Nietzsche’s Evaluation of Christian Ethics

By Douglas Groothuis

Both inside and outside of academia, the multifaceted thought of Friedrich

Nietzsche continues to stimulate interest and generate controversy. Nietzsche has becomea kind of a posthumous prophet to the post-modernist movement with its suspicion ofuniversal rationality and morality, objectivity, and Western Christian sensibilities ingeneral. His searing criticisms of established religion and his apocalyptic but enthusiasticpredictions of a world without God or gods make Nietzsche a fertile source of intellectualinquiry. His own vision for a post-Christian greatness of soul (found in the ubermensch

or Overman/Superman) has roused the moral imaginations of many desiring to transcendall religious moorings without sacrificing human nobility. Yet Nietzsche’s ethical thought, though provocative in its boldness, is difficultto form into a coherent system. Despite the interpretative difficulties caused by hisaphoristic style, scorn of systematizing,[1] development as an author, radicality of

conceptions, and use of purposely inflammatory language, his ethical posture is clearlycritical of Christian ethics. Moreover, as we will see, it is imperative for Nietzsche torefute or at least discredit the Christian ethos for his own ethical project to succeed.

Therefore, I will evaluates several key aspects of Nietzsche’s ethics—cosmic amoralism,personal immoralism, and moralism—in relation to his critique of Christian ethics inorder to discern whether or not Nietzsche is successful in his deconstructive endeavors.

I. Cosmic Amoralism

In The Will to Power Nietzsche records the loss of what he calls “cosmologicalvalues”—values objectively and inherently embedded in the cosmos. In discussingnihilism, he observes that “the feeling of valuelessness” results when “the overall

character of existence” is interpreted as lacking purpose, unity, or truth.[2] These valueswere once projected onto the world, but have now been withdrawn, revealing a value-less, meaningless, purposeless cosmos.[3] Divine order, purpose, and morality have beenliquidated. The upshot is that we can find no natural or divine law to guide our actions.Nietzsche says that without our own esteeming (value-creation), “the nut of the universeis hollow.”[4]

II. Personal Immoralism

Nietzsche’s critique of morality is long and complex. His rejection of moralitystems from a fundamental denial of the pillars of most moral theories. This makes him, inhis own words, “the first immoralist.”[5] Nietzsche rejects the traditional concept ofmoral responsibility whereby the actions of moral agents are judged solely by theconscious intentions of the moral agents. For Nietzsche, the actual reasons for any action

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go far beyond conscious intent, back to an agent’s unchangeable “deep character.”Nietzsche calls this perspective “extra-moral.”[6] The “decisive value of an action,” in

fact, “lies precisely in what is unintentional in it.”[7] In Human, All Too Human,

Nietzsche unmasks the “fable of intelligible freedom” by saying that we cannot holdpeople responsible for their actions or even their nature because human nature “is itselfan inevitable consequence, an outgrowth of the elements and influences of past andpresent things; that is, man cannot be made responsible for anything, neither his nature,nor his motives, nor his actions, nor the effects of his actions.”[8] Free will is an error.

This is closely connected to his rejection of moral “oughts.”[9] If deep character goesbeyond conscious intention and determines actions, mere imperatives will have noabiding effect on the agent’s actions; they will not change the incorrigible deep character.People can only “become who they are” and nothing more.[10] With the rejection ofoughts comes the rejection of universal imperatives. Nietzsche rejects “the desired man”in favor of “the actual man” who has much higher value. All desiderata about man havebeen “absurd and dangerous excesses through which a single type of man tried to

establish his conditions of preservation and growth as a law for all mankind.”[11]Nietzsche eschews universal ideals and imperatives because they demand actions andattitudes that do not universally facilitate growth in power and health: “Reality shows usan enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and

some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: ‘No! Man ought to be different.’”[12]Related to this is Nietzsche’s rejection of what he called “opposite values.” The way athing is, is taken to be negative, but the way it is not is taken to be positive. These

dichotomistic evaluations include: ought and ought not, right and wrong, good and evil,and true and false. But Nietzsche claims “there are no opposites.”[13] Such dichotomisticthinking is mistaken. This brief survey has covered only some salient points of the morality that

Nietzsche rejects. But before critiquing Nietzsche’s program, a brief overview ofNietzsche’s moralism is in order.

