Nietzsche on Writing: only when you forget, can you move forward

I mentioned in an earlier post that I've been reading Nietzsche.  Reading Nietzsche is very helpful for one of the main questions in my blog: how are writing and doctrine/theology and communication and doctrine in general, related?

I like this long quote from an essay by Nietzsche on history, and in this instance specifically on the danger of not being able to "forget" when one writes:

Forgetting belongs to all action, just as not only light but also darkness belong in the life of all organic things. A person who wanted to feel utterly and only historically would be like someone who had been forced to abstain from sleep or like the beast that is to continue its life only from rumination to constantly repeated rumination. Moreover, it is possible to live almost without remembering, indeed, to live happily, as the beast demonstrates; however, it is completely and utterly impossible to live at all without forgetting. Or, to explain myself even more simply concerning my thesis: There is a degree of insomnia, of rumination, of the historical sense, through which something living comes to harm and finally perishes, whether it is a person or a people or a culture.

I have a tendency towards a kind of perfectionism, when I write or teach, in which I imagine all the ways that what I'm saying could be nuanced or wrong.  This tendency is especially dangerous in teaching Freshmen, as they get confused or bored really fast if I bring in all the standard academic nuance and profusion of disclaimers that accompanies theology at the graduate level.

When I teach I find I just have to "go on" with an interpretation that seems it makes the most sense to my students.  But I've been happy to discover that these interpretations usually end up being faithful to the original text in ways I didn't foresee.  In this way, I think Nietzsche finds something important for writing and teaching. Writing and teaching are all about a strategic forgetting.

Nietzsche as Christian theologian?

I've recently read Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals and The Antichrist for teaching in my Freshman religion course.  We're teaching Nietzsche, along with Karl Marx, as part of a set of "modern challenges" to Christianity.  Until fairly recently, I wasn't really a "Nietzsche person" and I thought that engagement with postmodern readers of Nietzsche, the intellectual craze at Duke while I was there, was a weird trend that wasn't very fruitful for Christian theology.  The only Nietzsche I've read in the past was when a crazy atheist neighbor of mine lent me The Antichrist to read back in undergrad.  I've been surprised in going back to him in teaching this course.

Particularly, I've been startled by how "Christian" Nietzsche is - not in terms of personal belief - but in terms of how steeped Nietzsche was in the basic ideas and grammar of Christian theology.  The terminology, the setting, the basic concerns in Nietzsche's work all come from Christian theology, and the questions he raises about Christianity are incredibly helpful.

In my teaching Nietzsche I keep reminding my students to keep from saying "this one thing is what Nietzsche means."  The poetic, under-determined quality of Nietzsche's work has really struck me.  For instance, it's possible to read Nietzsche's account of master morality/slave morality in the Genealogy of Morals as simply "amoral," but it's equally possible to read this account as a critique of his German society’s own racist, "Christian" outlook on the marginalized/the poor/factory workers, etc. I think Nietzsche uses his discussion of "slave morality" to point to some of the more sinister ways in which Christianity functions to legitimate or theologize oppression through stirring up fear of dangerous "others."

Nietzsche also challenges a lot of the modern scholarly ideas of "objectivity" that are still present in university settings today.  Nietzsche, in some of his writings on history and historiography, shows how universities and academic settings create their own ends and goals that sometimes trick writers and thinkers into writing for the university, rather than writing to help people (or help the Church/preach the Gospel, for theologians).

Luther on bad and good theology

It's interesting to know which Luther sees as which.  I've been reading a book by Gerhard Ebeling, a pretty significant theologian from a past generation, on Luther.  Ebeling says that what Luther often condemned when he said negative things about "philosophy" wasn't reason or philosophy itself, but theology that became so academic as to become inaccessible.  This relates to my previous post on writing and theology a bit.  I thought it would be helpful to offer this quote from one of Luther's lectures that Ebeling cites at length:

I certainly believe that I owe it as a matter of obedience to the Lord to bark against philosophy and speak words of encouragement to the holy scripture.  For if perhaps another were to do this, who was not acquainted with philosophy from his own observation, he would not have the courage to do so, or would not have commanded belief.  But I have worn myself out for years at this, and can see quite clearly from my experience and from conversations with others that it is a vain and ruinous study.  Therefore I admonish you all, so far as I am able, to be done with this form of study quickly, and to make it your sole business not to allow these matters to carry any weight nor defend them, but rather to do as we do when we learn evil skills in order to render them harmless, and obtain knowledge of errors in order to overcome them.  Let us do the same with philosophy, in order to reject it, or at least to make ourselves familiar with the mode of speech of those with whom we have to deal.  For it is time for us to devote ourselves to other studies, and to learn Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

 Ebeling, Luther 78

Ecumenism and writing

I'm a Baptist interested in ecumenism.  Ever since I realized that there were groups of Christians who did things differently from my own Baptist church upbringing I've wondered, "what can Baptists learn from other Church groups?"

I realize, though, that I'm asking this question in a very particular way.  I'm asking it in a very fragmentary manner, on a blog with posts, comments, facebook links, and so on.  We can say at least that writing an "ecumenical blog," in this way, presupposes that writing in this setting can do something.  This blog, then, is not only motivated by an ecumenical question, but it's also motivated by a more philosophical question: what is the best way to write about theology?  What does it mean when we write about theology at all, whether in the customary form of academic papers in seminary classes or the more recent forms of theo-blogs or tumblrs?

