American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Christian commentators argued that what W. H. Griffith Thomas, writing for Bibliotheca Sacra, referred to as “German moral abnormality” was evident long before the war.82 A writer for the Atlantic Monthly argued that the path from the earlynineteenth-century historicist biblical criticism, to Nietzschean philosophy of power, to German imperialism and militarism was unmistakable: “The inference is inevitable, that, when the leaders of a nation’s life in theology and philosophy play skittles with every claim to Divine interest in the affairs of mankind… they are not likely to base national conduct upon the immutable and eternal foundations of righteousness.”83 However, it wasn’t enough to point fingers, for the despiritualized view of human affairs that produced the Übermensch and a culture of militarism was also the very culture of rigorous biblical scholarship and training which for generations had been the Rome for American Protestant theologians. The specter of a Teutonized militaristic Übermensch forced liberal theologians not only to reassess their relationship to developments in modern thought but to see how modern thought itself was emblematic of German “moral abnormality.” Thomas noted, “It is well known that there is not a single critical position adopted by British, American, and Canadian scholars which did not emanate from Germany.” Quick to see the connections between theological naturalism and Nietzschean antifoundationalism, Christian commentators argued that ...