What then if God is dead?

ATHEISM AND DEATH

By ROBERT TILLEY

THE ATHEIST PHILOSOPHER Friedrich Nietzsche is credited with many things, one of which is that he was the first to announce that God was dead, thereby shaking Europe out of her dogmatic and pleasant slumber. But atheism did not begin with Nietzsche, nor did he coin the term ‘the death of God’, Hegel used it a long time before he did. So why this common mistake?

However we answer this question, the blame cannot be laid at Nietzsche’s door – quite the reverse. It is in his book the Joyful Science (or Gay Science, but that translation is open to some misinterpretation today) that Nietzsche tells the tale of a madman who, in the early hours of the morn, comes into town waking up all and sundry by announcing ‘God is dead!’ The point of this story was not that the madman startled the townsfolk, quite the reverse: it irritated them, as it was something they all well knew. More importantly, they were quite comfortable with the fact, hence their ability to sleep soundly. If, that is, there is no lunatic shouting out commonplace truisms. Nietzsche's point was that Europe too easily accepted the idea that God is dead, but that she did not want to live out the ramifications of that truth. In this, Europe had become bourgeois, and for that Nietzsche despised her.

God was gone but morals remained. Europe desired comfort and prosperity and these necessitated civil order and social virtue, hence the appearance of religion had its uses; it was good for industry and the free-market in that it encouraged sobriety and hard work. The substance was gone but the facade remained, and that’s all that mattered. This disgusted Nietzsche. Not only did it point to the fundamental dishonesty of the bourgeoisie, but also to their insipidness; to their absence of nobility and a depth of soul. Why not smash the old values that were founded on God and create new ones? But Nietzsche knew why: to do this would necessitate looking into the abyss of meaninglessness, and his generation was not strong enough for this task.

Like a prophet, Nietzsche foretold that a generation would come that would truly live the death of God, that would look deep into the abyss and be strong enough to create and impose its own values on a world it knew to be devoid of all inherent and substantial meaning. A generation that would be noble and have depth of soul. And, in one sense, Nietzsche was right, that generation has come and here we are! But he was also wrong in that it is nothing like he envisaged – for people skim the surface not particularly caring if there is any substance beneath the thin crust on which they live and float and have their being. When they look beneath they do not see an infinite abyss but rather the potential of illimitable shelf space. The void represents unrestrained market opportunities, something to be filled with an endless array of consumer items, all well fitted to entertain and distract. Which items include ethics and values, and if you’re after meaning then you can, even if you’re an atheist, pick and choose from a variety of religious beliefs. By reference to the abyss beneath all things, anything can be made to order! If God is dead then all can be bought and sold. If God is dead, all is commodity! There is no soul, there is only lifestyle. There is no fear of God and thus no fear and trembling. There is no depth to frighten one, and thus there is no fear of death. This is what the Death of God looks like.

Nietzsche was wrong; the honest atheist is no aristocrat of the soul, for nothing is feared except surface considerations. But to fear God means to have a lively sense of something transcendent, something beyond one’s grasp, something beyond the reach of one’s reputation and wallet – something one has to answer to. Without God all becomes surface gloss and kitsch, and for the honest atheist the ‘care of the soul’ simply means that one keeps it from getting bored. Death means little because life means little. As to why an atheist should fear death is a puzzle, for there is literally nothing to fear.

But for the religious it is different.

It is the truly religious who fear death, not because they fear an abyss but because they know there is a God and there is judgment. They also hope in grace, and when grace and judgment are taken together then a soul becomes very deep, indeed, for all things become both serious and wonderful. Which is, one might say, a good description of life.

ROBERT TILLEY has a PhD from the University of Sydney. He currently lectures in Adult Education on Philosophy, Theology and History of Ideas. He also lectures in Greek and Biblical Studies at The Catholic Institute of Sydney and in literature and theology at Aquinas Academy.

This article appeared in the July 2010 issue of Annals Australasia and is reprinted with the kind permission of the Editor, Fr Paul Stenhouse MSC PhD

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