Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 May 6

= May 6 =

Why do Christians like Nietzsche?
Dear all

I recently went to a Evangelical Christian university to visit a good friend, when I saw that they had a day where they celebrated the life of Friedrich Nietzsche. I was confused, given that as far as I know, Nietzsche was an outspoken enemy of Christianity and Christians in general. Yet, the people at the university where not only happy about him, they were down right cheerful! They even gave visitors free books from Nietzsche, I received a hardcover collection with fives of his books put together. At first I didn't think much about, but when I visited a Catholic theology school in Switzerland, much to my irritation, the Christians there also really appreciated Nietzsche and offered specific studies and even an excursion to the Nietzsche archives in Weimar, Germany. Even Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig and apologists such as Ravi Zacharias have made admiring comments about Nietzsche. Protestants and Catholics alike seem to have a high regard of Nietzsche. My question is: how can it be that Nietzsche is so well received among Christians, when he was actually their self-declared opponent?--2A02:1205:502E:4030:D043:5F34:166F:AC1E (talk) 01:43, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * See Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, Christian existentialism, and Death of God theology.
 * Also, I'm guessing that it's more European Christians who understand his works, rather than Christians in general. You'd be hard pressed to find any American Evangelicals who have much positive to say about him.  I'm also guessing that the European Christians who don't like Nietzsche just don't talk about him instead of exerting effort to talk about someone they don't care about.
 * Where you to dig up Kierkegaard, he would probably say that Nietzsche really wasn't (perhaps couldn't) oppose the spiritual truth of Christianity, but was opposed to philosophically stagnating Christendom (which is a tool of the crowd to suppress the individual under the guise of religion). Simone Weil once said "There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."  Ian.thomson (talk) 01:52, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Were you to dig up Kierkegaard, I doubt he'd say much of anything; he's been dead for 163 years!  General Ization  Talk  01:56, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Fine, dig him up, cram as much cocaine as you can into him and run a billion volts through him while chanting "Kierkegaard, arise! Arise, Kierkegaard, arise! Ian.thomson (talk) 02:03, 6 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I found Why Nietzsche is Good for Modern Day Christianity by an American called Joel Anderson (a former Evangelical who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy). Alansplodge (talk) 14:39, 6 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Completely personal experience: My grandfather (who raise me) was a professor at Oklahoma Baptist University. He studied Nietzsche and used his works in his lectures. He complained that Nietzsche was great for academics, but useless for the gentry. He used "God is Dead" as an example. Inside the university, the speech made sense and was very religious. Outside the university, people couldn't get past the phrase "God is Dead" and would never hear what was being said. The end result, modern Christians have enthusiastically embraced all the "Christian" commercialism that Nietzsche was arguing against. I don't try to explain it any further. It just creates a lot of arguing because people don't actually read Nietzche's writings before shouting their opinions. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:38, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Probably relevant example. 1 Corinthians 3:2 also comes to mind.  Ian.thomson (talk) 23:37, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

The Big Short (film)
I was watching The Big Short (film) today and came across this line:

"Only that, in the entire history of Wall Street, no investment bank has ever failed unless caught in criminal activities."

Is this really true? I was expecting the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to have taken down at least one investment bank. The Financial crisis of 2007–2008 wasn't as severe as the Wall Street Crash of 1929 but the former still took out three investment banks. Mũeller (talk) 11:11, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In the USA, investment banks as such have only existed since the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 - before that, there were hundreds of bank failures, but all such banks would be classified as retail banks in modern terminology. Tevildo (talk) 15:36, 6 May 2018 (UTC)