Friedrich Nietzsche:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
RELIGIOUS EXPLANATION OF A DEAD GOD
Humanity was once perfect; but being selfish and wanting to go our own way, man rebelled against God – breaking our relationship between us and our Creator. Biblically,this is known as ‘The Fall’. In order that a relationship can be made between a perfect God, and sinful man, a sacrifice, according to Jewish law, was necessary. By sacrificing an unblemished animal the person was reconciled to God. This is not as gory as it sounds, as the animal was humanely slaughtered and used – parts used as food by the temple staff and others burned – a bit like a slaughterhouse today. However, the purest, best animal was required; so that a real cost was made by the person confessing their sins. God required the right attitude from his people – that of contrition and repentance and a real will to lead better lives.
Unfortunately the jewish nation found loopholes in these rules. They would sin all week, then buy a cheap, imperfect animal to slaughter, so they were ‘OK’ with God, and go off and do exactly the same things again. This was not part of God’s plan to bring us once more close to him.
In order that a sacrifice would be made for all time, for all people, God sent his Son Jesus to be the sacrifice. He was without sin (unblemished) and was sacrificed for our sins, taking them on himself like a sacrificed lamb so that we would have that relationship between us and God restored. He was referred to by later writers as ‘The Lamb of God’ for that is just what he was. At his death, the sins of everyone were taken on him – past people and present – and future, do that the relationship between God and Man. It is of importance too that the gospels record that at the moment of his death the temple curtain tore in two, exposing the ‘Holy of Holies’. This was the innermost room in the Temple, separated from the rest by a large curtain. In the room was the Ark of the Covenant, a chest containing the 10 commandments given to Moses by God. The Jews believed that in this room God himself dwelt. Therefore by the curtain tearing this symbolised the division between God and man being removed because of Jesus’ death.
But that was not the end. At The Fall, another thing happened. Death entered the world. Humans were to die – both physically and spiritually. “The wages of sin is Death” said one biblical writer. But Jesus didn’t sin. He was perfect. He had no price to pay like we do. Therefore, on the third day after his crucifixion he rose again – as the resurrected Christ, leading the way for us to follow.
By his death on the cross he was able to take all our sins (and those of all humanity) and pay the price that we should have paid – death. Though we may die physically – just as Jesus did, we will all rise too like Jesus – for sins have been removed once and for all.
PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATION OF A DEAD GOD
“God is dead” never meant that Nietzsche believed in an actual God who first existed and then died in a literal sense. It may be more appropriate to consider the statement as Nietzsche’s way of saying that the “God” of the times (religion and other such spirituality) is no longer a viable source of any received wisdom. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for existing moral considerations, because “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.“ This is why in “The Madman”, a work which primarily addresses atheists, the problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine order.
The death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is what Nietzsche worked to find a solution for by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values. He would find a basis in the “will to power” that he described as “the essence of reality.”
Nietzsche believed that the majority of people did not recognize this death out of the deepest-seated fear or angst. Therefore, when the death did begin to become widely acknowledged, people would despair and nihilism would become rampant. This is partly why Nietzsche saw Christianity as nihilistic. He may have seen himself as a historical figure like Zarathustra, Socrates or Jesus, giving a new philosophical orientation to future generations to overcome the impending nihilism.
What is more, Nietzsche later refers not only to the death of God, but states: ‘Dead are all the Gods’. It is not just one morality that has died, but all of them, to be replaced by the life of the übermensch, the new man:
‘DEAD ARE ALL THE GODS: NOW DO WE DESIRE THE OVERMAN TO LIVE.’
