A brief history of the death of God

A few weeks after Friedrich Nietzsche bragged to an admirer that he had completed a ruthless attack on our Lord, he collapsed, had convulsions, shouted like a madman and never recovered his faculties again. It was early 1889. He was 44 years old, his books had just begun to be noticed, and he lived for a decade longer, empty-eyed, silent and entirely unaware of the fame that was about to engulf him.

Was his tragic end divine punishment for his sacrilege? My devout Catholic wife begs to differ. Our Lord is not vengeful, she insists. That’s the only thing wrong with him, I reply. Although Darwin’s On the Origin of Species started the anti-God ball rolling in 1859, Nietzsche’s nervous breakdown and anti-Christian profanities had an enormous effect because the genius-madman had been a man of faith. Both his father and grandfather were Lutheran pastors, and young Nietzsche was so pious he was nicknamed ‘the little pastor’. Yet it was the Hellenes of ancient times who drew the little pastor away from Christianity and into the world of Homer and the Olympian gods. Schopenhauer and Wagner followed and soon the little pastor was into German myths, excessive masturbation (according to Wagner) and madness. The great religious and classical scholar Taki believes that if Herr Nietzsche had kept faith with the poor carpenter’s Bethlehem family instead of going Greek, he would have remained sane.

But this is my 45th Christmas issue and as a sinner, as well as a devout Christian, I need to reassert that at the heart of faith is mystery. God is not an object, and he is beyond our knowing, as is Jesus Christ. I was brought up to fear God, but as I grew older I learned to love him as much as I love Jesus.