This essay was largely inspired by Uberboyo and his comments on the faith. I find a lot of his content to be very interesting and anyone familiar with his work will recognise many of his comments in this writing. My intentions with writing this piece are not to sow discord, but to harmonise his comments on the faith with perennial Christian thought in order that we may move the dialogue forwards.
Let us begin by understanding the state of play. In 2023 Christianity in the West has undergone centuries of decay. This has culminated in many so-called Christians having an understanding of the faith that wouldn’t have been recognised as Christianity even a few decades ago. This begs some questions. Is this decay a feature or a bug of Christianity? Do we need to change or add a caveat to Christianity? Perhaps we need to forget Christ and move on to something else? In order to answer these questions we will examine Friedrich Nietzsche’s takes on this issue. Moreover, we will discuss how Christianity was understood for all of history and compare this to the modern heretical notions that pagans and Nietzscheans are so fond of misunderstanding.
At the time of Nietzsche’s writing, the West had begun to enter the decline we are still experiencing today. Christianity in Saxony (the district in Prussia that Nietzsche was from) had fallen into a dull and performative Lutheranism. Furthermore, the socialists in Europe were full of energy and more and more people were enticed by the allure of Communism. Nietzsche was well aware of this and spent his days formulating a way in which Europeans could get themselves out of the jaws of entropy.
To get a coherent understand of how Nietzsche viewed the situation in Europe, let us go back to Ancient Greece. Some cyclical historians point to Homer as the peak of Ancient Greek civilisation, rather than the philosophers who came later. The way they saw it, the men Homer wrote about were proud, passionate, jacked, handsome and tanned warriors, willing to die for glory and kill anyone seeking to dishonour them. However as the years wore on and the Greeks became more accustomed to the riches war had brought them, they started to become lovers of comfort. They didn’t have to kill to earn their keep, they were just given it. Eventually the energetic wellspring of these different states began to run dry. This was the perfect climate for Socrates to come along and ask self-reflective questions like an annoying therapist, causing everyone to doubt the presuppositions that held their society together. This is exactly why Socrates was sentenced to death. I mean his points may have been valid, but the Athenians weren’t wrong. Socrates was “corrupting the youth” by getting them to question everything that the Athenians took for granted. Then Plato comes along saying poetry (this would include Homeric epics) should be banned because it excites the passions and could lead men into making irrational decisions. Aristotle comes after him and wants to categorise everything and engage in lifelong, rigorous study. Before you know it, all the thumos of the successors of Achilles has been completely dissipated into books and endless Socratic thought experiments. Greece arguably never reached those heights again.
Long story short and at the risk of an oversimplification, Nietzsche decided that vitalism was the key to accomplishing this. Without the vital energy that made her great, Europe was doomed to decay. He recognised that the Achaeans and the Spartans were at their heights when they were full of vitalist energy, not when they were spending their days with their heads stuck in books. He stated that no amount of rational philosophy would prevent this decline, as ultimately men of action win the day, not men of letters.
So what did he mean by vitalism? When we think of vitalism, we think of it as the vril, thumos or life force that one experiences when their body is healthy, their mind is free, and their soul is driven to great heights. The English and Germans in the 19th century were full of it. The Spanish in the 16th century and The French in the 13th century (and Napoleonic era) had and even America in the 1980s was the vital country of its era. During these epochs, each one of these nations created amazing forms of art and saw themselves as an unstoppable force that would rule the world. Nietzsche recognised that Europe must recreate that vitalist energy she once held, or she would perish.
Nietzsche (or at least Nietzscheans insofar as they exist) felt that Christianity was not a solution for this decline in vitality. They believe this as Christianity is allegedly absent of vitalist energy. This comes from the severely lacking critique of the faith, that it is “life denying”. He argued that the focus on the afterlife meant Christians ignored the state of the world and instead preferred to ponder the supernatural. He also said the monastic tradition was a form of cowardice because people literally left society to live in monastery and focus solely on God. So Nietzsche did have a problem with the religion itself, however, when Nietzsche said that “God is dead”, he was largely referring to the Christians of his day killing the soul of their civilisation. They no longer really believed in God, and as God was the life force of Western Civilisation, their civilisation was doomed. There seems somewhat of a contradiction here. On one hand, killing God means the death of civilisation, and on the other, the Christian faith is inherently life denying. I am not entirely sure what to make of this, but I do believe Nietzsche recognised Christianity to be an ordered faith. He had his qualms with it, but I think he generally thought of it as a reasonable way to order society. He recognised the eternal principles that govern reality and perhaps referred to them as God. However, his big hang-up was that the way Christians obeyed these rules of the universe. He saw it to be a lifeless observance of cultural customs that lacked any kind of vitality.
