Were Nietzsche and Sartre On To Something?

[50_and_Fading]

I think Nietzsche and Sartre hit on something very important for the post-modern Christian, and that something is the existential freedom of God and the primacy of the will, both of which we participate in and reflect in our own lives as beings created in the very image and likeness of God.

As Christians we understand that God is love – all the way through, as Fr Barron would say – and yet we also know that God’s supreme love is a choice God makes, an act of His divine will. Love is not love if not freely given, and God freely chooses to love – throughout history, and at this very moment – and as an expression of that love He continually creates and supports the reality we exist within. He could just as easily choose not to love, at which point our reality as we know it would cease to exist.

In this sense, God is the first Nietzschean (the original superman) and the first Existentialist – who through His will and eternal freedom chooses and creates his way of being and the reality which flows from that choice.

As Christians, we understand that God creates us in his image and likeness. What we often don’t understand, I think, is why we are so created and the radical implications of what it means. It means – I think – that we participate in every aspect of God’s existence, including his existential freedom. God created us with the same freedom He has to choose and create our own way of being and the reality which flows from it. He created us this way, because it is the only way we can have any hope of participating in His way of being. In order to love as God loves, we must be free as God is free. Love is not love if not freely given.

So I think Sartre and Nietzsche were on to something, though not in the same way they thought they were on to something. I think they re-discovered the radicality of something intrinsically Christian – they re-discovered our full participation in God’s existential freedom. Like God, we can love – by which I mean we can live our lives for the good of the other – or we can choose not to love. We can – indeed, we have no choice but to – decide our own way of being. But Sartre and Nietzsche seem to view that as the end of the discussion, i.e., human beings are radically free, and the individual will of each human being is radically supreme, and so freedom and will are ends in themselves and, consequently, meaningless.

But freedom and will – as they are with God – are simply the starting points. They are not the end points. The end points are the realities we create when we exercise our freedom and our will to make the millions of individual decisions we make on a daily basis that establish our way of being. Every second we are creating ourselves, but the fact of self-creation is not the point – the point is what we create. Because what we create will either be in harmony with the way of being of Him who created the reality in which we exercise our freedom and will, or it will not. Some would call that a choice between good and evil – I don’t view that as a necessary distinction for these purposes. I could possibly even agree with Nietzsche that we actually – like God – face a choice that is beyond good and evil. But as Christians we know it is not a choice without consequences – we are choosing our way of existence, and when doing so we will either choose to exist within God’s way of being or outside of it, as Christ did when he chose the Cross, and as Adam did when he grasped the apple.

I think we are at a place where, as has happened throughout history, the philosophical and intellectual construct and support for faith has given way, or at least is under serious challenge. I think, in many respects, our world and culture is intellectually at a juncture where – quoting Tillich – God has for many people disappeared into the anxiety of doubt. And what intrigues me about that is Tillich’s sense that there may be something of this situation to embrace, that paradoxically it is when we are at such points that we are actually the closest to God.

Perhaps it is precisely at moments like these in our intellectual history when God finds ways to appear to us again – almost as if anew. *“Look, I make all things new.” *

It was Augustin who said that if we think we have comprehended God, it is not God. That is what I think Tillich means when he talks about the “God above God.” That is what I think is meant by Christian Existentialism – that without at all denigrating or doing away with the teachings and daily practices of our Catholic faith and the Church, without at all minimizing the importance of the sacraments and the graces flowing therefrom, without at all denying the revelation of God through Scripture and Tradition and grace, we are at bottom creatures that exist with absolute and utter freedom and with absolute free will to make of ourselves that which we choose to make, and with no real understanding or certainty of the meaning of any of it, except for our faith in the intrinsic beauty and goodness of the way of being that God has revealed to us. And in that situation we have to choose – “to be or not to be,” in the immortal words of Shakespeare, to have the “courage to be,” as Tillich would phrase it, to be the “yes” to the world’s “no” as St. Paul would say, to join in the magnificent “fiat” of our Lady.

Pax,

50

 

[KyrieEleison17]

I think Nietzsche and Sartre hit on something very important for the post-modern Christian, and that something is the existential freedom of God and the primacy of the will, both of which we participate in and reflect in our own lives as beings created in the very image and likeness of God.

Okay well certainly at least in our case or the case of man our will requires some object. It is therefore difficult to speak of the primacy of the will - what sort of ordering or relation is implied here by these thinkers? Why should the will have a primacy over the intellect, without which our wills would be useless and inactive ? Arguably we use our wills or attach our will to the object of our desire. In that sense at least the will is the/a means to the goal or end we are willing for. On this consideration, then, arguably we should speak rather of -if anything- the primacy of the intellect.