III. Moralism

By “moralism” I mean Nietzsche’s positive ethical program. Of course, it bears

little resemblance to the moralism he constantly criticizes, but it is a moral system in thesense of evaluation and prescription. Nietzsche rejects all universalizing, absolutistmoralities because he deemed them to be life-negating. Everything must, for Nietzsche,serve life, enhance life. In The Anti-Christ he says quite clearly: “What is good?Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness.”[14] Yet Nietzsche is never altogetherclear about what this “life” really means.[15] The doctrine of self-creation is central toNietzsche’s moralism. In Zarathustra he states that he who creates “creates man’s goal

and gives the earth its meaning and its future. That anything is good and evil—that is hiscreation.”[16] The creators of value must also be destroyers of the old absolutisms: “Andwhoever must be a creator in good and evil, verily, he must first be an annihilator and

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break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but this iscreative.”[17] The project of the self-creator, of the overman, is to act as a god.[18]

Overman is “the meaning of the earth.”[19] “Not mankind, but overman is the goal.”[20]

IV. The Rejection of Divine Law

In critiquing cosmic amoralism, it should be noted that Nietzsche’s rejection ofdivine law is often couched in less than convincing arguments. His genealogical criticism

of Christianity is speculative at best; even if it were partially successful it would not, initself, discredit the truth of Christianity. Showing the non-epistemic origin of a givenbelief does not necessarily discredit the truth claim it makes. That must be done throughrational analysis in which the claim itself (and not just the psychological or sociologicalinducement to believe the claim) is considered. To do otherwise is to commit the geneticfallacy.[21] But most of Nietzsche’s arguments against theism concern its purporteddeleterious consequences for people, not its objective falsity (this will be taken up

below). He may be reasoning that anything so manifestly anti-human must be false, but inseveral places he posits the falsehood of theology with little or no argumentation.[22]Even his famous pronouncement “God is dead” is more a cultural assessment of a post-Christian culture than a metaphysical conclusion.[23] Nietzsche does not do much to

preclude the plausibility of divine law and revelation; he seems simply to renounce(rather than disprove) Judeo-Christian truth claims. This attitude is seen in “the ugliest man’s” pronouncement on the death of God:

But he had to die: he saw with eyes that saw everything; he saw man’sdepths and ultimate grounds, all his concealed disgrace and ugliness.His pity knew no shame: he crawled into my dirtiest nooks. This most

curious, overobtrusive, overpitying one had to die. He always saw me:on such a witness I wanted to have revenge or not live myself. The godwho saw everything, even man—this god had to die! Man could not

bear it that such a witness should live.[24]

Zarathustra (and so Nietzsche) seems to approve of this verdict. But it is not an

argument against deity, only a psychological revulsion in the face of omniscience.Nietzsche is defying as much as denying. The ugliest man incident offers no logical argument against the coherence of theidea of omniscience or the existence of an omniscient being. It is, rather, a psychologicalrejection of theism. Guilt must be eradicated; therefore, the God who sees all and knowsour guilt must die. A fuller account of Nietzsche’s reasoning might be this: 1. Christianity promotes guilt (we are ethically exposed before God’somniscience).

2. Guilt is life-negating. 3. What is life-negating is not desirable. 4. Therefore, Christianity should be denied (“this God must die”) in order to:

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a) extirpate guilt and thus b) enhance life.

The first premise is affirmed by Christian theism. But a better formulationwould be that Christianity teaches that guilt is sometimes an appropriate response forfreely erring moral agents to experience. It teaches that true moral guilt should beacknowledged, not that false guilt should be fabricated. I will not dispute Nietzsche’ssecond premise, except to qualify it by saying that although a life permeated by guiltwould be vitiating, sporadic occasions of guilt might not be life-negating. As Nietzsche

might himself admit, this would especially be true if the guilt were to serve as aninstrument of self-overcoming.[25] I will grant Nietzsche the third premise, although I donot think it is universally true.[26] Nietzsche’s treatment fails to consider an importantaspect of the Christian claim. Christianity teaches that moral guilt can be overcome byfaith in divine grace. Guilt is an appropriate response to moral failing because guilt is,theologically construed, the result of sin: the breaking of God’s moral law which rendersa moral agent culpably immoral before a holy God. But the guilt is not an end in itself, a

terminal point beyond which there is no advance; rather, it is meant to lead people torepentance and faith in God’s provision through Jesus Christ. The Christian claim is thatfaith is the assurance that one is forgiven of one’s sin and accepted by God. Therefore,believing that God is omniscient (and morally good) and that God knows one’s

