"I Said, You Are Gods!" - A Trans-Nietzschean Perspective on Christian Soteriology (Part III).

Part III:
Jesus Christ: Superman

Therefore, the whole of Nietzsche’s project is a shout, nay, a scream of exhortation to mankind, saying, “Be excellent! Be excellent, and you will make us even more than this mortal man that we are now!” He believes that this will be achieved when mankind goes beyond good and evil by surpassing the need for a morality to control our actions. The man who is willing to destroy the ascetic ideals, willing to destroy moral ideals, and able to overcome nihilism—this man is the Superman. He spurs man on to a higher existence by allowing him to access his “will to power,” and through that, the excellence that Christianity and other ascetic ideals attempt to hold down. The rub: as previously stated, mankind requires a moral construct in order to be able to function without destroying itself because of the effects of original sin, man’s “will to power.” As long as man has the “will to power,” he is liable to destroy both himself and his fellow men.

C. S. Lewis, in his book entitled The Abolition of Man, discusses the dangers of the destruction of objective value, specifically dealing with the philosophies of those who, like Nietzsche, believed that the possession and exertion of power that is the most fundamental drive in man was a drive to abundant life, and should be embraced and encouraged, because it allows man to flourish and to conquer nature. In response, Lewis fully plays out the implications of their own philosophy and finds that those humans who hold ultimate power—and therefore those who determine ultimate value, if there are actually any such men—will be the least bound to any external force, including any objective system of value. These “Conditioners,” as Lewis calls them, will then be forced to determine new values completely from their own desires—their own natures. Therefore, Lewis says,

"At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammeled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man."

In Nietzsche’s abolition of moral value, we become more and more like his “savage cruel beast,” but instead of achieving a race of transcendent men, we cease to be men. We do not ascend into a higher existence, we slump into a lower one; we become beasts, machines, or as Lewis says, those who hold power will “envy us as eunuchs envy men.” Nietzsche, then, in wanting to affirm life in the here and now and the potential power held within the human race, succumbs to the very nihilism he so adamantly hated.

Then, if we are all truly depraved, no man has the strength to be like Nietzsche’s Superman, for no man can destroy both the ascetic and moral ideals and overcome our tendency for death. Our options are either to be controlled or to be destroyed. What then is to be done? Only a god could succeed where men’s strength fails. But what good would this do, if man too did not overcome himself? He would still be left in the dust, while this god did his work for him. What would be required would need to be a fusion between god and man, and who better for this task than Jesus Christ, the Word Who Became Flesh? Christ, in coming to earth, does what all other men cannot do for themselves— by “overcoming” and “going under” himself and making himself nothing, he becomes the Superman. Through Him, we have abundant life and we live life fully and joyfully in the here and now, not just in some transcendent life to come. Through Him, we live life freely, and are no longer bound by the Law. Through Him, we overcome death.

If Christ was really so much like Nietzsche’s Superman, then why was Nietzsche so opposed to Christianity? Nietzsche must have had Christianity misrepresented to him, if he was to miss this observation that, in retrospect, seems to stare us in the face. Christianity is not based on some ascetic ideal— a rejecting of our lives in the here and now as base and unworthy for the benefit of a life to come. In Christ, we have life abundantly here and now. Paul states as much in his epistle to the Colossians when he significantly downplays the importance of regulations and asceticism in the spiritual life. He says of them, “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” Therefore, we live here and now joyously and without shame of our earthly lives, and Nietzsche misunderstood our faith. Also, Christianity is not a system of law and punishment meant to keep us under control, nor a set of regulations to maintain, because in Christ, we are set free from the law. Paul tells us in his letter to the believers in Galatia of the absolute freedom we have in Christ: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” Therefore, the Christianity that Nietzsche was so vehemently opposed to because of its ascetic and moral ideals was not actually Christianity at all; it was merely sinful people misrepresenting the Gospel, as we so often do. Nietzsche completely misunderstood Christ, and therefore, his arguments against Christianity as it actually is are merely straw men.

It should be noted that even in the life to come, our new life will be lived bodily on this earth, when it too will be recreated as we are in Christ. The resurrection, then, should not cause us to live as always only looking forward to the life to come. The life to come will be better, to be sure, and looking forward to it is not necessarily bad, but the resurrection should cause us to start living that new life here and now, since we are in fact being recreated here and now. We Christians do not live nihilistically in the least, seeking after death, as Nietzsche thought. St. Athanasius tells us this very fact in his treatise entitled On the Incarnation. He says, “All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead.” Far from seeking death, as Nietzsche thought, we Christians laugh at it. But how do we do this? How are we to live in light of the resurrection of the dead, in light of the death of death? We live as Nietzsche suggests: free from any moral construct controlling us as far as we are able, free from the ascetic ideals that cause us to neglect the joys in this present life that we have been given, free from the guilt that comes from missing the mark of morality.