A Cat Named Feuerbach

I first read Ludwig Feuerbach after discussing Gilead with a mentor during my senior year of university. This novel is written in first person, almost like a journal (but not quite an epistolary novel), to tell a story of the final days of John Ames. John Ames had been a pastor his whole life, including his ancestors—additionally all named John Ames—from three generations prior. John Ames often mentions his two sons: a seven-year-old boy and Jack Boughton, a professor who was shunned and rebuked by the Ames family upon pursuing a life of pagan fulfillment, aka academia.

Jack Boughton is a philosophy professor; he frequently shared his interest(s) with John Ames and the seven-year-old boy. (The young boy was a product of John Ames’ second marriage to Lila, but Jack treated the boy like a biological brother.) Whenever Jack Boughton returned home for an occasional visit from the city, he brought a selection of books ranging from history, literature, and philosophy. To Jack Boughton’s surprise, John Ames and the boy thoroughly enjoyed Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity.

The Essence of Christianity was composed by Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher born in 1804, and published in 1841, later translated by George Eliot in the mid-nineteenth century. It was regarded then as now as a heretical work dedicated to mock God and strip His divine power and essence away and placing it in the hands of mankind. The Essence of Christianity has additional negative connotations after its popular approval by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Because of The Essence of Christianity’s ideas regarding humanistic thought, human responsibility, individuality, and agency, alongside its approval by Marx and Engels, its philosophical breadth opened the door to naive readers turning away from religion and God, which did not seem to be Feuerbach’s original intention. Feuerbach writes, “I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.” To Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity is his outward projection of his journey in finding truth. He does not want to be perceived as an evil man masquerading as a witness and bearer of truth, rather an honest man who is in pursuit of sharing absolute truth for the better good. With that in mind, let us begin analyzing what Feuerbach portrayed as absolute truth in The Essence of Christianity and why some Christians, historic and fictional, have found much to gain from reading its pages.

Starting—and formulating Feuerbach’s whole argument—with religion, he says mankind and animals are purely recognizable by their ability to either accept or deny religion. Animals cannot make this choice whereas man can due to consciousness. Animals have a conscience, like every living thing, but their mental capacity does not determine what is moral and/or ethical—which then cannot discern religious affiliations: “wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.” Feuerbach writes, “consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought.” Mankind’s consciousness is an important and persuasive and powerful organ that gives life and reason behind their actions. Thus, the consciousness’ ability to think either rational or irrational is only specific to man. Feuerbach believed that animals cannot think and therefore cannot know anything concerning religion or topics far beyond an animal’s bubble or surroundings. Animals can recognize and navigate their close surroundings, but humans are able to catalyze and search beyond their physical and emotional and mental proximity. And this is why mankind is able to grapple with eternity, God, and theological perceptions concerning the divine. Without a man’s subconscious curiosity to search for another reality, they cannot understand their current reality. And by seeking this alternate reality, Feuerbach instigates that the ability to know or assume there is a divine power then is dependent on what man discovers within themselves—they are a product of the divine, which we know is true (because we are created in the image of God).  

Feuerbach the transitions to the divine nature of the Trinity, suggesting Christians only really give credit to Jesus. Jesus Christ is indeed one of the most important figures in the Trinity as He is “the representation of God, the visible glory of the invisible God.” Feuerbach’s claim regarding the Trinity suggests that Christian’s worship and praise the image of an invisible being no one can physically see. Christian’s can only assume God’s characteristics are visible through the outward representation of Jesus—and mankind must put their full trust in Jesus as who He says He is. The image God creates of Himself through Jesus provides Christians an opportunity to tangibly feel God and His presence. After all, God sent His only Son so mankind may live through and by His example of the Father. Feuerbach writes, “Men pass away, the word remains; the word is life and truth. All power is given to the word.” Without Jesus, there is no God. And without God, there is no Jesus. If the Trinity did not have either Jesus or God, there would not be creation.

Jesus, as the Son of God, is the center of creation, making the world being formed with the intention to be saved by Jesus. Feuerbach writes, “the world is not God; it is other than God, the opposite of God, or at least which is different from God. Religious faith is not a gift, nor is it anything supernatural. Rather, faith is nothing else than confidence in the reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or laws of nature and reason, that is, of natural reason.” Feuerbach’s transition here is an excellent move from saying the world was made for the redemption of Christ. To acknowledge Jesus’ saving grace, man must have faith. Faith is declaring a belief or feeling as true. Man has already acknowledged that the divine exists, but now they must have faith that it actually does exist based on their discoveries within their conscious. Feuerbach writes, “the idea that that which man wishes actually is: he wished to be immortal therefore he is immortal; he wished for the existence of a being who can do everything which is impossible to nature and reason, therefore such a being exists.” Faith, described here, is man’s discoveries of the divine being transformed into an imaginative substance. It is almost like a miracle in a sense; it is taking nothing out of something: “a miracle presents absolutely nothing else than the sorcery of the imagination, which satisfies without contradiction all the wishes of the heart.” One of the negative and flawed characteristics concerning faith is its volatility. It is easily swayed and manipulated by even the simplest persuasive speech. But when faith is not in doubt, it manifests salvation. Salvation is the culmination of divine discovery, imagination, and faith in Feuerbach’s narrative. Salvation is at the heart of religion because it deals with Jesus’ death and resurrection. If man lacks faith, they resist God. If man lacks salvation, there is no religion.

