In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche penned one of the most powerful writings of the modern age. In his work The Gay Science, he includes his famous “Parable of the Madman” which contains his most well-known, and controversial, statement: God is dead.
I first heard this phrase at a church summer camp, where a compelling speaker told my fellow teenagers and me about this atheist philosopher who wanted people to shout “God is dead!” from the rooftops. Instead, he argued, we should go out and boldly proclaim that God is not dead. He responded to Neitzsche’s infamous phrase in the same way that PureFlix would do years later in their God’s Not Dead trilogy.
Many people are familiar with those three words from the Parable of the Madman. But few people have heard of the parable, and even fewer understand what Neitzsche was saying.
Before we proceed, I would encourage you to read the parable. It’s only about a page long and would take just a few minutes.
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It has been noted that commenting on this passage essentially deadens its impact. This seems true to me. What Nietzsche wrote here encapsulates a truth about modern society that is so strong and compelling that trying to elaborate on it seems to cheapen it.
But I want to talk about why the phrase “God is dead,” as Nietzsche used it, is essentially correct.
“God Is Dead”
Now, before anyone freaks out, yes this is Jordan. I’ve not been hacked by some internet troll hyped up on Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins videos. No, I don’t believe that the one true and living God, creator and sustainer of all things, and the only Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is dead. I affirm the resurrection of Christ and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus is reigning at the right hand of the Father at this very moment.
What we have to understand about Nietzsche’s parable is that it wasn’t primarily an indictment against believing Christians in an effort to get them to forsake their commitment to God. This parable is an indictment against atheists who have not accounted for the social, moral, and metaphysical implications of the nonexistence of God. They prefer to continue rationalizing their worldview in explicitly theistic, specifically Christian, terms.
Through the parable’s madman, Nietzsche poses the question to the enlightened atheists of his (and our) day: “Do we have any idea what we’ve done in abandoning the existence of God?”
The entire Western worldview was built upon the notion of a transcendent God who dispenses objective truth in His Word, and yet post-Enlightenment atheists have no pause about throwing God’s existence off as if it is childish nonsense. Moreover, they are unwilling and unable to replace God with any other sort of transcendent force able to dispense objective truth. Yet, these people are still perfectly confident in their objective claims about morality, science, and purpose. How?
That was Nietzsche’s question:
We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?... God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
Do you see his argument? Do you see what he means when he says “God is dead?”
Carl Trueman points out: “To kill God, either by denying His existence or at least the coherence of claims to knowledge of Him or by making Him nothing more than a necessary presupposition for moral discourse, the Enlightenment effectively tore out the foundations from under the polite bourgeois morality that it wished to maintain. You cannot do this, says Nietzsche.”
To say “God is dead, and we have killed Him” to an atheistic post-Enlightenment intelligentsia is to essentially say “We have discarded the very foundation of our entire conception of life. We have destroyed the pillars of our worldview. And yet, do we still expect that everything can carry on as normal?”
Although an avid atheist himself, Nietzsche rightly pointed out the blatant arrogance and hypocrisy of those who would cast off belief in God and still suppose that they can carry on in their worldview without any major disruptions. Or better yet, those who still use Christian categories of meaning and ethics to make sense of the world.
Two Options: Christianity or Nihilism
Of course, Nietzsche would be no fan of mine. And I am certainly no great fan of his. Our worldviews are diametrically opposed. But I have to give Nietzsche credit for not only seeing the opposition of the Christian and atheistic worldviews but also for being consistent in how he works out the implications of that opposition.
Nietzsche’s approach was one of nihilism, which suggests that nothing has any intrinsic meaning or value. Nietzsche rightly understood that without God, there is no other option.
If God is dead, and belief in Him is nothing more than a holdover from the bronze age, then there is no absolute moral truth. There is no absolute meaning to your life or the universe. There is no way to know if anything is actually real. And to search for, or supposed that there exists, any objective morality, truth, or meaning is to reach the peak of arrogance and naïveté.
But here’s the problem: We all know that there is such a thing as objective truth, morality, and purpose.
If I claim that I know that there is no objective truth, I am making a truth claim. I am working under the assumption that there is an objective truth that I can appeal to that proves that there is no absolute truth. Do you see the absurdity?
If I reject a transcendent Creator, then I have no basis upon which to say that murder, rape, slavery, or oppression of any kind is objectively wrong. If there is no absolute authority that exists outside the material world, what would I appeal to in order to make an objective moral judgment?
If I reject a God who makes man in His own image, why would I look for a sense of purpose in my life? If there is no God, my life has no purpose. I am pointless. Looking for any kind of meaning for my life would be hopeless because I am merely the result of millions of years of evolutionary accidents.
Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould says just this:
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a particular fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during the Ice Age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a higher answer — but none exists.
But don’t we know that this isn’t true? Don’t we know that there does exist objective truth? Don’t we know that objective morality is real, and it’s something we appeal to all the time? Don’t we know that there is actually a purpose to our lives that can only be found when we live in right relationship with our Creator?
Of course, we know these things. Everyone does.
Romans 1:18-23 -
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
In seeing the inconsistency, Nietzsche wanted his fellow atheists to lean more heavily into nihilism. But this is all wrong. Consistent, but nonetheless, wrong.
Instead, men should understand that it is impossible to make sense of the world, our existence, and our lives outside of the Christian worldview. Most self-proclaimed atheists essentially operate this way already, with their objective claims about truth, morality, and purpose. Instead of rejecting what is evident, we should embrace the freedom of belief in the one true and living God.
The sense in which God is dead in the West today is true insofar as the West has rejected His authority and removed Him from the social imaginary. Yet, no human can escape the fact that they have been made in God’s image. And being made in God’s image means that we are incapable of rationalizing the world without Him.
So why not go back and embrace what we already know to be true?