A Symbol

Friedrich Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence” cannot be defined. It can almost be described, but even this is a corruption. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the text under consideration), the main character finds he can never pronounce it, and any attempts to make it an object of knowledge induce nausea. Nietzsche’s solution to the problem is offering a narrative rather than a treatise. This paper, however, leans toward the latter (though relying heavily on a historical narrative of sorts), and thus another device is needed. Traditionally, wherever such apophatic discourse exists, symbols are usefully called upon both to represent and to conceal that which could never be discussed. The symbol of an inverted onion dome, a sphere that flows out of and rises back into a point within itself, is hereby called upon both to represent and to conceal Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. Now it can be discussed.

The especial aim of this paper, moreover, is to put Nietzsche in a historical context. Much will be said on the ancient Greeks and on Christianity, but always in regard to what is essential in Nietzsche. Nietzsche sits on a very important threshold in the history of the West. A proper evaluation necessitates a historical overhaul, for it is only after the ball, the line, and the onion dome that the symbolic image of the inverted onion dome can be formed in the mind.

The Ball and the Line [2]

Nietzsche once wrote, “The real philosophers of Greece are those before Socrates.” [3] Indeed one finds in these innovative thinkers the seeds both of ancient Greece and of the last thousand years of history in the West, the seeds — of dialectic. Xenophanes is the bulbous root. He rejects the traditional cosmology of warring gods and utters, “God is one.” That is, he defines his own cosmology in dialectic opposition to the past, and not without tragedy. For in depicting all previous knowledge as false belief, he concludes that knowledge is not to be had at all but that “belief is fashioned over all things.” [4] But why should Xenophanes be trusted if he admits he has no knowledge, only belief? He writes, “By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning, / but in time, by searching, they discover.” [5] The tragedy within Xenophanes is that his beliefs are to be eclipsed, and necessarily and fatefully so for his system requires it. Hence in Xenophanes there is opposition, but also contradiction; there is something that can be called continuous discontinuity, a sort of anti-tradition — the birth of Western dialectic. The implications of this thought will be “discovered” by succeeding generations, just as prescribed — and especially so by Nietzsche in whom all these themes surrounding Xenophanes recur.

Heraclitus and Parmenides represent, respectively, the ball of opposition and the line of contradiction inherent in Xenophanes. Heraclitus takes as a departure point Xenophanes’ physical ideas of wet and dry to develop a cosmology based on the balance and unity of polar opposites. “Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest,” Heraclitus writes. [6] When things are defined by their opposites, a binding force exists between them, for they depend on each other for their very meaning. This force Heraclitus calls war, “the father of all and king of all,” [7] — that is, dialectic opposition. As the word “polar” suggests, it forms a single sphere.

To Heraclitus’ cosmology of strife and plurality Parmenides reacts diametrically, claiming the cosmos is one and motionless. His revolution, however, lies in logical deduction based on contradiction, his unconscious reaction to Heraclitus’ method of dialectic opposition. The disparity between these approaches is made especially evident in relation to specific fragments by the two philosophers. As they bear profoundly on the thought of Nietzsche, the subject of this paper, they warrant discussion here.

In accord with his program of unifying opposites, Heraclitus says, “The road up and the road down are one and the same.” [8] Parmenides refutes such claims absolutely, referring to their adherents as “two-headed,” for reasons made clear by this discussion. Heraclitus does not, importantly, place a perspective on this road that looks up and down, but rather takes the road objectively as a whole. With Parmenides, however, in the passage that introduces his philosophy he describes a goddess leading him into a doorway that is formed by a lintel bridging two other, presumably opposed, doorways — that which leads to the path of Day and that which leads to the path of Night. (This location will be revisited by Nietzsche.) Only once Parmenides is in the doorway does the goddess dictate his contradiction-based philosophy to him. This detail signifies that two contradicting paths (the doorways are opposed, but to face them one must look in contradicting directions), such as the past and the future, require a perspective between them, such as the present, in order for the contradiction to occur. Heraclitus, in not taking such a perspective, might as well mean north and south when he says up and down, for by them he means polar opposites. Parmenides, on the other hand, assuming either that Heraclitus does, or that he must, take an involved perspective, calls him two-headed for looking in contrary directions at once.

