It was the sick and decaying who despised body and earth and invented the heavenly realm and the redemptive drops of blood …Ungrateful, these people deemed themselves transported from their bodies and this earth.
-Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
There is no doubt that Friedrich Nietzsche held 19th century Christianity in contempt. The text above betrays the two supposed aspects of Christianity that especially riled him: 1) despising this world and 2) pity towards humankind. We would be hard pressed to disabuse the reader that Christian theology is funded on pity, or something like pity. However, the anti-somatic tendencies espoused by some sects of Christianity could be shown to be the minority view. But at the very least, anti-somaticism cannot be readily substantiated as the given stance of the sacred texts. As we will see, Nietzsche appears to partially develop his view of Christian pity from his anti-somatic perception of the religion. The question for this essay is where, exactly, did Nietzsche derive this particularized view of Christian theology.
While populist tendencies will always share the same air, world-denial and/or anti-somaticism were not necessarily the prevailing doctrines of the Prussian church, neither Lutheran nor Roman Catholic. Neither were they an accurate representation of the somatic doctrine of the sacred texts. The sum of these indicators begs the question as to where Nietzsche developed and/or sustained such an uncritical analysis of Christian theology en toto.
It will be the thesis of this series that Nietzsche, in part or whole, derived much of his esoteric Christian theology from his friend Franz Overbeck. Specifically, Nietzsche finds particular parts of Overbeck’s world-fleeing theology for support of his more general attacks on Christianity. If this is correct, then almost all of Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity takes on Christian theology that has, in fact, strayed to the point that Nietzsche describes (i.e. anti-somatic, Platonic, etc.). His attempt to capture the center of all Christian dogma ultimately fails if it does not accurately represent the actual center of the historic Faith; rather, a peculiar outlying vantage of Christianity.
We will begin by looking at Overbeck’s particularized theology of the ancient church. We will then need to consider how strong of an intellectual camaraderie was present between these two housemates. Specifically, it will necessary to demonstrate that Nietzsche could accept any of Overbeck’s theology as plausible. Next we will begin to reconstruct Nietzsche’s view of Christian theology through Overbeck’s lens. Finally, we will reconsider both prongs of Nietzsche’s attack against the religion called Christianity.
