158.
Christianity as an _historical reality_ should not be confounded with
that one root which its name recalls. The _other_ roots, from which it
has sprung, are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse
of names to identify such manifestations of decay and such abortions as
the "Christian Church," "Christian belief," and "Christian life," with
that Holy Name. What did Christ _deny_?--Everything which to-day is
called Christian.
159.
The whole of the Christian _creed_--all Christian "truth," is idle
falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was
at the bottom of the first Christian movement.
All that which in the _ecclesiastical_ sense is Christian, is just
exactly what is most radically _anti-Christian_: crowds of things and
people appear instead of symbols, history takes the place of eternal
facts, it is all forms, rites, and dogmas instead of a "practice" of
life. To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to
dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology.
The practice of Christianity is no more an impossible phantasy than the
practice of Buddhism is: it is merely a means to happiness.
160.
Jesus goes straight to the point, the "Kingdom of Heaven" in the heart,
and He does _not_ find the means in duty to the Jewish Church; He
even regards the reality of Judaism (its need to maintain itself) as
nothing; He is concerned purely with the _inner_ man.
Neither does He make anything of all the coarse forms relating to man's
intercourse with God: He is opposed to the whole of the teaching of
repentance and atonement; He points out how man ought to live in order
to feel himself "deified," and how futile it is on his part to hope to
live properly by showing repentance and contrition for his sins. "Sin
is of no account" is practically his chief standpoint.
Sin, repentance, forgiveness,--all this does not belong to Christianity
... it is Judaism or Paganism which has become mixed up with Christ's
teaching.
161.
The _Kingdom of Heaven_ is a state of the heart (of children it is
written, "for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"): it has nothing to
do with superterrestrial things. The Kingdom of God "cometh," not
chronologically or historically, not on a certain day in the calendar;
it is not something which one day appears and was not previously there;
it is a "change of feeling in the individual," it is something which
may come at any time and which may be absent at any time....
162.
_The thief on the cross_;--When the criminal himself, who endures a
painful death, declares: "the way this Jesus suffers and dies, without
a murmur of revolt or enmity, graciously and resignedly, is the only
right way," he assents to the gospel; and by this very fact _he is in
Paradise...._
163.
Jesus bids us:--not to resist, either by deeds or in our heart, him who
ill-treats us;
He bids us admit of no grounds for separating ourselves from our wives;
He bids us make no distinction between foreigners and
fellow-countrymen, strangers and familiars;
He bids us show anger to no one, and treat no one with contempt;--give
alms secretly; not to desire to become rich;--not to swear;--not to
stand in judgment;--become reconciled with our enemies and forgive
offences;--not to worship in public.
"Blessedness" is nothing promised: it is here, with us, if we only wish
to live and act in a particular way.
164.
_Subsequent Additions_;--The whole of the prophet- and
thaumaturgist-attitudes and the bad temper; while the conjuring-up of a
supreme tribunal of justice is an abominable corruption (see Mark vi.
11: "And whosoever shall not receive you.... Verily I say unto you, It
shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha," etc.). The "fig tree"
(Matt. xxi. 18, 19): "Now in the morning as he returned into the city,
he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and
found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit
grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered
away."
165.
The teaching of rewards and punishments has become mixed up with
Christianity in a way which is quite absurd; everything is thereby
spoilt. In the same way, the practice of the first _ecclesia
militans,_ of the Apostle Paul and his attitude, is put forward as if
it had been _commanded_ or predetermined.
The subsequent glorification of the actual _life_ and _teaching_ of the
first Christians: as if everything had been _prescribed beforehand_ and
had been only a matter of _following_ directions----And as for the
_fulfilment of scriptural prophecies_: how much of all that is more
than forgery and cooking?
166.
Jesus opposed a real life, a life in truth, to ordinary life: nothing
could have been more foreign to His mind than the somewhat heavy
nonsense of an "eternal Peter,"--of the eternal duration of a single
person. Precisely what He combats is the exaggerated importance of the
"person": how can He wish to immortalise it?
