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Christianity or Nihilism? The Apocalyptic Discourses of Johann Baptist Metz and Friedrich Nietzsche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Matthew Eggemeier
Matthew Eggemeier
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross
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Abstract

This paper explores the apocalyptic discourses of Johann Baptist Metz and Friedrich Nietzsche, examining in particular Metz's juxtaposition of Nietzsche's approach to time as eternal recurrence with biblical apocalyptic's approach to time with an end. While framing his criticism of Nietzsche in terms of these differing approaches to time, Metz's opposition focuses on Nietzsche's affirmation of even the most brutal experiences of suffering in the world as mere moments in the innocence of becoming. In contrast to attempts in Western thought to either justify (Leibniz, Hegel) or affirm (Nietzsche) suffering as a necessary byproduct of the creation of the best possible world (Leibniz), historical progress (Hegel), or the innocence of becoming (Nietzsche), Metz retrieves the biblical apocalyptic spirituality of protest, resistance, and political compassion as the authentic response to innocent suffering.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 7 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2012

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References

1 Many thanks to Peter J. Fritz for comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

2 de Lubac, Henri, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. Riley, Edith M. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1949)Google Scholar; von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele: Studien zu einer Lehre von letzten Haltungen, 3 vols. (Salzburg: Anton Pustet, 1937–1939)Google Scholar; Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar; Hart, David Bently, The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008)Google Scholar. One might also mention Alasdair MacIntyre's philosophical engagement with Nietzsche, in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984)Google Scholar in which he characterizes the contemporary cultural climate in terms of a decision between Nietzsche and Aristotle, as well as Jean-Luc Marion's engagement with Nietzsche, and Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite in Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. Carlson, Thomas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

3 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, ed. Ridley, Aaron and Norman, Judith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), IVGoogle Scholar, no. 9 (emphasis original). I will follow the accepted method for citing Nietzsche's published works in which the section number (and chapter where applicable) is cited instead of the specific page number. Subsequent references after direct quotations appear in parentheses in the text as title, chapter, section number. In addition to The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings the following Nietzsche, texts will be cited in the essay: The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Golfing, Francis (New York: Doubleday, 1956)Google Scholar; Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1966)Google Scholar; The Will to Power, trans. Hollingdale, R.J. and ed. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1968)Google Scholar; The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix in Songs, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Random House, 1974)Google Scholar; “An Attempt at Self-Criticism,” The Birth of Tragedy: Or, Hellenism and Pessimism, trans. Haussmann, William A., ed. Levy, Oscar (Charleston, SC: Nabu Books, 2010)Google Scholar.

4 Milbank rather succinctly describes the relationship between Nietzsche-Augustine, when he observes that “The Genealogy of Morals is a kind of Civitas Dei written back to front” (Theology and Social Theory, 389)Google Scholar.

5 According to Hart, “Nietzsche figures in its first part as the prototype of a certain kind of ‘postmodernist,’ Gregory figures in the second part as his antithesis: his account of desire and epktasis is offered as an answer to Nietzsche's account of the will to power and finite becoming, and his understanding of the infinite as an answer to a certain postmodern understanding of the sublime” (The Beauty of the Infinite, 29). See also Hart's, “Christ and Nothing: (No Other God),” In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 1–19Google Scholar.

6 Metz, Johann Baptist, A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, ed. and trans. Ashley, J. Matthew (New York: Paulist, 1998), 76Google Scholar.

7 A Passion for God, 156. See also Metz, Johann Baptist, Hope against Hope: Johann Baptist Metz and Elie Wiesel Speak Out on the Holocaust, trans. Ashley, J. Matthew (New York: Paulist, 1999), 13Google Scholar and Metz, Johann Baptist, Memoria Passionis: Ein provozierendes Gedächtnis in pluralistischer Gesellschaft (Freiburg/Br.: Herder, 2006), 210Google Scholar. In Memoria Passionis, Metz describes a Nietzsche saturation in contemporary culture or what he describes as “atmospheric Nietzsche” (159, 176). All translations from Memoria Passionis are mine.

8 Cf. Löwith, Karl, Nietzsche's Philosophy: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. Lomax, J. Harvey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

9 Metz, Johann Baptist, “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” in The End of Time? The Provocation of Talking about God: Proceedings of a Meeting of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Johann Baptist Metz, Jürgen Moltmann, and Eveline Goodman-Thau in Ahaus, ed. Peters, Tiemo Rainer and Urban, Claus, trans. and ed. Ashley, J. Matthew (New York: Paulist, 2004), 31Google Scholar.