On another note, I really don’t think that Nietzsche was an atheist like Richard Dawkins. I think he would laugh and ridicule the new atheists and their fedora wearing followers. They actually had a brief period of vitalism, fuelled by their smug, pseudo-intellectual dismantling of low IQ Christian talking points. However, when the feelings of intellectual superiority wore off and it became clear than they had not ushered in the age of rational, enlightened individuals, their energy dissipated. Anyway…
Let us get back to the topic at hand. Nietzsche saw the energy of the high points of Christendom as a hollowed out and rotten corpse. Can you blame him? Christians once launched a 200-year crusade into the Holy Land! There is an evident distinction in vitality between these men and your local skinny jeans and beanie wearing pastor.
As Europe needed a fresh vital energy that would emerge in a new form of art and culture, he felt it would need a new “religion”. He argued that people leave one idol for another when that new idol makes them feel a certain way or reach a certain height. Like a person swapping preference for one form of music for another. The old genre might still tick the boxes, but it just doesn’t hit quite the same as it used to, so they find another type that makes them feel alive. Thus, Nietzsche believed the energy from Christendom had been drained and the people needed a new ordeal to strive for. One which would pour into them a new vitalist energy; the type Christianity once did, but no longer does. Here is where we get into two of his most famous and misunderstood concepts: The Will to Power and The Ubermensch.
The Will to Power
Believe it or not, Nietzsche’s concept of a will to power actually meant a little more than just telling people to do whatever they want and conquer everything in their sight. It was the understanding that humans will lose their vitality and descend into vice, unless there is a greater principle motivating them out of it. Only a greater will could conquer the temptation of the lower will. The Will to Power requires an indifference to suffering in order to ascend. One must endure the pains of discipline to reap the rewards of glory.
The Ubermensch
Nietzsche believed capable people should aim at becoming what he called The Ubermensch. His view for this came from the notion that what is good for the body is also good for the mind, and a valid will to power is the will to turn yourself into a vitalist being. The vision of The Ubermensch could be that greater principle which could conquer the temptation to be a bug-man.
Nietzsche is often accused of being a moral relativist, which is not entirely true. He recognised it as being objectively true that a strong man with healthy proportions, is objectively better than a skinny-fat soy-boy. The Ubermensch would pursue such physical ideas. Nietzsche argued that these ideas are objectively true in themselves. A healthy body is a healthy mind. An inflamed body filled with seed oils wrecks the gut-brain axis and produces all kinds of self-destructive thoughts in a person. A healthy body produces an appropriate balance of hormones that influences the mind to recognise the true, good and beautiful. It is objectively true that one must submit to nature and her rules in order to ascend physically. Nature wants strong people and that’s why she rewards those who obey her with strength, beauty and vitality. The icing on the cake is when Nietzsche says In Thus Spake Zarathustra, “The Ubermensch shall be the meaning of the earth”.
That Doesn’t Sound Very Christian
So that Ubermensch thing sounds pretty cool, what a shame Christianity offers nothing of the sort! In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche actually claims that Christianity “despises the body”. As our pagan friends assure us, the weak followers of Christ are told to deny the bodily urges and live in our heads instead.
But hold on a minute! God is all good and all powerful and all loving. Why would an all-loving God who can only be perfect give us inherently “bad” bodies and these “bad” urges? Why would God give us eros (one of the four Greek words for love; in this case the sexual love) and then torture us with it by telling us we aren’t allowed to use it. How could that even happen? It is literally an impossibility. This begs the question…
Why Did God Give Us These Urges?
Those who actually understand Christianity do not view eros as bad. Disordered eros certainly is wrong, but like anger, there can be a proper use for it. Eros can be used express to agape (the highest form of love expressed through sacrifice) with our spouse. The Christian faith celebrates sex within marriage. Man and woman were naked without shame in the Garden of Eden because they experience erotic desire as the desire to love divinely. Eros is fuel, and a man filled with eros is a man filled with vitality. Christ didn’t come into the world to condemn those with erotic vitality; he came to redirect them towards the stars.
If you’re a young male, you know the feeling of being full of testosterone and vitality. You’ve smashed some deadlifts at the gym, thrown back eight raw eggs and stacked some nootropic supplements. Your vitality is through the roof, and you feel like you’re king of the world. Your libido is likely also through the roof as well and that’s allowed. Just use the excess energy to spur yourself on towards greatness. Rocket fuel (as theologian of the body Christopher West would say) is supposed to propel you upwards, towards greatness. But the devil wants you to waste your rocket fuel to keep you from never getting off the ground.
As Christians, we are not called to suppress our libido out of pure repression. This is a diabolical misunderstanding that many Christians fall prey to, and many would-be converts are turned off by. The Puritans were heretics and they’ve disappeared for a reason. Don’t throw away this amazing life fuel that spurs us to greatness, but rather cultivate it and aim it towards infinite joy. The same goes for anger. We should be angry at certain evils. However, we shouldn’t direct our anger towards unjustly harming other people. We don’t deny the bodily urges and classify them as evil; we order them and use them to spur us towards righteousness.