As Christians we understand that God is love – all the way through, as Fr Barron would say – and yet we also know that God’s supreme love is a choice God makes, an act of His divine will. Love is not love if not freely given, and God freely chooses to love – throughout history, and at this very moment – and as an expression of that love He continually creates and supports the reality we exist within. He could just as easily choose not to love, at which point our reality as we know it would cease to exist.

In this sense, God is the first Nietzschean (the original superman) and the first Existentialist – who through His will and eternal freedom chooses and creates his way of being and the reality which flows from that choice.

I see where you are going here but I think we should be mindful to recall also that God is Triune and also that we speak only analogously of things like will when applying them to God. Again, our wills require an object and in us the will and the intellect are distinct; whereas, in God, it is usually said that He is metaphysically simple: i.e. in some sense or way God’s will is His intellect and so on.

As Christians, we understand that God creates us in his image and likeness. What we often don’t understand, I think, is why we are so created and the radical implications of what it means. It means – I think – that we participate in every aspect of God’s existence, including his existential freedom.

I think some Christians might think rather that we mirror or reflect something of God’s existence or nature - emphasizing perhaps the usual understanding or implications of being an “image” of something. A portrait of me is an image of me but to what degree or extent can it be said to participate in my nature or existence?

God created us with the same freedom He has to choose and create our own way of being

I don’t think we can really be said to create our own way of being and even our ability to choose our own way is limited by the nature of our finitude.

and the reality which flows from it. He created us this way, because it is the only way we can have any hope of participating in His way of being. In order to love as God loves, we must be free as God is free. Love is not love if not freely given.

This I more or less agree with.

So I think Sartre and Nietzsche were on to something, though not in the same way they thought they were on to something. I think they re-discovered the radicality of something intrinsically Christian – they re-discovered our full participation in God’s existential freedom. Like God, we can love – by which I mean we can live our lives for the good of the other – or we can choose not to love. We can – indeed, we have no choice but to – decide our own way of being. But Sartre and Nietzsche seem to view that as the end of the discussion, i.e., human beings are radically free, and the individual will of each human being is radically supreme, and so freedom and will are ends in themselves and, consequently, meaningless.

As noted above yes this appears to be the difficulty of their philosophy.

Perhaps it is precisely at moments like these in our intellectual history when God finds ways to appear to us again – almost as if anew. *“Look, I make all things new.” *

. . .

… And in that situation we have to choose – “to be or not to be,” in the immortal words of Shakespeare, to have the “courage to be,” as Tillich would phrase it, to be the “yes” to the world’s “no” as St. Paul would say, to join in the magnificent “fiat” of our Lady.

Except for the very last statement (“yes” to the world’s “no”?), which I think requires elaboration, you seem to be on to something. I hope your in school or have means to write and research - I’d be ready to read it. I would advise, however, a good spiritual director because when we get this lofty in our thought we sometimes need grounding and loving, constructive criticism and sometimes guidance if we get lost in the midst of it. Otherwise, thank you for sharing this.

God bless you and merry Christmas.

 

[lapis_lazuli]

That was a good and interesting post. Thank you for sharing. I needed that. I struggle sometimes with my faith, in God and in everything else. And it was nice to see ideas that fuelled my own narcissism and godlessness in the past turned on its head into something entirely new and beautiful.

 

[ClearWater]

I wonder about Nietzsche. Was he the one who said, “God is dead”? Isn’t his philosophy used a lot with communism?

 

[Peter_Plato]

So I think Sartre and Nietzsche were on to something, though not in the same way they thought they were on to something. I think they re-discovered the radicality of something intrinsically Christian – they re-discovered our full participation in God’s existential freedom. Like God, we can love – by which I mean we can live our lives for the good of the other – or we can choose not to love. We can – indeed, we have no choice but to – decide our own way of being. But Sartre and Nietzsche seem to view that as the end of the discussion, i.e., human beings are radically free, and the individual will of each human being is radically supreme, and so freedom and will are ends in themselves and, consequently, meaningless.

Your entire post resonated with me but the above paragraph seemed to point at an idea that has been in the back of my own mind for some time. Apart from being grounded in a deeper reality, freedom and will as “ends in themselves,” are consequentially speaking, meaningless. What would be the point of having freedom and a will as undetermined aspects of what it means to exist?

In God, freedom and will are an aspect of Being itself. They derive from the nature of God as Being itself. Our freedom and will, because we do not and cannot determine the nature of “being” must be grounded, as images of God, in what God calls us to be. Yet, that is not a “given” as the nature of a rock or a tree is a “given.” By bestowing freedom and will upon us, God raises us to the dignity of being “fathered” by him - not completed, but given the opportunity to “have a say” in what we are to be through the exercise of our freedom and will.

