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E. Wilson Myers
2001
God Is Dead: A Comparison of Nietzsche and the Death of God Theology
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was perhaps best known for pronouncing
that “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!”
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science 388). Thinkers of the death of God
theology of the American 1960s such as Thomas Altizer insisted
that “we must recognize that the death of God is a historical
event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence”
(Christian Atheism 61). Although these two conceptions of the
death of God differed, they had several aspects in common: they
faced opposition, they thought religion was a product of human
necessity, they acknowledged the importance of coexisting opposites,
they expressed a certain humanism and interest in individuality,
they saw God and religion as products partially of human influence,
and they saw that Christianity diminished to a nominalistic
existence. Friedrich Nietzsche and the death of God theology
thinkers recognized the death of God as the logical result of
the secularization of their societies and the change in their
culture’s ideas, and so they insisted on a parallel secularization
of Christianity.
Nietzsche’s bold belief in God’s death grew out of his firm
resolution that Christianity was a negative force. Christianity’s
stress on the virtue of such things as meekness and poverty
did not inspire people to better themselves; it simply made
laziness and lack-of-progress appear to be acceptable if not
recommended (De Botton 237). In addition to harmfully encouraging
mediocrity, Christianity (according to Nietzsche) dangerously
denied the importance of the individual by proposing predefined
paths to supposed greatness. Christianity, therefore, robbed
humanity of the personal vitality of living. According to Nietzsche’s
belief in the necessary coexistence of good and evil, good things
stemmed from hardships. Evil was a force to be embraced as part
of the concomitant opposites of reality. On the other hand Christian
theology perceived evil as a threat and insisted on its eradication
(Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols 417). This unacceptance
of the idea of necessary evils did not resound with Nietzsche’s
own ideology. Nietzsche’s views were often discordant with religious
tenets, which led him to question the validity of many Christian
claims.
Another major clash between Christian beliefs and Nietzsche’s
thought lay in the question of how to uncover the ideal self.
Christianity insisted that identity was a product of spiritual
inquiry and that people turned to religion and God out of emotional
necessity (Nietzsche, The Gay Science 395). On the other hand
Nietzsche asserted that core character existed within the individual
and could not be grasped by exterior means. The ideal man that
lurked beneath external superficialities was not the same man
that was the model Christian. Nietzsche’s Übermensch (over man)
had a well-defined, self-created individuality and moral code
much different from Christianity’s imposed idea of goodness.
In overcoming societal influences, the Übermenschen acknowledged
their animalistic natures and knew not to attempt to gain an
extraordinary position within existence. Übermenschen focused
on the present instead of a sort of ideal religious afterlife,
and in doing so they accepted the self-control necessary to
live amid the world’s paucity of certainty. The certain contrast
between the Christian and Nietzschian ideal man could only add
to Nietzsche’s disagreement with some core Christian canons.
Nietzsche’s only glimpse of hope for saving Christianity was
the acceptance of God’s death as a new part of it. Mankind killed
God in that it took part in the deterioration of the idea of
Him. The contemporary notion of God was so convoluted by time
and man’s own beliefs that it held little truth. Churches became
memorials standing in His memory and were only ostensibly God’s
houses. Nietzsche considered that Christians draw “from the
conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian
belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth,
that the truth is divine. . . . But what if this itself always
becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing any longer proves
itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and falsehood;
what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent lie?”
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science 392). For Nietzsche truth was the
absolute authority; so, if God was a lie created by generations
past then Christianity had a false basis. God’s existence was
also false to Nietzsche as a result of his belief that nothing
subsisted beyond the whole of the universe. The idea of a supreme
being in addition to the sphere of existence created a challenge
to the reality of the universe (Nietzsche, The Twilight of the
Idols 417). Denying the existence of God was in effect accepting
Truth and allowing for the continuance of life on Earth.
The death of God theology of the 1960s drew upon the concepts
of several earlier thinkers and philosophers (among them Nietzsche)
in order to develop a secular Christianity for contemporary
America. In denying the existence of God by various means, these
new thinkers began to weave fresh meaning into Christian theology
and to create a Christianity that was free from God’s presence.
The idea of God’s being an idol molded by society grew out of
Sören Kierkegaard’s view of the distortion of the gospel. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer spoke to the need for secularization of the church
and the concepts of the Bible. Thomas J. J. Altizer was influenced
by the idea of opposites of Buddhism and William Blake. After
drawing ideas from various individual sources, the men of the
death of God theology began to develop an ideology that partly
resulted from historical influence.
Mankind’s history, not just personal beliefs, had a great influence
on the new religious concepts expressed in the 1960s. For example
the emergence of capitalism and scientific reasoning liberated
America from its earlier dependence upon uncertainty. Not knowing
was previously a cause of reliance upon religious answers and
faith in God almighty. The separation of church and state was
another step towards the secularization of society (Toward a
Hidden God 84). People began to doubt Christianity’s validity
further when faced with the tragedies of war, sadism, and other
worldly ills (Toward a Hidden God 87). The secular, troubled
twentieth century seemed to be a place where God could not possibly
exist.
