Twilight of the Idols & The Antichrist

There are few writers as enjoyable to read as Friedrich Nietzsche.

"Wait, what?! Aren't you a Christian? Can you even say that?!"

In answer, observe:

First, his humor. It rams you like a hammer of wit, and gives you the sense that your own hypocrisy and inconsistency now have a gaping hole in them where the hammer made contact. For instance, "If a woman possesses manly virtues, she is to be run away from; and if she does not possess them, she runs away herself." Or, "Idleness is the parent of all psychology."

Second, his wisdom. Any man who can say, "Without music life would be a mistake," has to have some idea what's going on.

Third, his honesty. This is his greatest virtue, though he's also the same man that sneered at Christians as those "too cowardly to tell lies." He also said, "A people which still believes in itself has withal its own God." More than clever phrases, though, he was alone willing to take philosophy and life without God to their logical conclusions.

Nietzsche was an impatient man—impatient with those around him who'd rejected the Christian God and still clung to Christian morality, impatient with a Europe who kept one foot in Christendom and the other in Paganism, impatient with those who denied that nihilism was the only end for a people without religion.

This slim volume contains two of his most important works, both written at the end of his career, just before insanity gripped him for the duration of his life. Twilight of the Idols is meant as an introduction to his philosophy, in which he smashes what he sees as the idols of Western philosophy and civilization. He starts with Socrates and spares few men or ideas.

The Antichrist is more vitriolic. In it, Nietzsche exchanges his hammer for napalm and throws it at the whole of Christianity and all organized religion. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens must have learned a thing or two from ol' Friedrich: he spares no pains in making himself as odious to those he attacks as he possibly can.

Except that he isn't as odious as either of those two, not by a long shot. That's not to say he's right—he's far from right. But he is utterly consistent (which deserves at least some admiration), and he is brilliant in his criticisms of European Christendom and the hypocrisy to which it so often led.

Nietzsche is perhaps best remembered as the author of the line, "God is dead, and we have killed him." In the context of the poem, this line is not a triumphant declaration, but a sad admission. His philosophy is a wrestling with the implications.

Nowhere else in his collected works is there a more concise or more representative explanation of his philosophy than the two essays in this book. They are decidedly anti-Christian, but they present the most challenging attacks on Christianity you'll ever meet, and Nietzsche himself offers us the keys to refuting them through his irony and wit.

Of course, read with caution. Unlike Kant or Whitehead, Nietzsche is not systematiser. ("I mistrust all systematisers and I avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity.") Instead, he throws everything he's got in your direction all at once, and that's a hard approach to defend against.

Fortunately for us, there's a Christian counterpart to Nietzsche. His name was Soren Kierkegaard, and he too focused many vituperative attacks against Christendom, but unlike Nietzsche he did so as a Christian. For every book you read of Nietzsche, read one by Kierkegaard. You'll have a pretty fair vision of the consistent Christian perspective vs. the consistent non-Christian perspective. And you'll have laughed a lot.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he is a husband and father, teaches adult Sunday school in his Presbyterian congregation, and likes weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.