Gaudete, Christus est natus!
During Christmas Eve a few years ago, I was listening to talk radio, and one of the callers was an indignant old man who told the audience that we need to put Christ back in Christmas. But I wonder, at what point did Christ disappear? It seems no one has told the old man of the fateful Christmas of 1864.
Ah, 1864! In many ways, 1864 was just like any other year. The Hunan Army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in Nanjing, 70,000 people died in a cyclone in Calcutta, and the Central Park Zoo opened in New York City.
But more importantly for us, 1864 was the first year that Nietzsche spent Christmas away from home, and 1864 was also the year that David Strauss released a new version of ‘The Life of Jesus Critically Examined’, called ‘The Life of Jesus for the German People’.
It’s hard to imagine a book having quite the same impact today as David Strauss’ ‘Life of Jesus’, originally published in 1835. Naturally, there was strong language in reaction to it; the Earl of Shaftesbury described Strauss’s book as “the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell”.
Strauss’ own father said that he was cursed by God because his son had written The Life of Jesus.
More moderate voices like the Reverend Albert Schweitzer, said that when it comes to academic research about the historical Jesus, there’s “the period before David Strauss and the period after David Strauss”.
But the work of Strauss also had an important impact outside of intellectual circles. Ferdinand Baur wrote to L.F. Heyd that there was a “panic-stricken terror” amongst regular folk, and between 1835 and 1839, there were about 60 books written condemning Strauss. As Frederick Beiser explains, it can be safely said that Strauss’ book was the most controversial German publication of the whole 19th century.
It pretty much destroyed his life. Strauss was seen as the antichrist and no one wanted to have anything to do with him, lest they get infected by his godless stench.
Beiser explains that the conservative theory of the German state rested on the authority of Christian revelation, and if it turns out to be a bunch of myth-making with no basis in historical fact, who the heck’s gonna be in charge and why? If there isn’t some God-given hierarchy, why’s a prince any more special than a simple farmer like me?
Strauss figured he might have an easier time in Zurich, since a group of radicals had gotten control of the city council and as part of their educational reforms, started a new university that had a few political refugees from Germany in its theology department.
After years of back and forth, along with various political machinations, Strauss was finally approved into the theology department in Zurich. The clergy went nuts. They riled people up with the slogan “religion in danger”, going to the streets with chants similar to “hey! ho! Doctor Strauss has got to go”. Effigies of Strauss were burned.
In the end the pressure was too much, so Strauss was eventually let go with a pension that he decided to donate to the poor, arguably a Gigachad move. But the protestors didn’t stop there, since they had other demands which would ensure that someone like Strauss would never jeopardize Biblical literalism or encourage critical attitudes towards the Holy Book. Thousands marched with pitchforks, scythes and clubs, a kind of cartoon picture of a mob. Fighting ensued, shots were fired, and about 15 people died.
This is all to say, the book was a big deal, and 25 years later, a new and revised edition was released. Friedrich Nietzsche, who had just turned 20 in October, and his university bestie Paul Deussen, proved to be the perfect audience as intelligent and curious youth when they read the book around Christmastime. Deussen was mesmerized by the analytical sharpness of Strauss’ book, but Nietzsche was quite hesitant, explaining that “there is a serious consequence – if you give up Christ, you will have to give up God too.’
That Christmas of ’64, God was mortally wounded. On New Year’s Eve, Nietzsche saw the death of his old self:
“It is the last few hours before midnight. I have been rummaging among my manuscripts and letters, drinking punch and then playing the Requiem from Schumann’s Manfred. Now I want to shut out everything alien and think only of myself … The spirit flies swiftly through the towns it loves, lingering in Naumburg, then in Pforta and Plauen, returning finally to my room. My room? What do I see in my bed? Someone lying there – moaning faintly, a death-rattle in his throat – a dying man.”
Indeed, when Friedrich came home for Easter the following spring, his sister Elizabeth met a different person. He no longer wanted to go to church, and despite his mother’s insistence, he refused to take Easter communion. RIP God. Elizabeth began to weep, and only calmed down once her aunt Rosalie told her that every theologian has doubts about God from time to time. Nonetheless, Elizabeth was shaken to her core, since she had always trusted and admired her clever older brother. How could he go against God?
Although their mother had forbidden discussion of belief in their letters, Nietzsche wrote the following to Elizabeth:
“If we had believed from youth onwards that the soul’s salvation depended on someone other than Jesus – on Mahomet, say – we would no doubt have felt equally blessed. Surely it is faith alone that imparts blessedness, not the objective behind the faith … Genuine faith never fails. It fulfils whatever the believer expects from it, but it does not offer the slenderest support for a demonstration of objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. Do you want to strive for peace of mind and happiness? Then believe. Do you want to be a devotee of truth? Then seek.”
