God cares for you
Jul 14, '07 1:29 AMfor everyone

Until a few days ago I had taken it for granted for a long time that Nietzsche denied the existence of God by declaring Gott ist tot or God is dead. But if God were almighty, he could resurrect himself. If Jesus were God before he arrives on the Earth, he or God experienced human's inevitable destiny through the crucification.
If so, the real meaning of Gott ist tot is different from what I thought. God experienced death because he wanted to give his best creature, that is all humans, an eternal life in Eucharist and wanted to share the same suffering all humans once had to experience, that is death -sharing in other words, Communion.
So real meaning of Gott ist tot is God experienced death through which he was able to give us an eternal life and also share the same suffering. The real meaning of faith was giving and sharing.
God is dead was an ultimate expression of God cares for you.
Tags: god, eucharist, communion
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Comments:Chronological Reverse Threaded


imelnychenko wrote on Jul 14Hmmm...It depends what do you mean under "God". To the opinion of most theologies, even the most primitive ones, God is a reality that transcedes our physical, "touchable" reality. Our experience is the only source of information about Universe. All our experiences have very similar pattern: object appeares, lives and dies; our senses have a physical messenger and are limited in space and time. The smartest of us can observe and describe the transformation and interconnection of objects. The later are sometimes referred to as scientists. These created Euclidian geometry, Aristotelic logic, Newtonian mechanics and Einstein's relativity - the process of exploring the World is endless*. They admit though that all these facts are teared out of global context not percievable to normal human being at its fullest. And this is God. The endlessness itself. A non-material and non-personal one. It is immanent with the world but transcedes it.*exploring the World in the way the western people used to do.


mercedo wrote today at 12:08 AMThank you for a very poetic prose that is your comment. My assumption was if humans were dead, they would just return to soil since they were born from soil. Any humans are mortal, with limited knowledge and power. So when I heard the expression ' Gott ist tot' I though God was dead and disappeared for good, but on second thought I realised I had forgotten God is almighty, limitless, immortal when I asserted God was gone. The truth was God just experienced death to redeem human error, thus through this -the death of God, humans can now acquire the eternal life once humans had before Eden. This idea consists in central theology of Christianity whatever the dominations might be. God gives back life to humans through experiencing death and sharing the same destiny humans came to experience accidentally by having the forbidden fruits. God is a reflection of humans in the future. Now we are heading for God that trans-cedes.


morosoph wrote on Jul 14Nietzsche most likely meant that the idea of God was no longer tenable. Hence "We have killed him - you and I"; our research; our knowledge makes the idea of God - the kind of God that created the world, and Man and Woman separately from the rest of creation - implausible.Some kind of God is still possible, such as a Pantheistic God that is co-existent with the universe, but the old Transcendental God of the main religions is looking somewhat shaky.It is possible to read into the phrase something like the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, but Nietzsche's emphasis is that the whole decent into Christianity was a wrong turning. Christian assumptions of equality are incompatible with noble values, and the pre-eminence of the creative genius. The emphasis of morality shifts from cause to effect, and from an emphasis of creating new moral wealth to deviances from an uncreative "perfection" that is the state of no sin.

infinitemonkey wrote on Jul 14
morosoph saidSome kind of God is still possible, such as a Pantheistic God that is co-existent with the universe, but the old Transcendental God of the main religions is looking somewhat shaky. Why should be there any difference between the two? I see none. One can involve the other, or at least they don't exclude one another.I agree that Nietzsche didn't really mean the Eucharist, but Mercedo did understand the Eucharist at least -- that is in fact the central message of Communion: God's death is intended to share our lives with us.However, Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity, I should point out, tended to attack a very narrow Protestant version of Christianity. There are many, many other strains of Christianity that contain quite different models of viewing our relationship with God, free will and so on that he barely was aware of or touched on. I believe he made the mistake of viewing Christianity very nearly as a monolith, which it isn't and hasn't been almost since it began (there is really only unity in some very basic things, but in the rest there is an extraordinarily wide range of opinion, almost by design).Cheers,Ethelred