If we believe, as folks like Karl Barth believe, that every believer has the vocation of a theologian and preacher as one called to proclaim the Word of God, what does it mean for the Church that a very small number of these believers ends up writing in the academic university discipline of theology? (or expressing elements of this discipline on internet theology blogs)

Maybe there's biblical precedent for the special selection of particular persons according to their spiritual or intellectual gifts. But I also think it is important for those who are working in the world we call "academic theology," those studying for degrees in university settings, to regularly think about what the Bible says about what they are doing. It is also important to think about the social "side effects" of a university education and how it might set you apart from others. What kind of language or dispositions does a university education give you that you might not realize? There are a lot of great recent books on this, two examples being James KA Smith's Desiring the Kingdom (which analyzes the "secular" nature of university formation, even in confessionally Christian schools), and Kathryn Tanner's Theories of Culture, which points out how academic theology is a customary institution that can blind theologians to the realities of the Church they serve.

Bartholome de Las Casas and ecumenical theology

I've done a bit of work in the past on Bartholome de las Casas, a Spanish Dominican who used theological and legal arguments to try and stop Spanish persecution of the indigenous Americans during the colonial period.

I think Las Casas is important for ecumenical theology for three reasons.

First, reading him and knowing about his historical context reminds us that Christians in history have regularly distorted the Gospel and "sacred doctrine" in order to justify exploitation or oppression. 

Second, he is the first instance of what we might call a "Global" Christianity.  More specifically, I think that the discovery of the Americas was an intellectual catastrophe for Western theology which led to a rethinking of grace and divine providence.  Brian Tierny argues, for instance, that the work at the Spanish school of Salamanca, responding theologically to this discovery, laid the groundwork for the modern notion of "human rights."  Many scholars are beginning to look at connections between the the European discovery of the Americas and the effect of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which began at about the same time. 

Third, this is something of a controversial opinion, but I think that Las Casas shows how Christian theology can be used creatively to help those who are being oppressed.  To respond to Spanish theologians who argued that the American Indians were natural slaves, Las Casas mustered a number of theological and philosophical authorities, including some arguments from Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, to argue that the indigenous were fully human beings and thus had some degree of “derechos humanos,” or human rights.  Historically, Las Casas's arguments didn't have an enormous effect, but they may at least have stopped the Spanish Emperor from accepting a deal that would put the indigenous people in the Americas into a state of permanent slavery.

Being ecumenical by accident

It fell to me to decide how to teach Martin Luther in our experimental Freshman religion course, so I adopted a viewpoint that focused on Luther's text "On the Freedom of a Christian." I've never been super-familiar with Luther, although I've lately been interested in his theology of preaching.  I chose "Freedom of a Christian" for class because it seemed the shortest major text I could find, and I remembered reading it for Amy Laura Hall's Christian Ethics course at Duke. 

When I picked the text, I had forgotten (maybe I should have payed more attention in Christian Ethics) that "Freedom of a Christian" is the major focus for the "Finnish school" of Luther interpretation.  This "school," which now has adherents from theologians like Robert Jenson, finds a more "Catholic" (specifically more "Orthodox") Luther through similarities between his discussion of union with Christ and the idea of "theosis" or divinization in Eastern Orthodox theology. 

From my reading, Luther's work here describes a "union" or "mystical marriage" between the believer and Jesus Christ that makes the believer a sharer in Christ's nature and benefits.  Faith in the preached word of the Gospel makes this union possible, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  This union not only confers justification before God, but it also - importantly for the "Finnish School" and other recent Lutherans - begins a process of sanctification and "divinization" through which the believer is conformed to Jesus Christ.

What follows is a modification of some introductory words I provided to my students on this text and on this topic:


Luther’s message in this reading is that this freedom in Jesus Christ is freedom for Christians to more deeply love their neighbors in more radical ways.  “A Christian person is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian person is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.”  This phrase is the outline of the entire work.  Luther’s Freedom of a Christian is a meditation on “freedom” in the Bible, along with some rigorous theological thinking on faith and love and the behavior of Christians in the World.  

Freedom of a Christian is roughly in two parts.  The first part talks about faith and law and Gospel in a way that those who know about Luther will not find surprising.  But the second half of "Freedom of a Christian" has to do with what Luther calls the “outward man,” and here we have some of the thoughts that set Luther in this text apart from some caricatures.  This second half relates to where Luther says that a Christian is “the most dutiful subject of all, and servant to every one.”  How could this not contradict the first part, about the Christian’s freedom from works in faith?  Luther’s explanation, as you will see, is that good works naturally follow from faith.  Although Luther stresses in the first part that good works cannot justify human beings before God, he says in the second part that a faith that does not overflow into good works is not a real faith.  The freedom the Christian has is freedom thereby to spend their lives in service to God and to their neighbors.

This freedom in service, though, is not merely about being a good person, but for Luther it comes about through a mystical union with Jesus Christ that happens when the believer has faith.  The love or service we give our neighbors is only possible through our souls being united to Jesus Christ through faith.  Luther says that Christians become a “sort of Christ” through faith, and that in imitating Jesus through their care for one another, Christians become a community where Christ is in all.  Luther is able to put this point very elegantly in saying, “[we ought] freely to help our neighbor by our body and works, and each should become to other a sort of Christ, so that we may be mutually Christs, and that the same Christ may be in all of us; that is, that we may be truly Christians.”