FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AD 1844-1900
Daniel 4:28-32 “All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty? The words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven, “This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.”
Friedrich’s father, Karl Ludwig used Luke 1:66 for his baptismal verse: “Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, ‘What then is this child going to be?’” Friedrich was aspiring to follow in the steps of his father and grandfather and go into the pastorate. At the age of 17 he read Ludwig Feuerbach’s skeptical book on Christianity and it began to pave the way for unbelief to enter Friedrich. This was also during the time when German higher criticism and humanistic relativism began to affect the Lutheran church.
He began to dismantle the Judeo/Christian worldview in the west. In his own testimony he pronounced to the world that “the old god is abolished and I myself will henceforth rule the world,” and that he would be “the most terrible opponent to Christianity.” He later identified himself as the Anti-Christ in a book published with the same title in 1888. Three months after he made the statement about being the anti-Christ he lost his mind and for the last 11 years of his life he was certifiably insane. At the end he said: “I am dead because I am stupid… I am stupid because I am dead.”
Not only did Nietzsche speak about the death of God, but also about the death of traditional religion. Some would say that he embraced “nihilism” (rejection of all religious and moral principles). Instead of realizing that we are made in the image and likeness of God his plan for becoming ‘what one is’ was based upon instincts through his/her various faculties. “Through psychological struggle one must craft who they are through ‘self-realization’ (we see this idea of self-realization being taught in our public schools today) without any outside help – like God.” His tortured type of reasoning would be that we are to affirm that there is no God, and we pretend that there is one.
In doing research on these men I am amazed how much influence men like Nietzsche had and still have today on society, especially in modern philosophy and psychology in our universities. What an irony that a man who, for eleven years was certifiably insane, would bear the title of ‘humanist psychologist.’
It would seem that Nietzsche could not deny the existence of God or Christ, but he showed a very real hatred towards Christianity. He said: “Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in ‘another’ or ‘better’ life.”
It was Nietzsche who said: “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Isn’t this the philosophy that we have in our post-modern political, economic world today, facts do not count, only the interpretations. When talking to Pilate Jesus said: “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37) Truth for Nietzsche was: “Illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”
For us who are Christians and adhere to some of our main doctrines of Sovereignty of God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and heaven and hell for Nietzsche “would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one’s own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of one’s eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.”
The stronghold that these men have built over the centuries demands believers in Christ to know what we believe and to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us.