Dear Father Angelo,

I apologize for bothering you again!

However, I believe that the topic may be of interest for many.

What does it mean that Nietzsche’s “free spirits” place themselves above good and evil?

A dimension of pure good can exist in Heaven or in the lives of the great saints.

Evil is what Satan offers.

But without good, what kind of life can there be?

May God bless your very beneficial work: advising the doubtful and teaching the ignorant.

Thank you!

V.

Priest’s reply

Dearest V.,

  1. the expression “free spirits” is ambiguous.

According to Nietzsche, free spirits are those who think differently from how one would expect them to think based on their environment, their background, their history, the dominant culture of their time, etc.

For Christians, and also for any other person, a free spirit is someone who is inwardly free and not slave to error, bad inclinations and sin.

2 When one thinks he can do evil as he pleases, when one does not acknowledge that there are limits imposed by nature and that there is a goal to be achieved that is inherent in the very nature of men, he is no free spirit.

In other words: there is no freedom from truth.

3. A free spirit is one whose freedom conforms to the truth: not only to the ontological truth that we are creatures who need God all time in order to keep existing, but also to the moral truth.

One is truly free when one is not a slave to evil inclinations.

One is truly free when one enjoys inner freedom, even before outer freedom.

4. In reference to this, Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” (John 8:34).

By committing sin, some think they are free because they do what they want from a superficial point of view.

But they don’t realize that they lose their inner freedom, because they become addict to evil.

This can be tangibly seen in case of alcoholics or a addicts.

5. Commenting on Jesus’ statement in John 8:34, St. Thomas rightly says: “The slavery to sin is very burdensome because it has become unescapable: in fact, wherever one goes, he carries his sin within himself, even if the act and the pleasure from it are in the past. That is why Isaiah prophetically speaks of it in this way: ‘when the Lord gives you rest… from your hard bondage (to sin) to which you were enslaved’ (Is 14:3). Physical slavery, on the other hand, can at least be avoided by running away.”

6. Here St. Thomas follows up what St. Augustine had already said: “Oh miserable slavery to sin! The slave of a man, tormented by the harsh impositions of his master, can find escape; but the slave to sin drags sin with him wherever he flees. In fact, the sin he has committed is inside him. The pleasure is past, the act of sin is past, that which gave pleasure is long gone, but what remains is that which wounds” (In Io. Ev., 41,4).

7. In this regard, we cannot forget the other great affirmation of Our Lord: ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (Jn 8,32).

And here again is the masterful commentary of St. Thomas: “To liberate in this case does mean to be free from any kind of anguish, as it sounds in Latin; but rather means to be made free. So that the truth will make us free from three things: from error, from sin, from death”. That is, from error in our mind, from sin that makes our inclinations addict to evil, from death to the life of grace, which causes inner emptiness due to the loss of God’s presence.

8. In the encyclical Veritatis splendor John Paul II reminds us that “only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his true good. The good of the person is to be in the Truth and to do the Truth” (VS 84).

After recognizing that “This essential bond between Truth, the Good and Freedom has been largely lost sight of by present-day culture” and “Pilate’s question: “What is truth” reflects the distressing perplexity of a man who often no longer knows who he is, whence he comes and where he is going”, we note that “not infrequently witness the fearful plunging of the human person into situations of gradual self-destruction. According to some, it appears that one no longer need acknowledge the enduring absoluteness of any moral value. (…). Indeed, something even more serious has happened: man is no longer convinced that the truth is the only way to salvation. The saving power of the truth is contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide by itself what is good and what is evil. This relativism becomes, in the field of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law. Concrete situations are unfavorably contrasted with the precepts of the moral law, nor is it any longer maintained that, when all is said and done, the law of God is always the one true good of man” (VS 84).

Thank you for bringing me back to this topic.

I wish you fullness of freedom in Christ, the truth of man, and I bless you and remember you in my prayers.

Father Angelo

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