Who would have thought that Friedrich Nietzsche could rightly be described as homo religiosus or a person of faith? If anything seems to be true, it is that his credentials as “secular thinker” are sterling. As a vehement critic of Christianity, Nietzsche seems the paradigmatic “atheist” and “nihilist.” Yet Nietzsche’s thought is much closer to religion than has been generally recognized. I contend that his thought is deeply religious from start to finish. Thus, rather than read Nietzsche as a nihilist and atheist, I read Nietzsche as desperately wanting to escape from nihilism. Moreover, rather than simply throw religion aside, I see Nietzsche as designing his own new religion with its own peculiar god. Nietzsche begins as a Pietist and ends as one: though the content of Nietzsche’s “new” Dionysian Pietism is different from the Lutheran Pietism of his childhood, the form remains virtually unchanged.

As a boy, “Fritz” was deeply pious and often called the “little pastor.” The particular brand of German Pietism he inherited from his mother focused on practice rather than doctrine. From that Pietistic perspective, Christianity is primarily a way of being, one characterized particularly by childlike trust in God. Consider the following prayer that closes his autobiography From my Life (1858), written at the tender age of thirteen.

I have firmly resolved within me to dedicate myself forever to His service. May the dear Lord give me strength and power to carry out my intention and protect me on life’s way. Like a child I trust in His grace . . . . All He gives I will joyfully accept: happiness and unhappiness, poverty and wealth, and boldly look even death in the face, which shall one day unite us all in eternal joy and bliss. . . . Amen!

Here we find an outpouring of a heart that completely trusts in God. Whatever happens, Fritz is content to say “amen” to all that comes his way.

Only a few years later, we find a boy growing into manhood and deeply unclear about his faith. In his poem “Fled are the Lovely Dreams” (1862) he writes “I do not know what I believe.” His poem of 1864 titled “To the Unknown God” expresses a deep longing for God but no clear idea who or what that God might be: “I lift up my hands to you in loneliness . . . to whom in the deepest depths of my heart/I have solemnly consecrated altars. On them glows, deeply inscribed/the word: To the unknown God. . . . I want to know you, even serve you.”

Nietzsche is well known for “the death of God.” But how God “dies” is key. For instance, in 1881 Nietzsche speaks of the “euthanasia” of Christianity in which it morphs into a “gentle moralism.” Nietzsche nowhere provides a sustained argument against belief in God or Christianity. The reason for that lack of argument is simple: Nietzsche thinks that one needs merely to explain how belief in God—and other religious entities—came into being, and thus one has explained it away. Although Nietzsche does not use such terminology here, “genealogy” effectively replaces refutation. By showing the distinctly human origins of belief in God, one shows that such belief is no longer plausible.

In marked contrast, in that (in)famous passage in The Gay Science (1882) the death of God is announced as a murder. The madman enters the city square and says: “I’ll tell you! We have killed him—you and I! We are all his murderers.”  Of course, the death of God is not constituted by some actual mortal “event.” Nietzsche here clearly equates “God is dead” with the fact that (as he puts it) “the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable.” Nietzsche, then, is simply reflecting the German culture of his day, in which belief was slowly ebbing away.

But then who—or what—takes over the role of “God” for Nietzsche? It is not as if Nietzsche now leaves the “god question” behind; rather it remains with him throughout his life. As his contemporary Lou Salomé [more than just a friend, but that’s a long story . . . ] observes:

Only when we enter Nietzsche’s last phase of philosophy will it become completely clear to what extent the religious drive always dominated his being and his knowledge. His various philosophies are for him just so many surrogates for God . . . . His last years, then, are a confession that he was not able to do without this ideal. And precisely because of that, time and again we come upon his impassioned battle against religion, belief in God, and the need for salvation because he came precariously close to them.

In 1862, he had written to his childhood friends: “Christianity is essentially a matter of the heart” and “The ‘kingdom of heaven’ is a state of the heart—not something that is to come ‘above the earth’ or ‘after death’.” He also writes: “That God became man only shows that man should not seek his blessedness in eternity, but instead ground his heaven on earth.” Here we have a newly revised Pietism, one that provides the model for Nietzsche’s continually improvised Pietism that continues throughout his life. So, already by 1862, Nietzsche had come to think in terms of an earthly piety. Admittedly, Nietzsche’s conception of Christian Pietism is less than orthodox. Yet it is remarkable how true Nietzsche remains to the structure of Pietism. He writes—much later—in The Anti-Christ(ian) (1888):

It is false to the point of nonsense to find the mark of the Christian in a ‘faith’, for instance, in the faith in redemption through Christ: only Christian practice, a life such as he lived who died on the cross, is Christian. . . . Not a faith, but a doing.