Hence in the initiation of dialectic one can see two diverging methods, the sphere formed by polar opposites and the line proceeding from a single point in contrary directions. In relation to each other, the sphere and the line do not oppose, but contradict. When one asserts one polar opposite, one automatically affirms the existence of the other. Heraclitus: “They would not have known the name of justice if these [unjust] things did not exist.” [9] When one posits one side of a contradiction, however, one automatically negates the other. In the thought of Parmenides, the inaugural pair for logical deduction is “to be” and “not to be”: if something is said to be, it could not possibly not be. Therefore, where the ball posits, the line negates — just like the positive and negative numbers extending from zero, they contradict.

The paradox of ancient Greece is the coexistence of these contrary forces. Parmenides takes the polar opposite views of Heraclitus, and at the same time contradicts him, taking as method contradiction over opposition. The history of ancient Greece likewise exists as the dialectic between these two contrary modes of understanding. There is constant diverging and converging of forces, like the expanding and contrasting universe of modern physics. Plato, for example, will root himself in the sphere, the dialogue between opposing forces. In an oppositional response Aristotle establishes his thought along the line of contradiction, always affirming himself and negating everybody else. Socrates, engaging in oppositional dialogue from a subjective, internal perspective — like that on a line — rather than with Plato’s spherical objectivity, is the father of them both. It is threshold figures like Socrates and Nietzsche, moreover, that dive most deeply into the continuous discontinuity implicit in Xenophanes — more deeply perceiving it, anyway. As for participation in the discontinuity, it remains continuous as long as people persist in opposing each other in contradiction.

The Onion Dome and the Light of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ breaks the continuity of dialectic, for He opposes no one. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil… (Matt. 5:38–39). Dialectic would have it, as does Nietzsche, that good and evil are polar opposites, that their meaning depends on each other. Jesus Christ as God, however, creates not good and evil, but only a non-dialectically conditioned good. It so happens that it was good to grant His creatures free will, to make them in His image. And it so happens, unfortunately, that one of them chose to direct his will in eternal contradiction to God, i.e., towards himself. Dialectic opposition in itself comes from this contradiction, but a dialectician (e.g., Nietzsche) cannot understand such a thing — And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not (Jn. 1:5). From the polarizing perspective of dialectic, good is the opposite of evil, the one compelling the other. If opposition itself is evil, then good is the opposite of opposition, and this is sheer folly, a paradox. To oppose opposition is to be absorbed into it. Such will be Nietzsche’s critique. From the non-dialectic Christian point of view, however, good is not opposed to evil — it resisteth not — nor is it dependent on it for existence. Where the darkness is confounded by the light, therefore, the light exposes the darkness.

Avoiding all dialectic, Christianity is able to break the flux between the ball and the line and offer something truly new, the onion dome. A prayer from the ancient Byzantine Church, written to Mary the Mother of God, reads, “He who is full emptieth Himself; He who is pre-eternal beginneth to be; the Logos becometh flesh; the Creator is formed; the Infinite confines Himself to space, becoming in thy womb, O thou who art full of the grace of God.” [10] God transcends His own transcendence as He enters time, filling the empty moment with all the infinitude of the Godhead. The eternal circle obliterates all time, and the limit between two contrary lines obliterates all eternity. The onion dome is a spherical wholeness that rises to a single point over and above itself — it is finitude and infinity understood non-dialectically. Time and death become no longer a hindrance from but a vehicle to eternal life. Only in this context does the resurrection of the flesh, for example, make any sense. Only in this fashion can one’s whole life, body, and soul be redeemed from dialectic. Salvation occurs only in the person of Jesus Christ.

