Answers to Nietzsche
Frederick Nietzsche has yet to be definitively answered. This is certainly not definitive, but I would suggest some lines of response to Nietzsche, who, by the way, deserved an answer from somebody. His main critique was that Christianity had inculcated such truthtelling and truthfulness that it was bound to devour itself. What did not devour itself (as he did) degenerated into mealy, sentimental liberalism, which was all about "gentle Jesus meek and mild". The cult of the Sacred Heart may have had something to do with that, and Schliermacher's erudite pietism most certainly did. It is worth noting that Nietzsche mainly targeted the weakened cultural Christianity, which was more concerned with being nice and helping everyone, something that took shape as the "Social Gospel". Nietzsche was hammering the emerging Anglo-American/Protestant piety, but he also included in his censure the declining and weakened (by the French Revolution) Catholic Church.
The obvious response to all of Nietzsche's problems was to immediately separate Western Christianity from its Gothic roots. The problem lay at the heart and genesis of Western Christianity, when it converted the roving Teutonic tribes. Pope Gregory the Great baptized their culture, but permitted them to keep their holy sites and their rituals and their seasons. This, while definitely successful from the outset, would prove a tragedy in the 1900s, as the tribes of Europe stopped naming themselves Christian names and rushed to the auto d'fe called World War II, frightened that the great national types would disappear from the face of the earth as the Burgundians, Jutes, and Swabians had (along with innumerable other Gothic tribes). http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FA05Aa01.html One can see today, in the revival of Vampire Goth and icons like Marilyn Manson, the yearning of many Teutonic bloods for one last revel in their pre-baptized state.
The separation of Christianity from its Gothic roots would have, unfortunately, run counter to the Faustian impulse of the West, its drive into the infinite, when it declared independence from the Byzantine East and pursued its own destiny in Europa proper. Pope Leo the Great negotiating with Attila was the first consecration and hint of the forthcoming Western balance of power between prelature and emperor, foreshadowing the feudal age, the warbands, and the truce of God, as well as interdiction and excommunication of entire royeumes (as King John learned to his hurt).
This Western separation of church and state represented nothing more nor less than the baptism and resurrection of Rome and Hellenic culture. This tension within the West worked very well, interspersed with periodic Revolutions and Reformations, until the present day, due to the suicide of Europa on the steppes of Russia and the fields of Flanders. A failure to be able to distinguish between what is Western and what is Christian undermined the faith, and gave Nietzsche both the torture and the excuse for his blasphemous assault on God. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GF01Aa02.html He saw himself as proclaiming what had already happened - "God is dead, and we killed Him". He prophecied unknowingly, as Caiphas the high priest did when he said of Jesus - "It is expedient that one man die for the nation" (rather than that Jesus start a Jewish revolt and bring down Rome's wrath).
Of course the West has always been more dynamic, barbaric, lax, and also questing than the East. Part of that is God-given. However, the obvious reply to Nietzsche was the opposite of what TS Eliot and the neoconservatives http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB23Aa01.html of every age try to do: de-culturalize Christianity and let the Francis of Assissis and the Saint Patricks take over. The West had avoided Reformation for years that way, channeling its energy into Benedictine, Cluniac, Carthusian, and Franciscan monastic movements. Those, along with the Irish eremites, were the monks who saved Europa. Their ghosts are with us still, in the presence of the living Christ. It remains to be seen what their blood accomplished. The blood of Saint Alban is the seed of the Western Church.
And so Nietzsche was only dialoguing with himself after all - himself, and all others who were living in their own personal hell, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. They were all good Europeans, just as the neoconservatives are good Americans. Being conservative isn't enough, and there will always come a false prophet like Nietzsche to cast fake pearls before real swine.
Meanwhile, the roots of Christianity endure. In the catacombs of Russia, the monasteries of Kosovo, the chastised Southern states who found Christ in the Campfires, the marginalized evangelical "fundies" who are scorned by the American liberal elite, and the faithful Catholics of Spain who held to the good old ways in the midst of Civil War. Not to mention the Third World, which now sends missionaries to us and represents a far more traditional version of Christianity than we practice over here.
