"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" (18)

"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" (18)

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.(15:37)

Bonhoeffe’s statement, “Without God before God!” is similar to the aphorism of Nietzsche who says, “God is dead”. Many Christians accept Bonhoeffe but regard Nietzsche as an atheist and the head of anti-Christianity. In my opinion, we do not need to him that way. If his word is an eye-opener for us to see our fault, we should be rather thankful to him.

Nietzsche’s “God is dead” or “The will to nothing” does not demolish the entire foundation rather pursue much more positive side of the world through such nihilism. He made an affirmation of life a superman rather than God, eternal recurrence instead of immortality, the will to power instead of good and truth. Nietzsche’s nihilism promoted a downfall of pre-existing order and contains a positive momentum to overcome it through the will to power. At this point, his ‘nihility’ has an ambivalent meaning. Negative meaning is to dissect a moral system of Christianity and the other positive meaning is to initiate a new life. Listen to Pannenberg’s explanation for this.

“The fact of Nietzsche’s inclination toward atheism suggests his abhorrence to Protestant’s penitential tendency and when we look the fact, we can understand his mysterious phenomena that he never uses his intellect to prove modern atheism or did not try those social conditions. The virtue of honesty he had been so proud of was, in fact, pursued one-sidedly and also partially. Such fact is necessary to be explained as I hinted earlier. Despite this, Christianity should give thank to be broken of mirror for which Nietzsche used to criticize Christianity. Christianity should not overlook the advice that religious piety of Christianity could lead to wrong direction.”(Theology and philosophy, 385)