Was Nietzsche Right?

March 8, 2015

God’s Not Dead—Was Nietzsche Right?   

Genesis 21:33; Psalm 90:1-4               NOTES NOT EDITED

SIS—Christians and church can kill God’s influence in a community through apathy or empty religiosity.

"God is dead!" So said atheist, Frederich Nietzsche.  Nietzsche used this phrase several times but the most famous comes from his work titled:  “The Gay Science,” and again in “Thus Spake Zarathustra.”  Nietzsche, who despised Christianity a religion of weakness and pity, put the words “God is dead,” in the mouth of a madman running through the streets with a lantern yelling, “God is dead.  God is dead and we have killed him!”  Nietzsche was pointing out the obvious condition of his world in the late 1800’s.  What Nietzsche exposed was the state of the Christian church in Germany.  One author summed up Nietzsche famous phrase by saying, “What Nietzsche is concerned about in relating the above is that God is dead in the hearts and minds of his own generation of modern men - killed by an indifference that was itself directly related to a pronounced cultural shift away from faith and towards rationalism and science.”  In other words the Christian churched killed God through apathy and empty religion that could not stand up against the assault from growing secularism.  God was dead and Nietzsche was glad.  Now, the way opened for man to become his own god as Nietzsche would propose.

What if it is true? What if God were to die?  Adolf Hitler, with the help of Nietzsche's sister, latched on to a modified version of Nietzsche's philosophy. Though Hitler push Nietzsche's thought to a place Nietzsche had not foreseen, Hitler did reveal the ultimate expression of the "God is dead" philosophy. There is no way around it: without an eternal, self-existent ground of all truth, "anything goes." The ideas of right and wrong, or any virtues, melt like a snowflake on a hot griddle. What Nietzsche wanted to point out is what society would look like--and in his view, SHOULD look like--when the idea of the Christian God in particular (or any god in general) no longer held sway over the hearts of mankind. Nietzsche proposed the rise of the "Ubermensch,” or Superman, which is a category of men who inflict their will on others without reservation, mitigation, or even contemplation.  Hitler is precisely the kind of man that the death of God would produce.  Thank God, God is NOT dead. (And yes, I realize that is redundant, but it is for affect). God cannot die. However, God's influence in and through His people CAN, and I would say to a large degree, has died. As we have allowed scientism and unfettered rationalism to replace the Judeo-Christian world-view we have indeed fulfilled the words of Nietzsche's Madman, "God is dead, and we have killed Him."

As I said, God did not die because God CANNOT die.  Let’s read what the Psalmist said in this regard:  Psalm 90:1-4.

Rather than dismiss Nietzsche’s idea as the ranting of a madan—Nietzsche did in fact go insane before he died—let’s look at the proposition, “God is dead” from several different angles.

1.  Historically

As I mentioned, Nietzsche coined the phrase in the late 1800’s (The Gay Science was published in 1882.  Nietzsche father was a Lutheran minister, who died when Nietzsche was only five.  It is apparent that any faith Nietzsche’s father had did not transfer to Nietzche.  Nietzsche wrote: 

I have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning and still less as an event in my life: in me it is a matter of instinct.  I am too inquisitive, too questioning, too high spirited to be satisfied with such clumsy answers.  God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers—fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!

Nietzsche felt that Christianity was a weak religion full of pity driving a herd of weak-minded cattle.  Nietzsche despised weakness.  He despised pity.  He despised Christianity.  In his day in Germany, Christianity fulfilled all of Nietzsche’s prognostications about it.  In 1880 Germany, Christianity was eroding under a waterfall of intellectualism and moral apathy, spurred on by a new antagonistic attitude from science.  It is accurate to say, Christianity was dead—at least any Christianity that resembled anything in the Bible.

That is the historical basis for the “God is dead” proposition.  Eight decades later (1966) Nietzsche’s “Death of God” philosophy would resurface.  The 60’s were a tumultuous time.  There were riots in the streets and civil unrest in many neighborhoods.  The Civil Rights March to Selma was in 1965.  Famed atheist, Madalyn Murray Ohair, had successfully led a the government to remove prayer from school.  Removing Bible reading would soon follow.  The culture in the 60’s seems like it had been tossed into a pot hanging over a fire and being stirred vigorously. Nothing seemed stable. Into that boiling cultural cauldron was tossed a provocative article from Time Magazine. For the first time in the magazine's history the cover was without a picture or drawing. The cover contained three simple words in red letters upon a black background. The words asked the question: "Is God Dead?" (Time, April 8, 1966). This edition prompted more responses from readers than at any time in the magazine's history: over 3500 letters to the editor. Readers were furious. After all, at this time in America's history polls showed that over 97% believed in the existence of God. How could a mainstream magazine suggest that "God Is Dead?" Well, polls can be deceiving--as equally deceiving as we can be to ourselves--while 97% vigorously stood for the existence of God, only about 27% reported in polls that they were "very religious." The faith of America by the 1960's was barely skin deep. The thin veneer of faith has since slowly eroded to nearly nothing in our day. Christianity seemed as irrelevant and ineffective as it did eight decades before when Nietzsche coined the phrase, “God is dead.”

