of God’s Love.
Now to be sure, according to the Biblical texts, Jesus frequently refers to God’s Judgment — explicit references to fiery punishments and a place called ‘Gehenna’ [usually translated as ‘Hell’]. In the book of Matthew these references are particularly prominent. One of the most cited passages is the parable of the the Sheep and the Goats [Matthew 25:31-46]. While there are those who believe that Jesus believed in a literal hell fire, I think — consistent with Jesus’s frequent use of hyperbole — the parable of the Sheep and the Goats is much better understood as a condemnation of hypocrisy than as a literal description of the final judgments of God. In the parable, The righteous ‘sheep’ are surprised that they are to be rewarded while the wicked ‘goats’ are surprised that they are to be punished. The whole point of the parable is that those who were looking to prove to others and to themselves their own righteousness ignored the crucial needs of their fellow humans. Contrawise, those who tended to the crucial needs of their fellow humans were unaware that their righteousness was anything unusual or particularly praiseworthy. I personally think that Jesus was indeed a master of the layout of the human heart. However, I do not think that — while he was yet alive — that he could precisely foresee the geography of a putative postlife realm.
XII. Who was Nietzsche (Ecce Homo-II)??
“Ecce Homo!” John 19:5 [Latin Vulgate]
“Behold the Man!”John 19:5 [KJB]
In 1888 Nietzsche finished writing the polemical Der Antichrist (The Anti-Christian or The Anti-Christian) and, a few months later, the autobiographical Ecce Homo. The title of both books suggest that Nietzsche viewed himself as a worthy antagonist of Jesus of Nazareth — the man heralded as the Messiah by Christians and honored as a prophet by a number of Muslims and Jews. As the reader realizes by now, this author does not hold Nietzsche in quite such high esteem as Nietzsche’s own self-laudatory statements invited his readers to do. When all is said and done, however, Nietzsche’s life and work were infused with some ‘all-too-human’ weakness as well as some marvellous gifts and some very real, if inconsistent, personal triumphs. Walter Kaufmann’s seminal book— seminal for English readers at least — was entitled Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Freud was among the first of many who have praised Nietzsche’s psychological and psychoanalytical insight. Both Martin Heidegger were among the first of a growing number who see Nietzsche as the most important philosopher since Plato. His poetry, tho limited in its total output and impossible to fully translate, is frequently recognized as splendid indeed. Knowing the moods of his poetry makes it easier for the reader to overcome some of the unconscious emotional resistance to understanding his ideas. (Knowing where someone is coming from doesn’t make his ideas correct, but it does help to understand their essential drift. Some have viewed his premonitions of the coming twentieth century catastrophic convulsions of European nationalism and militarism as being prophetic. I would say more. I think that Nietzsche is quite properly called a prophet. To be sure, at some fundamental level, Nietzsche rejected his calling — but he remains a prophet nevertheless. The reason that Nietzsche deeply influenced such recognized religious thinkers as Paul Tillich and Martin Buber and such artists as Thomas Mann is that he constantly addressed spiritual questions and issues. He has presented a medley of important ideas about language, art, and philosophy — and his work remains an important and needed challenge to those that believe that the pursuit of truth is a sine qua non for the religious life.
Our discussion may appear to have a somewhat wandering focus. In some cases, we have observed similarities between Nietzsche’s words and various Christian texts while in other cases, we have discussed differences between Nietzsche’s words and various Christian texts and ideas. In a few cases, the author has explored issues prompted by Nietszche’s work — but with minimal reference to Nietzsche’s own ideas or to traditional Christian teachings. It seems appropriate to let Nietzsche have the last word. The following passage may surprise some readers, but — as Nietzsche readers know well — when Nietzsche was not involved in the ‘heat of philosophical battles’ he would make some unexpected ‘concessions’.
#12. “How we too are still pious”
“...But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely tht it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flames lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is truth, that truth is divine...”
[Gay Science, #344]
Personal Afterword
At home in 1958 after having completed my first year of college, I chanced to find - among the books that once had belonged to my great grandfather - a small Everyman’s Library book entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra written by one Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in the early 1880’s. I soon became enthralled by Nietzsche’s strange new ideas about the “Death of God” and the atheistic injunctions to “Be true to the Earth!” promulgated by the prophet Zarathustra in a pithy aphoristic, almost Biblical style. A couple of weeks later weeks later I bought a Modern Library book with five works by Nietzsche. Over the next six years, especially, I read as much as I could read by Nietzsche - several books in translations from the early 1900’s by Oscar Levy, plus a few books in new translations by Walter Kaufmann. I even made some beginning efforts to read Nietzsche in German. During this time Walter Kaufmann’s writings about Nietzsche were also quite helpful in helping me to assimilate Nietzsche’s central ideas from the heady mix of language, ideas, and striking (and sometimes reckless) hyperbole which characterize Nietzsche’s writings. During the next four decades of my life I have read a considerable number of books by and about Nietzsche, but not usually with the same intensity and preoccupation.