Good and Evil

The West falls back into dialectic after breaking with the Eastern Church in 1054. The Crusades are engaged despite, and in contradiction to, Christ’s command to resist not evil. Evil is opposition, and opposing it only incorporates one into it — sheer folly. The Crusaders even sack Constantinople, a full expression of their position in contradiction to God and to the rest of the Christian world. The Romanesque fixation on the Last Judgment, moreover, signifies a culture actively creating a dialectic between good and evil, in the same manner that Nietzsche describes. The dialectic is confirmed by the succeeding Gothic emphasis on God’s love and the romanticization of the Virgin Mary — in diametric reaction to the Romanesque fixation on God’s justice. This movement echoes directly that undergone by Muslims a few centuries prior, as they created their good and evil: the ascetic movement of the Umayyad era, emphasizing Allah’s justice, inspires the reaction of the Sufis in the Abbasid era, emphasizing Allah’s love. In both cases the “good” that arises from the dialectic is in opposition to evil — sheer folly. Aristotle is imported from the Arabs, and dialectic is in full gear.

“Behold the good and the just!” Nietzsche writes, “Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker; yet he is the creator.” [11] Insofar that the good actively hates the evil, good and evil are dialectic opposites, the creator of which the good hypocritically call evil — hypocritically, because good depends on evil for its very meaning. The “last man,” written of in the Prologue of Zarathustra, is like one huddling on the comfortable side of a dialectic, negating discomfort as if his comfort did not rely on it for definition. This is a critique of love defined in opposition to wrath, a critique of Gothic spirituality: “Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves. Oh, that falsified light!” [12]

Overcoming the Ball and the Line in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

If good and evil are to be understood as polar opposites, all values then become a possible source of nihilism, the objective sphere that contradicts and obliterates linear time and the present moment. Life, for Nietzsche, is “innocent” of all values; it has no purpose or necessity that values would imply. These are essential metaconcepts in the Nietzschean lifeview (a word more appropriate than “worldview”). In the chapter “On the Vision and the Riddle,” Zarathustra relives the mystical experience of Parmenides. Climbing to the top of a mountain he finds a gateway, “Moment,” between two paths that eternally contradict, the past and the future. This present moment is indivisible and infinitesimal. As it contains no time, it is free from all causality; it is called “accident.” Elsewhere, the personification of life talks to Zarathustra and tells him she is not virtuous, “But you men always present us with your own virtues….” [13]

Thus life constantly overcomes itself, radically discontinuous with all that may have come before or after. Values of good and evil bend this line into a circle; their poles require the extension of a sphere and could not, one would presume, fit into a dimensionless moment. However, Nietzsche writes: “Verily I say unto you, good and evil that are not transitory, do not exist. Driven on by themselves, they must overcome themselves again and again. With your values and words of good and evil you do violence when you value; and this is your hidden love and the splendor and trembling and overflowing of your soul.” [14] A perpetual re‑creation of values, Nietzsche suggests, would slide the poles of good and evil into the dimensionless present. The desired result is “…the becoming of purpose” — values, a sphere — “out of accident” [15] — the point between two lines. It may be helpful to imagine a vertical dimension intersecting the past and future in which poles of good and evil can be permanently set without intruding beyond the present. Thus the values continuously reside in the discontinuous present, renewing themselves as often as time does. Though life tells Zarathustra that she has no time, [16] the spirit is a stomach [17]; it is life that cuts into life [18] and creates a reservoir of space within the timeless. Nietzsche here has accomplished nothing short of finding time within time, a kind of infinity within the finite: “With both feet I stand firmly on this ground, on eternal ground….” [19] In “On the Famous Wise Men,” he paints the image of his wisdom as a ship, amid violent winds, sailing over the sea and into the horizon.

The Inversion of the Onion Dome

Of nihilistic values — those placed on life rather than in life — Nietzsche writes, “Many suns revolve in the void: to all that is dark they speak with their light — to me they are silent.” [20] In the chapter “On the Way of the Creator,” he explains his alternative: “Can you compel the very stars to revolve around you?” [21] And elsewhere: “I live in my own light; I drink back into myself the flames that break out of me.” [22] This is the image of the inverted onion dome, a sphere flowing down out of and back up into a point within itself.