In Greek mythology, there are stories where the Greek gods are all fighting until Zeus walks in and establishes order within them. Rather than killing them he puts the gods of war, love etc. in their rightful place. This is literally creating order out of chaos. It is not just killing off all these different gods competing for power. Now obviously Christians do not worship these “gods” but the message in that snippet of mythology is entirely coherent with the theology of the body.
This is merely one of many blind spots for many Nietzschians and pagans. It fundamentally misunderstands the types of urges we experience. When the bodily urges are disordered, they manifest into the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, sloth, wrath, envy and gluttony. For the sake of brevity I shall not go into great descriptions of these.
Moreover, when properly ordered, bodily urgers spur us towards the virtues that we intuitively know to be good. These are charity, temperance, fortitude and prudence.
We understand charity to be a good deed. But how can someone be charitable if they have a disordered attachment to the sin of greed? This attachment to greed can develop through indulging your desires for food and sex. I.e. misusing your carnal desires. A person might even understand that charity is a virtue but due to being so greedy, they just won’t help someone else.
So Christianity tells you to not engage in disordered use of the carnal desires (as this leads to developing vice) in order that you may be able to participate in the higher virtues.
As was always taught by those who professed the Christian faith, our life is a test with a final goal of salvation. This answers the trite objection of “why would God give us these urges if we weren’t supposed to act on them?” that many atheists and pagans are so fond of. Nietzsche himself literally says the only thing that can defeat the lower will is the higher will dominating it. I’m sure the moralistic Lutherans that Nietzsche grew up with were great with supressing their carnal urges, but perhaps due to their belief that they were guaranteed salvation, they didn’t really aspire for higher spiritual development.
Let us explore the severely obnoxious idea that Christianity is “life denying” a little more. Firstly, The Lord’s Prayer is literally worded “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only the heretical, pre-millennial believing protestants think we need to just bunker down and wait until the second coming. The actual Christian has the duty to “make disciples of all nations”. The goal is for all nations to fall under the rulership of Christ the King and be subject to His will. Christianity accepts that the world will never be perfect due to original sin but calls us to try to aspire to “be perfect like (our) Father in heaven in perfect” (Mt 5:48) nonetheless. It is also worth noting that the most grand and extravagant buildings and art forms have largely been Christian. The 140 statues of 10-foot-tall saints that circle St Peter’s Square absolutely mogg everyone that walks below them. Moreover, St Peter’s Basilica itself is undoubtedly the most stunning building in the world. As C.S. Lewis said “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.” No one does more to bolster the state of the earth than he who has eyes set on heaven.
And why is this the case? Simply, because order creates beauty (something Nietzsche recognised and was an avid proponent of). God is inherently ordered and not chaotic, so it follows that beauty flows from those who worship Him. We see this beauty physically manifest in the sacred geometry of cathedrals such as the aforementioned St Peters. We hear the harmony of a music scale and the ugliness and disorder when a note outside the scale is hit. There is a standard in the universe and both Nietzsche and Christ adhere to this.
Willing a Christian Ubermensch to Power?
So it seems to me that a Christian actually living the faith as intended fits the idea of the will to power and The Ubermensch somewhat well. Surely not! Well I mean both centre around conquering all vice through the determination to achieve the highest highs and to literally transcend normal life on earth. Maybe that explains why Christians won battles such as Lepanto? Maybe this modern, watered-down, rock band, “Jesus was just a nice guy” Christianity isn’t actually the real thing? Who knew?
Let’s elaborate on this further; I don’t think the pursuit of power is necessarily in conflict with Christian values. Obviously if there is a disordered lust for power for power’s sake, that is a different question, but the Catholic Church was arguably the most powerful institution in the world for centuries. The crusaders fought for Christ, not some elusive ancient concept of heroism which pagans think they have a monopoly of. Willing a Christian ruler of your nation is a pursuit of power. Are you, as a Christian, going to deny that is what you want? Understand that there is no virtue in NOT having power. You can have power and Christians should have power. Being able to protect those who are underneath you is something worth striving for. A father should be powerful enough to protect and provide for his family.
