What impact did Friedrich Nietzsche have on the Christian faith?

36 But, taken as a just human instrument, criticism, in the true sense and legitimate use of it, does not destroy authority. I admit that, morally, God's grace is necessary, because a corrupt — an "antagonist will" is to be dealt with; but, in the human sense, criticism does not exclude it. I may ascertain that a letter of my father is really his. When adequate evidence is acquired of that, his letter assumes at once his authority over me. Now the only thing that makes a difference in a divine communication is, that man is incompetent to judge of God, and has an antagonist will which will not receive Him. But this proves the necessity of a revelation and of divine grace — that is, of Christianity — unless man is to remain ignorant of God and opposed to Him.

The real secret of Mr. N.'s book is, that he desires to destroy confidence in Christianity. It is a common, very common, misfortune, through the weakness of our corrupt natures, to find invaluable moral truths mixed up with the grossest human corruptions. The divinely-wise man separates "the precious from the vile," and he becomes as God's mouth, being subject to truth from God. The self-confident man rejects all together, because his intellect is capable of seeing the corruption, and incapable of valuing the truth.

It would be mere folly and ignorance of human nature, blindness to the most obvious facts, not to recognize these influences in the forming and moulding of the human mind, and thus their power in colouring its judgment of all around and above h. Does Mr. N. think he has not profited by the influence of the Christianity he rejects? He miserably deceives himself if he does. But, to do him justice, he does not think so. In another volume of his (it is well the confession is absent from this) he avows (speaking of the New Testament, with the devotional parts of the Old, and declaring his intimate knowledge of it), "to it I owe the best part of whatever wisdom there is in my manhood." (Soul, p. 242.) But of this farther on. He will not suppose that he himself soars entirely above the ken of the moral discernment of others as to his own condition, since he accounts himself capable of judging what God and a revelation ought to be. He has profited, he tells us, by the wisdom and piety of this false Messiah. But he thinks he has emancipated himself from the trammels of a revelation which he does not believe, and emerged into the truthful results arrived at by the logical and philosophical workings of the human (let us say the word, of his own) mind.

I turn now to the revelation itself on which Christianity is based. The real object of Mr. N.'s book is to destroy the Christianity from which he gained almost all the wisdom he has. It is not very kind to others. Would he be the only depository of it in some improved shape into which it has been refined in his mind?

The kind of opposition men make to Christianity proves its truth in the main — proves in it the consciousness of a real claim of God on the soul.

51 And see the practical consequence. A man degraded in seeking the satisfaction of his own lusts is for Mr. N. "a good-humoured voluptuary." (Phases, p. 81.) How was he "to think that he deserved to be raised from the dead, in order to be tormented in fire for a hundred years?" Give an account of himself to God! This is all nothing to Mr. N. His morality is far better than christian truth. The voluptuary may go on in his good humour without troubling himself. Sin is only measured by a man's will and heart. God need not be in all his thoughts. And this is correcting and improving on Christianity! See this character treated in his contempt of and indifference to the misery of his fellow-man in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. But I proceed.

Bishop Butler wrote: "Duties arise out of relations" ("Analogy," part ii., book ii., § 2). Secular Ethics, on the other hand, as expounded by such as Tolstoi, "makes Duty flow from man's moral power" (supposing that man is able to do his duty if he will) (W. Kelly, "Exposition of the Epistles of John," p. 190). Butler was followed by Kant, who, at the close of his "Critique of Practical Reason," declared himself impressed by (1) the heavens above, (2) the moral law — the moral faculty or conscience within. By writing that work he signified his sense of the insufficiency of his previous classical treatise on Pure Reason. For his bringing the religious element back into the calculation, Kant has been denounced by the nineteenth century Nietzsche as an "idiot"; that is, by the man who could write that "God is dead," and yet became himself in his last days definitely insane: this should afford reflection for Agnostics enamoured with his "Zarathustra." Harnack brings man back to saner sentiment: he has described virtuous Agnostics as "parasites, living on the faith of others."

As to Buddhist denial of possession of Atman, the seat of personality, see Carus, "Buddhism and its Critics," p. 84 ff. In these latter days, Nietzsche, an admirer of that system, has gloried in the shame of such an attitude as that described by our Lord's words. "Remain faithful to the earth" spells his Gospel: see Prologue to his "Thus Spake Zarathustra." Probably no one would be led away by such literature who had read Dr. Arnold's sermon from this verse ("Christian Life," p. 99).

"In this time." Nietzsche: "Buddhism gives no promise, but keeps every one; Christianity gives any promise, but keeps none" ("Antichrist," § 42). This is the language of a man not understanding what he said (1 Tim. 1:7) in either direction. The Buddhism that he so much lauded occupies novice and grey-haired men alike in a delusive struggle against suffering. Nietzsche wrote of Pascal, that the eminent French Christian's intellect was ruined by his faith; but this miserable man himself, as elsewhere stated, died insane. Again, Stanton Coit writes: "Many have asked and no one has answered, save where the prayer was overheard by some fellow man" ("The Lord's Prayer," p. 12). Myriads of men and women "in this time" can give the lie to this airy statement.

One modern writer tells us that JESUS "was not a Christian" (Wellhausen, Introduction, p. 113); another, that "there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross. There never have been Christians at all" (Nietzsche, "Antichrist," § 39). Is it not a truism, so far as regards this last pronouncement, that "there are none so blind as those who will not see"?

For a scientific appreciation of the present state of Religious Belief in "Christian" communities see Pratt, "Psychology of Religion," especially chapter 8 (p. 231 ff.). This writer's third class of believers is composed of those who by the Evangelist are regarded as truly such. A correspondence in the Daily Telegraph some years ago, which has since been republished in a volume edited by W. L. Courtney, revealed the many lights in which this vital subject is now regarded. One of the contributors referred to an aphorism which would be found in Nietzsche's "Antichrist" (§ 52), that "Belief means not wishing to know what is true." (Cf. Herbert Spencer on "Christian Scepticism.")