Francis Berger
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Spiritual Creativity? Imagine Nietzsche as a Christian

11/12/2022

14 Comments

 
I've written about Nietzsche sporadically on this blog. Those Nietzsche posts have inevitably drawn critical comments from some Christian or other lambasting me for having the audacity to write about a philosopher who was quite obviously and quite literally an anti-Christ. 

Yes, well . . .  I offer the following in response: Imagine if Nietzsche had been a Christian.

This line of thinking will strike most Christians as anathema. Nietzsche a Christian? Impossible! Nietzsche ranks among the most anti-Christian philosophers the dying West has ever produced! He rejected God outright. Moreover, he pined for some kind of classical pagan revival that put man and human creativity at the center of the cosmos.

I cannot rebut these points in any meaningful way aside from mentioning that though Nietzsche's ideas may have missed the point, his approach and motivation did not. 

The thunderbolt of creativity that was Nietzsche was exactly what Christianity needed in the late nineteenth century, and it is interesting to consider how Christianity may have developed had Nietzsche been an ardent Christian rather than a self-proclaimed anti-Christ. 

Nikolai Berdyaev touches upon this theme in The Meaning of the Creative Act and offers the following observations: 

From this tragic problem of Christianity there can be only one way out: the religious acceptance of the truth that the religious meaning of life and being is not wholly a matter of redemption from sin, that life and being have positive, creative purposes. 

The higher creative, positive being, though unattainable at the time when redemption was begun, when God was still transcendent to man, is attainable in another period of religious life, after redemption, when God in man is immanent. 

Salvation from sin, from perdition, is not the final purpose of religious life: salvation is always from something and life should be for something. Many things unnecessary for salvation are needed for the very purpose for which salvation is necessary -- for the creative upsurge of being. 

Man's chief end is not to be saved but to mount up creatively. For this creative upsurge salvation from sin and evil is necessary. From the religious viewpoint the epoch of redemption is subordinated to the epoch of creativeness. A religion of thirst for salvation and terror of perdition is only a temporary passage through a dualistic division. 

In various ways men of our modern time have felt that the sources of creativeness are to be sought neither in the New Testament religion of redemption nor in the Old Testament religion of law. Men have sought the sources of creativeness in antiquity. 

In the world of antiquity, in Greece, there were creative bases for an anthropological revelation: Greece is the homeland of human creativity, of beauty and knowledge. Every new impulse of human creativeness must of necessity turn back to the world of antiquity for its nourishment. 

This problem reached its acuteness in the life of Nietzsche. He burned with creative desire. Religiously, he knew only the law and redemption, neither of which contains the creative revelation of man. And so he hated God because he was possessed by an unfortunate idea that man's creativeness is impossible if God exists. 

Nietzsche stands on the world divide of an epoch of creativeness but cannot recognize the indissoluble relationship of a religion of creativeness with the religion of redemption and the religion of law; He does not know that religion is one and that in man's creativeness the same God is revealed as in the law and the redemption. 


Yes, but imagine if Nietzsche had recognized the indissoluble relationship Berdyaev notes. Moreover, imagine what Christianity could be if Christians began to explore beyond the religion of law and redemption. 
14 Comments
bruce g charlton
11/12/2022 21:43:26

@Frank - That really hits the spot! It's probably the first of your Berdyaev excepts that has resonated fully with me.

The history of Romantic Christianity has not many solidly Romantic Christians, but several more people such as Nietzsche, or (a big influence on N.) Ralph Waldo Emerson -- who were anti-Christian, yet could so easily (it seems) have made a connective-leap in the opposite direction, with potentially tremendous results.

Well, we shall just 'have to do it for them' - in imagination.

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Francis Berger
11/13/2022 08:10:06

@ Bruce - I get the sense that people like Nietzsche and Ralph Waldo Emerson had their finger on the pulse as far as the direction of what was required, but their outright rejection of Christ limited the extent to which they could travel in that direction. Also, as the example of Nietzsche demonstrates, attempts at substituting Christ with some other basis of freedom/creativity proved futile.