During that same 1958 summer, however, only a few weeks after discovering Nietzsche I had a very powerful event in which I experienced the overpowering presence of What-or-Whom I could and can only call ‘God.’ As far as I can tell similar experiences have lead others to speak of “Jawveh’, ‘Allah’, ‘Zeus’, ‘I-am-that-I-am’, esse ipsum, and other such terms. This experience ended my own brief couple of years of ‘disbelief’ or ‘atheism.’ While hopefully my experience may have helped me to be a better person than I might otherwise have been, I want to stipulate ab initio that it did not make me a “good person” and especially not a “good person better than others who do not share my beliefs.” Beyond the mostly personal issues, however, my own life experiences and my philosophical, theological, and historical study have also shown me that some of the greatest evils in human history have been committed in the name of ‘God,’ ‘Jawveh,’ and ‘Allah.’ In countless instances these and other such terms referring to an Almighty Deity have been but words used to camouflage crimes and hypocrisy.
Furthermore, during those years and and in subsequent decades it has seemed to me that, some of the most telling and truthful criticisms of religious hypocrisy in Western Civilization — particularly in the last two centuries — has come from skeptics and atheists. One can list many examples of important secular critics of religious practice, but near the top of any list would be Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. So, by the early 1960’s I began to conceive that eventually I might write a book or more addressing the theme of what serious Christian believers could learn from some of Christianity’s most severe critics such as Nietzsche. I would, I thought, personally explore some of the implications of the theologian Karl Barth’s statement to the effect that:
“It was the church and not the ‘world’ which crucified Christ.”
My own life, however, has not unfolded as I had thought it might have done with regard to these early aspirations. During the past four decades plus I have wandered about both geographically and spiritually, spent several years in the Peace and Freedom movements of the sixties, intermittently returned to school to pursue various degrees, and have been a teacher for well over three decades. However, in December 2005 I retired from fulltime work and in May 2007 I handed in my very last grades.
Now freed from vocational pressures I have recently returned to the serious study of Nietzsche with particular attention to his particular importance for Christians. It now seems quite certain that I will never write a full book on Nietzsche and Christianity. Whatever I do, I will certainly never write anything particularly scholarly about Nietzsche — during the past half century the amount of writing about Nietzsche has exploded and my own originally modest foreign language learning skills are fading with age. Still, during the past century there have been only a few efforts to incorporate Nietzsche into the consciousness of thoughtful Christianity - and that which has been done is not always easily obtained [The Bibliography has a few examples.]. In this context, then, it is just possible that these reflections might constitute a modest, but useful contribution.
A POSTPONED INTRODUCTION
A ‘breviary’ is usually an epitome, a selection of quotations, Biblical verses, or brief writings which contain distilled highlites from some book, author, or topic deemed important by the collection’s editor. In contemporary usage a breviary usually refers to a religiously motivated selection useful for prayer or meditation. The role of the editor is usually limited and unobtrusive; he or she has selected the best fruit for those times when the reader does not have time to view the whole tree. Thus the collection is usually thematically bound by a mutual perspective and purpose shared by editor and reader.
In this case, however, I do not presuppose that the reader believes that there is a deep and genuine connection between the writings of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and the reported words of Jesus of Nazareth and other religious quotations cited below. As is well known Nietzsche was a passionately atheistic philosopher who rejected most religious beliefs and who especially rejected most Christian beliefs. In his Thus Spoke Zarathustra he proclaimed the “Death of God” and exhorted his listeners to be ‘true to the earth.’ His book Der Antichrist contains one of the most impassioned polemics against Christianity ever written. The ambiguous title is usually translated as The Antichrist, but is perhaps more aptly translated as The Anitichristian. In Der Antichrist Nietzsche disagreed with most of Jesus’s ideas and values as he understood them (altho he clearly admired Jesus’s life). More pointedly, however, in this book he utterly rejected the messages of Paul and the other authors of the Christian New Testament. Furthermore, in this and other works he frequently and pointedly criticized other famous Christians such as Tertullian, Luther, and Pascal.
Still, in spite of the striking and obvious dissonances in the lives and words of Jesus and Nietzsche, I have also found that underneath these dissonances there are some deep and instructive similarities and connections in both the words and spiritual interests of these two men. For one, both men frequently used hyperbole and very striking metaphors to express their most important thoughts. Both of them appeared to have thought that genuinely important or spiritual matters could not be expressed in strictly literal terms. Secondly, both men had a hatred for hypocrisy. To be sure, as I read the gospels, Jesus was also marked by a humility that was usually sorely absent in Nietzsche’s work. Furthermore, in the records that we have Jesus’s penchant for metaphor and parable was often limited by the context in which he was speaking. On the other hand some of Nietzsche’s more immoderate and even reckless use of hyperbole almost invites misinterpretation. This strikes me as being particularly true in those works written just before his January 1889 collapse and descent into madness.