God cannot die of course, but it seems clear that the influence He had on hearts and minds--upon the common American culture since our founding--has suffered grave decline. That's really what Nietzsche was getting at in 1882 when he sent a "Madman" running through the streets carrying a lantern and shouting, "God is dead. God is dead and we have killed him." While I understand that God is not dead and cannot die, those words of the atheist, Nietzsche, do convict me.  Have I killed God's influence in my life and my society through self-centeredness and apathy?  Have I killed God’s influence in my world through neglect as our society edges dangerously close to the precipice of total secularization thorough-going apathetic religiosity?

Historically, Nietzsche had a strong case for the death of God in society, and that case seems even stronger today.  Let’s look at it from another angle.

2.  Biblically (Genesis 21:33; Psalm 90:1-4)

What does the Bible say about the nature of God?

^{Gen. 21:33} Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and there he called on the name of Yahweh, the Everlasting God.

^{Ps. 90:1-4} Lord, You have been our refuge in every generation. ² Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God. ³ You return mankind to the dust, saying, “Return, descendants of Adam.” ⁴ For in Your sight a thousand years are like yesterday that passes by, like a few hours of the night.

The text in Genesis refers to a treaty between Abraham and non-Jewish king, Abimelech.  Abimelech witnessed how God blessed Abraham and wanted a covenant with Abraham “forever.”  In sealing the covenant, the only guarantee of the everlasting nature of the covenant was sealing it with the favor of the Everlasting God.  The name El Olam, or “God Everlasting” is used several times in the O.T. to refer to the nature of Yahweh, the One True God.  He is eternal.  This means God exists outside of and apart from time. 

The writer of Psalm 90 uses that same term, “olam,” and enlarges upon its meaning with several analogies.  God gave “birth” to the earth.  God has always been throughout “every generation.”  Philosophers from the beginning of critical thought in the 6^th century B.C. with Thales have sought to understand the nature of the “One Supreme Being.”  Ancient philosophers referred to this being as the “arche,” or the being that accounts for all other being.  Later philosophers would refer to this Being as, the “Necessary Being,” or the One without which nothing else could ever “be.”  To ask the question, “Where did God come from,” is a misuse of the term, “God.”  By definition God is the One from which everything has come, “creation ex nihilo,” our of nothing.  In the words of the sign that rested upon the desk of President Harry Truman, when it comes to essence of all being, “The Buck Stops Here”—that is with God.  God is defined as that which has always been before there was any been to be.

God cannot die because death is a “return” to a previous state.  Notice verse 3:  You return mankind to the dust.  Recall that it was from dust Adam was made and to dust the body of Adam returned after death.  But, where did the “essence” of Adam, the being, return?  Look what the Book of Ecclesiastes has to say about the “return”:

^{Eccl. 12:7} and the dust returns to the earth as it once was,

and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

Man can (and does) die because he has someplace (someone) to return to—God.  Aside from the fact that God is spirit, He cannot die because there is no point to which He can return, and not former state of being that He can occupy.  He is like a geometric figure of a circle with no beginning and no end.

No matter how far one can regress in his or her mind in regard to causes, at some point the mind must come to the point of a “Primary Cause,” or a “Necessary Cause,” that can answer the question framed by the genius Gottfried Liebniz who asked, “why is there something rather than nothing?”  Philosophers, except diehard skeptics, have always realized that ex nihilo, nihil fit—from nothing, nothing can be made.  If there ever were a time when nothing existed, nothing would exist.

God is the “Eternal One.”  He cannot die because He Himself is life.  He cannot return to dust, for He never was dust.  He cannot return to a former state, for He never was a “former” anything.

