Matthew Coats

In The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach’s objective is to find weaknesses in the religion of Christianity and to disprove it.  In the first few chapters of the book, he presents a few arguments attacking the very foundation of Christianity.  To begin, Feuerbach defines what religion really is.

There is some wisdom in what Feuerbach says about religion.  He says everyone has a religion and everyone has a god.  Whether you are Christian, Muslim, or atheist, you have a religion and a god.  What most people are thinking when they hear the word “religion,” are acts of worship and a commitment to a belief that guides your life.  And with religion comes a god.  This “god” is the idol of your life.  You praise and worship it, obey it, and it is the center of your life.  But what Feuerbach says about everyone having a religion and god is not the type of religion or god most people would think of.  He says religion is within us.  Religion is the morals and basis with which we guide our lives.  Even if you are an atheist, you don’t need a Bible to understand basic morals and principles of humanity.  Everyone has this within them, the ability to decipher between good and bad.  Similarly, everyone has a god.  This doesn’t mean all people have a divine being they pray to, however; it does mean they have something in their lives they worship and spend most of their time thinking about.  For example, money can be people’s god.  It consumes their thoughts daily and is something they cannot live without.  Even Christians can have a god besides the one true God.  Christians can struggle with putting distractions like entertainment, money, and worldly things in front of the true God.  Whatever is distracting them becomes their own god.

In addition to what Feuerbach says about religion, he narrows his terms and starts to define the Christian religion.  He says, “Religion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to himself, or more correctly to his own nature (i.e., his subjective nature); but a relation to it, viewed as a nature apart from his own.”  Feuerbach is saying there is no real divine being Christians worship.  Rather, the “divine being” Christians worship is just the human nature purified.  Man frees himself from the limits of being human.  All the attributes of the Divine being are attributes of the human nature.  Feuerbach is claiming the Christian religion and its “god” are nothing more than man making a divine being the perfect version of man.  The divine being, or God, is all the perfect attributes of man put together into a perfect divine being.  He goes on to say man can only believe in an object if it has qualities like his own.  Therefore, man created God in a perfect image of himself with attributes that make God an object to man.  Feuerbach says, “An existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipidity, and absurdity.  But there can be no more in God than is supplied by religion.  Only where man loses his taste for religion, and thus religion itself becomes insipid, does the existence of God become an insipid existence — an existence without qualities.”

Feuerbach’s claims about religion and the Christian God are completely inaccurate with the teachings of the Bible.  Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Genesis 1:27 says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”  God created man in His image; man did not create God in his image.  God is not some figment of our imagination; He is not the perfect version of our attributes.  Man is the fallen nature of God’s attributes.  We are God’s creation.

Feuerbach builds off his previous argument by saying, “It is necessary to man to have a definite conception of God and since he is man, he can form no other than a human conception of him.”  Feuerbach is somewhat making fun of the Christian God.  He is saying it is such a coincidence God is a man as well.  One example he uses for this is how birds would view their god.  If the birds had a God, wouldn’t that God also be a bird?  This argument Feuerbach makes is a very weak one.  Ancient Egyptians worshiped gods that were not man.  They worshipped cats, dogs, and all types of creatures.  Feuerbach cannot make such a weak claim to say God being man is such a coincidence.  Going back to the verses previously mentioned, God created man in His image. Man is an image of God, not God an image of man.

Feuerbach takes different approaches to the argument claiming God is just the perfect qualities of man.  Man made a perfect manifestation of himself.  However, Feuerbach contradicts himself on this point.  He claims the qualities of God are nothing else than the essential qualities of man and a particular man has his existence, his reality, only in his particular conditions.  God is the highest standard of existence to man.  Man can only comprehend the qualities that are in him.  Therefore, God is not a divine being but a particular, finite being.  His previous arguments were saying the Christian God is a perfect manifestation of human qualities, but now he is saying God is finite because man can’t comprehend what is not known to him.  Man can’t be perfect, and, therefore, cannot comprehend a being that is perfect.  Feuerbach fails to understand his whole argument is based around the fact God is created by the perfect attributes of man, what the perfect man would be.  But God wasn’t created; He is the creator.  He created those attributes and man is an image of Him.

The last part of Feuerbach’s argument about God being made by the attributes of man is the nature of man demanding goodness as an essential tendency of man.  Feuerbach says religion is an attack on goodness.  Religion and the idea of God attack man; man is wicked, corrupt, and incapable of good.  Feuerbach almost seems offended by the fact man needs a God because man is wicked.  Feuerbach is missing one monumental piece to the picture.  Man is wicked and man is corrupt. Man does need a God.  Man’s nature demands goodness because that is the nature of God, and we are made in God’s image.  Feuerbach asks, “If man is wicked, how can he perceive or create anything good?”  He can’t make anything good — only God can.  Good only comes from God.  Man is wicked and will always be.  Man is a fallen creature who needs something to follow and use as guidelines.  Man needs something to give him hope.

God is not just perfect attributes of man that man can follow.  God created man in His own image, and, because man is wicked, the only hope is through God himself.  God is not here as a book to follow or guidelines to read.  God is here to save us from our own wicked nature.