In sum, this editor will examine some striking or interesting phrases by Nietzsche and relate them to some well known words attributed to Jesus and to various Christians. Some interspersed commentary will be needed as the spiritual similarities of interest are are neither obvious nor complete.
A final caveat. In this work I am not trying to defend, correct, or refute Nietzsche’s ideas. Furthermore, when I cite Nietzsche’s words I am not even trying to interpret his words as he understood them. Nietzsche frequently wrote in a style which suggested multiple or even contradictory interpretations. What I am saying is that his words readily lend themselves to certain concerns and thoughts that I can only deem as spiritual concerns. Furthermore, I believe that these concerns should be important to those who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was one of the best — if not the best — exemplar of human life on record. And, whether the reader agrees with me on either of these issues, I hope this effort makes it clear that Nietzsche’s thought was not antipodal to some very important religious and spiritual concerns which have been expressed thru the ages.
A Further Note for the more scholarly inclined.
In the work I do not give serious attention to Nietzsche’s disdain for liberal democratic theory, his occasional praise of cruelty, or his sometimes rigid notions of sexual ‘roles.’ His ideas on these subjects are frequently neither substantial nor helpful in furthering philosophical and ethical inquiry. Why Nietzsche held or expressed these views is psychologically quite interesting, but cannot be done justice in such a short piece as this.
Aphorisms List
0a. “...; for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” Luke 16:18, King James Bible (KJB)
“...; for the worldly are more astute than the other-worldly in dealing with their own kind.” Luke 16:18, New English Bible (NEB).
0b. It was the church and not the ‘world’ which crucified Christ. (Karl Barth, paraphrased from his Epistle to the Romans.)
#1-0. I, who cannot fly, must reach the distant mountains!! [LCHj]
#1a “Man is a rope, tied between the beast and the overman — a rope over an abyss.” (FWN)
#1b “Life must overcome itself again and again.” (FWN)
#1c “But it is with Man as it is with the tree. The more he aspires to the height and the light, the more strongly do his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep — into evil.” (FWN)
#1d You should love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long.” (FWN)
#1e You must not think I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring not peace, but a sword. (Jesus)
#1f. “Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes”
#5 That which doesn’t destroy or kill me, makes me stronger. (FWN)
#6 Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life. (FWN)
#7a Whatever is done from love occurs beyond good and evil. (FWN)
#7b Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants—love God as I love him, as his son! What are morals to us sons of God! (FWN)
#7c The written law condemns to death, but the spirit gives life. (Paul)
#8—10 Truth is the lie which serves us best! (Nietzschean)
#8a Alas for you lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like tombs covered with whitewash; they look well from the outside, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of filth. (Jesus)
#8b Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; you can tell a tree by its fruit. (Jesus)
#9a Every word is a preconceived judgment. (FWN)
#10a What are mankind’s truths. They are the irrefutable errors of man. (FWN)
#10b Insanity in something individuals is rare - but in groups, nations, and epochs it is the rule. (FWN)
#4. One repays a teacher poorly if one always remains a pupil. (FWN)
#11a “Faith” means not wanting to know the truth! (FWN)
#11b God fully intends for Heretics and Atheists to be a thorn in the side of religious hypocrites. (LCHj)
#12a The Kingdom of God is in you. (FWN)
#12b The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart. (FWN)
#12c ”The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! For, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Jesus)
#13a In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the Cross. (FWN)
#13b “Jesus Christ will be in agony until the end of the world.” (Pascal)
“Alas for you lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like tombs covered with whitewash; they look well from the outside, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of filth.” (Jesus)
“...; for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” Luke 16:18, King James Bible (KJB)
“...; for the worldly are more astute than the other-worldly in dealing with their own kind.” Luke 16:18, New English Bible (NEB).
I. Nietzsche's Wörter
I. Aphorisms by Nietzsche and others
#1a “Man is a rope, tied between the beast and the overman —
a rope over an abyss.” (Zarathustra, Prologue, section 4)
“Der Mensch is ein Seil, geknüpft zwischen Tier und Ubermensch — ein Seil über einem Abgrunde.” (Z, forword, 4.)
“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.” Psalm #8: 5, King James Version.
#1b “Life must overcome itself again and again.” [Zarathustra, II, On The Tarantulas.]
