Eyes Frightfully Alive
On Understanding and Misunderstanding the Christian Spirit
In the midst of an atomized world, increasingly described as meaninglessness by our youth, there is a palatable craving for the exaltation of the human spirit. Man does not long to merely survive, but to be truly alive.
Among the philosophers of the 20th century, Friederich Nietzsche stands in a class of his own. His influence and style give his writing an indelible mark that will not be replicated.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra Nietzche summarizes one of his primordial concepts: “The Will To Power.” In the book, Nietzche philosophizes through the character Zarathustra who is portrayed as a sort of philosopher/prophet figure. The goal of the book is to teach individuals how to become an Übermensch (Superhuman). It is a quest for true humanity, for true life. Nietzche displays how one should live to achieve this state with Zarathustra and the philosophical implications it has.
He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: ‘Will to existence’: that will—doth not exist! For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence—how could it still strive for existence! Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but—so teach I thee—Will to Power! Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of the very reckoning speaketh—the Will to Power!”— Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, ye wisest ones, do I solve you the riddle of your hearts. Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls. But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new surpassing: by it breaketh egg and egg-shell. And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil—verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces. Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good: that, however, is the creating good.—Let us SPEAK thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. And let everything break up which—can break up by our truths! Many a house is still to be built!—Thus spake Zarathustra.
According to Nietzche, true greatness is not found in observing and submitting to what is considered good, but rather creating for yourself new axioms of good and evil through an exercise of one’s “will to power.” It is might that always wins, and is not necessarily “right” per se, but determines what is right. One sees the consequences of this philosophy in the contemporary discourse with phrases like “my truth” and “my values.” Achieving this “Superman” also requires a denial of moral realism, not to be supplanted with a shallow relativism but to be superseded by a moral vision of the Übermensch.
Obviously, such a vision is radically at odds with traditional Christianity which professes humility and submission as virtues. The Christian worldview is not one that is recreated but received from antiquity, originally from Christ himself.
Nietzche’s Dialogue With The Saint
In his most famous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzche puts his character (Zarathustra) in dialogue with a character he terms “the saint” who speaks for a general Christian ethic.
“Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well?
Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me.”
Zarathustra answered: “What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto men.”
“Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable unto them: if only it be agreeable unto thee!
If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, and let them also beg for it!”
“No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.”
The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus: “Then see to it that they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not believe that we come with gifts.
The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me—a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?”
“And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?”
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!”—And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”
Nietzche sees the saint as hopelessly idealist and obsessed with the heavens, so obsessed as to say, “Love to man would be fatal to me.” The irony of course, in Nietzsche’s view, is the saint is obsessed with something that does not exist but is the creation of man. The saint scoffs at men and sees them as nothing compared to God. The saint embraces suffering, seemingly for no reason (in Nietzsche’s view). He turns down the opportunity to help man and yet insists on sharing them with their burdens. He sees merit in begging for alms, which Zarathustra responds to by insisting he is not poor enough to give. Nietzsche views Christianity as a sort of “slave morality” where weakness and suffering are viewed as being worthy of merit and strength is shunned and rejected.
The end of this passage contains one of Nietzche’s most famous phrases: “God is dead.” Oftentimes, this quote is used as an exaltation of secular humanism, celebrating the triumph of modernity over traditional religion. Seen within the broader context of Nietzche’s philosophy, this quote is anything but that. By this remark, Nietzche is making the point that the age of the values embodied by the saint has come and gone, and there is vacuum left. The attempt of philosophers like Immanuel Kant to derive categorical binding moral rules seemingly conjured out of thin air frustrated Nietzche. Man would be better off embracing the “Will To Power” and recognizing that moral good and evil were merely concepts of his own creation.
In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche describes the Christian experience of faith as:
a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably PAINFUL, that all the past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdism, in the form of which "faith" comes to it. Modern men, with their obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, "God on the Cross".
Nietzche identifies religion as a neurosis and in stark contrast to modern humanity. He argues that Christianity makes one a slave, and deeply wounds the human spirit. He later criticizes the practices of celibacy, solitude, and asceticism that have been traditionally embraced by Christianity. That said, perhaps his final point, that modern man has lost the scandalizing nature of the cross, contains a stark insight. The Western world has been predominantly Christian for the last several centuries, and the cross has become a somewhat normal symbol in daily life. We never stop to think of how scandalizing this was and is, as scripture calls it a “stumbling block” and “foolishness” to non-Christians of the time.
Though Nietzche’s vision of humanity is as insightful as it is terrifying at times, it is still an error. The saints do not hate humanity, the saints are humanity par excellance. St. Irenaeus of Lyon is quoted as saying “The Glory of God is man made fully alive.”
The second Vatican Council further expanded on this idea in one of its constitutions:
The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.
Man’s role in the universe cannot properly be understood without understanding his origin and purpose, his answer to the old Platonic question from the Phaedrus: “ὦ φίλε Φαῖδρε, ποῖ δὴ καὶ πόθεν” (Where did you come from and where you are going”). God himself answers this question by referring to himself as “ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τὸ ὦ” (I am the Alpha and the Omega) (Revelation 1:8). He is our beginning and end (the greek alphabet starts with alpha and ends in omega). God himself is both our origin and our destination. Any love of humanity must consider the purpose for which he was made. Oftentimes, modern Christianity can be conceived of us a half-hearted sentimentality that your “nice” people of days gone past subscribed to. It defines itself in terms of what it opposes, it is defined by a list of prohibitions, and odd boundaries. On the contrary, Christianity is not a list of boundaries to adhere to while living within the secular world, but a completely different way of life.
The heart of a Christian is not pacified, restrained, much less repressed. It burns with a love that cannot contain itself, into it consumes everything in its wake. This much is promised to the Christian through scripture, as Ezekiel tells us: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh.”
The saints of today, like the saints of the past may appear as normal human beings walking among us. Perhaps they may be quiet, slow to speak, or unassuming. They burn with a zeal and a life known to few who have ever lived. They find their lives in losing them, they are exalted in their humility, and they are more human than you or I. It is in this sense then, that G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy describes the medieval saint as “starved to his crazy bones, with eyes frightfully alive.”