The Man Who Loved a Harlot

A beautiful bride, her pilfered pride brought to tears
By the Syndrome and his finest feature: an all-consuming fear.
Rape erased remorse and reason, too ravaged to recall.
"Is your phantom's love truly better than no love at all?"
We'd come to kill our hope by leaving childhood behind,
That very hope that ignites the lights in the hearts of humankind.

While he searched the streets and called her name, she'd been rendered paralyzed;

"Please don't run!"

She feared his wrath, yet he would have wiped the tears from her eyes.

"The dawn will come!"

And though she didn't understand, and lost her gift to give,

"Our hopes burn brighter than the rising sun!"

The man who loved that harlot would have died to see her live.

"I know what you have done has destroyed your peace,
But you must know that my heart pangs for your release.
I know these shadows, murky black, have dimmed your sight,
But my candle glows enough to melt this darkest night."

While he searched the streets and called her name, she'd been rendered paralyzed;

"Please don't run!"

She feared his wrath, yet he would have wiped the tears from her eyes.

"The dawn will come!"

And though she didn't understand, and lost her gift to give,

"Our hopes burn brighter than the rising sun!"

The man who loved that harlot would have died to see her live.

"Now dance with me, my Bride! Drink my Bacchic wine and play!
And all my Muses sing along as we dance the darkest night away!
Now sing with me, my Bride! Get lost in blood and joyous tears:
Our manifest eternal bliss in the blessed music of the Spheres!"

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

Part V:
Theogony

Thus, it is through our God-given love made possible through Christ that Nietzsche’s mantra of man becoming “beyond good and evil” is made possible— since it is obvious that a man who acts in Christ-like love toward both God and his neighbor will always freely do what is best toward them without need for moral guidance. This conclusion is especially ironic considering Nietzsche’s view of Christianity, since Nietzsche said that himself: “Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.” Nietzsche may have recognized the truth of this statement, but even if he did, he had no means to bring it about himself, since he clearly did not know Christ. In going beyond good and evil, Nietzsche claimed that one would be immoral, building up his own moral construct against the moral construct of his time and culture— he groups himself in saying, “We immoralists….” However, I would claim that, in going beyond good and evil in Christ, we are not immoral in the least— we are supramoral because we transcend the need for a moral construct entirely!

Our salvation in Christ, then, has at least two major effects on man. The first is that the will of man is actively transformed by his God-given love through the Spirit, so that he more and more displays the “will to love” of Christ. The second effect on man follows directly from the first: man’s “will to love” enables him to freely act in love toward both God and man, freeing him from the restraints placed on him by moral construct. Now, man can do more than just the good action— he can love! Irenaeus says this as well in his treatise On the Apostolic Preaching. He states,

"Therefore we do not need the Law as a paedagogue…. For no more shall the Law say, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ to him to whom even come desire for another’s wife; nor, ‘You shall not kill’, to him who has removed all anger and enmity from himself…."

Put simply, this salvation in Christ makes us Christ-like— makes us God-like— completely free to love.

If this salvation in Christ is making us more Christ-like, then this salvation is the restoration of man to what he was originally created to be— the image of God, since Christ himself is “the image of the invisible God.” Athanasius was very concerned with the fallen state of man in light of what he could have been. He says, “What was God to do in face of this dehumanizing of mankind, this universal hiding of the knowledge of Himself by the wiles of evil spirits?” We had “dehumanized” ourselves by marring the image of God that God had originally stamped on us in creating us. In our salvation, God makes us truly human again— that is, God makes us to be gods again, since to be truly human is to be godlike. Athanasius says,

"As, then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, may yet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ with his understanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and test whether they be of man or God…. He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God."

As Athanasius says, Christ— acting like the Superman, acting as the God-man— gives us the example of what a human truly is in his fullest sense. He shows us a life lived in love, defying the set moral construct of the time and abolishing moral constructs embodied in the Law altogether, healing and giving life to man even in this earthly life, and destroying death once and for all, defeating nihilism through submitting himself to it.

