Benjamin Taylor

Theology at Dawn: Nietzsche, Jüngel and the Post-Cartesian Theology

“You know when you’re young and you drop a glass and your dad says like ‘Get out of the way’ so you can be safe while he cleans it up. Well, now, no one really cares if I clean it up myself, no one really cares if I get cut with glass. If I break something, no one says let me take care of that. You know?”

--Hannah, HBO show Girls, season II, episode 10.

“Theology consisted also for us of constantly rejecting in our thinking the possibility of atheism which faith already rejected. In doing this, we learned that atheism can be rejected only if one overcomes theism, which is the presupposition of modern metaphysics and its disputation.

--Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 43.

Introduction

The idea of this paper came as a mediation between the two quotations above. The first

quotation comes from Lena Dunham’s character Hannah of the HBO show Girls. The quotation

depicts Hannah’s struggle to make it as a young twenty-something in Brooklyn. In a whimper,

she exclaims her nostalgia for an easier time when her father could help her with the issues of her

everyday life. Living alone, afraid and anxious, she misses the security of her childhood. The

foundations of her early life—the love of her parents, the security of a home and of a meal, the

naïve optimism of our teenage years—are now gone, vanished. Now, she says, no one really

cares about who she is or how she is doing in life. I contend that Hannah’s situation is an

aesthetic rendering of the existential angst that comes with living in the age of atheism. By the

age of atheism, I refer to secularization and its many philosophical and theological counterparts:

the postmodern, “the age of the death of God,” post-Cartesian, the age of relativism, anti-

essentialism, end of metaphysics, etc. Like it or not, something has happened in the last century

or so that has ushered in a new age for at least the Western world. Whether its origin is dated to

Nietzsche’s pronouncement, the summer of 1968, or to Auschwitz, life is different than it used to

be. And for some, we are left wandering, cut off from any traditional claims about life, society or

God. The experience leaves us with the nihil, a certain emptiness about life. This paper privileges

Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of God as a major event in theological consciousness.

For many theologians, atheism became a possibility with Nietzsche. This paper echoes Jüngel’s

commitment to faith in overcoming atheism.

Like Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of God, Descartes’s founding of the

individual’s subjectivity was a major turning point in historical consciousness. This paper

affirms the historical claim that Descartes’s Cogito initiates modernity. There are two parts to “I

think, therefore I am”: subjectivity and rationality. Both subjectivity and rationality are

foundational for modernity. Both concepts have positive effects as well as negative effects on

the modern world. Positively, subjectivity gave the world human (individual) rights, creativity,

and autonomy; while rationality provided the foundation for modernity’s scientific revolution

and the Enlightenment project. Negatively, too much emphasis on the individual in modernity

leads to narcissism, anthropocentricism, and the depletion of the natural world; likewise,

modernity’s overemphasis on rationality can lead to widespread atheism, society’s overreliance

on science and technology, and the diminishment of wonder and transcendence in everyday life.

Theologically, both subjectivity and rationality have impacted the way moderns think about God.

As we will see, Jüngel believes that Descartes’s subjectivity leads to modern theism and the God

who is determined by the individual (think Kant). In contemporary society, the influx of those

who self-define as “spiritual, but not religious” in emblematic of society’s over-privileging of the

autonomous self. The emphasis on rationality, theologically speaking, can lead to a rational God,

who must act rationally in punishing the sinner and rewarding the saint. Both concepts were alive

and well in the stage production that is the modern project. Enter Frederich Nietzsche. Nietzsche,

for me, represents a question mark to the modern project. Nietzsche questioned the very

foundations of modernity—truth, morality, reason, God—that modernity held to be both self-

evident and transcendent. In doing so, he turned modernity on its head, putting it in a tailspin.

Like Hannah, we are left searching in the dark, searching for what we used to know to be true.

This paper has two parts. First, this paper traces Eberhard Jüngel’s reading of Cartesian

metaphysics for its inception with Descartes’s Cogito to its deconstruction with Nietzsche’s

pronouncement of the death of God. Second, this paper articulates a principles of a post-

Cartesian theology envisioned out of the Barth—Jüngel arch in contemporary theology. In the

first part, this paper underlines Jüngel’s claim that Nietzsche’s death of God ushers the end of

Cartesian metaphysics, not the end of Christian theology. Contemporary theology has had an

ambiguous attitude towards Nietzsche. Some theologians have read him as an avowed atheist

who has nothing to say about Christian theology. Some others read him Nietzsche as the father

of a movement (the so-called “Death of God movement” proposed Altizer and company) that

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attempts to do theology without a transcendent God. I argue that Jüngel represents an archetype

for how theologians should read Nietzsche: Nietzsche as an important philosopher and social

satirist who showed the inconsistences and the problems with the God of Cartesian metaphysics.

Hence, contemporary theology should attribute his theological insights in order to develop a

richer theology.

In developing these claims, this first part of the paper makes a few moves. First, it

rehearses Descartes’s founding of modern metaphysics with his Cogito and his subsequent

founding of the Cartesian God based on his metaphysical foundation. Important here is that

Descartes’s understanding of God is based on his rational metaphysics. Because of his

metaphysics, Descartes constructs God as an idea. God is not a supreme being or an unmoved

mover. Descartes’s construction of God also includes the qualities of perfection, omnipresence,

and omnipotence. Second, this part of the paper rehearses Nietzsche’s deconstruction of the

Cartesian God. If we may say Descartes constructs modernity’s God, then we may also say that

Nietzsche deconstructs modernity’s God. Implicit here is the claim that Cartesian metaphysics

laid the groundwork for modernity and its notions of truth, morality and the self. By questioning

modernity’s values—such as truth, God, morality—Nietzsche deconstructs the Cartesian

metaphysical foundation that supported these values. We will examine Nietzsche’s claim that

Christianity suppresses humanity’s will-to-power, which serves two purposes. First, Nietzsche’s

claim that Christianity suppresses humanity’s will to power serves as the heart of Nietzsche’s

critique of Christianity; this claim is the key to Jüngel’s reading of Nietzsche. In his analysis of

Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, Jüngel finds that Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is a

critique of Cartesian metaphysics, not a critique of the Gospel. Thus, Jüngel concludes that

Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity can help contemporary theology move on from Cartesian

metaphysics into a post-Cartesian theology.

If Christian theology can no longer rely on Cartesian metaphysics as its foundation, then

on what can it rely? Are we left like Hannah in the above quotation—just floating through the

air, scared, alone, without a Father God to help us? Where do we go from here? In so many

ways, Karl Barth provided the theological answers to the questions of modernity. And here, Karl

Barth reminded theologians that the person of Jesus Christ—and Christ alone—is foundational.

Following Barth, and taking it one step further, Jüngel centered his theology on Jesus’ death on

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the cross. For us living in the cusp of two ages, the modern and the postmodern, we are searching

for that which is foundational. We are searching for something solid, something concrete. The

theological question of this generation might be: why isn’t God speaking? Jüngel’s answer: God

has spoken definitely in the person of Jesus Christ.1 In the first quotation above, Jüngel writes

that only atheism can only be rejected if theism is overcome. Atheism, then, must be overcome,

but how? Jüngel’s answer: atheism can only be overcome by Christ’s cross. This paper follows

that tripartite framework: theism, atheism, Christ. In theism, we examine Descartes’s founding

of modern metaphysics. In atheism, we examine Nietzsche’s deconstruction of modern

metaphysics. In Christ, we examine the notions of revelation and power and the new day for

theology in a post-Cartesian context.