10 Metz repeatedly underscores the significance of the return to the pre-Socratics in the philosophies of both Nietzsche and Heidegger: “F. Nietzsche and finally also M. Heidegger, with his theme of the century ‘Being and Time,’ advocated the well-known return to the pre-Socratic thought and the mythical world of Greece” (“In Eingendenken fremden Leids: Zu einer Basiskategorie christlicher Gottsrede,” in Gottesrede, ed. Metz, Johann Baptist, Reikerstorfer, Johann, and Werbick, Jürgen [Münster: LIT Verlag, 1996], 4Google Scholar; my translation). See also Metz, Johann Baptist, “Verzeitlichung von Ontologie und Metaphysik,” Zum Begriff der neuen Politischen Theologie: 1967–1997 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1997), 160–62Google Scholar. It is of interest with regard to the focus of Metz's theology that what Nietzsche and Heidegger share in common with respect to the problem of evil is a fatalism before the anonymous forces of the cosmos (Nietzsche's cosmodicy) or Being (Heidegger's ontodicy).

11 On the centrality of suffering in Nietzsche's philosophy see Reginster, Bernard, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Metz, , “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 35Google Scholar.

13 Thomas Altizer's interpretation is representative of the apocalyptic interpretation of Nietzsche's writings: “Nietzsche is an apocalyptic thinker. And he is an apocalyptic thinker by being our only truly post-Christian thinker, for he is that thinker most purely and most deeply understood the end of history, and most profoundly understood it by envisioning the eternal recurrence.” Altizer, Thomas J.J., Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 139Google Scholar.

14 Before quoting a portion of this passage from The Gay Science, Metz observes: “Nietzsche, for his part, knew very well in what almost apocalyptic-seeming turbulences humanity ends up in if it finally wants to bid farewell to the apocalypse; i.e., to thinking of time with a definite finale” (Metz, Johann Baptist, “Time without a Finale: The Background to the Debate on ‘Resurrection or Reincarnation,” in Metz, Johann Baptist and Moltmann, Jürgen, Faith and the Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995], 79–86Google Scholar, at 80).

15 For some of the most significant interpretations of Nietzsche's teaching on eternal recurrence, see Heidegger, Martin, Nietzsche, Vol. III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics trans. Stambaugh, Joan and Capuzzi, Frank (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986)Google Scholar, Löwith, Karl, Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Tomlinson, Hugh (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, Vattimo, Gianni, Dialogue with Nietzsche, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, Hatab, Lawrence J., Nietzsche's Life Sentence: The Redemption of Time and Becoming (New York: Routledge Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

16 Quoted in Stambaugh, Joan, Nietzsche's Thought (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1972), 87Google Scholar (emphasis original).

17 Gilespie, Michael Allen, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago, Press, 1996), 222Google Scholar.

18 “The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence—my formula for this is amor fati”(The Will to Power, no. 1041).

19 Deleuze describes Nietzsche's philosophy as engaged in “not a theodicy but a cosmodicy, not a sum of injustices to be expiated but justice as the law of this world; not hubris but play, innocence” (Nietzsche and Philosophy, 25). On Nietzsche's cosmodicy, see also Higgins, Kathleen, Nietzsche's Zarathustra (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987)Google Scholar and Kain, Philip, Nietzsche and the Horror of Existence (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009)Google Scholar.

20 Metz, , A Passion for God, 173Google Scholar.

21 See Metz, , “Theology in the Struggle for History and Society,” trans. Livingstone, Dinah, Faith and the Future, 49–56, at 56Google Scholar; “Freedom in Solidarity: The Rescue of Reason,” trans. Bowden, John, Faith and the Future, 72–78Google Scholar, at 75; A Passion for God, 78 and 173.

22 Metz observes: “God is for me the only reliable foundation for that universal solidarity and justice for which human beings hunger and thirst” (A Passion for God, 37).

23 Agamben, Giorgio, Infancy and History: Essays on the Destruction of Experience, trans. Heron, Liz (New York: Verso, 1993), 91Google Scholar.

24 Metz, , “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 45Google Scholar.

25 According to Metz, the ideology of progress supported this view of empty, evolutionary time in modernity, but in postmodernity it is Nietzsche who represents its primary theorist. On modern progress, see Metz, Johann Baptist, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. Ashley, J. Matthew (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 159Google Scholar.

26 A Passion for God, 73. See also, ibid., 173.

27 Ibid., 52. See also Metz, Johann Baptist, Love's Strategy, ed. Downey, John (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 1999), 60Google Scholar; Faith in History and Society, 162.

28 Hope against Hope, 41.

29 Faith in History and Society, 163. See also Love's Strategy, 153.

30 A Passion for God, 84–85.

31 Hope against Hope, 37; A Passion for God, 78.

32 A Passion for God, 78; “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 30.

33 “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 30.

34 Love's Strategy, 148; A Passion for God, 52.

35 “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 29–30.

36 A Passion for God, 78.

37 Ibid., 172–73.

38 “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 37.

39 Ibid., 30.

40 A Passion for God, 41.

41 Hope against Hope, 41.

42 Ibid., 50. See also A Passion for God, 78.

43 A Passion for God, 80–81. See also ibid., 37, 174.

44 For a detailed analysis of the task of becoming a subject before God and others, see Ashley, J. Matthew, Interruptions: Mysticism, Politics, and Theology in the Work of Johann Baptist Metz (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

45 Ricoeur, Paul, Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology (New York: Continuum, 2007), 49Google Scholar. David Tracy echoes Ricoeur's assessment observing that “the ultimate horror of onto-theology is theodicy” (Tracy, David, “God: The Possible/Impossible,” in After God: Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy, ed. Manoussakis, John Panteleimon [New York: Fordham University Press, 2006], 354Google Scholar).

