The Vicar’s Corner

I have just been thinking of the interesting connections between the Gnostic ideas expressed in the Gospel of Philip and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (when it is not over-simplified, as it usually is in popular discourse).  Consider Nietzsche’s famous comments on God in his “parable of the madman” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nietzsche-madman.html)

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?”

When you really think about what is being said here, it is sort of a modern development on an idea that was central to the Gospel of Philip.  GoP observes:

“God created humanity… [but then in turn] humanity creates ‘God’ [i.e. the concept]. That is the way it is in the world – men and women make gods and worship their creation. It would be much more fitting for the gods to worship the human beings.”

Nietzsche, living 1700 or more years later, was facing the obverse side of this paradox, once the paradox had begun to decay — though indeed its decay is already evident in the revolutionary ideology of Gospel of Philip — but all the more so in Nietzsche, who is confronting this decay head-on: “Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose.”

It is just as necessary now to clear away the stench of this decay in order to face the truth about ourselves and our destinies.

-Brother Matthew