Perhaps that “becoming” is why we exist within time. Time is an aspect of the process we find ourselves in - a dynamic relationship between God as absolute Freedom and Will (in Scholastic terms, Actus Purus) and our own “selves” (personal freedom and will) in a state of becoming. God as Being Itself (I Am Who Am) is the ground and end for our becoming. The “meaning” that underpins and gives sense to our freedom and will, that neither Sartre nor Nietzsche allowed, perhaps, as an act of will on their part rather than as an intellectual conclusion.

 

[50_and_Fading]

Okay well certainly at least in our case or the case of man our will requires some object. It is therefore difficult to speak of the primacy of the will - what sort of ordering or relation is implied here by these thinkers? Why should the will have a primacy over the intellect, without which our wills would be useless and inactive ? Arguably we use our wills or attach our will to the object of our desire. In that sense at least the will is the/a means to the goal or end we are willing for. On this consideration, then, arguably we should speak rather of -if anything- the primacy of the intellect.

I think the Nietzschean response would be that the will requires an object, but the object itself is meaningless. They would say there is no inherent beauty in any particular object, but rather beauty lies in the unflinching exercise of one’s will towards the object of one’s choosing. That is the primacy of the will I am thinking of here. What resonates with me is the thought that what Nietzsche may in fact have grasped (without actually grasping it) was the existential condition of God himself, at the eternal moment of God’s own willing, the willing of His way of being, and through that our derivative being and existence.

I struggle with the notion of the primacy of the intellect. It strikes me as Cartesian, and I tend to side with the Existentialist view that existence precedes essence (I am, therefore I think – not vice versa). The problem with this view is that it has historically been associated with atheistic or agnostic implications – what I am proposing is that it is potentially consistent with a Christian worldview.

I see where you are going here but I think we should be mindful to recall also that God is Triune and also that we speak only analogously of things like will when applying them to God. Again, our wills require an object and in us the will and the intellect are distinct; whereas, in God, it is usually said that He is metaphysically simple: i.e. in some sense or way God’s will is His intellect and so on.

I take your point here. I worry though that the concept of God being metaphysically simple can devolve into the notion that God has to be as he is, i.e., that he is not free to be other than how and what he is. I think that is problematic. It is not a question of contingency I am raising, but rather a question of will. God is love, and while he is perfect and pure love, he is still love, and love is not love if not a free act of the will. So for me there is some aspect of God that chooses to be as he is, and that is what I mean by God’s will.

I don’t think we can really be said to create our own way of being and even our ability to choose our own way is limited by the nature of our finitude.

I think we part ways a bit here. We don’t create our own being or the reality that we exist within, but we do create our own way of being within that reality. Our thoughts, decisions, actions are our own and they define and sculpt our way of existing. I don’t think the concepts of Christian obedience and Christian love can be understood apart from that reality.

Except for the very last statement (“yes” to the world’s “no”?), which I think requires elaboration, you seem to be on to something. I hope your in school or have means to write and research - I’d be ready to read it. I would advise, however, a good spiritual director because when we get this lofty in our thought we sometimes need grounding and loving, constructive criticism and sometimes guidance if we get lost in the midst of it. Otherwise, thank you for sharing this.

What I am suggesting is that God, as the source of all being, willed his way of being and our existence, and created us to mirror and participate in that way of being, with a will and freedom that reflects God’s own existential freedom. So in the end the action contrary to God’s way of being is essentially an act of non-being. So “to be or not to be” is indeed the Christian question. Or, as St.Paul described our Lord as being “always Yes” – a “yes” to being – the contrary actions of the world can be described as the great “No” to being. But no, not a student – not for some 25 years. And I do appreciate the constructive criticism you have offered here.

Pax, and Merry Christmas to you as well.

50

 

[KyrieEleison17]

I think the Nietzschean response would be that the will requires an object, but the object itself is meaningless. They would say there is no inherent beauty in any particular object, but rather beauty lies in the unflinching exercise of one’s will towards the object of one’s choosing. That is the primacy of the will I am thinking of here. What resonates with me is the thought that what Nietzsche may in fact have grasped (without actually grasping it) was the existential condition of God himself, at the eternal moment of God’s own willing, the willing of His way of being, and through that our derivative being and existence.

I struggle with the notion of the primacy of the intellect. It strikes me as Cartesian, and I tend to side with the Existentialist view that existence precedes essence (I am, therefore I think – not vice versa). The problem with this view is that it has historically been associated with atheistic or agnostic implications – what I am proposing is that it is potentially consistent with a Christian worldview.