wrongdoing does not, in the Christian view, condemn one to a life permeated by anenslaving and enervating guilt. We may agree that Christianity “promotes guilt” (or,better, exposes guilt) inasmuch as it claims to illuminate humanity’s true moral condition

before a morally impeccable deity. But it only does this to the degree that it offers arelease from guilt through forgiveness and the restoration of character through divinegrace. These comments illustrate, first, that Nietzsche has not really given us much

food for thought concerning God’s objective existence or non-existence. Yet God’s non-existence is required for his cosmic amoralism; for if the Judeo-Christian God does infact exist, the cosmos as God’s creation has meaning, purpose, and value (“cosmological

values”), and is governed by God’s moral law.[27] Second, Nietzsche’s psychologicalarguments against the healthiness of Christianity may also be defective (more on thatbelow).

V. The Critique of Opposite Values

Central to Nietzsche’s rejection of Christian ethics is his criticism of “oppositevalues:” the notion of a fixed and strong polarity or antithesis in ethical evaluation. Heviews this oppositional moral stance as life-negating and overly rigid. Instead of ethicaldisjunctions such as good versus evil, Nietzsche wants to rank values in accord with theirability to enhance “life” as he understands it. Unlike the “anti-naturalists” who want to

suppress and deny natural propensities (of whom Christians are the leadingrepresentatives), Nietzschean creators are essentially affirmers and not negators.Nietzsche says, “We immoralists have . . . made room in our hearts for every kind of

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understanding, comprehending and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it apoint of honor to be affirmers.”[28] Waiving the question of whether Nietzsche is

consistently an affirmer or whether he too uses opposite values in his manycondemnations of Christianity[29], it may be that his attack on Christian ethics isnonetheless misguided. Nietzsche understands opposite values in Christian ethics asrendering every moral action either entirely good or entirely evil, and this he rejects. Buta Christian can claim that God permits or employs certain evils to exist in order to furthera greater good. The existence of an evil is then viewed as instrumentally good and thus

morally justifiable for some larger providential end. But the deontological character ofChristianity still denounces evil actions as negative because they are performed with illintent and violate an objective moral law. Keeping the moral law is opposed to breakingit; virtue is opposed to vice. These are opposite values in the Christian understanding.Any positive consequence coming directly or indirectly from an evil is, in a sense,incidental, and not essentially related to the conscious intent of the agent who perpetuatesthe evil through a freely chosen action.

This is illustrated in the Old Testament passage where Joseph condemns the evilintents and actions of his brothers (who sold him into slavery in Egypt) and still affirmsthat though they meant it for evil, God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20). What wasdeontologically evil (a violation of God’s law performed with ill intent by one person

against another) may be used as an instrumental (or teleological) good by God through inaccordance with larger providential purposes. So it seems that Nietzsche sets up something of a straw man argument against

opposite values. Christianity does not teach that evil actions have no possible value;rather, Christianity teaches that evil intentions and actions have no moral valueredounding to the moral agent in question because evil actions are deontologicallydefective.[30] Nietzsche does not make a distinction between moral value imputed to

moral agents and teleological value (because for him there is no cosmic teleology).Although Nietzsche so misconstrues the Christian claim, his rejection of the oppositevalues held by Christianity has deleterious ramifications for his own view. For Nietzsche

there is but one scale of hierarchical value ranking, and absolute moral condemnation(based on opposite values) is excluded in principle. In the matter of moral judgments, theChristian (or any deontologist) fares far better than Nietzsche because of her employment

of strong deontological negation. For instance, it is absurd to affirm, as Nietzsche must,that the value of Hitler’s treatment of the Jews versus the value of a valiant person’sattempt to save Jews are simply “complementary value concepts,” with the value of thehero’s action being “more valuable” than Hitler’s atrocities. Hitler’s actions should benegated outright as immoral, not put on a ranking scale.[31] It is questionable whetherNietzsche could negate Hitler outright given his ethical assertions.[32] Inasmuch as hecannot, his system is lacking—to put it kindly. The reductio ad absurdum cuts deep andwide.