He likewise combats the hierarchy within the community; He never
promises a certain proportion of reward for a certain proportion of
deserts: how can He have meant to teach the doctrine of punishment and
reward in a Beyond?
167.
Christianity is an ingenuous attempt at bringing about a _Buddhistic
movement in favour of peace,_ sprung from the very heart of the
resenting masses ... but transformed by _Paul_ into a mysterious
pagan cult, which was ultimately able to accord with the whole of
_State organisation_ ... and which carries on war, condemns, tortures,
conjures, and hates.
Paul bases his teaching upon the need of mystery felt by the great
masses capable of religious emotions: he seeks a _victim,_ a bloody
phantasmagoria, which may be equal to a contest with the images of
a secret cult: God on the cross, the drinking of blood, the _unio
mystica_ with the "victim."
He seeks the prolongation of life after death (the blessed and atoned
after-life of the individual soul) which he puts in causal relation
with the _victim_ already referred to (according to the type of
Dionysos, Mithras, Osiris).
He feels the necessity of bringing notions of _guilt_ and _sin_
into the foreground, _not_ a new practice of life (as Jesus Himself
demonstrated and taught), but a new cult, a new belief, a belief in a
miraculous metamorphosis ("Salvation" through belief).
He understood the _great needs of the pagan worlds_ and he gave quite
an absolutely arbitrary picture of those two plain facts, Christ's life
and death. He gave the whole a new accent, altering the equilibrium
everywhere ... he was one of the most active destroyers of primitive
Christianity.
The attempt made on the life of _priests and theologians_ culminated,
thanks to Paul, in a new priesthood and theology--a _ruling_ caste and
a _Church._
The attempt made to suppress the fussy importance of the "person,"
culminated in the belief in the eternal "personality" (and in the
anxiety concerning "eternal salvation" ...), and in the most
paradoxical exaggeration of individual egoism.
This is the humorous side of the question--tragic humour: Paul again
set up on a large scale precisely what Jesus had overthrown by His
life. At last, when the Church edifice was complete, it even sanctioned
the _existence_ of the _State._
168.
The Church is precisely that against which Jesus inveighed--and against
which He taught His disciples to fight.
169.
A God who died for our sins, salvation through faith, resurrection
after death--all these things are the counterfeit coins of real
Christianity, for which that pernicious blockhead Paul must be held
responsible.
The _life which must serve as an example_ consists in love and
humility; in the abundance of hearty emotion which does not even
exclude the lowliest; in the formal renunciation of all desire of
making its rights felt; in conquest, in the sense of triumph over
oneself; in the belief in salvation in this world, despite all sorrow,
opposition, and death; in forgiveness and the absence of anger and
contempt; in the absence of a desire to be rewarded; in the refusal
to be bound to anybody; abandonment to all that is most spiritual and
intellectual;--in fact, a very proud life controlled by the will of a
servile and poor life.
Once the Church had allowed itself to take over _all the Christian
practice,_ and had formally sanctioned the State,--that kind of life
which Jesus combats and condemns,--it was obliged to lay the sense
of Christianity in other things than early Christian ideals--that is
to say, in the _faith_ in incredible things, in the ceremonial of
prayers, worship, feasts, etc. etc. The notions "sin," "forgiveness,"
"punishment," "reward"--everything, in fact, which had nothing in
common with, and was quite _absent_ from, primitive Christianity, now
comes into the foreground.
An appalling stew of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism;
continual judgments and condemnations; the order of rank, etc.
170.
Christianity has, from the first, always transformed the symbolical
into crude realities:
(1) The antitheses "true life" and "false life" were misunderstood and
changed into "life here" and "life beyond."
(2) The notion "eternal life," as opposed to the personal life which is
ephemeral, is translated into "personal immortality";
(3) The process of fraternising by means of sharing the same food and
drink, after the Hebrew-Arabian manner, is interpreted as the "miracle
of transubstantiation."