I take your point here. I worry though that the concept of God being metaphysically simple can devolve into the notion that God has to be as he is, i.e., that he is not free to be other than how and what he is. I think that is problematic. It is not a question of contingency I am raising, but rather a question of will. God is love, and while he is perfect and pure love, he is still love, and love is not love if not a free act of the will. So for me there is some aspect of God that chooses to be as he is, and that is what I mean by God’s will.

I think we part ways a bit here. We don’t create our own being or the reality that we exist within, but we do create our own way of being within that reality. Our thoughts, decisions, actions are our own and they define and sculpt our way of existing. I don’t think the concepts of Christian obedience and Christian love can be understood apart from that reality.

What I am suggesting is that God, as the source of all being, willed his way of being and our existence, and created us to mirror and participate in that way of being, with a will and freedom that reflects God’s own existential freedom. So in the end the action contrary to God’s way of being is essentially an act of non-being. So “to be or not to be” is indeed the Christian question. Or, as St.Paul described our Lord as being “always Yes” – a “yes” to being – the contrary actions of the world can be described as the great “No” to being. But no, not a student – not for some 25 years. And I do appreciate the constructive criticism you have offered here.

Pax, and Merry Christmas to you as well.

50

I will just say that this: your will is your desire for rational goods.

When I was nine, I wanted a family. It was not for lust’s sake (I had none). I wanted a family. That was “my will”. I desired a highly abstract and rational good. That just was or became “my will”.

I think the Medieval philosophers like St Thomas were right for describing the will as intellective appetite: a desire for rational goods. The rational goods activate will in us, as sensual goods activate desire or attraction in all animals. We are different. We desire “a family” - an abstract concept and rational good/goal. Simple animals don’t do that. We do. We act for ‘a reason’.

 

[50_and_Fading]

Your entire post resonated with me but the above paragraph seemed to point at an idea that has been in the back of my own mind for some time. Apart from being grounded in a deeper reality, freedom and will as “ends in themselves,” are consequentially speaking, meaningless. What would be the point of having freedom and a will as undetermined aspects of what it means to exist?

In God, freedom and will are an aspect of Being itself. They derive from the nature of God as Being itself.

Yup, agree with all of that. So do you think that it may be true to say that it is God’s freedom and will that are ends in themselves? God is Being itself, as you say. God needs nothing, requires nothing, lacks nothing. Nothing exists outside of God. Consequently, our reality and our existence are effectively the embodiment of God’s freedom and will as ends in themselves. We are reflections of God’s freedom and God’s will. Therein lies our dignity and our anguish, in a sense. When Sartre speaks of existential nausea, I think there is truth in that concept insofar as our thoughts and actions lack any meaning whatsoever outside of their relativity to the exercise of God’s freedom and will. Here I think of our Lord in Gethsemene, sweating blood at the prospect of non-being vs being and all it implies.

Pax,

50

 

[Peter_Plato]

Yup, agree with all of that. So do you think that it may be true to say that it is God’s freedom and will that are ends in themselves? God is Being itself, as you say. God needs nothing, requires nothing, lacks nothing. Nothing exists outside of God. Consequently, our reality and our existence are effectively the embodiment of God’s freedom and will as ends in themselves. We are reflections of God’s freedom and God’s will. Therein lies our dignity and our anguish, in a sense. When Sartre speaks of existential nausea, I think there is truth in that concept insofar as our thoughts and actions lack any meaning whatsoever outside of their relativity to the exercise of God’s freedom and will. Here I think of our Lord in Gethsemene, sweating blood at the prospect of non-being vs being and all it implies.

Pax,

50

Have you ever read Augustine’s On Grace and Free Will?

It isn’t an easy read, but I think he is basically saying what you are.

In his talk on Fated and Free Peter Kreeft also interprets Augustine, Boethius and Tolkien as implying that freedom is achieved in God as our destiny. So, you are not far off from a traditional Catholic view. Sin makes us less free, while grace is freedom from enslavement and addiction.

Read with this idea in mind, Exodus and the entire OT leading to the Gospels and the Church becomes much clearer as having the underlying theme that the fall was the imprisonment of humanity and Jesus came to finally set the prisoners free. CS Lewis would be another proponent when he writes of the distinction between bios and zoe as states of being.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

As others have already said, will is useless if it is not well directed to truth. It was the great lie the serpent offered Eve that corrupted our human will. She bought into a lie, whereas God had warned her against the lie. Jesus referred to Satan as the Father of Lies and a murderer.