Thomas J. J. Altizer expressed the view that God’s death in
society was in part the result of an overall secularization
of America. Taking it literally that Christ embodied God, Altizer
asserted that Christ’s death resulted in an actual death of
God (Carey and Ice 19). Traditional beliefs formed in ages in
which religion was central to both society and government, so
people’s lives were logically religious. As America developed,
it grew away from these spiritual origins. The existence of
a sanctified God amid a secular society resulted in a conflict
that needed to be resolved by using opposites. Removing God
from Christianity would lead to a worldly religion capable of
enduring. Following the influences of Buddhism and William Blake,
Altizer stressed the importance of the reconciliation of opposites.
Secular ideas were the tool that could return America to the
sacred since they, and not religion, governed society.
A belief in the importance of empiricism led Paul van Buren
to conclude that God was nonexistent. He thought that nothing
could be if it could not be explained. He insisted that the
Gospel was only true in its empirically-defined aspects (Shideler
115). Since the concept of God is beyond human language and
expression, he denied God’s being.
Men such as William Hamilton believed that love was the only
consolation left for him and his fellow theologians. Love had
the potential to solve the social, political, and technological
problems of the twentieth century. This idea led him to stress
the importance of Jesus Christ in a society in which the God
of faith was dead (Hamilton 213). Amid the ignorance and fear
of early Christianity, the belief in God was necessary; but
contemporary America did not share that same need. On the other
hand Jesus did exist to Hamilton. He embodied human compassion
and, therefore, taught mankind to serve his fellow man (Hamilton
214). Disregarding traditional views of Jesus, Hamilton believed
Christ to be more of an idea than a physical man (Adolfs 88).
Jesus was the mindset that aided people in supporting one another
in a country where God ceased to be.
As a result of his beliefs in cultural relativism, Gabriel Vahanian
could not agree with America’s ostensible concept of God. Vahanian
deemed man incapable of knowing God’s true essence, and so the
human perception of his existence was then an idolization created
as a result of contemporary culture. As a result of its being
a product of early Christian and Greek ideas, early Christianity’s
vision of God could not be relevant to twentieth-century America.
Therefore, if God existed at all, the expression of his presence
needed to be redefined. American Christianity needed to adapt
to the country’s own secularization in order to embrace a spiritual
ideology that its people could comprehend. This definition of
God’s death left open the opportunity for God’s return to American
beliefs after an alteration in creed.
The new Christianity (sometimes deemed atheist) of the 1960s
embraced a secularization of religion that did not escape opposition.
The thinkers were criticized for turning Christianity into mere
humanism in extracting God from religion and only leaving Jesus
(Christian Atheism 62). Some deemed the death of God theology
as simply ridiculous saying that the unbeliever was “like a
six-year-old boy saying that there [was] no such thing as passionate
love – they just [had]n’t experienced it [sic].” But even religious
figures such as Francis B. Sayre (the Episcopalian dean of Washington’s
National Cathedral) said that they were unsure of what God meant
(Toward a Hidden God 83). The proposition of a new religious
order threatened the mainstream belief system, so it could not
endure without challenge.
In addition to both meeting opposition, Nietzsche and the death
of God thinkers both thought that perhaps man formed his own
perception of God out of his necessity to trust in a higher
power. In early Christianity man needed to believe in order
to have security and to explain his humanity. The modern world
did not require this comfort since it distanced itself from
spiritual reliance and turned to reason and technology among
other explanations (Borowitz 93). Nietzsche was in accordance
with this idea of religion’s fulfilling a certain need. In surpassing
the weakness that caused need, man surpassed Christianity in
its traditional form (Nietzsche, The Gay Science 395).
Traditional Christianity was discordant with the shared belief
in the importance of coexisting opposites. While Christianity
encouraged the eradication of all evils, Nietzsche stressed
the importance of hardships and strife in birthing all good
things. In discussing the reconciliation of opposites, Altizer
suggested a change in Christianity to incorporate the conflict
between spirituality and secularization. He never hinted at
eliminating the conflicting state of affairs as Christianity
might recommend. Evil and conflict were tools for refining Christianity
according to those people who believed God to be dead.
Nietzsche and the death of God theologians both believed that
contemporary God was a product of man’s own molding. Nietzsche’s
celebration of the individual in contrast with Christian humility
paralleled the 1960s view that man held enough personal power
to affect his own religion. This humanism was a large part of
the new Christianity that they proposed. Nietzsche went so far
as to claim that man’s influence on the concept of God contributed
to God’s death. The dearth of truth in the human perception
of God rendered Him meaningless and, therefore, killed him.
This similar assertion appeared in the philosophy of the 1960s
in the form of beliefs such as Vahanian’s contention that cultural
relativism contorted the perception of God. That man was easily
influenced by his surroundings caused man’s interpretations
to hold little legitimacy. The idolatry of God and humanity’s
formation of His image influenced Nietzsche and the theologians
in their assessments of the validity of Christian beliefs.
In suggesting that Christianity evolved to a point where it
only ostensibly held real meaning concerning God, Nietzsche
and the death of God theologians in effect asserted that Christian
thought became a matter of nominalism. The name and concept
of God only held import within the parameters of a society’s
own thoughts, and God was meaningless in the context of contemporary
America. The religious incorporation of secularization appeared
in such contexts as the stress by Hamilton and others on Jesus
Christ’s importance. According to both the ideas of the 1960s
and Nietzsche, Christianity needed to adapt in order to survive.
The history of America brought the nation to a position where
spiritual ideas could only exist as a part of the secular world;
and in asserting that God was dead, Nietzsche and the thinkers
of the death of God theology acknowledged this condition of
society.
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