On God, Humanity, and Jesus

In the mirror of this humanity of Jesus Christ the humanity of God enclosed in His deity reveals itself.  Thus God is as He is.  Thus He affirms man.  Thus He is concerned about him.  Thus He stands up for him.  The God of Schleiermacher cannot show mercy.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can and does.  If Jesus Christ is the Word of Truth, the 'mirror of the fatherly heart of God,' then Nietzsche's statement that man is something that must be overcome is an imprudent lie.

- Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960)

On Anime, Depravity, And Darkness

This past week, I have been watching the Anime Tokyo Majin Gakuen. My youth watch it, and I wanted to see what exactly was influencing them. Needless to say, it is demonic and full of divination, so I am not too thrilled they watch it. With that said, there are themes of sin, death, atonement, salvation, resurrection, redemption, love and even the need for a savior. Sadly it's wholly deficient and distorted without revelation of Jesus. The anime struggles with the human condition (mixed with themes of divination). Although it's not like reading Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky where a sin wrought, depraved humanity drips off the page in honest fashion, there is still something to learn. So what is seen when one goes below and within and observes the human heart? There is a telling monologue in episode 13:

"That man said to me, 'to exact your revenge you will need a mighty power. A power to violate or obliterate the laws of this world and change it forever.' He told me I could obtain that power if i was willing to sacrifice. I would have to abandon my human heart. What heart? I don't need any human heart? What good is it? I abandoned it a long time ago. A human heart -what is a human heart? What a useless organ -much more trouble than it's worth. What did the human heart ever do for me? What did the human heart ever do for my mother. Those people, those miserable pigs don't deserve to live -so why don't you kill them? There is nothing stopping you. I have been chosen -I don't have to worry about those swine anymore. Destroy them... do them in.... end their lives... MURDER every last one. And then.... become a demon. I'll show you once and for all why we call it the dark arts."

- Tendo Kozunu, Episode 13, Toyko Majin Gakuen Kenpucho

On Nietzsche and Marriage

To be frank:

"Even concubinage has been corrupted -by marriage"

- Fredrick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1989), Part 4, Section 123.

On Nietzsche, Women and Passions

Nietzsche states:

"Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman's game is mediocre"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1989), Part 4, Section 115.

On Nietzsche, The Madman, and God

The Madman. – Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, "I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!" Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? – Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.

"Where is God?" he cried; "I'll tell you! We have killed him – you and I! We are all his murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to 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? Where is it moving to now? Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? –Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater deed – and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!"

Here the madman fell silent and looked at his listeners; they too were silent and looked at him disconcertedly. Finally he threw his lantern on the ground so that it broke into pieces and went out. "I come too early," he then said; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder need time; the light of the stars needs time; deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard. This deed is still more remote to them than the remotest stars – and yet they have done it themselves!" It is still recounted how on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there started singing his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but, "What then are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchres of God?"

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III 125, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

On Truth, Dogma, And Women

In the Preface it is written:

"Supposing that Truth is a woman -what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as the have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women -that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discourages mien -if, indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground -nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it be once understood what has actually sufficed for the basic of such imposing about absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject -and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief); perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious (sic) generalisation of very restricted, very personal, very human -all -too-human facts."

Of course, I couldn't disagree more.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), 4f.