He also says, according to the gospel of John:

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

From this it seems that knowledge of the truth is useless if the will of man does not submit itself to the will of God. Yet not entirely useless. Everyone can have a change of heart, because the truth never changes whereas a single lie can morph into a thousand lies. The truth is buried within our hearts and can be revealed by grace and a free act of submission.

It should be meaningful to us all that Sartre in his last months ceased to be an atheist. As for Nietzsche, he ended in a cloud of insanity.

 

[50_and_Fading]

Have you ever read Augustine’s On Grace and Free Will?

It isn’t an easy read, but I think he is basically saying what you are.

In his talk on Fated and Free Peter Kreeft also interprets Augustine, Boethius and Tolkien as implying that freedom is achieved in God as our destiny. So, you are not far off from a traditional Catholic view. Sin makes us less free, while grace is freedom from enslavement and addiction.

Read with this idea in mind, Exodus and the entire OT leading to the Gospels and the Church becomes much clearer as having the underlying theme that the fall was the imprisonment of humanity and Jesus came to finally set the prisoners free. CS Lewis would be another proponent when he writes of the distinction between bios and zoe as states of being.

So I downloaded On Grace and Free Will from iBooks for only 99 cents, and the Kreeft podcast from iTunes for free. I can listen to Kreeft on the ride home. Gotta love one’s iPhone.

Thanks for the referrals. I will read with earnest … while trying to stay on top of 4 kids, a job, etc –

50

 

[meltzerboy]

I think Nietzsche and Sartre hit on something very important for the post-modern Christian, and that something is the existential freedom of God and the primacy of the will, both of which we participate in and reflect in our own lives as beings created in the very image and likeness of God.

As Christians we understand that God is love – all the way through, as Fr Barron would say – and yet we also know that God’s supreme love is a choice God makes, an act of His divine will. Love is not love if not freely given, and God freely chooses to love – throughout history, and at this very moment – and as an expression of that love He continually creates and supports the reality we exist within. He could just as easily choose not to love, at which point our reality as we know it would cease to exist.

In this sense, God is the first Nietzschean (the original superman) and the first Existentialist – who through His will and eternal freedom chooses and creates his way of being and the reality which flows from that choice.

As Christians, we understand that God creates us in his image and likeness. What we often don’t understand, I think, is why we are so created and the radical implications of what it means. It means – I think – that we participate in every aspect of God’s existence, including his existential freedom. God created us with the same freedom He has to choose and create our own way of being and the reality which flows from it. He created us this way, because it is the only way we can have any hope of participating in His way of being. In order to love as God loves, we must be free as God is free. Love is not love if not freely given.

So I think Sartre and Nietzsche were on to something, though not in the same way they thought they were on to something. I think they re-discovered the radicality of something intrinsically Christian – they re-discovered our full participation in God’s existential freedom. Like God, we can love – by which I mean we can live our lives for the good of the other – or we can choose not to love. We can – indeed, we have no choice but to – decide our own way of being. But Sartre and Nietzsche seem to view that as the end of the discussion, i.e., human beings are radically free, and the individual will of each human being is radically supreme, and so freedom and will are ends in themselves and, consequently, meaningless.

But freedom and will – as they are with God – are simply the starting points. They are not the end points. The end points are the realities we create when we exercise our freedom and our will to make the millions of individual decisions we make on a daily basis that establish our way of being. Every second we are creating ourselves, but the fact of self-creation is not the point – the point is what we create. Because what we create will either be in harmony with the way of being of Him who created the reality in which we exercise our freedom and will, or it will not. Some would call that a choice between good and evil – I don’t view that as a necessary distinction for these purposes. I could possibly even agree with Nietzsche that we actually – like God – face a choice that is beyond good and evil. But as Christians we know it is not a choice without consequences – we are choosing our way of existence, and when doing so we will either choose to exist within God’s way of being or outside of it, as Christ did when he chose the Cross, and as Adam did when he grasped the apple.

I think we are at a place where, as has happened throughout history, the philosophical and intellectual construct and support for faith has given way, or at least is under serious challenge. I think, in many respects, our world and culture is intellectually at a juncture where – quoting Tillich – God has for many people disappeared into the anxiety of doubt. And what intrigues me about that is Tillich’s sense that there may be something of this situation to embrace, that paradoxically it is when we are at such points that we are actually the closest to God.