This topic is of importance to me personally as I wrestle with the question of

postmodernity. I am torn. I am torn between two convictions. The first conviction is that

historical consciousness and social context matter, they matter as they influence the way we live

in the world. My ideas about God are shaped by my historical and social situation and, in our

contemporary society and culture, I do believe that something has happened that gives

ontological weight to the claims of postmodernity. Like Hannah, I too sometimes feel lost,

wondering what, if anything, I can hold on to. The second conviction is that I believe God

revealed God’s self on the cross, and that this claim is central to my faith, my identity, and my

existence. This paper is an attempt to hold these two personal convictions in tension with one

another. The tension between these two convictions is that while I maintain that fundamental

questions of faith, truth, and life are shaped by people like Descartes and Nietzsche, there is

something more fundamental about the Gospel. In intellect, I can agree that theological truths

ebb and flow with the changing of the intellectual seasons; but in faith, I must confess that the

truth of Jesus Christ is above all the rest. This paper, then, is my effort to work through these

questions of truth and of religion, all the while holding on to what I believe to be most true.

Theism: Descartes Constructs

A major turn in the history of metaphysics came about with the advent of modernity and

its progenitor René Descartes. Cartesian thought conceives the existence of God from a new

perspective, the perspective of the human being. The Cartesian turn to the self is symbolized by

1 Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, xiv.

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the Cogito, “I think therefore I am.” The Cartesian turn emphasized the subjectivity of the

individual over against the objective world. Jüngel believes that the Cartesian turn to the self and

the metaphysics it promoted had many implications for modern theology. In other words,

Descartes’s thought not only revolutionized the understanding of the self, it also revolutionized

our understanding of God.2 Cartesian thought provides the foundation for modern theism, the

construction that Nietzsche will later deconstruct. In what follows, this paper traces the process

by which Descartes constructs his idea of God from his own ego. Important here is that

Descartes’s conception of God (henceforth, the Cartesian God) is a human conjecture and not the

God who is revealed by Jesus Christ.

Jüngel believes that the problem of theism begins with the problem of the self.3 Descartes

uses the same methodology for his construction of God from as he did for his construction of the

ego. Jüngel believes that the Cartesian God arises out of Descartes’s development of the self. In

other words, Jüngel believes that Descartes comes to construct God out of his own subjectivity

because he succeeded in securing the self out of his own subjectivity. Therefore, this

construction of the Cartesian metaphysics occurs as a development. Jüngel traces this

development in three stages: the securing of the self as a result of Descartes’s radical doubt, the

securing of God for the self, and finally, the construction of the Cartesian God.

The first stage is the securing of the self as a result of Descartes’s radical doubt.

Descartes’s quest for certainty, which ends with his formulation of the cogito, begins with the

problem of doubt, the problem of uncertainty.4 Descartes conceives “his being” through human

thought (I think and because I think, therefore I am). “But if I must think myself thinking, then I

have myself as being.”5 Jüngel makes the following two points about this stage of the

construction of the Cartesian metaphysics. First, as already seen, the ontological certainty of the

self happens through rationality itself. Second, through the thinking of thought, Descartes

conflates human existence and human essence.6 Essence is produced through existence. “I am

(exist) because of I am what I am.”7 Being gives itself through human rationality, not through

2 Jüngel, 111.3 Ibid, 122.4 “Doubt drives man’s lack of perfection, which is essential to man, and which is his ability to doubt, to its extreme, and in so doing,, he allows man to arrive at the essence of his human existence (114).”5 Ibid, 114-115.6 Ibid, 115.7 Ibid. Jüngel’s emphasis.

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transcendental givenness. Jüngel’s italicization of “what” in the preceding quotation emphasizes

the choice of “what” rather than “who.” The ego is abstracted through thought.8

The second stage of the development of Cartesian metaphysics is the securing of God for

the ego. Jüngel believes that Descartes’s methodology in securing the self over against radical

doubt informs the way in which the ego secures God for the ego. Thus, “this is where God is

called into play.”9 The dialectic of doubt and certainty which leads to the construction of the self

also leads to the construction of God through the same dialectic of doubt and certainty. Before

we proceed farther into how this construction of God plays out, we must acknowledge two

points. The first point is that Descartes believes that the self must be continually reconstructed

because of the dialectic between doubt and uncertainty.10 Thus, because the construction of the

self serves as the basis for the construction of God, the self must also reconstruct God

continually. The second point is that Descartes believes that this dialectic process of doubt and

certainty is necessary.11 The category “necessary” is a red flag for Jüngel. When an object is

deemed necessary (usually a logical necessity), its foundation is no longer ontological but

theoretical, as in “by way of the thinking of thought.” As Jüngel sees it, this is the problem of

theism: God is necessary because of the ego.

Because the Cartesian God arises from the dialectic of doubt and certainty, there must be

a not-God in order to account for the God.12 Descartes must think through the not-God in order to

arrive at the certainty of God.13 Therefore, Descartes imagines “the imagined devil” in order to

posit its opposite, “the good God.” Jüngel writes that “one could say that God has to be made

into his opposite first, in order to be guaranteed as the opposite of the opposite and thus as the

power to prove certainty.”14 A few comments here. First, as Jüngel continues to emphasize, this

construction is necessary. There is a driving force that continues this process along as Descartes

pushes for certainty. Second, Descartes sets up a binary between the good God and the bad God

(Descartes uses words such as “deceiver God” and “evil spirit” to categorize “the not God”).

8 As we will see, this abstraction is the problem of the God of theism: God is determined as an idea, rather than the revealed in person of Jesus Christ on the cross.9 Ibid, 117.10 “I must constantly and initially ascribe my being to myself, conceive of my being for myself (115).”11 “Thinking claims that God is necessary in order to be able to secure the continuity of the ego with his help (116).”12 On the “not God,” Jüngel remains faithful to the Cartesian language of “deceiver God” and ‘evil spirit.” I am using “not God” for purposes of simplification. 13 Ibid, 118.14 Ibid.

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This, in part, qualifies God. Not only is the existence of God a product of the ego’s imagination,

but now the quality of this God is also a product of the ego. And third, again, this process arises

from Descartes’s own self-doubt. An existential problem has been mistaken for a metaphysical

problem.

We have now come to the third stage of the development of Cartesian metaphysics: the

construction of the Cartesian God. By now, we can see the problem of the Cartesian God: it is a

human conjecture that has arisen from the Descartes’s doubt. Descartes “constructs God” by

giving God three qualities: perfection, omnipresence and omnipotence. First, God is perfect.