However, there is a key distinction which the vitalist idolaters always miss; not everyone can have large amounts of power. So Christ in his genius provided a path of justification and sanctification for everyone. There is something for the young , high testosterone young male, as well as the old female downtrodden peasant. There is a way that everyone, no matter their state in life, can benefit from and give meaning to their suffering and hardships. On the other hand, The Ubermensch is not available to everyone. This is where the big split between this worldview and a Christian worldview occurs. Nietzsche says himself that “the beautiful belongs to the few” (Twilight of the Idols). Only a select few great men could be fortunate enough to pursue becoming The Ubermensch. Well, that’s fine, Christianity clearly has no qualms with hierarchy, but if your potential solution to the decline of the Western World is a handful of people maybe becoming giga-Chads then I’m sorry but your solution sucks. What does everyone else do? Just sort of follow along and do what their overlords tell them? You also aren’t a young, vitalist man forever. What happens when you get old and frail and you’re incapable of pursuing physical excellence? Time comes for us all.
More About the Body
“Take care of the body as if you will live forever, take care of the mind as if you will die tomorrow” – St Augustine.
In today’s era of microplastics and dopamine overload, it’s hardly surprising that many Christians are weak and passive. Would you imply that pagans and the common man are not? But this obviously was not always the case. Back before we swallowed a credit card worth of plastic every year, invented seed oils and ruined our circadian rhythms with blue light, men were simply higher in testosterone and to put it simply, more masculine. Christian men would have been the same. I’d be willing to bet that Richard the Lionheart would have had 1500 ng/dL of testosterone (that’s a lot). So one wonders whether the faith itself is what causes the decline in vital masculinity or just the epoch we live in?
There is nothing anti-Christian about working out and looking after your health. You should resist the urge to be prideful, but understand that God made the body and therefore the body is good. Only heretical Gnostics believe otherwise. The reason those in religious life subdue the body is purely in order to get the carnal temptations under the control of right reason, not because they despise it.
What do we then Make of Rationality?
But wasn’t Christianity iNfLuEnCeD by Plato and Aristotle? Didn’t we learn earlier that Plato was lame, Socrates was a Redditor and Aristotle was a nerd? Achilles on the other hand was a giga-Chad, right? So do we then dismiss everything the Greek philosophers taught us? There seems to be some contradictions here. Do not be mistaken into thinking I am trying to conform Christianity into a purely physical expression of a vitalist, pagan worldview.
The answer here is, no, we don’t disregard everything they taught. Our friends who love to claim that Christianity is a form of Platonism or was influenced by Aristotelian thought fail to understand that Plato and Aristotle simply arrived at a True interpretation of the world. As Christianity is the Truth, you’ll find that they overlap. Two people can independently arrive at the conclusion that two and two is four without one having influenced the other. The Greek philosophers are the grandfathers of rationality. Yes, I’m sure many before them also arrived at similar conclusions, but for the sake of not getting too bogged down in the weeds, we’ll go with the idea that Plato, and Aristotle especially, are the gold standard when it comes to logic. If you’re at all familiar with their work, you will know that they largely arrive at similar understanding of virtues and vice that the Christian faith proclaims. Why is this? Simply because the virtues are reflected in a correctly ordered and logical understanding of the teleology of the world. And it makes sense to be that way. Things simply wouldn’t be logical if they didn’t align with the reality of the world. So the rational philosophers provide a logical explanation for why we understand the cardinal virtues to be Good and worthy of pursuit.
In Roman mythology, the goddess Veritas (“veritas” is Latin for “truth”) gave birth to the goddess Virtus. This is quite literally telling us that truth gives birth to virtue.
For example, what is the relation between a passion such as anger and rationality. Aristotle says in “The Problems” xxviii 3 that “it is reason which indicates the insult or accusation” of which we are to become angry at. We are allowed to be angry at that which the rational mind recognises to be evil. St Thomas Aquinas is in complete harmony with Aristotle’s understanding of righteous anger, and he references this section in the Summa Theologiae. Why is this the case? Did Aristotle influence the natural law? No, he just observed it correctly. They’re both right and that’s why their perspectives align. That’s all there is to it!
A modern-day pagan might claim that since Christianity denies the passions, Christians must therefore be passive and pose no resistance to all the evils in the world. Logically and anecdotally you can see this is astoundingly low IQ dribble.
To conclude, it is clear that Christians are not called to reject the body and physically waste away from nature. God only makes good things; therefore our bodies are good, and we should give them due care and admiration, which in turn gives rise to a spirit of vitalism. This is an evident truth that only those with an unsound doctrine of the faith might disagree with. The rule of thumb is to always remember that God is a deity of order, and from that order flows truth, goodness and beauty. All that is good came from Him and therefore it a thing is good; it is of God. Many wish to create their own brand of Christianity. This might come in the form of “muscular Christianity”, “Christian Nationalism” or “progressive/liberal Christianity”. These qualifications are futile, there is not caveat that can be added to Christianity to make it better; there is just Christianity, which by definition is all that is good. It is the religion of all that is true, good and beautiful. It is the religion of order and not chaos. If it is false, evil and ugly (chaotic), it is not Christianity. Thus only heresy (and microplastics) can subdue the vital spirit in a Christian.
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