A brief history of the death of God

A few weeks after Friedrich Nietzsche bragged to an admirer that he had completed a ruthless attack on our Lord, he collapsed, had convulsions, shouted like a madman and never recovered his faculties again. It was early 1889. He was 44 years old, his books had just begun to be noticed, and he lived for a decade longer, empty-eyed, silent and entirely unaware of the fame that was about to engulf him.

Was his tragic end divine punishment for his sacrilege? My devout Catholic wife begs to differ. Our Lord is not vengeful, she insists. That’s the only thing wrong with him, I reply. Although Darwin’s On the Origin of Species started the anti-God ball rolling in 1859, Nietzsche’s nervous breakdown and anti-Christian profanities had an enormous effect because the genius-madman had been a man of faith. Both his father and grandfather were Lutheran pastors, and young Nietzsche was so pious he was nicknamed ‘the little pastor’.