Descartes’s logic unfolds thus: because the existence of God provides the foundation for

Descartes’s self-certainty, God must be posited to be greater than both the not-God (as seen

above) and Descartes (or more generally, the human being itself).15 For Descartes, this means

that God must be perfect.16 Second, God is omnipresence. In keeping with the Cartesian dialectic

between doubt and certainty, God’s presence is always recalled by the self to assure the self’s

doubt. “Therefore, God is proven to exist beyond doubt only in that [God] is present with me.”17

In other words, God’s existence is conflated with God’s presence. God is God only as God is

present. And third, the Cartesian God is omnipotent. Jüngel writes that “God cannot do without

any perfection and must do without any deficiency. God must lack defects. The defect which

God must lack is anything which can be considered as a hindrance of power. That means that

God must be free of every weakness.”18 We see here the principal problem with Cartesian

metaphysics that is raised by both Nietzsche and Jüngel: God is constructed from the Cartesian

ego. This leads to the following paradox: “God possesses all perfection, which man cannot

comprehend, but can somehow attain through thought.”19 Because of the Cartesian turn inward,

God is God only as God is for the ego.]

Nietzsche surveys God from the perspective of Cartesian metaphysics, and concludes that

God is not important, and thus, might as well be dead. Jüngel surveys Cartesian metaphysics, and

15 Ibid, 120. Jüngel’s logic seems a little ambiguous here. Jüngel asserts that “God is necessary for Descartes initially not as the most perfect essence, but only as the essence which is more perfect than man (119),” which affirms the latter part of my statement. He also says that “the successful proof of the existence of God might be called the title of nobility for doubt., which has been steered into a more fitting path by the destruction of the ‘evil spirit,” which affirms the former part of my statement. 16 Ibid, 123.17Ibid, 124. 18 Ibid, 123.19 Ibid.

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concludes that Descartes had it wrong. Jüngel asserts that God is the God who is revealed by

Jesus Christ. Theism must be overcome by atheism before Christ can overcome atheism. To

Nietzsche and his deconstruction of Cartesian metaphysics we now turn.

Atheism: Nietzsche Destructs Cartesian Metaphysics

‘Whither is God?’ he cried. ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of his are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?...Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.20

The relationship between Nietzsche and Christianity is complex. There have been many

attempts to simplify this relationship. One such simplification is to say that Nietzsche was an

atheist. Another such simplification is to say that Nietzsche valued concrete humanity over

against the ephemeral. While these simplifications are correct, it is incorrect to trace Nietzsche’s

rejection of Christianity to one such idea. Nietzsche was an atheist, but that was not the reason

for his rejection of Christianity nor was his valuation of humanity over against the ephemeral.

This paper claims that Nietzsche’s rejection of Christianity is predicated upon the emptiness of

the Cartesian God. In other words, Nietzsche rejects Christianity because he correctly

understands that Christianity built a metaphysical system on the Cartesian God. Nietzsche

maintains that this metaphysical system held humanity in bondage. In order to free humanity

from this Cartesian God, Nietzsche reasons, we must proclaim the death of it. In what follows, I

examine two parts of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity:21

1. Nietzsche’s deconstruction of truth and morality.

2. Nietzsche’s belief in humanity’s will-to-power and Christianity’s suppression of it.

After working through Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, we will examine Eberhard Jüngel’s

appraisal of the critique. We will find that Jüngel believes that Nietzsche’s critique represents the

death of the God of Cartesian metaphysics, and thus, not the death of Christian God. Thus,

Jüngel affirms Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity as an important part in the theological

development from theism to Christ. Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God proclaims the

20 Friederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, quoted in The Portable Nietzsche ed. Walter Kaufmann, 95. 21 Because of the dynamic nature of Nietzsche’s thought, any explanation requires reduction. Thus, I am not saying that Nietzsche’s reduction boils down to these three positions. Nietzsche’s thought requires dance, but sometimes walking is quicker.

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death of Cartesian metaphysics, which opens up room for the possibility of a post-Cartesian

theology.

Nietzsche believes that modernity grounds its structures of morality and meaning in God.

As we saw above, this process goes back to Descartes as he grounded the self in God. But

modernity had reached its apotheosis in nineteenth century German society, during Nietzsche’s

early life. These values had become engrained in the value system of the German people.

Decades earlier, Immanuel Kant had rooted moral principles in the moral God. Participation in

the society through the propagation of truth and progress was required by the German people.

Religious life was oppressive. Nietzsche felt this intimately. Nietzsche grew up in a very

religious household (his father was a Lutheran pastor) and experienced God as an oppressive

God who punished the sinners and rewarded the faithful. Thus, Nietzsche would interpret the

death of God as a liberating historical event rather than a nihilistic message: as he saw it, the

death of God meant the death of nihilism. The death of God freed humanity from Christianity.

The Christian tradition maintained that truth and morality were rooted in the being of

God.22 Nietzsche deconstructs this traditional argument by asserting that both truth and morality

were human conjectures and thus not of divine origin.23 In On Truth and Lie in An Extra Moral

Sense, Nietzsche questions the origin of truth:

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically and which after long use seem firm, canonical and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.24

In the above quotation, Nietzsche argues two points about so-called truth. The first point

is truth is “a sum of human relations.” The common notion about truth is that truth is self-

evident. In another text, Nietzsche refers to truth as a “tablet of gold” that hangs above society’s

head.25 Nietzsche problematizes the divinization of truth, the idea that truth is divine. Instead, he

asserts that what we call “truth” is nothing more than societal norms and customs. There is

22 We can root this in Aquinas: “Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and the first truth.” Summa Theologica, Book 1, Part 1, Question 16; Aquinas: “God alone is good essentially” Book 1, Part 1, Question 6. 23 The term “deconstruct” is anachronistic. But what else is Nietzsche up to but deconstructing?24 Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, 46-47. 25 Ibid, 170.

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nothing sacred or divine about it. The second point is that truths “are illusions about which one

has forgotten that this is what they are.” Likewise, an idea that has been around a long time tends

to become “firm and canonical.” A custom, “a truth” becomes “the Truth” as time progresses.

Many truths, in addition to seeming self-evident, seem primordial. The primordial sense of the

truth turns it into Truth. Nietzsche demystifies truth by deconstructing the claim that truth is

primordial.

Nietzsche’s genealogical method serves to put into practice the above idea. By

chronicling the history of an idea, Nietzsche shows that the idea is not as fundamental to the

society as many in the society think. In other words, in tracing the history of truth, Nietzsche

ventures to show that truth is not self-evident. In The Twilight of the Idols, he shows the

development of truth in six steps. The first step is the Platonic notion of truth. The second step of

truth’s genealogy is the stage of Christianity: “The true world—unattainable for now, but

promised for the sage, the pious, the vitreous man (“for the sinner who repents”). (Progress of

the idea: it [truth] becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible—it becomes female, it

becomes Christian.)”26 The third stage is the Kantian concept of truth; the fourth stage of truth is

the truth of modern science. The fifth stage of the development of truth signals the dissolution of

the metaphysical notion of truth. Nietzsche writes: “The “true” world—an idea which is no

longer good for anything, not even obligation—an idea which has become useless and

superfluous—consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it.”27 And finally, the sixth stage is

nihilism, which opens the door for the figure of Zarathustra. Thus, Nietzsche believes that truth

can no longer be conceived as fundamental to human life. Truth is an idol that must be scrapped.