Nietzsche was wrong. The Church did die, and so did Christ. It's just that it keeps coming back to life again, or being rediscovered, like a pearl of great price. And someone forgot to acquaint Nietzsche with the Eastern Branch of the faith, whose Magian culture is impervious (Providentially) to many of the weaknesses of the Gothic and Faustian impulse. http://www.orlapubs.com/AR/R146.html Welcome to reality, Nietzsche. The joy of the labyrinth isn't complete until you emerge with the pearl of great price.
The obvious response to all of Nietzsche's problems was to immediately separate Western Christianity from its Gothic roots. The problem lay at the heart and genesis of Western Christianity, when it converted the roving Teutonic tribes. Pope Gregory the Great baptized their culture, but permitted them to keep their holy sites and their rituals and their seasons. This, while definitely successful from the outset, would prove a tragedy in the 1900s, as the tribes of Europe stopped naming themselves Christian names and rushed to the auto d'fe called World War II, frightened that the great national types would disappear from the face of the earth as the Burgundians, Jutes, and Swabians had (along with innumerable other Gothic tribes). http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FA05Aa01.html One can see today, in the revival of Vampire Goth and icons like Marilyn Manson, the yearning of many Teutonic bloods for one last revel in their pre-baptized state.
The separation of Christianity from its Gothic roots would have, unfortunately, run counter to the Faustian impulse of the West, its drive into the infinite, when it declared independence from the Byzantine East and pursued its own destiny in Europa proper. Pope Leo the Great negotiating with Attila was the first consecration and hint of the forthcoming Western balance of power between prelature and emperor, foreshadowing the feudal age, the warbands, and the truce of God, as well as interdiction and excommunication of entire royeumes (as King John learned to his hurt).
This Western separation of church and state represented nothing more nor less than the baptism and resurrection of Rome and Hellenic culture. This tension within the West worked very well, interspersed with periodic Revolutions and Reformations, until the present day, due to the suicide of Europa on the steppes of Russia and the fields of Flanders. A failure to be able to distinguish between what is Western and what is Christian undermined the faith, and gave Nietzsche both the torture and the excuse for his blasphemous assault on God. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GF01Aa02.html He saw himself as proclaiming what had already happened - "God is dead, and we killed Him". He prophecied unknowingly, as Caiphas the high priest did when he said of Jesus - "It is expedient that one man die for the nation" (rather than that Jesus start a Jewish revolt and bring down Rome's wrath).
Of course the West has always been more dynamic, barbaric, lax, and also questing than the East. Part of that is God-given. However, the obvious reply to Nietzsche was the opposite of what TS Eliot and the neoconservatives http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB23Aa01.html of every age try to do: de-culturalize Christianity and let the Francis of Assissis and the Saint Patricks take over. The West had avoided Reformation for years that way, channeling its energy into Benedictine, Cluniac, Carthusian, and Franciscan monastic movements. Those, along with the Irish eremites, were the monks who saved Europa. Their ghosts are with us still, in the presence of the living Christ. It remains to be seen what their blood accomplished. The blood of Saint Alban is the seed of the Western Church.
And so Nietzsche was only dialoguing with himself after all - himself, and all others who were living in their own personal hell, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. They were all good Europeans, just as the neoconservatives are good Americans. Being conservative isn't enough, and there will always come a false prophet like Nietzsche to cast fake pearls before real swine.
Meanwhile, the roots of Christianity endure. In the catacombs of Russia, the monasteries of Kosovo, the chastised Southern states who found Christ in the Campfires, the marginalized evangelical "fundies" who are scorned by the American liberal elite, and the faithful Catholics of Spain who held to the good old ways in the midst of Civil War. Not to mention the Third World, which now sends missionaries to us and represents a far more traditional version of Christianity than we practice over here.
Nietzsche was wrong. The Church did die, and so did Christ. It's just that it keeps coming back to life again, or being rediscovered, like a pearl of great price. And someone forgot to acquaint Nietzsche with the Eastern Branch of the faith, whose Magian culture is impervious (Providentially) to many of the weaknesses of the Gothic and Faustian impulse. http://www.orlapubs.com/AR/R146.html Welcome to reality, Nietzsche. The joy of the labyrinth isn't complete until you emerge with the pearl of great price.
posted by Matthew C Smallwood | 1:35 PM
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