As far as what being Christ-like means, Paul also gives us clues in his epistles. He says in Romans, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed into the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Christ, through this example, shows us, whom are called his brothers and coheirs in his kingdom, that men as we are now were meant to be like Supermen; free from the bonds of death and morality, we would be able to freely choose to love God and men in true freedom. Also, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” Paul was not the only man of faith to give us insight in this area. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus said of the Christ-like life in his Five Theological Orations, “Walk like God through all that is sublime, and with a fellow-feeling through all that involve the body; but better treat all as God does, so that you may ascend from below to become God, because he came down from above for us.” Really, we Christians surpass even Nietzsche’s hopes for the continuing progression of man. Far from making man into a herd animal, as Nietzsche thought, Christ makes us into the men of true excellence that we were always meant to be. Following Christ’s example, we who are truly in Christ— and have thus received His Holy Spirit— are, through His ultimate sacrificial love, being remade to be like Christ, to be Supermen, to be gods; higher even than God’s angels, brothers to the only-begotten Son of God, coheirs to the universe! Immortality, eternal life, godhood, is ours for the taking, if we will only but receive it!

So often we make so little of humanity. Obviously, we are correct in saying that all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but in doing so, it seems as if we do not understand the glory for which humanity was really created. In understanding the greatness for which we were made, we can see our present depravity and rejoice all the more in our restoration to godhood through Jesus Christ. After realizing this, however, we must also understand that we are still underneath the God by whom we were created. We must realize that we are glorified only because He was, is, and will be glorious, and that though we are closer than brothers to the King of Kings, He is still King, and we are not. Between both of these represented extremes, we find humanity’s proper place. Christ, then, fulfills Nietzsche’s project better than Nietzsche himself ever could have. By restoring man to his proper place, Christ has restored the natural order of the universe, placing those who were meant to be strong back in a position of strength, excellence, and power. Through Christ, man is restored to where he was always meant to be: sitting at the right hand of God the Father, a god himself, crowned in glory, splendor, and majesty.

It may be that someone objects, and believes that this idea of human apotheosis as I have stated it— the idea of our Theogony— is absurd. After all, even as Christians, we still fall prey to sin and do “bad” things. In at least some real way, we are not truly free from morality. This objection would indeed present a problem for my argument, if I were arguing that, in Christ, we are made into perfect images of Christ immediately. However, this is not what I am arguing in the least. This is a simple objection to circumvent by simply arguing that our Theogony is another way of viewing our Christian sanctification. As the Holy Spirit, through the love of Christ, makes us into more perfect images of God, we are made more and more able to exhibit Christ-like love, thereby continuously lessening the hold of morality over us. C. S. Lewis talks about the surpassing of the moral construct by humanity in an essay entitled “Man or Rabbit?,” arguing that man was always meant for something much greater than our moral constructs. He says,

"The people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that ‘a decent life’ is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up."

Since, then, as we are still unable to completely and totally exhibit Christ-like love at all times to both God and man, morality must govern our actions insofar as we cannot love as Christ did. This can be shown as a kind of inverse relationship. Less ability to act in love requires more moral control; more ability to love requires less.

Now surely, this imperative of love is much harder to live by than any moral construct, since it comes into direct conflict with our “will to power.” Now, instead of repenting of our sins— those actions that did not conform to morality— we now must repent of anything less than unconditional love for both God and man. Until our “will to power” is completely replaced by our “will to love,” this is indeed a difficult thing— surely, it is a complete paradigm shift. But thank God for His Grace, and for His Holy Spirit, who is continuously reforming and reshaping us, transforming our “will to power” into the “will to love,” making us more and more into the likeness of the Son of God and His Glory. We will love and be loved as He does and is; we will be free as He is free; we will be glorious as He is glorious. We will be gods, but we are not quite there yet.

"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.

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

Ever since he wrote in the late nineteenth century, people have been either glorifying or demonizing Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a self-proclaimed Antichrist, not finding much middle ground for serious critical acceptance or denial for him. This is particularly true of Christians, who, for the last century, have tossed Nietzsche in their philosophical wastebaskets, simply ignoring his enormous contributions to certain modern and postmodern views on ethics and psychology. In doing this, I believe that we have been missing an extraordinary opportunity to reconcile an enemy of the Kingdom of God to ourselves, granting us yet another weapon for use against the forces of darkness. While we, as Christians, should obviously not accept a Nietzschean philosophy wholesale, I believe that adopting a Nietzschean perspective in certain ways is invaluable to a Christian understanding of ethics, as well as a Christian understanding of the ontology of man. This is because Nietzsche says some particularly enlightening things in regards to the relations between the nature of man, his “will to power,” and moral constructions that have much more in common with Scripture than most Christians would like to believe. In this paper, I hope to reconcile elements of this Nietzschean perspective on morality and man with a model of Christian soteriology, our doctrine of salvation, as seen in the writings of the Apostle Paul, as well as several patristic theologians. Christ, in becoming a man, makes it possible for us to become gods by replacing our “will to power” with a more powerful “will to love,” thereby removing the need for the constraints placed on us by the moral construct.