(4) "Resurrection" which was intended to mean the entrance to the
"true life," in the sense of being intellectually "born again," becomes
an historical contingency, supposed to take place at some moment after
death;
(5) The teaching of the Son of man as the "Son of God,"--that is to
say, the life-relationship between man and God,--becomes the "second
person of the Trinity," and thus the filial relationship of every
man--even the lowest--to God, is _done away with_;
(6) Salvation through faith (that is to say, that there is no other way
to this filial relationship to God, save through the _practice of life_
taught by Christ) becomes transformed into the belief that there is a
miraculous way of _atoning_ for all _sin_; though not through our own
endeavours, but by means of Christ:
For all these purposes, "Christ on the Cross" had to be interpreted
afresh. The _death_ itself would certainly not be the principal feature
of the event ... it was only another sign pointing to the way in
which one should behave towards the authorities and the laws of the
world--_that one was not to defend oneself--this was the exemplary
life._
171.
Concerning the psychology of _Paul._--The important fact is Christ's
death. This remains to be _explained ..._. That there may be truth or
error in an explanation never entered these people's heads: one day a
sublime possibility strikes them, "His death _might_ mean so and so"
--and it forthwith _becomes_ so and so. An hypothesis is proved by the
sublime _ardour_ it lends to its discoverer....
"The proof of strength": _i.e.,_ a thought is demonstrated by its
_effects_ ("by their fruits," as the Bible ingenuously says); that
which fires enthusiasm must be _true,_--what one loses one's blood for
must be _true--_
In every department of this world of thought, the sudden feeling of
power which an idea imparts to him who is responsible for it, is
placed to the _credit_ of that idea:--and as there seems no other way
of honouring an idea than by calling it true, the first epithet it is
honoured with is the word _true._ ... How could it have any effect
otherwise? It was imagined by some power: if that power were not
real, it could not be the cause of anything.... The thought is then
understood as _inspired_: the effect it causes has something of the
violent nature of a demoniacal influence--
A thought which a decadent like Paul could not resist and to which he
completely yields, is thus "proved" _true_!!!
All these holy epileptics and visionaries did not possess a thousandth
part of the honesty in self-criticism with which a philologist,
nowadays, reads a text, or tests the truth of an historical event....
Beside us, such people were moral cretins.
172.
It matters little _whether a thing be true,_ provided it be
_effective_: total _absence of intellectual uprightness._ Everything
is good, whether it be lying, slander, or shameless "cooking," provided
it serve to heighten the degree of heat to the point at which people
"believe."
We are face to face with an actual school for the teaching of _the
means wherewith_ men are _seduced_ to a belief: we see systematic
_contempt_ for those spheres whence contradiction might come (that
is to say, for reason, philosophy, wisdom, doubt, and caution); a
shameless praising and glorification of the teaching, with continual
references to the fact that it was God who presented us with it--that
the apostle signifies nothing--that no criticism is brooked, but
only faith, acceptance; that it is the greatest blessing and favour
to receive such a doctrine of salvation; that the state in which one
should receive it, ought to be one of the profoundest thankfulness and
humility....
The resentment which the lowly feel against all those in high places,
is continually turned to account: the fact that this teaching is
revealed to them as the reverse of the wisdom of the world, against
the power of the world, seduces them to it. This teaching convinces
the outcasts and the botched of all sorts and conditions; it promises
blessedness, advantages, and privileges to the most insignificant and
most humble men; it fanaticises the poor, the small, and the foolish,
and fills them with insane vanity, as though _they_ were the meaning
and salt of the earth.
Again, I say, all this cannot be sufficiently contemned, we spare
ourselves a criticism of the teaching; it is sufficient to take
note of the means it uses in order to be aware of the nature of the
phenomenon one is examining. It identified itself with _virtue,_
it appropriated the whole of the _fascinating power of virtue,_
shamelessly, for its own purposes ... it availed itself of the power of
paradox, and of the need, manifested by old civilisation, for pepper
and absurdity; it amazed and revolted at the same time; it provoked
persecutions and ill-treatment.
It is the same kind of _well-thought-out meanness_ with which the
Jewish priesthood established their power and built up their Church....