Like the idea of truth, classical metaphysics rooted morality (“the good”) in God. Dating

back to Aquinas, God is believed to be the highest good.28 In the nineteenth century, good had

become synonymous with “religious.” To be religious was to be good. Religious systems were

reduced to system of rights and wrongs. Immanuel Kant constructed a moral system with God at

the center who governed over moral law.29 Nietzsche rejects this theological system by calling

into question the divinization of “good.” Nietzsche’s target came to be “morality,” as he sees

morality as the systematization of the good. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche chronicles 26 Ibid, 485.27 Ibid.28 See footnote 22.29 Livingston, Modern Christian Thought: Volume 1, 63.

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the history of morality back to human origin. Nietzsche contends that this means that morality

does not have a divine origin. In the preface, he signals the unfolding of his critique of morality:

Let us speak out this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values is for the first time to be called into question—and for this purpose a knowledge is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and their distortion.30

Nietzsche believes we must critique not only values themselves, we must also critique the value

of these values; in other words, we need to critique God. Nietzsche believes that moral values

had not been sufficiently challenged because modernity held morality to be sacred. Thus,

Nietzsche ventures to show that these values are human values and not divine values. In the first

essay of The Genealogy, Nietzsche traces the history of “good.” He writes: “The real homestead

of the concept ‘good’ is sought and located in the wrong place: the judgment ‘good’ did not

originate those whom goodness is shown.”31 Perhaps ‘to whom goodness is shown,’ is a

reference to Christians, and by critiquing them, Nietzsche deconstructs the idea that God calls

Christians good. He then argues that the concept “good” was constructed by the powerful of the

society and not by the weak as Christians might presume.32 He writes, “It has been the good

themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have

felt that they themselves were good and their actions were good.”33 Nietzsche identifies that the

powerful in the society were the ones with the power to name what is good and what is not

good.34 Thus, Nietzsche not only deconstructs the concept “good,” he also signifies that the

question of good is a question of power, not a question of character.

In addition to making the genealogical argument about the origins (and thus the validity)

of morality and truth, Nietzsche also makes an ontological argument that diminishes morality’s

ontological validity. In Human, All too Human, Nietzsche claims that the trio of “religion, art

and morality” has basis only in metaphysics and (therefore) not in the real world, not in the

“thing-in-itself.” In a section entitled “The Harmlessness of Metaphysics in the Future,” he

writes:

30 Nietzsche, The Philosophy of Nietzsche, tr. Horace Samuel , 627-628.31 Ibid, 634. Nietzsche’s emphasis.32 “Blessed are the meek.”33 Ibid.34 This argument would fit Walter Benjamin’s thesis on the nature of power in the writing of history: it is the powerful who write history.

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As soon as the origins of religion, art, and morality have been described, so that one can explain them fully without resorting to the use of metaphysical intervention at the beginning and along the way, then one no longer has as strong an interest in the purely theoretical problem of the “thing in itself” and “appearance.” For however the case may be, religion, art and morality do not enable to touch “the essence of the world in itself.” We are in the realm of idea, no intuition can carry us further.35

This argument is categorically different from the other arguments we have examined thus far.

Above, we examined Nietzsche’s critiques of truth and morality because on the basis that they

made transcendent claims. But, here, Nietzsche devalues “religion, art and morality” because

they do not “touch the essence of the world in itself.” This is the other side of the pronouncement

of the death of God: because God is dead, religion, art, and morality are also dead because their

ontological claims were tied up in God. With this claim, we see both the extent of Nietzsche’s

deconstruction of modernity and Nietzsche’s conviction that God was central to modernity. For

Nietzsche, with the death of God comes the death of metaphysical recourse. Nietzsche thinks that

humanity spends too much time thinking transcendently. He believes moderns were wasting their

lives with their “heads in the clouds,” worrying about how to be good or how to please God.

Instead, he believed that humanity needs to be true to life itself. He believed that life itself

contained its own life force, which he termed the will-to-power. We now turn to the will-to-

power.

Nietzsche’s will-to-power is often misunderstood when reduced to an idea or a doctrine.

One interpreter of Nietzsche identifies the will-to-power thus: “For [Nietzsche] power is the self-

affirmation of being. Will-to-power means will to affirm one’s power of living, the will to affirm

one’s personal existence.”36 This description of Nietzsche’s will-to-power brings forth the

dynamic nature of will-to-power. The will-to-power is the force that drives the individual to live

life emphatically. Nietzsche’s most detailed reflection on the will-to-power comes in section 36

of Beyond Good and Evil. He begins by envisioning a world free of metaphysical constructions:

“Suppose nothing else were ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, and we

could not get down, or up, to any other ‘reality’ besides the reality of our drives.”37 Note the

importance of the words given and reality, which Nietzsche emphasizes by putting them in

quotation marks. Given refers to the a priori constructs that structure our reality and that are

35 Nietzsche, Human all too Human, tr. Marion Faber,. 18 (section 10). Nietzsche’s emphasis.36 Paul Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Protestant Theology, 197.37 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, tr. Walter Kaufmann, 47.

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often grounded in Cartesian metaphysics. Reality refers to the life that is lived on the foundation

of those a priori constructs. Nietzsche envisions a world in which the only foundational

principles of life are the individual’s basic human drives. He believes that the only authentic

reality would be the material reality, as opposed to a reality grounded in a metaphysical

construction. Nietzsche continues to envision a world free of metaphysical constructions. Such a

world would be controlled only by human’s “organic functions.” He concludes:

Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will—namely of the will to power, as my proposition has it…then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as—the will to power. The world viewed from inside, the world defined and determined according to its ‘intelligible character”—it would be “will to power” and nothing else.38

We can gather the following three points from Nietzsche’s description of the will-to-power.

First, this scenario, in which individuals life their life free of any metaphysical “givens,” is a

representation of how Nietzsche thinks that individuals should live their life. Although this

section is framed as a thought experiment, Nietzsche believes the will-to-power to be the most

essential part of life and therefore it is central to how he believed humans should live. Second,

Nietzsche reduces all life forces to the will-to-power, as evidenced by the latter sentences of his

description of the will-to-power (“it would be will-to-power and nothing else”). And third, the

will-to-power is a life force. This idea bears repeating because of its importance and because we,

in the twenty-first century, do not use the category “life force” anymore. By life force, Nietzsche

means that the will-to-power that has the capability to drive our lives. Nietzsche combines the

will, the intellect, the passion into a single power, a single force: the will to power.

Nietzsche’s most robust critique of Christianity is that Christianity suppresses the will-to-

power of human beings. Nietzsche believes that Christianity (and all religious systems in

general) turn the individual’s will-to-power against themselves. Nietzsche thinks that this

suppression of the will-to-power occurred most prominently in two ways: Christianity’s

valorization of suffering and Christianity’s claim to transcendental meaning. Nietzsche thinks

that life was in continual conflict, as life forces and individuals clashed with one another.