Perhaps it is precisely at moments like these in our intellectual history when God finds ways to appear to us again – almost as if anew. *“Look, I make all things new.” *

It was Augustin who said that if we think we have comprehended God, it is not God. That is what I think Tillich means when he talks about the “God above God.” That is what I think is meant by Christian Existentialism – that without at all denigrating or doing away with the teachings and daily practices of our Catholic faith and the Church, without at all minimizing the importance of the sacraments and the graces flowing therefrom, without at all denying the revelation of God through Scripture and Tradition and grace, we are at bottom creatures that exist with absolute and utter freedom and with absolute free will to make of ourselves that which we choose to make, and with no real understanding or certainty of the meaning of any of it, except for our faith in the intrinsic beauty and goodness of the way of being that God has revealed to us. And in that situation we have to choose – “to be or not to be,” in the immortal words of Shakespeare, to have the “courage to be,” as Tillich would phrase it, to be the “yes” to the world’s “no” as St. Paul would say, to join in the magnificent “fiat” of our Lady.

Pax,

50

I agree with much of what you say, especially the part about freedom and will targeted not so much toward self-creation and as ends in themselves but rather directed toward the potential creation of actualities in the outside world, which in turn influence our own being and behavior. But can we honestly compare our choices and will to those of G-d? In particular, does G-d choose to love as though He had the free will NOT to love?

 

[50_and_Fading]

I agree with much of what you say, especially the part about freedom and will targeted not so much toward self-creation and as ends in themselves but rather directed toward the potential creation of actualities in the outside world, which in turn influence our own being and behavior. But can we honestly compare our choices and will to those of G-d? In particular, does G-d choose to love as though He had the free will NOT to love?

I think that is a great question - one that I have been wrestling with for a while. I trust one or more of the doctors of the church have addressed it and someone here will be able to refer us to a source. For me, though, I don’t know which philosophical conundrum is more troubling, ie, a God who has no choice but to love or a God who has the freedom not to love.

50

 

[newenglandsun]

I think Nietzsche and Sartre hit on something very important for the post-modern Christian, and that something is the existential freedom of God and the primacy of the will, both of which we participate in and reflect in our own lives as beings created in the very image and likeness of God.

As Christians we understand that God is love – all the way through, as Fr Barron would say – and yet we also know that God’s supreme love is a choice God makes, an act of His divine will. Love is not love if not freely given, and God freely chooses to love – throughout history, and at this very moment – and as an expression of that love He continually creates and supports the reality we exist within. He could just as easily choose not to love, at which point our reality as we know it would cease to exist.

In this sense, God is the first Nietzschean (the original superman) and the first Existentialist – who through His will and eternal freedom chooses and creates his way of being and the reality which flows from that choice.

As Christians, we understand that God creates us in his image and likeness. What we often don’t understand, I think, is why we are so created and the radical implications of what it means. It means – I think – that we participate in every aspect of God’s existence, including his existential freedom. God created us with the same freedom He has to choose and create our own way of being and the reality which flows from it. He created us this way, because it is the only way we can have any hope of participating in His way of being. In order to love as God loves, we must be free as God is free. Love is not love if not freely given.

So I think Sartre and Nietzsche were on to something, though not in the same way they thought they were on to something. I think they re-discovered the radicality of something intrinsically Christian – they re-discovered our full participation in God’s existential freedom. Like God, we can love – by which I mean we can live our lives for the good of the other – or we can choose not to love. We can – indeed, we have no choice but to – decide our own way of being. But Sartre and Nietzsche seem to view that as the end of the discussion, i.e., human beings are radically free, and the individual will of each human being is radically supreme, and so freedom and will are ends in themselves and, consequently, meaningless.

But freedom and will – as they are with God – are simply the starting points. They are not the end points. The end points are the realities we create when we exercise our freedom and our will to make the millions of individual decisions we make on a daily basis that establish our way of being. Every second we are creating ourselves, but the fact of self-creation is not the point – the point is what we create. Because what we create will either be in harmony with the way of being of Him who created the reality in which we exercise our freedom and will, or it will not. Some would call that a choice between good and evil – I don’t view that as a necessary distinction for these purposes. I could possibly even agree with Nietzsche that we actually – like God – face a choice that is beyond good and evil. But as Christians we know it is not a choice without consequences – we are choosing our way of existence, and when doing so we will either choose to exist within God’s way of being or outside of it, as Christ did when he chose the Cross, and as Adam did when he grasped the apple.

I think we are at a place where, as has happened throughout history, the philosophical and intellectual construct and support for faith has given way, or at least is under serious challenge. I think, in many respects, our world and culture is intellectually at a juncture where – quoting Tillich – God has for many people disappeared into the anxiety of doubt. And what intrigues me about that is Tillich’s sense that there may be something of this situation to embrace, that paradoxically it is when we are at such points that we are actually the closest to God.