Feuerbach now carries his argument to examine the existence of religion in its entirety in the absence of faith and salvation. Since Feuerbach stated—towards the beginning of The Essence of Christianity—that religion is based on mankind’s imaginative encounter with the divine, it seems like he changes his point of view mid-argument.

Feuerbach now allows the ball to go in the audience’s court, allowing them to ponder a similarly stated question: if mankind formulates their notion of religion through the imaginative realm, does it mean mankind made God within the construct of their imagination? This is indeed the quintessential question The Essence of Christianity instigates all the way from start to finish. And it is the biggest topic Feuerbach eagerly investigates with passion and endurance, which concerns both readers and scholars by arguing the existence of God’s origins. Feuerbach’s philosophical background now comes into play by examining, through logical deduction and psychological analysis, the ultimate creation story of God. He writes, “God is the manifested inward nature, the expressed self of a man, — religion, the solemn unveiling of a man’s hidden treasures, the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets.” Feuerbach utilizes and puts his philosophical process to the test by connecting man’s idea of God to a psychological construct—repression. The way a psychologist, shrink, and/or a psychiatrist may perceive the quote above is mankind seems to be yearning for something more, or reflecting on what they never acquired or achieved. Thus, it becomes wishful thinking, or wish-fulfillment. Wish-fulfillment is a Freudian idea regarding the concept of wishing something into existence because the wisher needs that intangible thing to become tangible. Thus, again, Feuerbach says that mankind created God because mankind needed God. Mankind needed their own concept of divine power, because mankind needed to formulate a delusion they knew would make them feel safe and assured. Feeling protected from evil allows mankind’s imagined divine discoveries to follow them all the rest of their days. Feuerbach writes, “one day there will be no nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as to separate man from God: then there will be only God and the pious soul.” It all makes sense now because there is no direct linkage or even historical creation account to God, Feuerbach says mankind did it themselves to account for the missing piece(s) of information the Bible never outlined. To Feuerbach, man controls their perception of God—whatever their imagination wants Him to be then becomes an ever-changing substance of this divine entity.

Moving on, Feuerbach’s arguments become more fragmented and lost, almost as if he was encountering clinical imbalances as the work progressed. There is no monumental point in his life to reflect such a radical argumentative turn—in my opinion, Feuerbach most likely went mad by researching the same subject over and over again. It is almost like studying in an academic setting; you go over the information so many times that you forget it. In this case, still in my opinion, Feuerbach must have encountered the same thing, but he twisted the information so much that the following ideas he produced were only a matter of pure “what if” conspiracies. Meaning, he stretched his findings so far that the only way to wrap up his argument was to extend it into sacrilegious territory. From here on out, The Essence of Christianity becomes the heretical work Christians have long claimed that it is.

Feuerbach’s conception of God was defined as a spirited being who brought His Son into flesh to save mankind from damnation. While these notions are still prevalent, Feuerbach now says God is a thought our conscious dictates. To think of and about God is the act of placing Him within the self-conscious. He writes, “We are necessitated to regard the fact of God being thought by us, as his thinking himself, or his self-consciousness.” Feuerbach tells his audience a staunch distinction between God and mankind, and it is solely within the consciousness. God’s consciousness is spirited. Man’s consciousness is tangible. Feuerbach accounts for mankind’s ability to understand, articulate, and criticize the world around them is placed above God’s consciousness, making mankind superior to God. God can only see the world from above, and mankind is actively living and breathing within the universe God created. Because mankind is an active participant within creation, they are now seen as gods. Feuerbach writes, “the divine essence first realized and unfolds itself. In the creation of nature God goes out of himself, he has relation to what is other than himself, but in man he returns into himself:— man knows God, because in him God finds and knows himself, feels himself as God.” Mankind is God’s spitting creation; and because of this, God has the ability to see and find Himself within His children, ultimately deeming His children as gods themselves.

Upon reading both Gilead and The Essence of Christianity, I gained a new perspective in reading philosophy. As a pastor, John Ames took Jack Boughton’s advice and read Feuerbach, which then helped him produce a stronger relationship with the son he chastised; John Ames even named his cat after Feuerbach as a token of appreciation to Jack Boughton. While John Ames never took the whole book into consideration, he still was able to affirm his faith, knowing he is able to discern what is theologically right and wrong. I think most Christians can glean from this posture John Ames exhibited. While we do not need to intentionally seek out heretical texts, it is important to determine, when those texts are given to us, what is still good and true within them.

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