46 Heidegger, Martin, Nietzsche, Vol. I: The Will to Power as Art, trans. Krell, David F. (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 208–09Google Scholar.

47 Ricoeur, , Evil, 50–58Google Scholar.

48 Leibniz, G.W., Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Writings (Lanham, MD: Dent, Rowman, and Littlefield, 1991), 172Google Scholar. In Hegel's philosophy this principle of sufficient reason is historicized in the preface to The Philosophy of Right as “the rational is real and the real is rational.” See Hegel, G.W.F., The Philosophy of Right, ed. Wood, Allan, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 20Google Scholar.

49 In The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche observes: “‘the world is perfect’ —this is how the instinct of the most spiritual people speaks” (The Anti-Christ, no. 57; emphasis original). See also Nietzsche, The Gay Science, nos. 278 and 370.

50 When Metz describes his theological project as a “theodicy,” he is departing from the standard usage of this term which traditionally has connoted a rational defense of God in the face of a suffering world. What Metz has in mind in his use of “theodicy” is the attempt to place the problem of unreconciled suffering at the center of theology: “I am not suggesting (as the word and its history might suggest) a belated and somewhat obstinate attempt to justify God in the face of evil, in the face of suffering and wickedness in the world” (A Passion for God, 55).

51 Memoria Passionis, 162.

52 Ibid., 162. See also A Passion for God, 28.

53 Hope against Hope, 44.

54 I am following Ashley's translation of Leiden an Gott as “suffering unto God.” For Ashley's explanation see Interruptions, 218 n. 31.

55 A Passion for God, 71, 82.

56 Ibid., 56.

57 Hope against Hope, 44.

58 A Passion for God, 71. See also Love's Strategy, 148. For Metz the “eschatological mark” of God is the fact that “God is the end that brings to an end” (Hope against Hope, 42).

59 While Metz characterizes the onto-theological orientation of metaphysics as a form of gnosticism or idealism, these terms point to the same tendency in Western thought that in a post-Heideggerian climate has been characterized under the rubric of onto-theology. For Metz's critical comments on the idealist and gnostic contamination of Christian theology, see A Passion for God, 87; “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 41–42, Hope Against Hope, 12, Faith and the Future, 71, and Memoria Passionis, 44–48.

60 Hope against Hope, 48. See also A Passion for God, 42.

61 A Passion for God, 71.

62 Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Coleman, Dorothy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 74Google Scholar.

63 A Passion for God, 42.

64 Ibid., 52.

65 Memoria Passionis, 105.

66 Metz's approach to Nietzsche is formally similar to John Milbank's approach to Nietzsche in Theology and Social Theory insofar as both Milbank and Metz attempt to contest Nietzsche's philosophical vision by describing its interpretation of the world and then narrating the biblical vision of the world as fundamentally opposed to Nietzsche's vision on every point. See, e.g., Milbank, , Theology and Social Theory, 279Google Scholar.

67 On Nietzsche's religion and spirituality, see the very fine analysis of Benson, Bruce Ellis, Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For an alternative account, see Young, Julian, Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Metz, , “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 41Google Scholar.

69 A Passion for God, 163.

70 See “Wer steht für die unschuldigen Opfer ein? Ein Gespräch mit Johann Baptist Metz,” in Orienteirung 72, nos. 13/14 (15/31 July 2008): 150Google Scholar. See also, Metz, , Memoria Passionis, 177Google Scholar.

71 A Passion for God, 163.

72 Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, no. 7. See Martha Nussbaum's discussion of the six types of criticism that Nietzsche offers in his assault on pity in Nussbaum, Martha, “Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche's Stoicism,” Nietzsche, Genealogy, and Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 139–67Google Scholar.

73 On Nietzsche, and Darwinism, , see Hope against Hope, 36–37Google Scholar and Love's Strategy, 123. On the market, politics, and Darwinism, see Metz, Johann Baptist, “Toward a Christianity of Political Compassion,” trans. Ashley, J. Matthew, in Love that Produces Hope: The Thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, ed. Burke, Kevin F. and Lassalle-Klein, Robert (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2006), 252Google Scholar. See also A Passion for God, 3; Memoria Passionis, 170.

74 Memoria Passionis, 164. See also ibid, 171; “Toward a Christianity of Political Compassion,” 251; Love's Strategy, 168.

75 Love's Strategy, 175.

76 See, for instance, Love's Strategy, 175 and “Toward a Christianity of Political Compassion,” 252.

77 “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” 43.

78 “Toward a Christianity of Political Compassion,” 251.

79 Memoria Passionis, 170.

80 A Passion for God, 173.

81 Ibid.