However, I think that Nietzsche was not going to let Strauss off the hook that easily for disturbing his peace of mind.
When Nietzsche met Wagner in 1872, Wagner told him that David Strauss’ new book “The Old and the New Faith” was kind of a stinker. Nietzsche read it and agreed— it’s garbage, screw that guy, what does he know! Cosima Wagner (Richard’s wife), who Nietzsche had a crush on, also wrote to him later on, piling on Strauss. So Nietzsche told her that he’s going to write a hit piece on him: “It will be a choice selection of his stylistic excesses which will show once and for all what this supposed ‘classic’ really is.“
What’s interesting about the vicious tone in the piece of writing that resulted is how much Strauss’ beliefs resemble the ones held by the popular image of Nietzsche. Consider this passage from ‘The Old and the New Faith’, and let me know if it reminds you of anything, perhaps even Zarathustra’s central teaching:
“Even as the order of Nature, such as it now exists, has evolved itself out of Chaos, so likewise can it again evolve itself out of the new Chaos occasioned by its destruction; especially as Kant conceives the destruction as taking place by combustion, by which the same conditions must again be produced as those whence, according to him our, planetary system was primarily evolved.
[T]he Cosmos itself—the sum-total of infinite worlds in all stages of growth and decay—abode eternally unchanged in the constancy of its absolute energy, amid the everlasting revolution and mutation of things.”
It’s almost as if it’s some kind of eternal… repetition.. or… reappearance. I dunno, you guys gotta help me out here, I’m just a simple farmer.
‘The Old and the New Faith’ was a kind of prototype of The Gay Science, as well as other Nietzschean projects. The catchphrase from the book that caught on in its time was “We are no longer Christians”, a less spicy version of “God is dead”. In the early 1860s, Strauss’ brother Wilhelm said he ought to write a kind of catechism for freethinkers (maybe a Koran for unbelievers?).
Here’s another quote:
“In man, Nature endeavoured not merely to exalt, but to transcend herself. He must not, therefore, be merely an animal repeated; he must be something more, something better. He ought, because he can. The sensual efforts and enjoyments are already fully developed and exhausted in the animal kingdom; it is not for their sakes that man exists; as in fact, no creature exists for the sake of that which was already attained on lower stages of existence, but for that which has been newly conquered through itself.”
So what are you saying Dr. Strauss? That man must transcend himself into some kind of… Beyond-man or Ultra-man..? For a simple farmer like me, it’s a little crazy.
Or how about this:
“To demand an exception in the accomplishment of a single natural law, would be to demand the destruction of the universe. Imperceptibly at last, by the kindly force of habit, [the Universe] leads us to adapt ourselves to a less perfect condition, should we be placed in such, and to perceive at last that only the form of our frame of mind is conditioned by external circumstances, that its substance of happiness or unhappiness, however, is derived from within.”
Now hold on a second, Doctor Strauss. You’re telling me, that I could look at the world and not want anything to be different? To not just tolerate necessity but to love it (for idealism is hypocrisy towards necessity)? Frankly, that’s total nonsense, as Nietzsche explains in his rebuttal:
“On the contrary, Master: an honest natural scientist believes that the world conforms unconditionally to laws, without however asserting anything as the ethical and intellectual value of these laws: he would regard any such assertions as the extreme anthropomorphism of a reason that has overstepped the bounds of the permitted. […] [Strauss] assumes without question that all events possess the highest intellectual value and are thus absolutely rational and purposeful, and then that they contain a revelation of eternal goodness in itself.”
Nietzsche also condemns Strauss for his “shameless philistine optimism”, reminding him that such an affirmative vision of life is “a bitter mockery of the nameless sufferings of mankind”, serving only as an “inordinately stupid ease-and-contentment doctrine for the benefit of the ‘ego’”.
There’s another part of the book where Strauss says that there’s beauty in the process of striving, action and investigation, that we should embrace that, and Nietzsche dumps on him for that too.
There’s a lot more to cover, not least Nietzsche’s comments on Darwin, but suffice to say, it’s a profoundly unfair and unnecessarily hostile attack on someone who he was deeply indebted to throughout his career—though it might be that he attacked him precisely to diminish the sense of indebtedness he had.
Now, some of you might be thinking, “hey Andrei, you’re undermining Nietzsche by picking him apart just because you feel indebted to him.” Well, frankly this is ludicrous. I am a self-made aristocratic genius and owe nothing to anyone. Moving on!