Nietzsche affirms that life is meaningful, then, as individuals affirm their will-to-power in this

life amidst the conflict of life. Thus, Nietzsche believes that Christianity weakened humanity’s

38 Ibid, 48.

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will-to-power as it attempts to attribute meaning to suffering. Nietzsche has in mind the religious

platitudes that some theologies offer, such as “it will all be okay in the end because Jesus

promises the gift of eternal life.” Nietzsche believes that this view of suffering is affirms

otherworldly or transcendent meaning in the suffering. Nietzsche emphasizes that meaning

should be affirmed in this life, not some other life. We sometimes see such valorization of

suffering in theologies of the cross. In some iterations of the theology of the cross, suffering can

be depicted as “picking up one’s cross” and identifying with the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Nietzsche

refers to valorization of suffering as “the morality of pity.” He writes: “But [the Christians] are

also at one in the religion of pity, in feeling with all who feel, live, and suffer. They are at one,

the lot of them, in the cry and their impatience of pity, in their deadly hatred of suffering

generally, in their almost feminine inability to remain spectators, to let someone suffer.”39

Nietzsche believes that identifying with the crucified Christ affirms weakness over strength. He

believes that Christianity is harmful to Western civilization because it transvalues strength into

weakness. Along with strength into weakness, Nietzsche thinks that Christianity turns the will-

to-power in on itself. He writes:

Break the strong, sickly o’er great hopes, cast suspicion on the joy in beauty, bend everything haughty, manly, conquering, domineering, all the insights characteristic of the highest and best-turned-out type of ‘man’ into unsureness, agony of conscience, self-destruction—indeed, invert all love of the earthly and of dominion over the earth into hatred of the earth and the earthly—that is the task the church posed for itself.40

Christianity’s transvaluation of strength into weakness was the reason for Nietzsche’s

break with Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer affirmed the “un-egoistic” instincts of Christianity and

Nietzsche could not.41 Nietzsche could not affirm a set of values that cherished meekness and

prophesied against the strong.

I believe that the heart of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is best understood by

looking at Nietzsche’s evaluation of the cross. As mentioned above, Nietzsche believes that

Christianity is harmful because it transvalues strength into weakness. It is important to note that

39 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 116 (sect. 202).40 Ibid, 75 (sect. 62).41 Nietzsche: “The issue was, strangely enough, the value of the ‘unegoistic’ instincts, the instincts that of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently painted with golden colours, deified and etheralised that eventually they appered to him, as it were, high and dry, as ‘intrinsic value in themselves,’ on the strength of which he uttered both to Life and to himself his own negation (The Genealogy of Morals, sect. 5 in The Philosophy of Nietzsche).”

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Nietzsche affirms “the transvaluation of values,” as such, he just does not favor how Christianity

particularly transvalues weakness into strength. The idea of transvaluation of values, per se, is

integral to Nietzsche’s philosophy as a means of a continual self-overcoming the conflictive

nature of the world. However, because he values the idea of transvaluation in itself, Nietzsche

affirms the cross of Christ:

Modern men, obtuse to all Christian nomenclature, no longer feel the gruesome superlative that struck a classical taste in the paradoxical formula “god on the cross.” Never yet and nowhere has there been an equal boldness in inversion, anything as horrible, questioning and questionable as this formula: it promised a revaluation of all the values of antiquity.42

Nietzsche understands and affirms the radical nature of the Christian proclamation that God died

on the cross. Like Nietzsche, the proclamation is bold, controversial, and paradoxical. Nietzsche

understands that. He then turns away from his positive evaluation of power of God on the cross,

however, as he discusses the manner in which Christians pick this formation up and turn it into

something else.43 In other words, Nietzsche likes the power of statement “God on the cross,” but

he does not like the way Christians have commoditized it into a valorization for suffering. He

likes the paradox; he does not like the attempt to reconcile the paradox.

Nietzsche’s evaluation of the cross provides segue into Nietzsche’s critique of

Christianity’s claim on transcendent meaning.44 We saw that Nietzsche criticizes “theologies of

the cross” because of their affirmation of transcendent meaning over against the meaning of this

world (the will-to-power). According to Nietzsche, Christianity is ultimately nihilistic because it

holds claim to transcendent meaning. Christianity professes that God died on the cross in order to

reconcile the world to God’s self. Nietzsche sees that this belief system needs a metaphysical

interpretation of life. In this way, Christianity places value in the other-worldliness of life.

Nietzsche believes that Christianity ends up being nihilistic because it denies the meaning of this

world, which for Nietzsche, is all meaning itself. He writes that “Every negation which [man] is

inclined to utter to himself, to his nature, naturalness, and reality of his being, he whips it into [a

42 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 60 (sect. 46). Emphasis mine.43 Ibid, 61.44 This paper argues that many of the Nietzsche’s claims about Christianity claims about Cartesian metaphysics and hence, are sidestepped or deconstructed itself. Here, I think Nietzsche’s claim holds true throughout Christianity. Christianity does affirm transcendence. Nietzsche does not agree. This paragraph is important to the paper’s goal in giving a sufficient treatment to Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity. This is a good caveat for understanding this paper’s appropriation of Nietzsche: Nietzsche is seen as important in the development of Christian theology, not as a Christian or a misunderstood atheist.

15

response] of ‘yes,’ uttering it as something existing, living, efficient, as being God, as the

hangmanship of God, as transcendence, as eternity, as unending torment, as hell, as infinity of

punishment and guilt.”45 Nietzsche’s point is that Christianity ends up being nihilistic because all

meaning is given to God and the transcendent world. Nietzsche interprets this transcendent claim

to be an assault on humanity’s will-to-power. Nietzsche believes that the Christian individual

ends up overcome by guilt because the individual cannot live up to the holiness which God

demands.

Recall that Cartesian metaphysics postulates a God out of Descartes’s radical self-doubt.

As a means of securing himself, he secures God. Nietzsche calls Descartes’s bluff by pointing

out that the Cartesian God is simply a conjecture. A pivot point in this paper is that Nietzsche

tears down that which Descartes build, even though Nietzsche believes he is tearing down much

more. Jüngel provides the connection between Nietzsche and Descartes by highlighting

Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics. To conclude part II of this essay, we will examine

Jüngel’s analysis of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics. Then, at the beginning of part

III, we come back to Jüngel’s claim that Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity amounts to his

critique of Cartesian metaphysics.

Jüngel sees four strands of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics, which all

revolve around the distinction between the finite human being and the infinite God.46 The first

strand of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics is that Descartes posits a finite human

and an infinite God. Nietzsche believes that the infinite God oppresses the finite human being.

Jüngel writes “The conjecture of infinite destroys the finitude of the one who conjectures. It

imposes finitude on him, instead of comprehending finitude in and of itself.”47 Nietzsche makes

this argument when he claims that Christianity suppresses humanity’s will-to-power. The second

strand of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics is that it postulates that the finite human

being must go beyond the human’s self to reach the infinite God. But the distinction between the

infinite and finite should prohibit the finite’s reaching beyond the finite self. Jüngel writes that

“the thought of God, always presupposed in a metaphysics which understands God as that

45 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, sect. 22 of Essay 2, in The Philosophy of Nietzsche, 712.46 Jüngel, 146-150. Jüngel traces this distinction to Cartesian metaphysics: “If [God’s] existence is provable and thus my existence is to be secured as identical, then [God’s] name must be understood to denote an infinite, independent, most intelligent, and most potent substance (123).”47 Jüngel. 147.