Perhaps it is precisely at moments like these in our intellectual history when God finds ways to appear to us again – almost as if anew. *“Look, I make all things new.” *

It was Augustin who said that if we think we have comprehended God, it is not God. That is what I think Tillich means when he talks about the “God above God.” That is what I think is meant by Christian Existentialism – that without at all denigrating or doing away with the teachings and daily practices of our Catholic faith and the Church, without at all minimizing the importance of the sacraments and the graces flowing therefrom, without at all denying the revelation of God through Scripture and Tradition and grace, we are at bottom creatures that exist with absolute and utter freedom and with absolute free will to make of ourselves that which we choose to make, and with no real understanding or certainty of the meaning of any of it, except for our faith in the intrinsic beauty and goodness of the way of being that God has revealed to us. And in that situation we have to choose – “to be or not to be,” in the immortal words of Shakespeare, to have the “courage to be,” as Tillich would phrase it, to be the “yes” to the world’s “no” as St. Paul would say, to join in the magnificent “fiat” of our Lady.

Pax,

50

I’d say yes. I think Sartre got it right when he said we desire to be God. How many of us want it. Now. All the time. Everything. On demand.

And then by this materialism, we end up killing God in the meanwhile. Heresy is never a complete rejection of truth but an over-emphasis on just one aspect of truth.

 

[meltzerboy]

I think that is a great question - one that I have been wrestling with for a while. I trust one or more of the doctors of the church have addressed it and someone here will be able to refer us to a source. For me, though, I don’t know which philosophical conundrum is more troubling, ie, a God who has no choice but to love or a God who has the freedom not to love.

50

I think of it as a situation in which G-d cannot be or do what is contrary to His nature, which includes being omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, extra-temporal, and extra-spatial. Not loving is contrary to G-d’s nature, and thus He is incapable of not loving. The same in the scenario that asks the question whether G-d can invent (or imagine) a weight He cannot lift: He cannot do so because He is omnipotent. And likewise in the case of the Euthyphro dilemma, G-d cannot be or do anything not moral and so His behavior is moral. IOW G-d is the very essence of morality, love, knowledge, justice, power, and His actions reflect that which He is.

 

[50_and_Fading]

I think of it as a situation in which G-d cannot be or do what is contrary to His nature, which includes being omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, extra-temporal, and extra-spatial. Not loving is contrary to G-d’s nature, and thus He is incapable of not loving. The same in the scenario that asks the question whether G-d can invent (or imagine) a weight He cannot lift: He cannot do so because He is omnipotent. And likewise in the case of the Euthyphro dilemma, G-d cannot be or do anything not moral and so His behavior is moral. IOW G-d is the very essence of morality, love, knowledge, justice, power, and His actions reflect that which He is.

Yes – that could be it. You make a lot of sense.

I just struggle with the “G-D cannot” part of it. For me it just seems like there has to be some exercise of something like “will” by the Creator in order for God to be God.

One way I have thought about it is the inability of the imperfect to fully reflect or grasp the concept of the perfect. In other words, God is perfection – perfect nature, perfect love, perfect will, such that while He has the theoretical potential to act differently, He nonetheless always acts in a way consistent with pure self-giving love. To use a clumsy analogy from my beloved game of baseball, God bats 1.000, not because He has to, but because He is just that good. And the problem for us as imperfect creatures is that we cannot grasp the possibility and reality of such willed perfection, and so we confuse the reality of God batting 1.000 with a belief that God must not be able to bat anything less.

Another way I think about it is to remember that God is beyond time. We experience God’s love in time, but God loves us beyond and outside of time. So perhaps it is better to say that God’s act of complete self-giving love is a single and eternal act of His timeless will. God did not have to be as He is, but He is as He is by choice, and that “choice” is beyond time and eternal in nature, and so it is not inconsistent for us to experience God’s love as both willed and incorruptible.

Anyway, thanks for your posts.

Pax,

50

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I think Nietzsche and Sartre hit on something very important for the post-modern Christian, and that something is the existential freedom of God and the primacy of the will, both of which we participate in and reflect in our own lives as beings created in the very image and likeness of God.

As Christians we understand that God is love – all the way through, as Fr Barron would say – and yet we also know that God’s supreme love is a choice God makes, an act of His divine will. Love is not love if not freely given, and God freely chooses to love – throughout history, and at this very moment – and as an expression of that love He continually creates and supports the reality we exist within. He could just as easily choose not to love, at which point our reality as we know it would cease to exist.

In this sense, God is the first Nietzschean (the original superman) and the first Existentialist – who through His will and eternal freedom chooses and creates his way of being and the reality which flows from that choice.

