Nietzsche’’s Protestant Fathers: A Study in Prodigal Christianity

Nietzsche was famously an atheist, despite coming from a strongly Protestant family. This heritage influenced much of his thought, but was it in fact the very thing that led him to his atheism? This work provides a radical re-assessment of Protestantism by documenting and extrapolating Nietzsche’s view that Christianity dies from the head down. That is, through Protestantism’s inherent anarchy.

In this book, Nietzsche is put into conversation with the initiatives of several powerful thinking writers; Luther, Boehme, Leibniz, and Lessing. Using Nietzsche as a critical guide to the evolution of Protestant thinking, each is shown to violate, warp, or ignore gospel injunctions, and otherwise pose hazards to the primacy of Christian ethics.

Demonstrating that a responsible understanding of Protestantism as a historical movement needs to engage with its inherent flaws, this is a text that will engage scholars of philosophy, theology, and religious studies alike.

Thomas R. Nevin is Professor Emeritus at John Carroll University, USA, and a Life Member of Clare Hall at Cambridge University, UK. His previous books include The Last Years of Saint Therese (2013) and Therese of Lisieux (2006).