If you have ever had much conversation with young children, say 3 to 5 years old, you will no doubt have been asked:  “where did clouds come from?” The answer I usually give is, “God made the clouds.”  I know that is not scientifically sufficient, but I said I was having a conversation with a child, not Einstein.  That will usually satisfy them in regard to clouds, but will almost always lead to a follow-up question:  “Who made God?”  To that, I very authoritatively and lovingly say, “Nobody made God.  He has always been God.”  At that, they usually scamper away quite satisfied that all is well and the universe is in safe hands.

You cannot explain the existence of God scientifically because science requires observation of repeatable and quantifiable events.  God is neither repeatable nor quantifiable.

God is the Necessary Being (the philopher’s Prime Mover and the physicists initial singularity), from which everything else “lives and moves and has it’s being” Acts 17:28.

God is very much alive.  In fact, there is reported to have been an act of graffiti on a subway train wall that had two parts.  Part one was the famous line:  “God is dead,” signed, Nietzsche.  Underneath someone else came along and wrote:  “Nietzsche’s dead, signed, God.”  I think that about sums it up. 

Biblically God has not died, and God in fact cannot die.  Let’s look, however, at that proposition from a “cultural” angle.

2.  Culturally (Mark 6:1-6)

I don’t want to spend a great deal of time belaboring the point that the influence of godly principles in our present culture has diminished to the point of almost being undetectable.  Kevin Shrum, a writer for the Christian Post Magazine analyzes the post-Christian condition of American culture when he writes:  How does one live as a Christian in an era where same-sex marriage is now the norm, where homosexuality is openly celebrated, where hypocrisy in the church is consistently exposed, where atheism is not just an alternative intellectual option, but a hostile enemy, where Christianity is viewed as the enemy and not the founder and friend of America, and where the "spiritual shallowness" of many Christians, especially evangelical Christians, is being exposed for what it is - an Americanized version of cultural Christianity that is not authentic, genuine, or biblically orthodox?

The most telling part of that analysis is the line stating, “Christianity is viewed as the enemy and not the founder and friend of America.”  Would the Founders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and nearly 200 others, even recognize America today.  What would they think about a judge ruling that a convicted Army traitor named, Bradley Manning, who is serving a 35 year sentence for violating the “Espionage Act,” can not be referred to as “he,” but must be referred to by the Army as, “she,” or Private Manning.  There is no biological reason to refer to Manning as a woman.  Everything biological down to his DNA say that “he” is a “he” not a “she.”  But, we live in this crazy, post-Christian world where culturally we are as blind as bats when it comes to reason and good sense.

Would our Founding Father’s even recognize America?  A culture that penalizes the killing of a bald eagle but legitimizes the killing of human babies?  America has drifted so far from our moorings as a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles that we would not even recognize our nation’s baby pictures.

I could site hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples of America’s slide toward a full fledged anti-Christian culture.  We are not just “post-Christian,” but closer to anti-Christian as a culture.  Christian churches no longer have much influence on our communities.  In far too many Christian congregations, at least in regard to culture, the evidence seems to point to Nietzsche being correct:  “God is dead.”  Is it possible that God’s influence, for all practical purposes, can die in a given culture or community.  Well, the answer is:  yes, AND, no.

The Bible actually addresses this very issue.  In Mark 6:1-6.

He  went away from there and came to His hometown,  and His disciples  followed Him. ² When the Sabbath  came, He began to teach  in the synagogue,  and many who heard Him were astonished. “Where did this man get these things?” they said. “What is this wisdom  given to Him, and how are these miracles  performed by His hands? ³ Isn’t this the carpenter,  the son of Mary,  and the brother of James,  Joses, Judas,  and Simon? And aren’t His sisters here with us?” So they were offended  by Him. ⁴ Then Jesus said to them, “A prophet  is not without honor  except in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his household.” ⁵ So He was not able to do any miracles  there, except that He laid His hands on  a few sick  people and healed  them. ⁶ And He was amazed  at their unbelief.

We have looked at what Nietzsche implied in a point of history when he declared the influence of Christianity had died by the sword of the apathy and empty religiosity of the very ones that proclaimed to follow Christ.  We saw biblically that God cannot die.  But, what about culturally?  Is there a sense in which the influence of God can no longer be evidenced in a particular place or culture?  Well, the answer is, “yes AND no.”

Jesus returned to the town of His boyhood.  Friends and family were around him.  He had become somewhat of a celebrity.  Demons had been driven out.  The sick and infirm had been miraculously healed.  So great was His fame that those that watched Him grow up were both amazed and skeptical.  Why, He was just the son of a carpenter?  He had never exhibited any kind of “miraculous power” in the 30 or so years He had lived in Nazareth.  The people were offended by any notion that Jesus was “all that” we’d say in today’s vernacular.