As Christians, we understand that God creates us in his image and likeness. What we often don’t understand, I think, is why we are so created and the radical implications of what it means. It means – I think – that we participate in every aspect of God’s existence, including his existential freedom. God created us with the same freedom He has to choose and create our own way of being and the reality which flows from it. He created us this way, because it is the only way we can have any hope of participating in His way of being. In order to love as God loves, we must be free as God is free. Love is not love if not freely given.

So I think Sartre and Nietzsche were on to something, though not in the same way they thought they were on to something. I think they re-discovered the radicality of something intrinsically Christian – they re-discovered our full participation in God’s existential freedom. Like God, we can love – by which I mean we can live our lives for the good of the other – or we can choose not to love. We can – indeed, we have no choice but to – decide our own way of being. But Sartre and Nietzsche seem to view that as the end of the discussion, i.e., human beings are radically free, and the individual will of each human being is radically supreme, and so freedom and will are ends in themselves and, consequently, meaningless.

But freedom and will – as they are with God – are simply the starting points. They are not the end points. The end points are the realities we create when we exercise our freedom and our will to make the millions of individual decisions we make on a daily basis that establish our way of being. Every second we are creating ourselves, but the fact of self-creation is not the point – the point is what we create. Because what we create will either be in harmony with the way of being of Him who created the reality in which we exercise our freedom and will, or it will not. Some would call that a choice between good and evil – I don’t view that as a necessary distinction for these purposes. I could possibly even agree with Nietzsche that we actually – like God – face a choice that is beyond good and evil. But as Christians we know it is not a choice without consequences – we are choosing our way of existence, and when doing so we will either choose to exist within God’s way of being or outside of it, as Christ did when he chose the Cross, and as Adam did when he grasped the apple.

I think we are at a place where, as has happened throughout history, the philosophical and intellectual construct and support for faith has given way, or at least is under serious challenge. I think, in many respects, our world and culture is intellectually at a juncture where – quoting Tillich – God has for many people disappeared into the anxiety of doubt. And what intrigues me about that is Tillich’s sense that there may be something of this situation to embrace, that paradoxically it is when we are at such points that we are actually the closest to God.

Perhaps it is precisely at moments like these in our intellectual history when God finds ways to appear to us again – almost as if anew. *“Look, I make all things new.” *

It was Augustin who said that if we think we have comprehended God, it is not God. That is what I think Tillich means when he talks about the “God above God.” That is what I think is meant by Christian Existentialism – that without at all denigrating or doing away with the teachings and daily practices of our Catholic faith and the Church, without at all minimizing the importance of the sacraments and the graces flowing therefrom, without at all denying the revelation of God through Scripture and Tradition and grace, we are at bottom creatures that exist with absolute and utter freedom and with absolute free will to make of ourselves that which we choose to make, and with no real understanding or certainty of the meaning of any of it, except for our faith in the intrinsic beauty and goodness of the way of being that God has revealed to us. And in that situation we have to choose – “to be or not to be,” in the immortal words of Shakespeare, to have the “courage to be,” as Tillich would phrase it, to be the “yes” to the world’s “no” as St. Paul would say, to join in the magnificent “fiat” of our Lady.

Pax,

50

I can’t think of a single thing Nietzsche or Satre ever said that was worthy of being seriously considered by a Christian. They were the ultimate anti-Christians. Don’t you have better things to do with your time than to spend it with these two over aged deliquents.

Linus2nd

 

[newenglandsun]

I can’t think of a single thing Nietzsche or Satre ever said that was worthy of being seriously considered by a Christian. They were the ultimate anti-Christians. Don’t you have better things to do with your time than to spend it with these two over aged deliquents.

Linus2nd

Quick condemnation of the two. Are you desiring to be God?

 

[50_and_Fading]

I can’t think of a single thing Nietzsche or Satre ever said that was worthy of being seriously considered by a Christian. They were the ultimate anti-Christians. Don’t you have better things to do with your time than to spend it with these two over aged deliquents.

Linus2nd

Regarding the use of my time, let me worry about that.

 

[tonyrey]

I think Nietzsche and Sartre hit on something very important for the post-modern Christian, and that something is the existential freedom of God and the primacy of the will, both of which we participate in and reflect in our own lives as beings created in the very image and likeness of God.

Atheists like Sartre and Nietzsche fulfil a vital role in purifying our concepts of God and religion. The truth is usually to be found between two extremes - in this case fundamentalism and humanism. Calvin’s view that not a drop falls without the express command of God is as false as Nietzsche’s view that God is dead. Ironically the Christian underestimated man’s freedom whereas the atheist overestimated it!