A Reply to David Deane's Response to My Discussion of His Book

My thanks to Dr. David Deane, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax for his response (see the last post) to my discussion of his book Nietzsche and Theology: Nietzschean Thought in Christological Perspective (Ashgate, 2006). He is a conservative Roman Catholic who likes Karl Barth. I am an Evangelical Protestant who likes Barth, but John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI as well. I am criticizing him for being insufficiently Catholic and he is responding by trying to get me to take Barth more seriously! What fun! The dialogue continues. If you can get your hands of a copy of his book, by all means do so. It is excellent.
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First of all, I would like to say that I don’t think we are as far apart as it might appear – and I don’t think Benedict is as far from Barth as it might appear. Benedict stands in a tradition shaped by Lubac and Balthasar, who surely learned much from Barth’s criticism of 19th Century Liberal Theology and his Christological concentration. Surely Benedict, like them, transcends the worst of Enlightenment rationalism. And everyone named in this post (including you and I) fancies himself an Augustinian of one sort of another.

As for First Things, it should be noted that that journal does not have a single position in the sense that one could convert to it – it is too eclectic for that. It brings together voices from Jewish, Catholic and Protestant traditions to converse in such a way that no one is forced to leave behind his own set of philosophical/theological presuppositions. I see it as being valuable especially insofar as it provides a place for dialogue between Paleo-conservatives (like me) and Neo-conservatives.

Secondly, to get to the substance of the issue, David, you say that you can’t agree with Benedict because you believe that “only the presence of the Holy Spirit (who is inseparable from the Word) can make Reason possible.” You also say:

“Only a Christian can know the meaning of, say, “power”, as only a Christian knows the power of God revealed most perfectly on the Cross of Jesus Christ. As such this “power”, power indistinguishable from servitude and sacrifice, renders our common uses of “power” to be meaningless, referring to nothing but the play of signifiers.”

I think I have read enough Barth and postliberal stuff to understand you here. But where I get confused is when you go on to say: “I recognize the Nietzschean story in scripture and tradition.” You elaborate as follows:

“When people talk about my book they wonder why I find Nietzsche "helpful" or how I'm trying to "beat" or "outnarrate" Nietzsche. The first thing to say is that when I read Nietzsche's depiction of knowledge (babel) and the self (Eden) qua salvation I say, "this is true!".”

So does that mean that Nietzsche has the Spirit? How can Nietzsche have a true vision of the human condition if what you say is true when you write: “Reason is butchered by sinfulness and only Grace can restore it. Nietzsche cannot see the world for what it is because he is not in relationship with and being conformed to Christ.”

My question is “does Nietzsche see the human condition clearly or not?” It seems to me you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. If Nietzsche can see sin clearly, but not redemption, that sounds pretty much like what Aquinas thought was often true of pagans. The Reformed traditon accounts for things like this with its notion of common grace. The light of natural reason is not pure darkness, but it isn’t sufficient to find our way out of the labyrinth of sin and error either. Salvation requires grace. I can’t imagine what part of this Benedict would have a problem with. All he wanted to do at Regensburg is to say that recognizing that this world has a rational structure should lead us to realize that it has a moral structure and this moral structure, to the extent Christians and Muslims can agree on it, might give us the basis for world peace instead of the clash of civilizations. He certainly was not envisioning Muslims getting saved by reason.

And if Nietzsche offers us so much good insight into the nature of original sin – and I fully agree with you that he does – then why not call that the kind of dialogue that Benedict XVI was envisioning in his Regensburg Lecture? I think you and I would both want to say to Nietzsche something like: “Yes, that is true as far as it goes, but you know God has provided a way of escape from the tyranny of biological drives and if we look at Jesus Christ – really gaze on his beauty and goodness – we will find forgiveness and liberation.”

Thirdly, you write: “So Nietzsche grounds the 'fact of relativism' in our biological nature and this, as an Augustinian Christian, fascinates me, why? Because Augustinian Christians do too.” But of course, the Holy Father is an Augustinian as well and I suspect that he would like your project with regard to Nietzsche. I don’t presume to speak for him, but as I read him and you and think about these issues, I don’t see any real conflict. It is a shame that he has never written the big book on sin that he wanted to do as his magnum opus.

The pope surely is well aware that, just because inter-faith dialogue on moral issues is possible, that does make it easy. Sin is a pain in the inter-faith dialogue rear end for sure. This may be why he has sought to shift the focus away from trying to find common ground on theology to trying to agree on a basic common morality (and I mean really basic – things like the right to life, the family as the natural unit of society and marriage).

Fourthly, when you talk about disordered desires as fundamental I am right there with you and want to endorse bringing eros into the discussion. But here, Benedict is way ahead of us. In Deus Caritas, after clarifying that love includes both agape and eros, he unites love of God and love of neighbor. Then, quoting St. Augustine, he writes: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity.” Nietzsche could not see charity in the Benedictine sense and therefore could not really see the Triune God. Yet he saw some truth – truth with which we have to engage.