Such was the essence of true Christian faith for Nietzsche, this practice that is a state of being. For Nietzsche, the problem with Christianity is that it is against this world and only concerned with the world to come. Thus, he accuses Christianity of being “otherworldly.” In place of this denigration of the world, Nietzsche preaches the doctrine of what he calls amor fati [love of fate]—the idea of loving all that has happened, is happening, and will happen. “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary . . . but love it.” For Christianity, the assumption is that sin is wrong and so we need to be “redeemed” from sin. Conversely, “redemption” for Nietzsche means not thinking there is something wrong in first place. The logic of amor fati, then, is the antithesis of the logic of redemption.

On the one hand, making this change from the usual concept of redemption to amor fati would seem to be a truly gargantuan task. For, as Nietzsche fully admits, it requires both a thinking and feeling differently that would seem difficult to accomplish. On the other hand, amor fati is remarkably close to the sentiments of the Pietistic prayer of the young Fritz in which he joyfully accepts all that God will give.

Yet how might the death of God allow for the possibility of the creation of a new god? Nietzsche admits that—so far—“at bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome.” And then he goes on to ask: “Does it make sense to conceive a god ‘beyond good and evil’?” Such, I contend, is exactly what Nietzsche desires and toward which he strives. But, for Nietzsche, this new god is actually a very old one—the ancient Greek god Dionysus refigured by Nietzsche. Exactly who this refigured Dionysus is never becomes fully clear in Nietzsche. Yet, even in creating a new god, the extent to which Nietzsche remains connected to the logic—and perhaps even the substance—of Christianity is more significant than he realizes. In other words, he has not simply left it all behind.

When Nietzsche writes “I would believe only in a god who knew how to dance,” it seems as if Nietzsche has found his “god” in Dionysus. Dionysus turns out to be the “unknown God” to whom Nietzsche earlier had prayed. In effect, Nietzsche invents what he terms “a fundamentally opposed doctrine and counter-evaluation of life” that he says he “baptized,” “by the name of a Greek god: I called it Dionysiac.” Further, Nietzsche adopts what he sees as the Dionysian “tragic outlook” on life: although life is full of suffering, one ought to embrace it anyway. It is what Nietzsche calls a “pessimism of strength” that leads to “a total affirmation of the world.” Nietzsche styles himself as “the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus.” As a way of describing what a follower of Dionysus might be like, Nietzsche’s description provided by the poet Goethe is particularly enlightening.

Goethe conceived of a human being who was strong, highly cultivated, skilled in everything bodily, with self-control and self-respect . . . . Such a spirit who has become free stands with a glad and trusting fatalism in the midst of the universe, with a faith that only the particular is to be rejected, that as a whole, everything redeems and affirms itself—such a spirit does not negate anymore . . . But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.

That one is able to accept all that happens is only possible on the basis of this Dionysian faith and clearly represents a religious move for Nietzsche. Indeed, he speaks of this as “the holy way.” It is a new sense of “holiness,” not a Christian but a Dionysian holiness.

Having laid down the “doctrines” of his Dionysian faith, how faithful a follower does Nietzsche prove to be? For, rather than merely postulating Dionysus and his Dionysian Piety, Nietzsche actually needs to become Dionysian. Such is a project to be accomplished, rather than something already completed. How does Nietzsche think that he can reach the Dionysian? Part of the answer lies in the very nature of Dionysus. Not only is Dionysus himself able to take on multiple appearances, those whom he inspires are likewise enabled to become “other.” The Rausch—frenzy or rapture—that one experiences when under the spell of Dionysus brings about an “ecstasy”—an ekstasis that removes one (even if only temporarily) beyond normal existence. The substitution, then, of Dionysus for the God of Christianity not only changes the identity of God for Nietzsche but also enables Nietzsche to change his own identity (from the follower of Christ to the follower of Dionysus). Of course, a major—perhaps the major—problem facing Nietzsche is that to accept all of life would mean accepting everything, and that “everything” would have to include Christ, the whole history of Christianity, and even the doctrine of redemption as interpreted by Christians. Can Nietzsche really accept all of this?

As it turns out, Jesus proves—in certain ways—an exemplar for Nietzsche, for Jesus actually lives out a sense of what Nietzsche terms “blessedness.” On Nietzsche’s (admittedly highly unorthodox) read, Jesus does not care about repentance or reconciliation, for there is no sin for which to feel guilty. Nietzsche says that the “glad tidings” finally “dispose” of the notion of “redemption through faith.” Instead, one can “feel oneself ‘in heaven’” simply by this “new way of life.” So Jesus’ life is a radical affirmation to life. Moreover, Jesus is also free from ressentiment [resentment] and seems to be able to say “Yes” to life in a way that Nietzsche does not seem free to do. In contrast, Nietzsche still seems mired in ressentiment—which would mean he is far from free. While Nietzsche hopes and prays to become a child, he portrays the evangel—at least in two crucial respects—as someone like the person he himself wishes to be—a child and a free spirit. Thus, the evangel is already a free spirit, rather than merely an aspiring one like Nietzsche.