Berdyaev describes the sort of freedom and creativity espoused by N as the limits of autonomous freedom. People like N overcame the world to the highest degree possible without religion, but without religion, more specifically without Christianity, he slammed into the wall of "natural", temporal freedom and could go no further. It's an interesting perspective.

I am certain Nietzsche accepted salvation when it was offered to him, and I like to imagine that he is still creating in life everlasting, working together with God in the same sort of passionate, red-hot, fiery manner in which he created during mortal life

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johnson j
11/12/2022 22:00:57

I am probably one who criticized your appreciation of Nietchze in the past. And I must say this post has me intrigued but not yet fully convinced.

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Francis Berger
11/13/2022 08:16:13

@ johnson j - The German philosopher Max Scheler claimed that Nietzsche's fierce rejection of Christianity was actually nothing more than a fierce rejection of bourgeois, middle-class Western values -- values that Nietzsche equated with Christianity even though they were not really Christian values at all.

Scheler expounds on these ideas in his "Ressentiment", which I highly recommend if you are interested in exploring alternative perspectives on Nietzsche. The book is short, easy to read, and free online:

https://hscif.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Max-Scheler-Ressentiment.pdf

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lea
11/13/2022 09:37:23

Maybe it was not a random incident that i looked at 'really long movies' the other day, and came to the conclusion i have never seen anything by Bela Tarr, to then find out that 'Turin Horse' is based on a story that involves Nietzsche, even if it is not about him at all.

Since most of his movies seem to address slow processes that require full attention, there could be multiple messages for me in there, that i have avoided so far.

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JMSmith
11/13/2022 13:53:04

Nietzsche did not say "God is dead" as the conclusion of an argument for atheism. He said it as a sociological observation. The vital and living belief in God had gone out of Europe and what called itself Christianity was just the gangrenous stump of a severed limb. Christianity had been reduced to sentimental slop and guilty goo. This criticism was not altogether unfair then, nor is it now.

If Christians had been serious, they would have taken Nietzsche as the scourge of God. They would have seen that he was right when he said the faith that promised New Life had curdled into a demoralizing and devitalizing drug. Nietzsche was wrong about Christ but he was not wrong about what Christianity was fast becoming.

What was it fast becoming? Something like the house of an elderly couple which is very tidy because nothing new ever happens there. Like the house of an elderly couple who reminisce (or quarrel) about bygone days, dote on fading photographs, and wait to die.

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Francis Berger
11/13/2022 17:52:49

@ JM - Quite right. As noted in Zarathustra, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." Unfortunately, Nietzsche regarded Christianity as a chief cause of the malaise -- the decent into what he termed slave morality. Had he re-examined his position and channeled his yearning for a vigorous, creative upsurge of being through Christianity, he may have discovered that a vigorous, creative upsurge was compatible with a true vision of Christianity. Alas, he could see only the congealed, essentially spiritless form of Christianity that dominated his day; the same one that lingers on today.

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Lady Mermaid link
11/14/2022 02:32:21

I remember a complaint that "Christianity is the religion of being nice". A lot of churches function more like welfare services than spiritual beacons. Even the more spiritually sounder conservative versions of Christianity at least in the United States can sometimes act more as a vehicle for politics rather than transforming politics on a spiritual level.

Paganism has shown to be attractive to young people across the political spectrum. While a lot of neo paganism is nonsense, modern pagans do have a point about the dryness of modern Christianity. This is why I appreciate to work of the Inklings. They maintained traditional theology but went deeper into a more creative expression of Christianity.

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Anti-Gnostic
11/15/2022 01:06:29

Christianity went from being an implacable Imperial force to a pacifist sect unable to defend itself and completely subservient to the atheistic State. What happened?

What if, instead of being tortured and burned to death, I want to live and thrive, and for my family and friends to live and thrive? Does Christianity have an answer?

What would the Church Fathers say about tax dollars and government laws to support incredible, ungodly practices? Why isn't it our Christian duty to "come out from among them and be ye separate"? If the answer is "render unto Caesar," well, we are living in that future. I guess we just dutifully pay our taxes into extinction.

