American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

As Patton recognized, Nietzsche gladly “touch[ed] the ark without fear, and without reverence penetrate[d] into the holy of holies. He will not be repressed or silenced.” If modern Christianity hoped to weather his boundless assaults, then Nietzsche “must in the first place be understood, and not ignored or refuted.” Patton added, “Nietzsche himself says [that] ‘one refutes a thing by laying it respectfully on ice.…’ But one cannot refute Nietzsche by laying him respectfully on ice … [because] he has far too much vitality to freeze to death.”20 American ministers and theologians thus grudgingly agreed with Nietzsche’s assertion that “what does not kill me makes me stronger,” accepting his challenges to their faith as an opportunity to reinvigorate it.21 But they also agreed that the battle for the modern American soul was a zero-sum game: moderns would cleave their spirits and moral imagination either to Nietzsche or to Christ.