Page 17 - GALIET CRUX, NUX OR LUX: Nietzsche IV

conscience. In his Confessions, Saint Augustine, displays the sinful nature of being. Basically, he says that the sins you see in other people are a mirror of yourself. Therefore, he insists there is nothing you can do to merit salvation by the mighty God.
Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and one of the major church reformers, affirms Saint Augustine’s philosophy when he says that the Ten Commandments are not there to tell us how to behave, but rather they are there to remind us how impossible it is for us not to break each and everyone of them. Basically, we carry original sin from the time of Adam and Eve. Consequently, most of the theological debate that informs the reformation is based on Saint Augustine and Luther’s predestination theories against Pelagius’ position on free will. Although Saint Augustine and Luther admit that there is something within ourselves that will drive us to pursue an ascetic life, we do not and cannot have an ascetic will. We cannot escape our sinful natures in any way shape or form (except today, we can if we are willing to sit on a Freudian or a Lacanian couch for $150.00 an hour!). Nietzsche, following a strong Lutheran tradition, his father was a Lutheran minister, becomes exposed to Luther’s readings and discovers that Luther’s doctrine harmonizes with his own research on Greek Tragedy: the Dionysian16 will in constant struggle with the Apollonian will.
16 The Bacchae, that side of us that we can’t control or Freud’s Thanatos drive. Euripides. The Bacchae. Trans. Nicholas Rudall. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996.
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