Just how far, then, does Nietzsche’s go in becoming Dionysian? For the truly free spirit is able to embrace fate and all that life brings. Although Nietzsche himself seems not to be entirely clear about this, it would seem that only the one who has this “joyous/glad and trusting fatalism” can truly be a free spirit and thus freed from the logic of ressentiment. Yet, while Nietzsche speaks lovingly at times of life in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885), that love is too often eclipsed by ressentiment. This becomes even more problematic in his late texts. It is particularly telling that Nietzsche makes remarkably little headway on his last projected book titled Revaluation of All Values (which would be a potentially “positive” endeavor). He talks in the preface to that work of “new ears for new music” but we get little in the way of “new” music, just the vehemence of The Anti-Christ(ian). Moreover, to what extent is Nietzsche truly honest with himself? Consider the following “self-assessment” Nietzsche offers in Ecce Homo (1888):

Really religious difficulties, for example, I don’t know from experience . . . .‘God’, ‘the immortality of the soul’, ‘redemption’, ‘beyond’—without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them.

At best, only part of this describes Nietzsche: true, he has not been concerned with immortality of the soul, redemption, and beyond. Yet he has been obsessed with God throughout his life. His problem is that he is not childlike enough, though in exactly the opposite sense he means here. If amor fati is “saying yes to life even in its most strange and intractable problems,” then Nietzsche seems unable to live up to that. In place of “Yes-saying,” he is all too full of denial.

Ultimately, the self that Nietzsche wishes to overcome is that of the pious young Fritz. But does Nietzsche really overcome this self? We have already seen that Nietzsche remains remarkably true to his pietistic roots in important ways. True, he moves from his old faith in the God of Christianity to a faith in Life, resulting in both a desire to serve life and a willingness to say “Yes and Amen” to life rather than God. But he has not left what Salomé terms the “mystical God-ideal” behind. And he seems quite unable to leave it behind. Further, even in his desire to serve Life he turns out to be unfaithful. Nietzsche admits in Zarathustra that he is not true to Life and he feels deep remorse for his infidelity. So he turns out to be a heretic in his own religion.

Yet there is a further problem that Nietzsche faces. Not only does he wish to be free from the God of Christianity, he also wishes to be free from the very hope of redemption. But—in the end—can Nietzsche make such a move? How can Nietzsche truly escape from escaping, overcome overcoming, redeem himself from redemption, or save himself from salvation? The most Nietzsche can do is make a religious move, saying that all this can only be accomplished by faith. But is Nietzsche’s faith strong enough? He hopes and prays to be a true follower of Dionysus. But he knows he is unfaithful. So Nietzsche’s last of multiple autobiographies, Ecce Homo, is an attempt to re-interpret his life as a faithful follower of Dionysus. It is a confession of faith and a confession of unfaithfulness. When Nietzsche claims that Ecce Homo is designed to tell us “who I am,” that claim is only partly right. For it is also designed to tell us whom Nietzsche wishes to be. “I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,” writes Nietzsche. Such is both what Nietzsche is and what he also wants to be. In effect, Nietzsche says: “I believe; help thou my unbelief.” He is all too well aware of his failings to live up to his own teachings. He writes: “When I have looked into my Zarathustra, I walk up and down in my room for half an hour, unable to master an unbearable fit of sobbing.” Why does he sob? One could respond that these are tears of rapture. Yet it is in looking into himself that Nietzsche begins sobbing. And he goes on to describe himself as “an abyss.” Thus, Nietzsche’s tears are at once for the nothingness within him and the nothingness without. As the supposedly free spirit with “Dionysian faith” enabling him to say “Yes and Amen” to all that comes, he ought not to be sobbing. Instead, he should have the resolution of the young Fritz to say: “All Life gives I will joyfully accept: happiness and unhappiness, poverty and wealth, and boldly look even death in the face.” That would be the expression of the childlike trust after which Nietzsche so desperately seeks. In fact, if Nietzsche were actually to return to the mentality of the young Fritz, he might actually be better off in reaching true Dionysian Piety. For what Nietzsche calls “the free spirit par excellence” is able to dance “even beside abysses.” But, lacking that faith, Nietzsche prays to be rescued from himself. His tears are for his inability to make that a reality.

***

Perhaps it is only in his madness that Nietzsche finally reaches the Dionysian. It is not merely that he signs a number of letters “Dionysus” or even that he claims to have “become Dionysus.” Rather it is his signing of other letters as “The Crucified” and saying “I have also hung on the cross” that symbolizes the greatest change. For, if he can affirm even the Crucified, then he has truly reached the profoundest level of Yes-saying that characterizes the Dionysian. To be able to affirm even Christianity—against which he has railed so vehemently—is finally to become truly Dionysian—and to have left all ressentiment behind. But, of course, the price he has to pay to reach the Dionysian is not his soul but his sanity.

Bruce Ellis Benson is professor of philosophy at Wheaton College.

8 April 2008