He ought to be the undisputed patron saint of atheism.

I can write in letters which make even the blind see. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty. I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

Yet for all this, Friedrich Nietzsche is woefully underappreciated by the fashionistas of contemporary media atheism. Despite his huge philosophical reputation and widespread influence, Nietzsche makes an uncomfortable ally for the Dawkins brigade. He will not stand in line behind received opinions. He won't nod along with the reduction thinking to some narrow empiricism. And, worst of all, he does Christianity the compliment of first seeking to understand it.

But if he makes no new friends amongst trendy unbelievers, he is ignored completely by the vast majority of the righteous. For his is a challenge that few Christians are prepared for. Nietzsche does not claim that the primary sin of religion is that it has an imaginary object at its centre. His insults – and he is the great master of the insult – rise way above the flying spaghetti monster jibe. Indeed, he is remarkably indifferent to the question of God's existence. Rather, Nietzsche thinks religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is a corruption of the human spirit.

Even if it were all true, he would be against it. In essence he thinks Christianity is wickedness – though he wouldn't put it quite that way because he argues that it is precisely concepts like wickedness that are the source of the problem. And here is one of the big ideas in his On the Genealogy of Morals (OGM) that I shall be exploring in the following weeks.

It ought to be said, Nietzsche would have hated almost everything about the project of blogging his great work. He would have hated the democratising everybody-has-their-say power of the Internet. He would have hated the left-leaning politics of the Guardian. He would have hated the idea that I, as a Christian priest, was presuming to interpret his words. As he warned:

The greatest haters in world history, and the most intelligent, have always been the priests: - nobody else's intelligence stands a chance against the intelligence of priestly revenge. (OGM I:7)

And he didn't have too much time for the English either. All of which should give the reader the highest degree of suspicion about my line on things – which is precisely the way Nietzsche would have wanted it. After all, as the philosopher Paul Ricoeur famously put it, he was one of the three great "masters of suspicion" (the others being Marx and Freud).

One other note. Perhaps the most tiresome thing about Nietzsche is that he has groupies, those who hang on his every word as if he were re-writing holy writ. "May your name be holy to future generations" said his friend Peter Gast at Nietzsche's funeral. This deification of Nietzsche often takes the form of obsessing about the details and minute nuances of interpretation – just like evangelical Bible study at its very worst. In contrast, my interest is not in offering a definitive reading of the text, or in undertaking anything academic, but to use a more journalistic style as a springboard for some of the great questions that Nietzsche explores: Where does morality come from? Is Christianity a religion of hatred? Is Christian morality the revenge of the weak against the strong? What is the purpose of asceticism? Are priests the great manipulators? So what, then, about Nietzsche himself? It's no surprise he grew up a terribly pious little boy. His father, a Lutheran clergyman, died when Friedrich was only five. His mother wanted him to grow up just like his dad. It was a role he played throughout his early years. Kids at school teased him for being the "little pastor". At that time he was writing some of the most cringe making evangelical poetry one could ever imagine.

You have called,

Lord, I rush

With circumspection

To the steps of your throne.

Glowing with love,

Your glance shines into

My heart so dearly,

So painfully:

Lord, I come.





All this piety continued to the first year at university, where he won the preaching prize, after which he lost his faith. From then on in, Christianity was the enemy.



What is important to note about this childhood is that it orientates Nietzsche so very differently towards the whole question of God than, for example, the way that most modern atheists tend to approach things. Contemporary popular atheism follows philosophers like David Hume in presuming that the most fundamental question to address is whether or not God exists. It is the stark simplicity of this question that gives much of the debate between believers and non-believers is boo/hurrah quality. It is this binary approach that makes religious culture wars so dull and so fractious.



The religion that Nietzsche was brought up with starts somewhere else entirely. The first question is not so much "Does God exist?" but rather, something like "How are we saved?". Christianity isn't dodgy philosophy but, as it were, corrupt existentialism.

In short, Nietzsche sets out to save people from the idea that they stand in need of salvation. And this means that he is not just against God, but against anything political, moral, environmental, etc that offers itself for the salvation of human beings. The paradox of Nietzsche's work is that he too is offering a narrative of salvation – salvation from salvation itself.



So much for the preliminaries and scene setting. Next week we will dive into the text. My aim in all of this is get Nietzsche to lead us into a rather different conversation about faith than the rather sterile one that we have been having for some years. As a Christian, I have always found Nietzsche a very effective astringent against false or lazy faith. I hope that unbelievers can use him in just the same way too. For Nietzsche offers self critical vigilance for all.

Rev Dr Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney. He was formerly a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. His books include Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief (Routledge, 2002)