VI. Absolute Morality As Life-Negating

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As we have seen, Nietzsche is committed to the idea that a universal andabsolute morality is constrictive and life-negating. I can have my virtue in common with

no one, and I should—an imperative creeps in—never prescribe my virtue for anyoneelse. Yet Nietzsche seems to be prescribing the virtues of self-creation and self-overcoming throughout his writings. Further, why should he imagine that virtues must beunique to be authentic? Why should Nietzsche think that a common unifying goal withdeterminate virtues should be poisonous to life? It seems he believes that it would destroyindividuals’ unique integrity; it would “level” the incorrigible plurality of personalities in

the world. He appears to be reasoning this way: 1. There is an incorrigible plurality of personalities in the world. 2. Each person is unique with unique potential which should not be squelched. 3. Mandated common goals and determinate, universal virtues oppose thisplurality by “leveling.” 4. Leveling is life-negating. 5. We should reject what is life-negating.

6. Christianity prescribes common goals and determinate, universal virtues. 7. Therefore, Christianity is life-negating and should be rejected as a universalprescriptive system. I will first consider Nietzsche’s third premise, and then his first premise. My

aim is to suggest that Nietzsche again misconstrues the position he opposes by giving lessthan a fair representation of the position he rejects. His own position will look lessattractive if what he rejects is seen in a clearer light.

The Apostle Paul teaches that all the Christian’s activities should glorify God(common goal) and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love should be presentand growing in all Christians.[33] There is a common attitudinal standard, or idealcharacter. Christianity, contra Nietzsche, stresses one way, not many ways; one truth, not

many truths. Yet within this singular moral goal (the glorification of God) and view ofvirtue (faith, hope, and love, to simplify), great existential diversity is allowed and evenencouraged. There need not be, as Nietzsche claims, the kind of leveling that suppresses

human potential.[34] But how is this so? The Apostle Paul also stresses the diversity ofgifts, abilities, and personalities among Christians and emphasizes that a certain divisionof labor is appropriate in Christian behavior.[35] Within the single ethical telos of

glorifying God by developing virtue there fits very nicely a plurality of personal projectsor divine callings. Yet these projects are not arbitrarily chosen or completely self-created.The diversity of personal projects is consonant with the unified goal of moral purpose andobjective standards; there is unity without suffocating uniformity. For example, under normal circumstances it would be absurd for a stuttering,shy, and less than lucid person with an incredible gift for painting to be a preacher.[36]To pursue the personal project of preaching would be inauthentic and life-negating. Thisperson has been gifted in art. But nothing in Christianity demands that he become a

preacher. He should rather be a painter! Gifts are given in order to be used appropriately,but all toward the same end—the glorification of God and the development ofdeterminate virtues: faith, hope, and love. This need not in any way destroy the

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personality, ability or inclinations of individual Christians. The Christian doctrine that humans are all created “in the image of God” claims

that they are not essentially different from each other; there is a human nature, howevervaried in its expression. This disputes the idea of Premise One: that the diversity ofdifferent types of people reduces to incommensurability. Christianity claims that God,having created humans in his image, knows what is best for these moral agents. Someactivities and attitudes—such as theft and covetousness—are best avoided by all peoplebecause they are not conducive to life as it ought to be lived. Defending the Christian

doctrine of human nature would take us far beyond the scope of this paper, but the pointis that the common goals and standards prescribed in a theistic morality do notnecessarily demand the life-negating leveling that Nietzsche envisioned. The Christian claims is that God’s commands are not opposed to humanrealization but are in accord with it. And history attests the fact that a great diversity ofpersonalities—from the gentle strength of St. Francis to the melancholic brilliance ofBlaise Pascal to the incorrigible effervescence G. K. Chesterton—have claimed to find

significance, moral development, and a flowering of individual potential within theChristian moral framework. For these witnesses, the restraining of the flesh does notentail the destruction of one’s unique personality, but rather its flourishing. Although Nietzsche often affirms a radical relativism regarding virtues and

value-creation, he does say in Zarathustra, “A thousand goals have there been so far, forthere have been a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking:the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal. But tell me my brothers, if humanity

still lacks a goal—is humanity itself not still lacking too?”[37] A Christian theist wouldagree with this description, but would offer a radically different prescription: the yoke ofChrist himself.[38] This critique has raised several troublesome questions about Nietzsche’s ethics.

His rejection of Christian ethics has been shown to be unconvincing because Christianethics (properly construed) does not seem to fall prey to the difficulties Nietzscheascribes to it with respect to opposite values and life-negation. Nietzsche’s rejection of

Christian ethics is radical, thorough, and blistering, but it remains less philosophicallycogent than his triumphant tone might tempt us to believe.