It seems Nietzsche had something of a guilty conscience when it came to this attack. Strauss died a little while after the publication of his hit-piece, prompting Nietzsche to write:
“I very much hope that I did not sadden his last months, and that he died without knowing anything about me. It’s rather on my mind.”
Nietzsche would also agree that he has a tendency to be what the French call, un âsshôle. Explaining his reputation at university, he wrote that “I am often unhappy and too moody and like being a thorn in the flesh not only to myself but to others.’ A man after my own heart! His bestie Paul Deussen agreed, saying that Nietzsche had “a tendency to play the pedagogue, constantly correcting me, and sometimes really to torture me.”
Well, in the spirit of Christmas, let’s be more generous and constructive, and return to the old man’s challenge of putting Christ back in Christmas, but with the freedom of being unattached to any particular doctrine.
One thing that caught my eye in Strauss’ book on Jesus is the story of Christ’s birth in the Protoevangelium Jacobi, or in more common parlance, the Gospel of James, which has interesting details regarding Mary’s life and pregnancy, something that would help add a little spice to the religious symbols of the holiday season.
In this gospel, Mary is born miraculously after her parents desperately prayed for a child. Mary is born after seven months, at which point they decide that Mary’s life will be completely devoted to God, so they send her to the Temple of Jerusalem, where angels will feed her every day.
My favourite part of this story is Mary’s arrival at the temple at the tender age of three, where she “danced on her feet, and the entire house of Israel loved her.”
I declare that this must become a central icon of the holidays: dancing toddler Mary with a giant crowd of people egging her on. I also think that encouraging dancing among toddlers in church would be a surreptitiously Zarathustran improvement that would bring much mirth.
You might be thinking this is some kooky obscure apocryphal stuff, but even though this isn’t in the New Testament, there’s a liturgical feast on November 21st called the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated by Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, which commemorates Mary being consecrated to the temple.
It has received attention from artistic masters in the Renaissance. There’s a nice painting by Titian of Mary’s arrival at the temple, but it doesn’t quite capture what I picture to be the joy and playfulness of the moment. Mary looks to be quite a bit older and her body language is quite serious, if not rigid. I don’t know if you’ve seen a toddler joyfully dancing but I can tell you that ain’t it. This sense of heaviness plagues the representation of the scene throughout history, and I challenge artists to do better.
The Gospel of James is also interesting because of the more realistic reaction from Joseph when he finds out that Mary’s pregnant: “Striking his face he cast himself to the ground on sackcloth, weeping bitterly”. This would be an interesting and more somber contrast to the dancing toddler, even though it is a case of dramatic irony.
Also, instead of a manger, Joseph and Mary enter a cave while on their way to Bethlehem. Joseph looks for a midwife, and once he finds one, they head back to the cave and see a dark cloud hovering over it. The midwife declares that this day is a miracle as salvation has finally come to Israel, and suddenly, the cloud disappears and a flash of light blinds everyone in the cave. This powerful light fades after a little while, and the infant Christ appears.
But here comes my second favourite part of this gospel. You see, this gospel insists on the idea that Mary was a virgin both before and after the birth of Christ. Salome is informed that a virgin has given birth, and like doubting Thomas, she decides that feeling is believing:
“As the Lord my God lives, if I do not insert my finger and examine her condition, I will not believe that the virgin has given birth.”
She heads over to the cave and the midwife tells Mary to brace herself.
But as Salome is fiddling around to check Mary’s birthing organ, God decides that enough’s enough, and blasts Salome with some painful punishment, making her cry out:
“Woe to me for my sin and faithlessness. For I have put the living God to the test, and see, my hand is burning, falling away from me.”
After pleading with God, an angel tells her that she will be forgiven if she picks up Christ with the hand that isn’t disintegrating, so she lifts him up and says “I will worship him, for he has been born as a great king to Israel.”
I hope that this will become a key scene in our newly invigorated Christmas, illustrated by the best masters of the 21st century, since it contains an important lesson: don’t finger the Mother of God.
Merry Christmas!
Works Cited:
Beiser, F.C., 2020. David Friedrich Strauss, Father of Unbelief: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blind, M. (trans.) 1873. The Old Faith and the New: A Confession by David Friedrich Strauss. London: Asher.
Hayman, R., 1980. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press
[Available at https://archive.org/details/nietzschecritica00haym/mode/2up]
Levine, P., 1995. Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities.
MacGaughey, D.R., 1994. On D.F. Strauß and the 1839 Revolution in Zurich. [Online] Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20140203022720/http://www.chora-strangers.org/files/chora/mcgaughey_1994.pdf
Nietzsche, F., Hollingdale, R.J. (trans.) 2012. Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ehrman, B.D. and Pleše, Z., 2011. The Apocryphal Gospels. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