Like Richard Cocks said the other day evolution that is, God's Creation, would seem to favor a taller, physically fit, ethnocentric, heterosexual man who doesn't suffer fools. Why is it our Christian duty not to be such a man? (I say this as a 58-yo who's now dipped below 5'10" ;^) )

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Francis Berger
11/15/2022 17:52:02

@ Anti-Gnostic - "I want to live and thrive, and for my family and friends to live and thrive? Does Christianity have an answer?"

Officially, no. Unofficially, yes, I believe it does, but that requires taking an eternal rather than just a temporal view of life. In this way, thriving is not limited to this world but extends beyond it.

Superficially, that sounds like a cop out, but it isn't. After all, what good is our temporal thriving if eternally we fail?

I think it is good to want to thrive and have your family and loved ones thrive, but this desire should not eclipse the desire to have everyone thrive eternally.

Christianity -- official and proper -- has lost the second part of the equation, which means the first part is all but irrelevant (given the entropic and transitory nature of this world).

But that doesn't mean we can't strive for it ourselves.

Lady Mermaid link
11/14/2022 02:44:59

I really believe that Tolkien was on to something when he described his theory of subcreation. Man was meant to develop into a co creator w/ God starting back from Genesis. St. Athanasius stated "God became man so that man might become god” The deification of man is called theosis. It's been neglected in our churches, but it's time to re focus if we want to develop a positive motivation for faith.

I believe that the primary error of modernity was seeking to become sub creators independently from God. Man was not wrong to seek to broaden his understanding of the world. Individuality is not necessarily evil. However, trying to create w/o God leaves nothing but orcs, or mockeries of true creation.

Salvation is still essential. In fact, for most people it may be enough. A lot of people won't get serious about faith until the time of death (ex: good thief on the cross) However, God is calling each of us to develop into co-creators and not settle for mere fire insurance.

Here is an interesting article on Tolkien's theory of subcreation.

https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/2015-mirante-thesubcreationtheoryofjrrtolkien.html

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Francis Berger
11/15/2022 18:58:20

@ Lady Mermaid - Co-creation makes many Christians uneasy because they see no sign of it in the Gospels or anywhere else in revelation. Berdyaev argued that this is perfectly acceptable. In his view, co-creation is an anthropological revelation; a revelation that comes from within rather than from "up high".

Superficially, this sounds like wishful thinking or delusion, but it makes sense if you think about it. After all, any theosis God handed to a person from up high would not be theosis at all. Theosis is more of a meeting halfway, but man must take the first steps.

I agree with your assessment of the primary error of modernity, and I believe we are experiencing the collapse of the ultimate limits of that sort of God-less subcreation, which is now morphing quickly into all out destruction mode.

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Lady Mermaid link
11/16/2022 01:54:27

The term co-creation is not explicitly stated in the Scriptures or liturgy, but there are hints of it. The gospel according to John explicitly states that we are to become God's children. Jesus quoted the psalms saying "Ye are gods" when He was accused of blasphemy. At the end of John, he tells his followers they will do greater works than He. What could be greater than the resurrection?

Contrary to popular opinion of men becoming angels after death, St. Paul states that although men is created at a lower level than the angels, he will be raised to a higher state.

Now, I understand some Christians can become uncomfortable if this is misunderstood to replace or become independent from God. We will never take God's place nor would we want to. While we can add to creation, our source of life ultimately comes God.


If we cut ourselves from that source, we become incapable of creation. In fact, there was a twitter lament about the ugliness of our architecture despite our great wealth. It was correctly pointed out that the barrier to creating great art is spiritual, not technical. We see this in our low birthrates despite being more prosperous than any other time in history. We cannot co-create w/o God.

https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-fork-in-road.html

Francis Berger
11/16/2022 11:08:58

@ LM - Most Christians are comfortable with/accept subcreation because it maintains omni-god theology. Same goes for procreation. Both are vital, and both suffer when people become despiritualized, but co-creation is a step beyond those two forms of creation. The examples you refer to do provide hints but only hints. As such, they can be easily dismissed or re-interpreted; however, if they are accepted as valid, then they do indeed point to latent potential and the further development of Christianity.

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