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‘which nothing greater can be conceived,’ causes giddiness because it forces thought to compare

itself to a height to which it is forbidden to climb.”48 The thought of God—itself a human

conjecture—becomes unreachable by humans through divinization. This critique is central to

Nietzsche’s critique of modernity’s divinization of truth. Modernity turns truth into that “golden

tablet” about humanity, the irony being that humanity must have claim to the truth.

The third strand of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics is that for the finite to

think the infinite, the finite would have to become infinite. In other words, for the human being

to think God, the human being must become God.49 Jüngel connects this part of Nietzsche’s

critique with Nietzsche’s formation of the superman (Übermensch). In thinking God (the project

of Cartesian metaphysics) “the infinite is now transformed into the dimension of the becoming or

emergence of the Superman, that is, into the dimension of a finitude which is restricted from the

outside.”50 Jüngel’s point is that Cartesian metaphysics posits the difference between the human

being and God as a theoretical difference, rather than an ontological difference. The fourth

strand of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics—as rehearsed by Jüngel—is that for the

infinite to be brought into the finite, the infinite can no longer be infinite.51 In other words, God

must be reduced to the world for human beings to think God. This idea is central to Nietzsche’s

pronouncement of the death of God. For God to be “killed,” God must be determinable by

human thought. Jüngel identifies the four strands of Nietzsche’s critique of Cartesian

metaphysics.. In all of these four strands, Jüngel shows that Nietzsche exploits the contradictions

within the Cartesian metaphysical framework. These contradictions are necessarily embedded in

Cartesian metaphysics because Cartesian metaphysics grounded itself in the ego rather than in

God. Therefore, Nietzsche claims the death of Cartesian metaphysics as the death of God.

Nietzsche makes a mistake, however, when he identifies the Cartesian God as the God of Jesus

Christ. As we turn to part III, we will affirm Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity as a critique of

Cartesian metaphysics. By affirming Nietzsche, Christian theology is able to construct a post-

Cartesian theology with the rising sun of dawn.

Christ: Revelation and Power

48 Ibid, 149.49 In this section, Jüngel is working through both Nietzsche and Feuerbach. This argument is close to the Feuerbach’s critique of theology.50 Ibid, 150.51 Ibid,.

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In asserting that we must go through atheism on our way from theism to Christ, Jüngel

makes positive use out of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity. For Jüngel, Nietzsche’s critique is

productive for Christian theology to develop out of theism.52 But Jüngel maintains that theology

must also “move past” atheism.53 In moving past atheism, Jüngel demonstrates that Nietzsche’s

critique of Christianity misses the mark: as we concluded above, Nietzsche critiques Cartesian

metaphysics, not the Christian faith.54 Further, Jüngel claims that Nietzsche’s critique of

Christianity represents a critique of metaphysics (not Christianity) because Nietzsche’s God is

not the God of Jesus Christ. In making this claim, Jüngel argues that Nietzsche cannot even

conceive of the God of Jesus Christ because Nietzsche is unable to think of “God’s unity with

perishability.” Jüngel believes that “God’s unity with perishability” lies at the center of Christian

Gospel and its claim that God reveals God’s self on the cross. In other words, Jüngel believes

that Nietzsche could not even conceive of the reality of Jesus’ death on the cross because he

cannot conceive of God as a God who dies. Jüngel supports this claim in three ways.

First, Jüngel argues that Nietzsche’s God is the Cartesian God. We touched on this claim

a little earlier, but it needs clarification. Jüngel writes that “one cannot think God and

perishability together without setting aside the metaphysically conceived thought of God.

Perishability disintegrates [God].”55 This claim sets up Jüngel’s argument about Nietzsche’s un-

ability to conceive the perishability of God: the Cartesian God cannot perish; the Cartesian God

cannot be put on the cross.56 To the point, Jüngel believes that Nietzsche’s God is unable to

perish because Nietzsche maintains that God—the Cartesian God—is omnipotent, omnipresent

and perfect. Jüngel writes that “For Nietzsche, God is at best a simile, as is everything

imperishable. The metaphysical concept of God remains the presupposition, in that the God

asserted to be imperishable is still seen as the simile for the strength and power of the

52 This claim might sound Hegelian. Jüngel is not asserting that this is a necessary step in Christian theology, only that it has happened this way historically. 53 Jüngel claims that Christian faith demands that Christianity move past atheism (43). In other words, the move past atheism is, again, not an Hegelian move.54 Barth made a similar argument about Nietzsche. Barth: “Naturally there is an element of caricature in his depiction. Those who try to fight the Gospel always make caricatures, and they are then forced to fight those caricatures….Nietzsche was undoubtedly conditioned by his age when he thought he could regard Christianity as typical socialist teaching and contest it as such.” Barth, Church Dogmatics 3/2, 242. 55 Jüngel, 203.56 Jüngel jokes about putting the Cartesian God on the cross: “The Cartesian God on the cross—and the cross would collapse! The ‘infinite substance, independent, omniscient and omnipotent’ is too heavy (123).”

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perishable.”57 Because Nietzsche’s concept of God is the Cartesian God, Nietzsche cannot

understand God as the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ.

Second, Jüngel argues that although Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God,

paradoxically, Nietzsche cannot believe that that God dies because Nietzsche himself is caught

up in Cartesian metaphysics and its pairing of God’s existence with God’s essence. The

Cartesian metaphysical project identifies God’s essence with God’s existence by making God’s

being a condition of human thought.58 God is because the human being thinks that God is.

Nietzsche incorrectly believes that this identification was God. But this identification is not God,

God is the one who reveals God’s self in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus, for Nietzsche “talk of

the death of God is speaking of death only as an image.”59 For Nietzsche, God is a human

conjecture that is not rooted ontologically. Nietzsche is then unable to think about the actual

death of God as it happened on the cross:

But [Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of God] does not conceive of the idea that God comes together with death. For, if God may not be brought together with and thought together with perishability, then the point of speaking of the death of God in this intellectual context is that a real death of God cannot be thought at all.60

For Nietzsche, the death of God refers merely to the death of the human conjecture of God. In

other words, he cannot envision the realities of Calvary, because for Nietzsche, gods do not die.

Third, Jüngel argues that Nietzsche could not understand God’s unity with perishability

by highlighting Nietzsche’s aversion to Paul’s “theology of the Crucified One.”61 In Twilight of

the Idols, Nietzsche writes that the God who died on the cross was a lie created by Paul. He

believes that this God—Paul’s God—represents the negation of God.62 Jüngel believes we can

see just how much Nietzsche’s idea of God is tied up with the Cartesian God by looking into

Nietzsche’s suspicion and outright objection to Paul’s God on the cross. In other words, we can

see how foreign the idea of God’s self-revelation on the cross is to Nietzsche by examining his

aversion to the very idea. Jüngel believes that Paul’s theology of the cross transforms weakness

into strength. He writes, “For Paul, the Crucified One is weak, subject to death…The weakness

57Ibid, 206.58Jüngel, 103.59 Ibid, 204.60 Ibid, 205.61 Jüngel identifies “Paul’s theology of the Crucified One” with God’s perishability.62 Ibid.