#2 “But it is with Man as it is with the tree. The more he aspires to the height and the light, the more strongly do his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep — into evil.” (Zarathustra, part I, On the Tree on the Mountainside)
“Aber es ist mit dem Mensch wie mit dem Baum. Je mehr er hinauf in die Höhe und hell will, um so stärker streben sein Wurzeln erdwärts, abwärts, in Dunkle, Tiefe — ins Böse.” (Z, section I, Vom Baum am Berge.)
#3 “You should love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long.” (Zarathustra, I, On War and Warriors.)
“Ihr sollt den Frieden lieben als Mittel zu neuen Kriegen. Und den Kurzen mehr als den langen” (Z, I, Von Krieg und Kriesvolke.)
“Love your enemies and pray for your persecuters.” Matthew 5:44
“You must not think I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring not peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law; and a man will find his enemies under his own roof” [Matthew 10:34-36].
“Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes” [Thomas #10 in the Five Gospels].
#4 One repays a teacher poorly if one always remains a pupil. [Z, I, On the Gift-giving Virtue.]
“Man vergilt einem Lehrer schlect, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt. Und waru wollt ihr nicht an meinem Kranze rupfen.” (Z, I, Von der schenkenden Tugend, part 3.)
“...das Leben sich immer wieder selber überwenden muss!” (Z, II, Von den Taranteln.)
“...das der Mensch eine Brücke sei un kein Zweck” (Z, III, Von alten und neuen Tafeln, section 3.)
“Was aus Liebe getan wird, gechieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse” (JGB, IV, #153.)
“Was mich nicht umbring, macht mich stärker.” (GD, I, 4.)
“Das ‘Himmelreich’ is ein zustand des Herzens.” (WM, I, 4.)
Nietzsche’s Actual Words
#4
One repays a teacher poorly if one always remains a pupil. [Z, I, On the Gift-giving Virtue.]
“Man vergilt einem Lehrer schlect, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt.” (Z, I, Von der schenkenden Tugend, part 3.)
#5
Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own agony it increases its own knowledge. [Z, II, On the Famous Wise Men.]
“Geist ist das leben, das selber ins Leben schneidet; an de eignen Qual mehrt es das eigne Wissen.” (Z, II, Von den berühmten Weisen.)
#6
Whatever is done from love occurs beyond good and evil. (Beyond Good and Evil, part 4, epigrams and interludes, #153)
“Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse.” (JGB, IV, #153.)
#7
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. (BYGE, part 4, epigrams and interludes, #156 [WK])
“Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse.” (JGB, IV, #153.)
Bibliographical Conventions and Bibliography
I have cited Walter Kaufmann’s translations of Nietzsche whenever available. Most of the translations are found in the Viking Portable Nietzsche (VPN) and Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (BWFN ). I have also provided the actual German words in those instances when I have been able to locate them. See both the Aphorism and Sayings List [above] and Bibliography [below] for more details.
The translations chosen for Jesus’s words are less consistent. Translations such as The New English Bible [1961] and the even more recent The Five Gospels [1993] correspond much more directly to the modern manner of speech than the four century old King James Bible [KJB]. On the other hand the King James Bible has a literary resonance that I still find irresistible at times. I hope the reader will not take it too much amiss that I will sometimes use the older translation and sometimes use newer translations.
Perhaps a more important issue is the question of determining Jesus’s actual words. My own approach is to utilize only those Biblical texts which strike me as a faithful paraphrase (if not the actual words) of Jesus’s teachings, teachings worthy of serious consideration. I do not speak here as a scholar, but as a moderately informed amateur who trys to write from the heart.
Deutsche Bibliographie
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1882;1887). Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft. Anaconda Verlag: Köln.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883). Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für alle und keinen in Friedrich Nietzsche: Also Sprach Zarathustra. Goldmann Klassiker: München. 269 pages.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1885). Jenseits von Gut und Böse.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1888). Götzendämmerung.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1895; 2003). Der Antichrist in “Friedrich Nietzsche: Der Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Dionysus-Dithyramben”. Goldmann Klassiker: München. 213 pages. (Written in1888, but first published in 1895).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche [Post-Humous; 1901, 1904, 1911]. Der Will zur Macht. [Published post-humously from Nietzsche's notes.]
Friedrich Nietzsche (1987). Brevier. [Wolfgang Kraus, Editor]. Diogenes Verlag: München. 151 pages.
English Bibliography
Walter Kaufmann, Editor &Translator (1954). The Portable Nietzsche. The Viking Press: New York. 687 pages.
Walter Kaufmann (1974). Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (4/e). Princeton University Press: Princeton. 532 pages.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1969). Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Walter Kaufmann, Editor &Translator. The Modern Library: New York. 845 pages.
Christians (1966). Good News for Modern Men: The New Testament in Today’s English [Robert G. Bracher, Translator]. American Bible Society: New York. 601 pages.
_____ (1961). The New English Bible. Oxford University Press: New York. 447 pages. [NEB]
