THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT OF THE HUMAN NATURE IN THE FACE OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S ATHEISM – BERNHARD WELTE ON “THE DEATH OF GOD” AND “ÜBERMENSCH”

Abstract

The most widely known sentence in The Gay Science is ”God is dead.” Nietzsche himself is fully aware that with the disappearance of God, all human ideas and acts lose their foundations, and what was formerly built upon God as a basis, suddenly loses its footing, and floats in the endless nothing. The rejection of the Christianity, is the moment for Nietzsche when man re-gains his free will and abandons all limiting powers over his all-surpassing self, and starts his journey to the new quality of becoming Übermensch. The willpower, the will to existence and the will to power play central roles in the birth of the Übermensch. Bernhard Welte reminds us that man’s desire to exist is an a priori that Christian anthropology also finds important. Man is created in the image and likeness of God, and carries on himself the shine of the face of God. Our want of existence is indeed an a priori of our selves, it is indeed the dynamism which is the source of all our specific willful actions, then this will is, in the interpretation of Christian anthropology, a will to bring us closer to God. Man wants to be God somehow, moves towards a divine existence. Consequently, atheism is a human capability and opportunity possibly derived from the innermost essence of the human race. There is a divine element in every human being, that is why man wants to become god, and that is why man makes himself godless when, in his rebellion, he rejects God.

Is it really possible that the most extreme atheism is fed by man’s divine origin and roots? Bernhard Welte provides an explanation through the dialectics of the original, essential structure of human existence - this explanation is presented in the following paper.