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of the Crucified One is for Paul the way in which God’s power of life is perfected. Weakness is

then not understood as a contradiction of God’s power.”63 This weakness of God reveals the

perishability of the Christian God. Nietzsche does not understand this idea because his idea of

God is the God of strength, not the God who reveals strength in weakness, the God of the cross.

The text reveals how precisely Nietzsche grasped the incompatibility of the Christian understanding of God with the metaphysical concept of God. That Nietzsche felt ‘even less able to believe’ in the God of the Christians, even if this God should be proven to him, provides Nietzsche’s talk about the death of God a double orientation. On the one hand, it points to the unthinkability of the metaphysically conceived highest essence. On the other hand, it is also intended to point to the incredibility of the Christian understanding of God, which is the former’s precise opposite.64

Jüngel concludes that Nietzsche is unable to believe in the Christian confession that God reveals

God’s self in Christ’s death on the cross because he maintains a metaphysical concept of God,

which privileges God’s omnipotence rather than God’s power of love which transforms

weakness into strength. Jüngel believes that from this assertion, we can conclude that

Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is off the mark. Nietzsche’s critique is aimed at the Cartesian

God, not the God of Jesus Christ. Thus, we can say that Nietzsche tears down what Descartes

had built. Or, to continue with the framework of this paper, atheism overcomes theism. But then

how does theology overcome atheism? In answering this question, this paper affirms Jüngel’s

turn to the cross: atheism is overcome only by God’s identification with Jesus on the cross. But

then a new question comes up: what do we do with Cartesian metaphysics? Cartesian

metaphysics must die along with Nietzsche’s God. Now, we are on to foreign territory. The terra

firma has been washed away, leaving ourselves asking what is now left. After the Cartesian

ground has turned to quicksand, what can we say about God? We cannot say that God is

conceived conceptually. We cannot recourse to modernist notions of truth and subjectivity to

locate God in the self. We cannot join philosophers who generalize about the existence of God.

So who is God? God is the one who reveals God’s self in the person and in the death of Jesus

Christ.65 Thus, following Jüngel, I believe that we can affirm two theological claims after

Cartesian metaphysics. We can say two things about who God is:

63 Ibid.64 Ibid, 206-207.65 This idea obviously comes from Barth and Jüngel, who follows Barth. But the set up and phrasing of this statement also comes from Robert Jenson in The Christian Theology Reader, ed. McGrath, 198-200.

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1. God is love.

2. God reveals God’s self in Jesus’ death on the cross.66

A post-Cartesian theology revolves around these two identities of God. These two identities do

not rely on Cartesian metaphysics. These two identities of God are only to be believed through

the gift of faith. One cannot reason themselves to them. They are essential to the Christian

narrative of how Christians believe God involves God’s self in the world. They are the central

conviction of the Christian faith. As such, they stand at the center of a post-Cartesian theology.67

Since a post-Cartesian theology cannot rely on Cartesian metaphysics as its foundation,

post-Cartesian theology must reevaluate theological categories according to the two identities of

God. This cannot be done in the space of this paper, so we must limit ourselves to the categories

of revelation and power. Both these categories are understood in a particular way in modernity

because of the Cartesian emphasis on the individual self. In short, revelation is understood in

modernity as knowledge of God that is available through human thought. Power, in modernity, is

understood as autonomy. Autonomy is not destructive in itself. However, in late modernity,

autonomy (“self-power”) becomes power over the other, or exploitation. Post-Cartesian theology

redefines both categories of revelation and power anew as the Cartesian foundation is dissolved.

Revelation

In the Cartesian project, God is encountered through rational thought. God is thought

about; God is grasped intellectually. Thus, for modernity, revelation is often understood

exclusively as the Word of God as contained Scripture or in the doctrines of the church as they

66 This is an interpretative claim from the Jüngel’s God as the Mystery of the World. He does not set up systemic principles upon which a theology “after the death of God” may be based. He does advocate and return to these two principles, thus, I believe that my rendering of them as basis for a post-Cartesian theology are appropriate. Two quotations for Jüngel will help my claim. On the first presupposition “God is Love,” Jüngel writes “Christian theology has given many answers to the question of the being of God. But among all those answers, it has always assigned unconditional primacy to this one: God is love (314).” On the second presupposition “God reveals God’s self in Jesus’ death on the cross,” Jüngel writes: “[T]heology cannot expound the poverty of existence of the ‘homo humanus’ apart from the identity of God with the man Jesus. Conversely, only on the basis of the event of this identity of God and man can theology say and think what the word ‘God’ really is supposed to mean…Therefore, the theology of the Crucified One must comprehend the essence of deity out of the unity of God with the poverty of existence of the true man who is called Jesus (208-209, fn. 45).” 67 This paper worked towards a post-Cartesian theology, in large part, by utilizing Nietzsche’s philosophical and cultural critique of the Christian faith. Thus, one might think that a post-Cartesian theology would serve as an attempt to reconcile Nietzsche to Christianity. One would be wrong in this assumption. In other words, in prioritizing these two theological principles, I am not claiming that Nietzsche would be “on board” with these theological identities. Nietzsche has served his purpose in this paper. Now he is left behind.

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are handed down through the generations.68 Further, the church exists as the body of people who

attest intellectually to these doctrines. A post-Cartesian theology decenters the intellectual

emphasis of revelation. A post-Cartesian theology understands God’s revelation as the event of

God’s love. In explicating the event of God, Jüngel emphasizes that the being of God comes ‘as

the mystery of the world.’ He writes that, “The statement God’s being is in coming implies first

of all that God’s being is the event of his coming to himself. This event, this coming of God’s

being to itself, is what the tradition has meant when it spoke of eternity.”69 Jüngel continues to

develop his trinitarian theology on the event of God’s coming: God comes from God in the event

of the first person of God; God comes to God in the event of Jesus Christ; and God comes as

God in the event of the Holy Spirit.70

Jüngel believes that the event of revelation occurs as God reaches beyond God’s self to

the world.71 As God gives God’s self in the event of revelation, God also gives faith to the

individual. Jüngel writes that:

For revelation is, in its facticity, not primarily an occasion for knowledge, but rather an event of self-sharing in the being of the one revealing [God’s self], an event which implies knowledge. Accordingly, faith is not primarily a human mode of knowing…but rather is an event of human participation in the being of that one who allows such participation in [God’s] being.72

Revelation in post-Cartesian theology occurs as the event of God’s giving of God’s self, not

merely the disclosure of knowledge of God. It is important to emphasize two points about the

category of revelation in post-Cartesian theology. First, God’s revelation occurs as momentary

presence. Against the Cartesian idea of revelation as a set of authoritative doctrines that

Christians must follow, God’s revelation cannot be objectified or commoditized. It is not

possible “to have” God’s revelation. It is the momentary transformative power of God’s love

itself. Second, God’s revelation invites participation into the being of God. Revelation is not a

static entity; it is rather an experience of the very presence of God’s self that calls individuals to

participate in God. Over against the Cartesian notions of God’s revelation as the Bible or

68 See Daniel Migliore’s first model of revelation, “revelation as authoritative doctrine” in Faith Seeking Understanding, 33. Migliore borrows his models from Dulles’s Models of Revelation.69 Jüngel, 380.70 See Jüngel, 381-389.71 Ibid, 12.72 Ibid, 228

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“infallible doctrine,” post-Cartesian theology emphasizes revelation as the gift of God’s

presence.

