Nietzsche on Christianity

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."

-Friedrich Nietzsche


The formulation of Nietzsche's arguments arise from a top-down approach; he first considers his own knowledge and experience of the world, then considers Christianity's truth claims, and, finding them quite divergent, concludes that Christianity offers no real substance. What if, unlike Nietzsche, we take a bottom-up approach to evaluating Christianity's truth claims? This process is, of course, much more difficult; we will have to shed our preconcieved notions about our existence and walk a great deal more than a mile in someone else's shoes. When we do, however, we begin to find that not only does Christianity offer our lives purpose and hope, but it provides our minds with a robust philosophy, a solid reason to believe.

The blatant failure of Nietzsche's argument does not lie here, however. It lies in something much more fundamental: the person of Jesus. If this man, the person Jesus, never walked on this earth, then Nietzsche might just have a point. The difficulty for Nietzsche and those who appeal to the modern philosopohers is that Jesus existed in time and space; this fact is corroborated by multiple accounts other than the four gospels, and the arguments for the authenticity of all of the early accounts are striking and cannot be taken lightly. If this Jesus was able to accomplish all that is told of him, then Christianity does more than come in contact with reality, it is reality.

But maybe it is all just heresay and conjecture; maybe Jesus was just a lunatic and his disciples were his body-snatching accomplices; maybe Christains are forcing a lifestyle and a morality on themselves and others because they are afraid of what it means to be truly 'free.' The complete irony of all of this thinking is this: you may agree with Nietzsche's argument, but you would never want to live in Nietzsche's world with Nietzsche's values. When considering which worldview you would like to make your own, be sure to take a wholistic approach to the worldview instead of a top-down approach; if you can't imagine living in the world that your worldview espouses, perhaps it is time to consider a paradigm shift.