This image of the eternal recurrence is not merely a synthesis of the ball and the point between two lines. As ancient Greece discovered, the ball and the line contradict; synthesis is impossible. Indeed, Nietzsche has in places attempted to characterize the eternal recurrence as such a synthesis, most famously in the final fragment (#1067) of his posthumously published collection of notes Will to Power. The result is a gross amalgamation of the physical theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides; it makes no logical sense and contradicts his entire lifeview. That is why he did not publish it. Often, in Zarathustra, the title character experiences great nausea when approaching his “abysmal thought” of the eternal recurrence. It is too difficult for him not to reduce the inverted onion dome into a nihilistic circle, too difficult to keep the poles of good and evil from popping out of the dimensionless moment. The tendency, made evident in Will to Power, is to turn the mode of living into a kataphatically explainable concept — an object of knowledge, which it cannot possibly be.

No, Nietzsche’s formulation of the inverted onion dome is not a synthesis of ball and line, but is solely the result of contradicting the original solution to the ancient Greek paradox — the Christian onion dome. He merely inverts it. It is intellectually and historically inconceivable, within the context of Western dialectic, that Nietzsche could have formed his inverted onion dome if Jesus Christ had not offered the transcending onion dome first. If the pre-eternal God had not emptied Himself into a limit between two contrary lines, the eternal contradiction between the ball and the line would never have a solution.

But from the outset Zarathustra declares two things: “God is dead,” [23] and “I love man.” [24] All things “God” are replaced by man. In Christianity, the uncreated is the Holy Trinity; one places faith in it over and above the sensible and intelligible realms of creation. Nietzsche too has an uncreated and places all faith in it — that is, the future. He writes, “Let the future and the farthest be for you the cause of your today: in your friend you shall love the overman as your cause.” [25] The overman is not a prophecy of what will occur in a future time, not primarily at least, for positioned in the gateway “Moment,” Nietzsche sees the future ahead as radically discontinuous with the present. Accordingly, the future lies before him as a symbol of the eternity he has yet to create. In this regard the uncreated overman represents the potential of the self, and this future self is the seat of all faith and worship.

Furthermore, when the uncreated Christian God enters this world, the evil present here contradicts Him and crucifies Him. Nietzsche claims the same about his uncreated future-god: “For the good are unable to create; they are always the beginning of the end; they crucify him who writes new values on new tablets; they sacrifice the future to themselves — they crucify all man’s future.” [26] Again, however, Nietzsche proves himself wholly ignorant to the power of a non-dialectic good. Only good as a polar opposite forms a nihilistic circle that crucifies the future. The non-dialectic good of the onion dome is immutable and crucifies nothing.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Liturgy

Inasmuch that Nietzsche is merely Christianity multiplied by a negative one, the absolute value of each is the same. Accordingly the two lifeviews operate in similar patterns. The Gospels and Thus Spoke Zarathustra are narratives for the same reasons and have similar ends. The Christian Liturgy, moreover, realizes the anagogic nature of the Gospel narrative in ritual format, and to some degree Thus Spoke Zarathustra too works as liturgy. It is perhaps telling of his times that when Nietzsche reached for words to describe the eternal recurrence, as in the Will to Power fragment, he found only quasi-scientific explanations whereas the liturgical language of the Christian tradition would have served him much better.

The common end of both the Liturgy and Zarathustra is a type of communion. Genesis 1:26 reads, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…, but in verse 27 God proceeds to create man only in His image. This has been interpreted as being that the purpose of a human life, having already been created in the image of God, is to be made moreover into the likeness of God. Similarly, on the incarnation of Christ, Clement of Alexandria (†215) is famous for saying, “The Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.” [27] This is meant in the way Psalm 82:6 means, I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High (cited by Christ in Jn. 10:34). The Liturgy ritually re‑creates the life of Christ, first His appearance and ministry and then His mystical sacrifice. The life of the Liturgy participant is thus combined with the life of Christ, and through the sacrament of communion is united to the Church, His very Body.

