On conviction, vow, and fidelity to Truth. An Orthodox reply to Nietzsche
The text we begin from
Conviction and Justice
The requirement that a person must afterwards, when cool and sober, stand by what he says, promises, and resolves during passion, is one of the heaviest burdens that weigh upon mankind. To have to acknowledge for all future time the consequences of anger, of fiery revenge, of enthusiastic devotion, may lead to a bitterness against these feelings proportionate to the idolatry with which they are idolised, especially by artists. These cultivate to its full extent the esteem of the passions, and have always done so; to be sure, they also glorify the terrible satisfaction of the passions which a person affords himself, the outbreaks of vengeance, with death, mutilation, or voluntary banishment in their train, and the resignation of the broken heart. In any case they keep alive curiosity about the passions; it is as if they said: „Without passions you have no experience whatever.” Because we have sworn fidelity (perhaps even to a purely fictitious being, such as a god), because we have surrendered our heart to a prince, a party, a woman, a priestly order, an artist, or a thinker, in a state of infatuated delusion which threw a charm over us and made those beings appear worthy of all veneration, and every sacrifice, are we, therefore, firmly and inevitably bound? Or did we not, after all, deceive ourselves then? Was there not a hypothetical promise, under the tacit presupposition that those beings to whom we consecrated ourselves were really the beings they seemed to be in our imagination? Are we under obligation to be faithful to our errors, even with the knowledge that by this fidelity we shall cause injury to our higher selves? No, there is no law, no obligation of that sort; we must become traitors, we must act unfaithfully and abandon our ideals again and again. We cannot advance from one period of life into another without causing these pains of treachery and also suffering from them. Might it be necessary to guard against the ebullitions of our feelings in order to escape these pains? Would not the world then become too arid, too ghost-like for us? Rather will we ask ourselves whether these pains are necessary on a change of convictions, or whether they do not depend on a mistaken opinion and estimate. Why do we admire a person who remains true to his convictions and despise him who changes them? I fear the answer must be, „because every one takes for granted that such a change is caused only by motives of more general utility or of personal trouble.” That is to say, we believe at bottom that nobody alters his opinions as long as they are advantageous to him, or at least as long as they do not cause him any harm. If it is so, however, it furnishes a bad proof of the intellectual significance of all convictions. Let us once examine how convictions arise, and let us see whether their importance is not greatly over-estimated; it will thereby be seen that the change of convictions also is in all circumstances judged according to a false standard, that we have hitherto been accustomed to suffer too much from this change. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
The reply
Nietzsche asks an honest question: am I bound to remain faithful to my errors merely because I swore them in an hour of passion? His answer: no, we must be „traitors” again and again, and the pain of changing comes from overvaluing convictions. Half of this is true, and the Church has known it for two thousand years. The other half is an abyss.
Where he is right
Passion makes promises that light cannot keep. Herod killed the Forerunner „for the sake of his oaths and of those who sat with him” (Mark 6:26). He kept his word and was a murderer. The interpreters say an oath cannot bind one to kill. Peter said: „Even if all fall away, I never will” (Matthew 26:33). It was enthusiastic devotion, and the cock crowed before dawn.
Passion casts a charm over the beloved or hated person, and the darkened mind swears by what it sees with feverish eyes. Here Nietzsche and the Fathers meet: a promise born of delusion is not a debt but a wound.
Where he errs
First error: he confuses change with freedom. Change is not a virtue in itself. James calls the „double-minded man” „unstable in all his ways” (1:8). Direction matters. Nietzsche has freedom from, but not freedom toward.
Second error: he loses the Person. We are not faithful to a conviction, which is a state of mind, but to the Truth. And Truth is not an idea: „I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Convictions are signposts. Whoever embraces the signpost never arrives, and whoever despises it no longer knows where he is going. So the Fathers’ „betrayal” is not self-betrayal but leaving delusion for Someone.
Third error: he reads pain as mistake. For him, the pain of change comes from a wrong opinion. For the Fathers, it is the pain of birth: „godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation” (2 Corinthians 7:10). Saint John Climacus calls it joy-making mourning. The pain shows the heart is alive. One who changes without pain has not repented, only relocated.
How convictions are born
Nietzsche asks us to examine how convictions arise. Let us. Abba Moses, in Cassian’s Conferences, says thoughts come from three places: from God, from the adversary, from ourselves. Many of what we call „convictions” are reason serving as advocate for passion: vanity, fear, the need to belong, an old wound left unnamed.
Modern man calls it „my truth,” but in fact he holds an opinion not because it is true but because he has paid too much for it and it defines him. To give it up would be to lose his tribe and his face. The Fathers name the root philautia, self-love, the mother of passions. It is not only the pride of never being wrong, but the pride of never being seen to be wrong. The remedy is humility: the capacity to be corrected.
Sincerity is not truth. Saul persecuted with conviction, and Christ foretells: „the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2). Paul writes of himself: „I acted ignorantly” (1 Timothy 1:13). He did not pass from one opinion to another, but changed his center: „it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
The desert and the fire
Nietzsche fears that a world without passions would be „arid, ghost-like.” The Fathers do not demand the killing of the soul’s powers but their turning according to nature (Saint John of Damascus, Saint Maximus). Anger rises against sin, and desire runs toward God. Dispassion is not coldness but „the mother of love” (Saint Maximus). Christ says: „I came to cast fire upon the earth” (Luke 12:49). The point is not the absence of fire, but fire without smoke.
The only vow that binds
The one who swore in passion and the one who cooled afterward are both parts of the same person, and neither is the whole. Ephesians 4:22–24 speaks of the „old man” and the „new man,” and the only legitimate betrayal is that of the old in the name of the new.
The vow that truly binds is the one of Baptism, made neither in rapture nor in coldness, but in the Spirit. And even it does not demand that we never fall, but that we rise. A brother asked Abba Sisoes: „I have fallen, what shall I do?” „Get up.” „I got up and fell again.” „Get up again.” „Until when?” „Until death finds you, either in good or in a fall.”
This is Nietzsche’s „betrayal again and again,” but with a Face, and it has a name: repentance.
Three questions before keeping or leaving a conviction
- From what state did I promise: passion, or prayer and clarity?
- Toward whom does it point: Christ, or myself?
- What fruit does it bear (Galatians 5:22): peace, gentleness, humility, or restlessness, contempt, pride?
Let us be faithful neither to our errors nor to change itself, but to the One who is „the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
Apophthegm
A brother came to an elder and said: „Father, I am unmoved in my views. For twenty years no one has turned me from anything, and I count it as faithfulness.”
The elder was silent for a while, then asked: „Tell me, brother: the last time you said ‘I was wrong,’ to whom did you say it?”
The brother thought for a long time and found no one.
The elder said: „I fear you are not unmoved, but that you have no one you allow to move you. Go and search: whom do you defend with such faithfulness, the Truth or yourself?”
(An apophthegm composed )