There skepticism killed their faith and their dead faith killed the movement of God’s power among them.  Matthew says of these people:  ^13:58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

So, a lack of passionate faith and sacrificial devotion to God can “kill God’s influence” in a particular place among a particular people.  In this sense, in regard to culture, God can die—that is, His influence.  So the answer to the question:  Cuturally, can God die, the answer would be “yes.”

However, it is not that simple.  Jesus simply went on His way about the business of the Father.  Mark 6, verse 6b says:  Now He was going around the villages in a circuit, teaching.  God’s Kingdom will come—with or without us!  It can come “with our participation” and we will see God’s miraculous power in our midst.  Or, the Kingdom will come “without our participation” and we will see nothing of the movement of God and will become nothing more than a “monument” to faith rather than a “movement of faith.”  So, to the question of the cultural death of God in our world, the answer is, “no, God is always at work somewhere through someone bringing His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.”

Do you hear Nietzsche’s madman running up and down the streets declaring, “God is dead. God is dead.  And the apathy and empty religiosity of the Institutional Church has killed Him!”

Historically, that is the essence of what Nietzsche meant.  Biblically, it is an absurd and even nonsensical notion.  Culturally, however, the matter gets mixed reviews—yes, AND no.  There is another angle we must consider in looking at the proposition, “God is dead.”  We must look at it:

4.  Individually (Hebrews 11:6)

We read in Mark that Jesus did not do many miracles in His hometown because the people “lacked faith.”  Hebrews 11:6 says:

⁶ Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.

God’s influence has died in most churches because it first died (if it ever had lived) in the hearts of individuals.  The faith of the vast majority of Christians in America is a very “thin veneer.”  Remember we said that during the “Death of God” movement in the 60’s, 97% of Americans declared to be “Christians.”  Yet, in the same polls only 27% (less than a third) said they were “very religious,” meaning what came from their lifestyles did not reflect what came from their lips.

There are two sides to the coin of faith.  On one side a person must be fully convinced that God “exists.”  While only something like 3% to 5% of Americans consider themselves card-carrying atheists, the vast majority of Americans are “practical atheists.”  For all intents and purposes the lifestyles of those in the church is not much different from those outside the church.  Polls and surveys continue to demonstrate this, as well as what can be observed as church-goers live in the world.

A philosophical atheist is someone who believes there is not God.  A practical atheist is one who “lives” like there is no God.  A Practical atheist is someone who has only landed on one side of the faith coin—a belief in the existence of God.  That alone cannot save you, and it certainly won’t gain you a place in the “Faith Hall of Fame” which is what Hebrews, chapter 11, is all about.

The other side of the coin is that one must also believe, “God is a reward of those that DILIGENTLY seek Him.”  It is not enough to know God exists—saving faith means we must KNOW Him personally.  The Bible says that “even the demons of hell believe that God exists—in fact, they know it because they were once in His very presence” (James 2:19). 

The word translated “seek Him” (HCSB), or “diligently seek Him” (KJV), or “earnestly seek Him (NIV) means to “exert considerable effort or care in learning something.”  It is a forceful and strong word.

If the Christians of Nietzsche’s society had been “diligently seeking God and devotedly serving Him,” Nietzsche still would not have been a believer no doubt, but he would have had no justification for accusing the Christian community of killing God with there apathy and empty religiosity.

When I look at the proposition, “God is dead,” from an individual angle, I must ask myself:  “When others see my faith would they use adjectives like diligent, earnest, or exerting considerable effort to describe me?”  It is not enough that I simply believe God exists.  Do I live my life in such a way that no “madman” could point me out in the streets and say, “God is dead—and YOU killed Him with your apathy and empty religiosity?” 

It has been 133 years since Nietzsche sent that madman into the streets declaring, “God is dead.”  Nietzsche didn’t hit the bull’s eye to be sure, but I think he hit close enough to home for us to take note.  For the most part, God has slipped into irrelevance in our society; but, He first slipped into irrelevance in the lives of His people. 

As we move through this series titled, “God’s NOT dead,” let’s be aware of the different angles from which we can view the proposition, “God IS dead.”  Biblically, He cannot die.  That’s a fact.  Culturally, well that’s a different issue:  yes, AND no.  Where the rubber meets the road as they say (though I don’t really know who “they” are), is how do we deal with the issue INDIVIDUALLY.

There’s some real food for thought on the sermonic plate.  Eat hardy.

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