In the Zarathustra liturgy, the overman, as the uncreated man-god of the future, the potential of the self, takes the place of Christ as the final cause in which the ritual is rooted. Nietzsche writes, “You could well create the overman. Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers. But into fathers and forefathers of the overman you could re‑create yourselves: and let this be your best creation.” [28] But the re‑creation of the self into the likeness of the overman is not described as vividly as it is narrated. In “On the Vision and the Riddle,” after arriving at Parmenides’ gateway and discussing it with the dwarf known as the spirit of gravity, Zarathustra has a vision of a man, a young shepherd, with a thick black serpent lodged in his throat, overcome with nausea. Zarathustra yells for him to bite down on the serpent, which he eventually does. Having overcome the serpent and his nausea — both representing nihilism — the shepherd is transformed into something “no longer human — one changed, radiant, laughing!” [29] His laughter likewise is described as not human, and Zarathustra longs for it. He asks, “And who is it who must yet come one day?” [30] Again he does not so much prophesy here as much as he confronts his own potentiality.

Towards the end of the Third Part, that potentiality is realized, if only momentarily. Zarathustra awakens one morning and in a frenzy immediately summons the thought of the eternal recurrence. Prepared for it, he recites a creed, “I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle; I summon you, my most abysmal thought!” [31] “Suffering” implies living in a discontinuous present; “the circle” is that which is created within the present; and “life” is ceaselessly overcoming oneself — this is his creed. He proceeds, “Hail to me! You are coming, I hear you. My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate depth inside out into light. Hail to me! Come here! Give me your hand! Huh! Let go! Huhhuh! Nausea, nausea, nausea — woe unto me!” [32] This is Zarathustra’s sacrament of communion. Traditionally, in a Christian church a screen sets apart the altar area from the nave. The inner sanctuary thus represents the Holy of Holies, and to receive communion one approaches the doors of the screen where the nave and sanctuary meet. Likewise Zarathustra approaches the doors into the eternal recurrence prepared to receive the life of the overman; he embraces it for a moment but falls into nihilism and nausea.

He lies as though dead for seven days and awakens to the sounds of his chattering animals. They recite to him the concept of the eternal recurrence, which he enjoys as delightfully ironic; he knows that their concepts are merely “illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart.” [33] He then bears witness to his communion with the overman, his self’s potential: “How well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days, and how that monster crawled down my throat and suffocated me. But I bit off its head and spewed it out.” [34] The young shepherd that was before perceived as another is now identified with the self. Whereas the Christian Church is an ontological symbol for the Body of Christ, Nietzsche’s church of creators of good and evil serves as an ontological symbol for the body of the overman.

The Church of the Way of the Dialectician

It remains yet to note the natures of these two churches, for their differences are at the heart of this paper. In a Socratic fashion, Nietzsche actively and subjectively engages in a dialectic lifestyle. His lifeview in many ways is a throwback to the unity and balance of opposites first created by Heraclitus. The ancient writes, “What is opposed brings together; the finest harmony is composed of things at variance, and everything comes to be [or, occurs] in accordance with strife.” [35] Nietzsche’s friendships thrive on such dialectic opposition. “In a friend one should have one’s best enemy,” Nietzsche writes. “You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.” [36] He starts the chapter “On the Friend” by noting the necessity of the friend without whom one’s conversation with oneself sinks into the depths. Being alone presents a problem to the dialectician because without a person to oppose, one has no meaning. An existentialist is but a lonely dialectician.

The solution to loneliness is an interior dialectic. One is one’s own worst enemy; one goes out away from oneself in order to regain oneself, that is, a dialectic harmony within oneself. Nietzsche advises, “You must wish to consume yourself in your own flame: how could you wish to become new unless you had first become ashes?” [37] Just as the poles of good and evil are slid into the timeless moment, so too does dialectic manage its way into the self — which must be the case if “the finest harmony is composed of things at variance.” This is the way of the eternal recurrence.

