"God is dead!" claimed Nietzsche, a German philosopher,
philologist, and a cultural critic. His pronouncement, though, is not
literal –in the sense that a God is literally lying dead in a coffin.
He rather implies a cultural fact –that is, at modern times, people are
living their lives as if God is dead. There is another implication
of Nietzsche’s pronouncement, as commonly agreed by scholars, which is a sort
of nihilism. Nihilism is a philosophical belief which
claims that there is no foundation or whatsoever to one’s belief, knowledge,
morals, and so on.
Let me elaborate each implication in
this article. Firstly, the death of God is a cultural fact. During his
times, Nietzsche observed that people's obsession or their fundamental concern
in life has dramatically changed. This paradigmatic shift was spawned mainly
by industrialization. In its primitive
form, industrialization replaced the traditional means of producing goods such
as garments, shoes, textiles and so on by means of machines. The invention of machines somehow shaped the
dawn of industrialization, which generates the philosophy of materialism. In
highly-industrialized cities, the cathedrals which were once the centers of the
lives of the people are dwarfed by
shopping malls, high-rise industrial buildings, and many other
business-oriented institutions. In fact,
in some European countries, there are only few people going to church to
worship God. Many are going to church as
tourists who are more interested of the socio-cultural, historic and aesthetic
value of churches.
In feudalistic (agricultural) society
in Medieval Europe, what was at the center in the life of the people was the
church. It was in the church where people prayed before going to their
farms and after working in the farms. It was in the church where some
people spent their lives in prayer and devoted their whole life serving
God in prayer and doing corporal works of mercy. Even how the village was
arranged, the church was located at the center of the village. The municipal hall and residences surrounded
the church.
In modern times, people are busy in
doing business or busy spending their waking hours earning income. The obsession of people today is money and
how to get more money. God is placed at
the side-line. To put it succinctly, the
idea of God is fading, or waning like the moonlight in a dark night, in the minds of people caught up in the web of
industrialization and of the materialistic philosophy.
Secondly, the death of God also
implies nihilism. Nihilism is derived
from the Latin word nihil, which
means “nothing.” If “God is dead,” there
is nothing which serves as the foundation of man’s existence, man’s moral
sense, man’s knowledge, and so on. Among
Christian thinkers, God is regarded as the cause and foundation of man’s existence
and the existence of all things. Without
God, we are nothing. Moreover, God sets
all foundations of other realities. God
implants the fundamental principle of morality in all of us so that each of us,
by nature, knows what is good from bad.
God is also the source of true knowledge, and the one who truly knows
the truth is enlightened by God. “God is
dead,” everything is lost as well.
How to Overcome the Death of God?
Nietzsche does not preach the
glory of God in his mournful death. Instead,
he eventually buries God in his graveyard.
I mean, Nietzsche settles with the idea that God is really dead, and he
is completely gone. With God’s absence,
man is left flying in the vacuum. Man is
left to exist without God to look upon for his salvation and ultimate purpose
in life. For Nietzsche, man has to
overcome God’s absence by becoming an “ubermensch” (superman). He has to fly without wings. Otherwise, he lives without any purpose in
life. As a superman, he has to exert his
“will to power.” With “will to power,”
man shall create and impose his own values in life, his own standards of right
and wrong, of what is true. He has to
become what he wants to become without determinations of someone powerful than
him (like God). He has to turn himself into a god.
Is God Really Dead?
Let me attempt to answer this question. Yes, the idea of God is dead! But, the historical God who became man
(Emmanuel) in the person of Christ is not dead.
He is really alive and has impacted the lives of saints and martyrs for
centuries, and the lives people who are still within the signal of God’s
presence.
It’s true that people, in modern
times, are drifting away from God. But
it doesn’t follow that He’s dead. He is
still there inside the church waiting for his prodigal sons and daughters to
come back and pay him homage.
