After all, both Friedrich Nietzsche and Ignatius Loyola were from Europe, even though they lived in different centuries in different countries there. But trees go through cyclic patterns of growth as they go through the seasons over the centuries. So perhaps their two books were fruit from the same European branch of Christianity. (Christianity is a branch of the tree of the Jewish monotheistic religion. Islam is another branch.)
Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister, and both of his grandfathers were Lutheran ministers. Incidentally, Martin Luther was in a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church before he challenged certain conventional teachings and practices in the Roman Catholic Church at the time.
In the earlier centuries of the branch of Christianity, certain orthodox Christian dudes used to refer to deification. See Norman Russell's book The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (2004) and A. N. Williams' book The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (1999). In the Roman Catholic tradition of thought, Thomas Aquinas is usually considered to be an orthodox dude, despite his deep communion in spirit with the pagan Greek philosopher Aristotle. (Many other orthodox medieval Christian dudes engaged in deep communion in spirit with the pagan Greek philosopher Plato.)
I know, I know, deification sounds strange to many people today. But the patristic and medieval dudes who used this term really were orthodox Christians.
Basically, the idea of the Suprahuman Person in Friedrich Nietzsche's puzzling book Thus Spoke Zarathustra represents the atheistic equivalent of the psychological-spiritual development of deification.
For a discussion of atheistic spiritual development, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen's book Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (2010).
So today we have Pope Francis as the warrior-king of the Roman Catholics under the standard of the mythic Christ engaging atheistic Suprahuman Persons (also known as secular humanists) under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche -- and perhaps under the standard of the mythic Lucifer, eh?
At the present time, the Roman Catholic Church is far better organized and far better funded in the United States and elsewhere than are secular humanists and other people of goodwill in the United States today who are opposed to the political policies advanced by the Roman Catholic bishops in the United States and other Roman Catholic theocons.
Concerning certain Roman Catholic theocons in the United States today, see Damon Linker's perceptive book The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (2006).
CONCLUSION
Me, I'm a theistic humanist, as distinct from a secular humanist, but I'm in favor of a revaluation of all values advanced in the Roman Catholic tradition of natural-law moral theory.
Fat chance, you say?
Maybe you're right.
Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of the anti-body spirit of Christianity in Victorian Europe in Thus Spoke Zarathustra was and is still perceptive, as was D. H. Lawrence's novel about the negative influence of the anti-body cultural conditioning in Victorian England, Lady Chatterley's Lover. Americans today need to embrace an attitude of sex-positivity, regardless of what the Roman Catholic Church teaches.
In his search for a way to express an opposing spirit to oppose the Christian anti-body spirit, Friedrich Nietzsche, who was professional trained in classical philology, hit upon the image of Dionysius and the Dionysian spirit as a possible way to express what is needed to counter the Christian anti-body spirit.
But another way to proceed would be to start by stopping the allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is love poetry, erotic poetry. For further explorations of possible ways to counter the Christian anti-body spirit, see Margaret A. Farley's book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (2006).
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