Nietzsche Was Wrong: God Is Not Dead. His Church Theology Was Dead

By Julio Severo

Atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) came to the conclusion that many young people from non-charismatic churches arrive: God is dead — in their souls!

That is, God is not really dead, but when these young people out of moral obligation or parental imposition went to church, what did they see? Liturgy, empty and dull sermons, songs that sounded more like funeral songs. They called it service. Nietzsche would seem to call it a wake. Who could disagree with him?

Decades ago, I went to a Swedish Lutheran church. The pastor appeared to be conducting a funeral service. The members sang as if they were at a wake. The atmosphere was cold — typical Nordic ice and typical spiritual ice. It was easier to find a needle in the haystack than the presence of the Holy Spirit there.

Theology without freedom from the Holy Spirit is like a lifeless corpse. Body without breath and without life is dead.

Even so, silently not to disturb the wake they called a service, I prayed in my spirit that the Holy Spirit would be poured out in the dead church.

It was no accident that Nietzsche saw God as dead. He was a member of the Lutheran Church, which has so emptied itself of the presence of God that everything that members can feel there is little more than a wake.

My wife was born in a Lutheran home. All she remembers is a lot of liturgy and services that looked more like funerals. It seems that the only time that pastors would acquire any emotion was when it was time to preach against the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. These pastors, full of dead theology and empty of the presence of God, were sure that these gifts were from the devil.

The tragic result was that when a Lutheran member would have a terminal illness, he was afraid to seek out a Pentecostal pastor to pray. Ask for prayer from the Lutheran pastor? No way! The Lutheran pastor’s prayer was nothing more than a liturgical wake.

Tragically, I personally met Lutherans who were very afraid to ask prayer from Pentecostal pastors, but they were not afraid to seek out witches. Why? Because the real opposition of the Lutheran pastors was the Pentecostal pastors, not the witches.

So who can blame Nietzsche? He was the son of a Lutheran pastor. He spent his entire youth attending the “funerals” of the Lutheran Church. After such an experience, he could only come to two dismal conclusions: God is dead or Nietzsche is spiritually dead.

However, I must warn you that I have seen the same funerals in the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church and other churches of a more liturgical style. They had exquisite hymns, sermons and temples. But they were empty of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

And where the presence of the Holy Spirit is absent, demons occupy space in the church and among members. Remember the synagogues? They were the churches of the Jews. In the synagogues there were liturgy and hymns, especially songs from the Psalms. There was a reading of the Bible. And incredibly, there were manifestations of demons.

And what did Jesus and his disciples do in synagogues? They cast out demons. Important lesson: Demons can inhabit churches and synagogues. Demons inhabited Nietzsche, who spent his youth attending the Lutheran Church.

Churches should be spiritual hospitals. People who enter churches with disease, oppression and demons should find cures.

Nietzsche entered in the church as an oppressed and demonized man. To make matters worse, the Lutheran Church that received him was full of theology and empty of the presence, manifestations and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Elegant as it may seem, theology does not heal, does not deliver and does not save. Nietzsche discovered this from experience. But instead of concluding that his church and theology were dead, he concluded that God was dead — just because his church and his theology were too far from God. Away and dead.

The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia said,

Nietzsche, Friedrich (Wilhelm)

born Oct. 15, 1844, Röcken, Saxony, Prussia

died Aug. 25, 1900, Weimar, Thuringian States

German-Swiss philosopher and writer, one of the most influential of modern thinkers.

The son of a Lutheran pastor, he studied at Bonn and Leipzig and at age 24 became professor of Classical philology at the University of Basel. He became close to the older Richard Wagner, in whose operas he saw the potential for the revival of Western civilization, but broke with Wagner angrily in 1876. His Birth of Tragedy (1872) contained major insights into ancient Greek drama; like Untimely Meditations (1873), it is dominated by a Romantic perspective also influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer. Mental and physical problems forced him to leave his position in 1878, and he spent 10 years attempting to recover his health in various resorts while continuing to write prolifically. His works from Human, All Too Human (1878) to The Gay Science (1882) extol reason and science, experiment with literary genres, and express his emancipation from his earlier Romanticism. His mature writings, particularly Beyond Good and Evil (1886), A Genealogy of Morals (1887), and Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–92), were preoccupied with the origin and function of values in human life. If, as he believed, life neither possesses nor lacks intrinsic value and yet is always being evaluated, then such evaluations can usefully be read as symptoms of the evaluator's condition. He fulminated against Christianity and announced the death of God. His major breakdown in 1889 marked the virtual end of his productive life. He was revered by Adolf Hitler for his dislike of democracy and his heroic ideal of the Übermensch (Superman)… His analyses of the root motives and values that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights.

If I attended a Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal or Catholic church and saw a lot of liturgy, innocuous sermons and songs of wake, I would come to only two conclusions if I were not a spiritual Christian: I AM DEAD. Or: God is dead. But as a spiritual Christian, I would have just one conclusion: These churches are dead.

Nietzsche was wrong. God is not dead.

After I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and received supernatural gifts from the Holy Spirit, I experienced the fullness of the Spirit’s presence and its manifestations. With such authority, I can in the name of Jesus preach the Gospel with power, heal the sick and cast out demons.

It seems that neither Nietzsche nor his Lutheran Church had such experiences. It is therefore no wonder that Nietzsche thought that God was dead. And I very much doubt that the other Lutherans in his church had an experience with the living and supernatural God.

God is not dead in churches that do not give freedom to his Holy Spirit. He is only absent until he is invited to manifest himself.

God is not dead in human hearts. He is only absent until he is invited to manifest himself.

Empty, hard hearts conclude that the lack of life within them is evidence that God is dead.

Empty hearts that are hungry and thirsty for God end up being, sooner or later, filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

What can you do? Even if you are the son of a Lutheran pastor or son of a pastor of another Christian church, you are not required to spend your entire youth in the evangelical church with Nietzsche’s emptiness and hardness. You can pray audibly:

“God, my father is a pastor, but I don’t feel you. God, I go to church faithfully, I don’t feel anything of his presence in my mind, soul and interior. So, I open myself to you. Pour into me the same Holy Spirit of power that the Lord poured out on the apostles. Pour into me the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Fill me with your presence and deep love for Jesus that there is no place left for anything else. In Jesus’s name!”

I don’t know if Nietzsche would be open for such a prayer. But if he were, his life would have totally changed and he would have proclaimed worldwide: GOD IS ALIVE!!!!! His Holy Spirit lives in me!

Portuguese version of this article: Nietzsche Errou: Deus Não Está Morto. A Teologia da Igreja dele Estava Morta

Source: Last Days Watchman

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