morosoph wrote on Jul 14
infinitemonkey saidWhy should be there any difference between the two? I see none. One can involve the other, or at least they don't exclude one another. No, the two are exclusive. If God is one with nature, he is not beyond nature. In particular, he is not the creator of the universe.With regards to Nietzsche, he drew from Schopenhauer's conception of the world as will and representation; arguably a form of pantheism. He later discovered Spinoza. I take after Spinoza in theistic outlook, and although I value Nietzsche's insights, I am certainly not Nietzschian, although I used to think that I was a few years ago.Nietzsche's view of Christianity was certainly informed by his experience of religion, but he was strongly informed by the Bible itself in his critique, and much of it was directed against Jesus's teaching. Nietzsche was infamous for his attack on pity, for example, which he viewed as love mixed with contempt. Christianity was, to Nietzsche profoundly unnaturalistic, and by nature opposed to nobility. Any realistic interpretation takes the highest level of self-definition out of the hands of the individual, and therefore leads to a contempt for greatness.I don't know how far I go with this reasoning myself, for I believe that there is natural law and natural right rooted in human nature and the nature of human interaction. However, natural law has a voluntary character: it is a law for society rather than individuals. That said, it does limit the ability of 'creators' to fashion society as they will.Being fair to Nietzsche, the last thing that he wanted was society to be ruled. The will to power was to him an engine for competition rather than monopoly, so it is possible for his scheme to find natural law through the rejection of conventional law.

mercedo wrote today at 12:49 AM, edited today at 1:02 AMNietzsche couldn't get out of the realm of Christianity. By saying Gott ist tot, Ubermensch, Eternal recurrence, he mad another theology similar to Christianity.
According to his theology, God is dead but since he is almighty, he resurrected himself. If he were an atheist, he definitely ought to have said that God doesn't exist.
By saying Ubermensch or Super-man, he created another man who try to overcome any situation he faces, he had known that the ultimate form of Super-man was God. If he were an atheist, he just should have said that men only exist.
By saying eternal recurrence, he tried to understand the notion of eternal life. For Nietzsche, eternal life was just an unbearable thing. He went too far to say there would be an eternal recurrence, which is just the expression that is more nihilistic than eternal life. Even if we have aims, eternal life was too long to pursue our objectives. If he were an atheist, he would have pointed out that humans have only limited time to live.
God exists, God, eternal life are all an ultimate form of nihilism, and he tried to get over those nihilisms by advocating those three new theologies.

briangriffith wrote on Jul 14We don't know what God thinks. Maybe he likes us and maybe he doesn't. Anyway, Jesus thought animal sacrifices were stupid and immoral, much less human sacrifices.


mercedo wrote today at 1:01 AM
briangriffith saidAnyway, Jesus thought animal sacrifices were stupid and immoral, much less human sacrifices. Can you show some Bible reference on that matter?


paji2 wrote on Jul 14"If so, the real meaning of Gott ist tot is different from what I thought. God experienced death .."That presupposes the idea that Jesus was God, something he - throughout his ministry - consistently denied. He insisted he was "son" of God, not God himself. Even at his baptism, when God spoke, He called him "son". Jesus then, was a divine human - according to the traditional Christian belief.I agree that Nietzsche's viewpoint was a narrow one - and from that point, he was right, God was dead, in that he abandoned the wrong practices of those claiming to follow Him. His followers lost "Love" (Agape), therefore God, to them, was dead - for the Bible says, "God is Love.."

mercedo wrote today at 1:21 AMIn unitarian theology that is arianism, Jesus is human. In trinity theology that is athanasian creed, Jesus, as well as Holy Spirit and Father consists of one God.
For non-believers, he is merely a human, but a human that intended to redeem all sins humans had made, so as you pointed out he was indeed a divine human.
His followers lost "Love" (Agape), therefore God, to them, was dead - for the Bible says, "God is Love.."
Totally new perspective we ought to hark.