Endnotes

[1] Nietzsche said, “I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” section 26; in Walter Kauffman, ed., The

Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1975), 470.

[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1968), 13.

[3] Although Nietzsche struggled against nihilism, and credits its advance to Christian decadence, he agrees

with its cosmic amoralism.

[4] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in Kaufmann, 171.

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[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1969), 327.

[6] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Vintage, 1966), 44.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1985),

43.

[9] Nietzsche also held a metaphysical reason for rejecting oughts because they implied an impossible

counterfactual conditions which would alter the entire cosmos, but we will not pursue this here.

[10] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 266.

[11] Nietzsche, The Will To Power, 210.

[12] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in Kaufmann, 491.

[13] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 298.

[14] The Antichrist, in Kaufmann, 570.

[15] See Thomas L. Carson, “The Ubermensch and Nietzsche’s Theory of Value,” International Studies in

Philosophy, Vol. XIII (1981), 9-30.

[16] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in Kaufmann, 308.

[17] Ibid., 228.

[18] The Will to Power, 503.

[19] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in Kaufmann, 125.

[20] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 519.

[21] Of course, if Nietzsche can exhaustively and compellingly explain Christianity’s origin and

continuation by means of non-supernatural historical and psychological factors he would have explained

away the essential truth claims of the faith. But this is a tall epistemic order and one which he has notfulfilled. For more on this see Keith E. Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York:

NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 119-159.

[22] Nietzsche, The Antichrist, in Kaufmann, 581-82.

[23] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, in Kaufmann, 95-96.

[24] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in Kaufmann, 378-79.

[25] This is a debatable claim which I won’t try to substantiate; nothing rests on it for my argument to

proceed.

[26] Martyrdom or other types of supererogatory self-sacrifice may be appropriate in some cases. Given

Christian theism, the giving of one’s life for the faith is not ultimately life-negating, but rather affirms one’s

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belief in eternal life.

[27] The point stands whether one believes that God’s nature grounds the moral law or whether the moral

law is somehow distinct from God but that God, as a perfectly good being, abides by it and wills it for hiscreatures. For a convincing defense of the former thesis, see James G. Hanik and Gary R. Mar, “What

Euthyphro Couldn’t Have Said,” Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 3 (July 1987), 241-61.

[28] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in Kaufmann, 491.

[29] See Nietzsche strong negations of Christianity throughout The Antichrist, for example.

[30] I am here only concerned with moral evil committed by human agents, not the problems of “natural

evil,” such as natural catastrophes beyond human control, or demonic evil.

[31] While the Christian can reject Hitlerian atrocities outright, it is not as simple to find the instrumental or

teleological value therein. But the distinction of moral and teleological values need not demand that one

always be able to discern what the teleological value might be. In some cases it may be much more obvious

than in others. This raises the problem of evil which cannot be discussed here.

[32] This criticism does not concern the issue of whether Nietzsche’s own philosophy is compatible with

Nazism; it rather deals with a weakness in his system which makes it prey to these kinds of criticisms.

[33] We will not here take up the unity of the virtues thesis verses Nietzsche’s “enmity of the virtues” thesisexcept to say that Christianity denies an enmity view.

[34] If, of course, Nietzsche can hold to a view of potential-inhibition at all, given what he has said about

deep character.

[35] See I Corinthians 12-14; Romans 12:1-8; Ephesians 4:1-13, for instance.

[36] There are several cases in the Bible where God specially calls unlikely people for extraordinary roles,

but I’m concerned with the normal operation of gifts and opportunities. Even when unlikely people perform

God-ordained roles, they still find significance and fulfillment in their tasks, however counter-intuitive theroles may seen.

[37] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in Kaufmann, 172.

[38] See Matthew 11:28-30.

Douglas Groothuis (Ph.D., University of Oregon) is professor of philosophy at DenverSeminary, where he has served since 1993. He has written ten books, including On

Pascal and On Jesus (both in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series), and he served as contributing editor for Dictionary of Contemporary Religion in the Western World.

Copyright ©2005 Douglas Groothuis. All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced and circulated

only as “freeware,” without charge. For all other uses, please contact Douglas Groothuis to request

permission.

This article can be read online at: http://www.ivpress.com/groothuis/doug/archives/000116.php

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