Socially, this interior dialectic is expressed as mentioned, as friends bonding to each other by opposing each other. And when the interior dialectic fails — for the eternal recurrence is extremely difficult — one’s unity and identity can be maintained by opposing the friend. In this way do friends support each other on their individual paths. These paths, moreover, are defined in opposition to each other. On one and the same page Nietzsche urges the reader both to “Follow my precedent!” and to “Go your own ways!” [38] As Zarathustra explains to his disciples, “The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.… Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.” [39]

The Nietzschean individual stands in opposition to others, but not in a heated, passionate manner. This facet of Nietzsche testifies to the refinement and beauty of his lifeview; it also goes far to describe the nature of the overman church of the future. Envy, pity, and revenge are all things to be avoided in favor of an opposition that is cool and detached. If pitying must be done, “it is preferably from a distance.” [40] Why something like revenge is bad is illuminated by the exhortation, “‘Enemy’ you shall say but not ‘villain’….” [41] One should oppose others but not impose on others. To take revenge, to call someone “villain,” is to apply the values created by oneself onto another as if they existed outside the self. In other words it is a form of nihilism, of establishing a circle of good and evil that obliterates linear time and the present moment. To envy is to project “good” onto someone else, and to pity is to project “bad.” Such impositions are negated because they disturb the harmony of opposites upon which the overman church is based. Nietzsche puts it most eloquently in “On Those Who are Sublime”:

But just for the hero the beautiful is the most difficult thing. No violent will can attain the beautiful by exertion.…
To stand with relaxed muscles and unharnessed will: that is the most difficult for all of you who are sublime.
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible — such descent I call beauty.
And there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest. [42]

At Present

If a church characterized by kindness, by lack of hatred and envy, is what Nietzsche desires, he does not have it at present. The world today has been covered like a net by dialectic opposition of a passionate variety — a form called nationalism — and it has all come from Nietzsche’s culture of Western Europe. Through colonialism and the cultural and economic hegemony of the West, cultures everywhere have redefined themselves firstly in opposition to the West and then, after the colonists have left, in opposition to their neighbors. What can a people do when confronted with European dialectic? They can either accept it and become one of its lesser members, or they can oppose it and become one of its greater members. Nothing can be more contagious than dialectic, and so far, a dialectic lifeview, expressed socially, has resulted in nothing but the bloodiest century in history.

Nietzsche addresses the people of these times in the chapter “On War and Warriors.” Global warfare is what Nietzsche has in mind, but expressed internally — externally, expressed as peace. He writes,

My brothers in war, I love you thoroughly; I am and I was of your kind. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!
I know of the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Be great enough, then, not to be ashamed of them.
And if you cannot be saints of knowledge, at least be its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such sainthood. [43]

Importantly, he further encourages those who are warriors to be so precisely for their thoughts. Nietzsche seems to acknowledge that the hatred and envy that cause war are common side effects of what he advocates, but his plea is for neither hatred nor envy. Nietzsche rather advocates a community of friends united by their diversity and detached from all ill will. The church of the overman envisioned by Nietzsche is in this regard quite humane and exceedingly humanist. It is, of course, the inverse of the church with the onion dome.

The Two Churches

Christians are united in love, a non-dialectic love that is not opposed to anything, least of all opposition. St. Paul puts it this way, that All things are lawful unto me, but not all things are expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any (1 Cor. 6:12). Indeed, Christians love opposition — (one might, for example, find beauty in tracing the dialectic from ancient Greece to Nietzsche) — but they do not care to participate in it. For all his bad poetry and overall nastiness, one cannot but love Nietzsche. This Christian finds he is a better person for having read him and thinks of the German philosopher as a tremendous inspiration.

The path of dialectic, however, is not expedient. If one could slide one’s vision into the vertical dimension that contains the infinity of the present moment, one might see the following. The ideals of the two churches, one dialectic and one non-dialectic, present the image of two separate masses of tiny circles, little gods, each mass being in a state of inner harmony. The little circles in the Christian body have little plus signs in them representing the love they have for all things and that they, being not conditioned by dialectic, oppose nothing. Likewise little plus signs exist between the circles as the very love within them binds them together, and their body is always complete unto itself.