Power

As the category of God’s revelation is redefined in post-Cartesian theology, so also the

category of power is redefined in post-Cartesian theology. A post-Cartesian theology does not

reject power, but rather seeks to redefine it.73 In modernity, power is defined as self-power. Self-

power, however, if abused, often can lead to power over the other; autonomy becomes

exploitation. Modern history bears many examples of this phenomenon. Permit me to identify a

few. Exploration of the new world (autonomy) in early modernity ends in colonization of the

indigenous people of the new world. The free-market system in modernity, which in theory

allows for each individual to make their own living (autonomy), ends in subjugation of the

individual worker’s rights (exploitation). The scientific revolution, which begins in the spirit of

discovery (autonomy), ends in domination of the natural world (exploitation). The freedom to

voice one’s own individual concerns politically (autonomy) gets droned out by the influx of

money in politics which ends in policies that privilege the few over the many (exploitation). In

all these ways, self-power has given way to power over the other. However, the category of

power is not the problem. Power is a human category; it is neither good nor bad. Power itself is

undetermined.74 Thus, power becomes destructive only when it is determined negatively and

used abusively. A post-Cartesian theology must determine power on the basis of the Christian

faith.

Jüngel determines power on the basis of the event of the cross. The theologia crucis

asserts that God reconciles God’s self to humanity with Jesus’ death on the cross. In that

assertion, the theologia crucis claims that God acted powerfully in a moment of weakness.

Therefore, God’s power is understood as the transformation of weakness into strength.75 Jüngel

writes:

73 Likewise, a post-Cartesian theology does not reject Nietzsche’s will-to-power, but seeks to use that category to redefine power itself. Power cannot be the enemy of theology. Abuse of power is the enemy. Some proponents of “weak theology,” however do seem to reject power altogether (e.g. John Caputo).74 Nietzsche’s will-to-power bears that power itself is neither good nor bad. 75 Thus, I am not claiming either of the following, which sometimes are articulated on the basis of the theologia crucis:“God rejects power,” “God’s strength is really God’s weakness” or “God is weak.” In my opinion, Jüngel comes close to articulating the weakness of God in the event of the cross. He doesn’t go all the way there, but he might go a little farther than I would.

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For Paul, the Crucified One is weak, subject to death…What is joyful about the weakness of the Crucified One? The weakness of the Crucified One is for Paul the way in which God’s power of life is perfected (II Cor. 13.4). Weakness is then not understood as the contradiction of God’s power. There is, however, only one phenomenon in which power and weakness do not contradict each other, in rather love can perfect itself as weakness. This phenomenon is the event of love. Love does not see power and weakness as alternatives. It is the unity of power and weakness, and such is certainly the most radical opposite of the will to power which cannot affirm weakness.76

Three points need to be made about Jüngel’s understood as God’s power as determined by the

event of the cross. First, God’s power is transformative. Along with transforming weakness into

strength, the event of the cross witnesses to God’s power as that which transforms death into life

(resurrection), sin into grace (justification) and fear into hope (eschatology). Second, God’s

power is both immanent and transcendent. The event of the cross cannot be understood apart

from the event of the resurrection. God’s immanent power is understood as the power of the

Holy Spirit that raises Jesus from the dead. God’s transcendent power is understood as the power

that operates in the economy of salvation. In other words, the event of the cross reveals that

God’s power operates outside the parameters of our worldly existence. Third, Jüngel identifies

God’s power as the power of love. Only the power of love can transform the apparent weakness

of Jesus’ death on the cross into the strength of God’s salvation for all. The question, then, is

how power can be determined in the post-Cartesian context according to way in which Jüngel

understands God’s power.

Throughout this paper, we have examined power in the Cartesian context as the power of

the individual to determine the self and to determine God. In a post-Cartesian context, the power

of the self is dissolved. In a post-Cartesian context, power manifests itself in the event of the

church. In the event of the church, power manifests itself in three of the following ways: the

event of the baptism, the event of the Eucharist, and the event of Word of God. In the event of

baptism, God frees church from the power of sin and invites the church to live in God’s grace.77

76 Jüngel, 206. I believe that Jüngel misinterprets Nietzsche’s will-to-power in the last sentence. Certainly he is right that Nietzsche rejected the theology of the cross. But Nietzsche’s rejection of the cross is predicated upon how Christians lived out the cross by valorizing suffering. I think it is possible to say that the God’s power is its own form of will-to-power because God’s power affirms life in its identification with suffering. The will-to-power is not the will-to-dominate or the will-to-exploit. In addition, I think this sentence sets up a harmful binary between power and weakness. I believe we must also be careful with “affirming weakness.” See fn. 75 above.77 Jüngel: “The church testifies to and celebrates Jesus Christ as sacrament in baptism, by confessing that through his death and resurrection Jesus Christ has condemned to destruction the sins of this world and thus the sins of every person, and has once and for all broken their power so that we might be free (Jüngel, Theological Essays, 213).”

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In the event of the Eucharist, God invites the church to participate in the life of God.78 In the

event of the Word of God, God calls the church to go out into the world to live the Gospel.79 In

these three ways, the power of God transforms the community of believers into the body of

Christ. In a post-Cartesian context, power is determined by the life of God in the event of the

people of God.

Earlier, I raised my personal convictions about the questions and claims of

postmodernity. One of my convictions was that I believe that my personhood is situated in my

historical and intellectual context, and thus, my beliefs are impacted by the context in which I

live. In demonstrating the veracity of this claim, this paper worked through Descartes and

Nietzsche to show their impact on Christian theology. The other conviction was that I believe

that God reveals God’s self on the cross in the person of Jesus Christ, and that, I hold this claim

to be true, no matter the philosophical or intellectual milieu. For me, Jüngel embodies this

conviction, which may be the reason I feel so drawn to his work. The last section of this paper

held these claims in tension by showing that although the categories of revelation and power do

in fact change with the changing of the intellectual seasons, they are still fundamentally related

to and determined by the truth of the Christian Gospel.

Jüngel has a great image of “God above us” to describe the way that modernity imagined

God as the Supreme Being, who looks down on the sinners. I believe that that concept of God is

the concept of God that Jüngel works against in God as the Mystery of the World. He and I want

to say that that the Cartesian concept of God is not the God of Jesus Christ. I believe the

preposition “above” is significant in understanding the quality of the relationship between the

“God above us” and humanity. It describes a God that is far away, on another plane. Jesus Christ

proclaimed that God is near, not far. Hence, at the end of the paper, I turn to the community. I

believe that the God of Jesus Christ is the God who is within the community. I believe that this is

the future of Christian theology. God is not the God that is above us; God is the God who is with

us. Immanuel!

78 Jüngel: “The church testifies to and celebrates Jesus Christ as a sacrament in the Lord’s Supper…that through his own presence he renews that communion until he comes to reveal in an irresistible way before the whole world the victory of the love of God which is already guaranteed in him (213).”79 Jüngel: “The church testifies to the sacramental being of Jesus Christ by listening to him as God’s Word through which the sinner is justified and by bringing to speech and celebrating him as that Word in human words and actions (212).”

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