Nietzsche Devil's Advocate Analysis

A devil’s advocate is a person who raises contentious opinions to cause debate or test the strength of conflicting arguments. In the past, the Catholic Church appointed a “devil’s advocate” in order to challenge if a nominated candidate was eligible for canonization or to verify a miracle. With that being said, it seems that the Catholic Church advocates for arguments against Christianity to be raised, in order to provoke a sense of reliance on faith in response. Friedrich Nietzsche offers perhaps the most striking arguments against the Christian faith in his polemic On The Genealogy of Morality. Most Christians see Nietzsche’s atheistic claims as an enemy to the faith, however, when Christians dig deeper into his thought-provoking arguments …show more content…
He thinks that slave morality’s conception of ‘good’ is somewhat similar to master morality’s conception of it, however, it is “re-touched, re-interpreted and reviewed through the poisonous eye of ressentiment.” Christians aim to use “faith,” “hope,” and “love” as weapons to combat evil. However, Nietzsche highlights the vengeful tactics which seem to be saturated with the Christian faith. He makes references to the great teacher and saint, Thomas Aquinas, which reveals the notion of “ressentiment” in Christianity. Aquinas says that “the blessed in the heavenly kingdom will see the torment of the damned so that they may even more thoroughly enjoy their blessedness.” To Nietzsche, this declaration seems to expose the reality that Christian morality is rooted in contempt and resentment. At first glance, a Christian may give thought to this notion. However, they should recognize that seeing the “torment of the damned” from the heavenly kingdom will result in enjoyment of their blessedness not due to happiness in seeing residents in hell suffer, but happiness knowing their glorious victory over …show more content…
Nihilism denies life and its values, and Nietzsche does not believe this. He thinks that as humans, we must value the things which we produce ourselves, and we should not rely on Christian dogma, especially that which encourages asceticism. This is definitely not nihilistic, because he finds values and morals to be productive and affirming to life, and not the irrelevance of the nonexistent afterlife. He thinks that values are created solely by humanity and not God. He actually thinks that being a Christian who associates morals and values with the divine, is a nihilist. To him, this is slave morality, and denies life itself. He especially finds this in asceticism, as he regards it to deny and hate humanity:
“The ascetic ideal: this hatred of the human, and even more of the animalistic, even more of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from appearance, transience, growth, death, wishing, longing itself - all that means, let us dare to grasp it, a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental prerequisite of life, but it is and remains a