In the dialectic-based body, on the other hand, the little circles have little minus signs in them; the opposition of good and evil is the ground upon which they stand. Likewise little minus signs lie between them as they find their unity in the same opposition that defines their souls. Being without hatred or envy, the opposites harmonize and are stable, and thus the dialectic church is also one of peace.

But it cannot be said that it is complete unto itself. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape (1 Thes. 5:3). Like a lonely dialectician, as soon as the dialectic church can be said to be whole, an existential crisis ensues. It has an eternal appetite for knowledge, but what happens when it meets the non-dialectic church of Christian love? In Christ it finds a wall that it cannot pass, and it is made to return unto itself. Dialectic gains knowledge by opposing, but Christ will not oppose. It meets non-opposition, that which it contradicts, and finding itself powerless to oppose, it is disabled.

In the end it can be said that the difference between God and Nietzsche is one of contradiction over the issue of opposition. God, being non-dialectic, can diagnose the contradiction for what it is. Nietzsche, on the other hand, while contradicting God defines himself in opposition to God. This is the original paradox within Xenophanes and the ancient Greeks. While contradicting the past, Xenophanes defined himself in opposition to it. This singular move creates the continuous discontinuity that will eventually enable Nietzsche to invert Christianity. The inverted onion dome, however, is consumed by its own contradiction, the very pasting together of opposition and contradiction. It burns with appetite for knowledge, but its error of defining non-dialectic dialectically places a limit on its knowledge. This divergence occurs eternally between the two churches. Dialectic is eternally confounded by Jesus Christ; forever hungry it is never filled. God, being all-good, does not create hell. He merely gives his creatures free will to do as they please, and the wicked among them create hell for themselves — and they call it eternal recurrence.

NOTES

[ 1 ] Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, New York: Penguin Books, 1966, pp. 208–09.

[ 2 ] The summary of another, earlier chapter of said non-existent work, for which there yet exists a sketch: “Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides—and the Initiation of Dialectic in History.”

[ 3 ] Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, ed. by Kaufmann, Will to Power, New York: Vintage Books, 1967, p. 240.

[ 4 ] Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Philosophy Before Socrates, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994, p. 67.

[ 5 ] Ibid.

[ 6 ] Ibid., p. 123.

[ 7 ] Ibid., p. 124.

[ 8 ] Ibid., p. 122.

[ 9 ] Ibid., p. 123.

[ 10 ] Orthodox Menaion, 3 February, Sts Symeon the God-Receiver and Anna the Prophetess, Matins, Canon of St Symeon, Ode I, Theotokion.

[ 11 ] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 23.

[ 12 ] Ibid., p. 91.

[ 13 ] Ibid., p. 108.

[ 14 ] Ibid., p. 116.

[ 15 ] Ibid., p. 62.

[ 16 ] See ibid., p. 218.

[ 17 ] See ibid., p. 206.

[ 18 ] See ibid., p. 104.

[ 19 ] Ibid., p. 240.

[ 20 ] Ibid., p. 106.

[ 21 ] Ibid., p. 63.

[ 22] Ibid., p. 106.

[ 23] Ibid., p. 12.

[ 24] Ibid., p. 11.

[ 25] Ibid., p. 62.

[ 26] Ibid., pp. 212–13.

[ 27 ] Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Greeks,” 1.

[ 28 ] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 85–86.

[ 29] Ibid., p. 160.

[ 30] Ibid.

[ 31] Ibid., p. 216.

[ 32] Ibid.

[ 33] Ibid., p. 217.

[ 34] Ibid., p. 218.

[ 35 ] McKirahan, p. 121.

[ 36 ] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 56.

[ 37] Ibid., p. 64.

[ 38] Ibid., p. 209.

[ 39] Ibid., p. 78.

[ 40] Ibid., p. 88.

[ 41] Ibid., p. 38.

[ 42] Ibid., p. 118.

[ 43] Ibid., pp. 46–47.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: I would like to acknowledge my Nietzsche professor in college Krzysztof Michalski, who influenced me to the degree that I understood him properly.