One of my set texts for philosophy A level was Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. I lost my own cherished copy. But I reasoned that of all the books I had studied at school, this was the least loss, for I would carry it within me for life. Captivating, inspiring and horrifying, Nietzsche’s prognosis for morality without Christianity defined my intellectual trajectory.

Studying theology at university, I encountered Nietzsche everywhere. He was Christianity’s most formidable opponent, and its greatest ally. He saw that while the “death of God” might seem to liberate us, in fact it cast us into an abyss. The moral order of our civilisation is based on God. Without God, the words “good” and “evil” are just that – words. They would express variable and subjective feelings and tastes, not objective and timeless truths. From John Paul II’s “culture of death” to Benedict XVI’s “dictatorship of relativism”, Christian thinkers routinely declare Nietzsche’s prophecy to have been proved correct. Without belief in God, our culture has become a moral vacuum, they say, in which the notions of good and evil no longer mean anything.