Nietzsche and the Book of Genesis

What is Value? Does it exist, is it for real? Or is it something we make up to justify our capricious behavior? After all, we do what we do. Attaching value to what we do just makes us feel better about ourselves, right? But is that so bad? Bad Faith, you bet! Bad Bad, maybe not. 

The concept of Value has been on the defensive in Euro-American culture ever since dear Nietzsche called it out: 

“…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” (Twilight of the Idols) 

Value is inherently hierarchical. Values motivate us to act and empower us to evaluate our actions. To do so, values must be on a higher ontological plane than the events they regulate. Nietzsche was an ontological democrat; he abhorred any sort of hierarchy. Therefore, being intellectually honest to the end, he rejected the concept of Value per se. 

But did Nietzsche go too far? Is ontological democracy really incompatible with Value? Not necessarily. For example: 

You don’t get your report card from another student in your class and, if you do, who cares? It has no value! Only a teacher can confer value on a report card and teachers have a hierarchical relationship with their students, right? 

Well, yes…and no. Teachers and students are coequal partners in a single ecosystem called school. Broadly speaking, “No teachers no pupils/No pupils no teachers!” But within that democratic ecosystem, teachers have a hierarchical relationship with their students.

Hierarchy at one level may be resolved as democracy at another. Equality and hierarchy are not necessarily incompatible when they are viewed in the context of process. 

We can model this with the help of a simple equilateral triangle. Extrinsically, nothing could be more democratic with its equal sides and equal angles. Intrinsically, however, an equilateral triangle can model a dynamic process. Consider: 

A 

↙ ↘ 

B → C 

Let A be Valuation, B Proposition, C Realization. Valuation stimulates and regulates the process by which what is proposed comes to be what is real. But the three phases work together to create one, indivisible event. 

The model of hierarchy within democracy is all around us. An all-volunteer army has a rigidly hierarchical chain of command, but it is in service of a single, ultimately democratic, enterprise: national defense. Multimillionaire athletes willingly place themselves under the authority of middle class managers in pursuit of a loftier goal, e.g. winning a World Series. 

This event structure and the embedding of hierarchy within democracy were detailed, possibly for the first time, in the opening verses of the Book of Genesis: 

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’. Evening came and morning followed – the first day.” (1: 3-5) 

This primordial event, creation, is the paradigm for events generally, from Big Bang to present day. According to the text, creation is a process with three distinct phases, as outlined above: Proposition, “Let there be light”; Valuation, “God saw that the light was good”; Realization, “God separated the light from the darkness.” 

Sidebar: It is important to note that these three phases are logically, not chronologically, sequential. The primordial event (Big Bang) occurred outside of time as will the ‘Ultimate Realization Event’, whatever that turns out to be. 

According to the Genesis model, Valuation oversees and empowers Proposition and Realization, although the three phases are coequal in the constitution of a single concrete event. Hierarchy exists in the service of higher level democracy. The concept of Value is rehabilitated and ontological democracy is preserved. 

What does it mean to ‘get real’. Drawing on Gregory Bateson, we can say that ‘realization’ occurs when ‘a difference makes a difference’. The process of creation ‘began’ within the introduction of the potential for difference, i.e. Let there be light. But that potential difference was only realized as actual difference, i.e. an event, once that difference made a difference, i.e. when the light was separated from the dark. Now the potential difference is actual; it has made a difference. It is a permanent part of the fabric of the world. 

Sidebar: We all yearn to ‘make a difference’; but why? Do we really care that much about the world? Sadly, no. We want to make a difference because It makes us feel real. 

According to Bateson, that is not an illusion. Making a difference is how you get real. Footprints in the sand, ripples on the pond! Of course, the value of those differences, if any, is another matter entirely. Not all differences are good, but all differences are real. 

Only now do we have a settled matter of fact, an Event (“evening came and morning followed”), and the birth of Time, the beginning of cosmic history (“the first day”). 

The first chapter of Genesis is incredibly dense. It condenses 14 billion years, from the Big Bang to the evolution of Homo Sapiens, into just 31 verses. Even so, the author understood that it was not possible to conflate the three phases of the creative process. They are logically disjoint, ontologically incompatible! 

As Genesis goes on to point out, these three phases structure, not only the primordial event (creation) but every other event as well. Perhaps surprisingly, Nietzsche accepted the logic of Genesis, though he was unable to accept its implications (e.g. Value). 

Still, to make his system work, he needed to replace the function of Value. In place of evaluation, Nietzsche introduced the somewhat vague concept of Fate. It is fate, not measurement (aka evaluation), that collapses the wave function. 

Fate, in Nietzsche’s scheme of ontogenesis, is a so-called hidden variable. It fulfills the function of ‘the implicate order’ in David Bohm’s quantum physics. Unfortunately for Nietzsche, hidden variables have fallen into disrepute since the work of Stephen Bell (1964). But it would be myopic to think that the final word has been spoken on this matter. 

So far, we have been referring to Creation as the primordial event. But that, of course, is wrong. The primordial is God himself. Happily, in the Christian doctrine of Trinity, we see that the event called ‘God’ shares the same structure (above) as the event called ‘Creation’. 

Once again, our equilateral triangle may serve a purpose. 

A 

↙ ↘ 

B → C 

Understand B as Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, A; understand C as the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father (A) and the Son (B). (Nicene Creed) 

So we are indebted to Nietzsche’s searing critique of the concept of Value for helping us see the deeper, tri-polar structure of events and for opening new windows into the nature of Trinity and into the ontology of Genesis. Nietzsche declared God ‘dead’ and that declaration helped us see God in new ways and in new places. (Not sure Nietzsche' would be pleased!)

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Quentin Massys’ The Moneylender and His Wife (1514) shows a moneychanger carefully weighing coins while his wife, who had been reading a devotional book, leans in to watch the transaction. The gleaming scales, coins, and rich still-life details emphasize themes of wealth, commerce, and the lure of material gain. Subtle symbols—a mirror reflecting passersby and the neglected prayer book—suggest a moral tension between spiritual devotion and worldly preoccupation.