One must be able to discern: (1) that warmth of passion "love" (resting
on a base of ardent sensuality); (2) the thoroughly _ignoble character_
of Christianity:--the continual exaggeration and verbosity;--the lack
of cool intellectuality and irony;--the unmilitary character of all its
instincts;--the priestly prejudices against manly pride, sensuality,
the sciences, the arts.
173.
_Paul_: seeks power _against_ ruling Judaism,--his attempt is too
weak.... Transvaluation of the notion "Jew": the "race" is put aside:
but that means denying the very basis of the whole structure. The
"martyr," the "fanatic," the value of all _strong_ belief. Christianity
is the _form of decay_ of the old world, after the latter's collapse,
and it is characterised by the fact that it brings all the most sickly
and unhealthy elements and needs to the top.
_Consequently other_ instincts had to step into the foreground, in
order to _constitute_ an entity, a power able to stand alone--in short,
a condition of tense sorrow was necessary, like that out of which the
Jews had derived their _instinct of self-preservation...._
The persecution of Christians was invaluable for this purpose.
Unity in the face of danger; the conversion of the masses becomes the
only means of putting an end to the persecution of the individual. (The
notion "conversion" is therefore made as elastic as possible.)
174.
The _Christian Judaic_ life: here resentment did not prevail. The
great persecutions alone could have driven out the passions to that
extent--as also the _ardour of love_ and _hate._
When the creatures a man most loves are sacrificed before his eyes for
the sake of his faith, that man becomes _aggressive_; the triumph of
Christianity is due to its persecutors.
_Asceticism_ is not specifically Christian: this is what Schopenhauer
misunderstood. It only shoots up in Christianity, wherever it would
have existed without that religion.
Melancholy Christianity, the torture and torment of the conscience,
also only a peculiarity of a particular soil, where Christian values
have taken root: it is not Christianity properly speaking. Christianity
has absorbed all the different kinds of diseases which grow from morbid
soil: one could refute it at one blow by showing that it did not know
how to resist any contagion. But _that_ precisely is the essential
feature of it. Christianity is a type of decadence.
175.
The reality on which Christianity was able to build up its power
consisted of the small dispersed _Jewish families,_ with their warmth,
tenderness, and peculiar readiness to help, which, to the whole of the
Roman Empire, was perhaps the most incomprehensible and least familiar
of their characteristics; they were also united by their pride at
being a "chosen people," concealed beneath a cloak of humility, and by
their secret denial of all that was uppermost and that possessed power
and splendour, although there was no shade of envy in their denial.
_To have recognised this as a power,_ to have regarded this _blessed_
state as communicable, seductive, and infectious even where pagans
were concerned--this constituted Paul's genius: to use up the treasure
of latent energy and cautious happiness for the purposes of "a Jewish
Church of free confession," and to avail himself of all the Jewish
experience, their propaganda, and their expertness in _the preservation
of a community_ under a foreign power--this is what he conceived to
be his duty. He it was who discovered that absolutely unpolitical and
isolated body of _paltry people,_ and their art of asserting themselves
and pushing themselves to the front, by means of a host of acquired
virtues which are made to represent the only forms of virtue ("the
self-preservative measure and weapon of success of a certain class of
man").
The principle of _love_ comes from the small community of Jewish
people: a _very passionate_ soul glows here, beneath the ashes of
humility and wretchedness: it is neither Greek, Indian, nor German. The
song in praise of love which Paul wrote is not Christian; it is the
Jewish flare of that eternal flame which is Semitic. If Christianity
has done anything essentially new in a psychological sense, it is this,
that it has _increased the temperature of the soul_ among those cooler
and more noble races who were at one time at the head of affairs;
it discovered that the most wretched life could be made rich and
invaluable, by means of an elevation of the temperature of the soul....
It is easily understood that a transfer of this sort could _not_
take place among the ruling classes: the Jews and Christians were at
a disadvantage owing to their bad manners--spiritual strength and
passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing (I
become aware of these bad manners while reading the New Testament). It
was necessary to be related both in baseness and sorrow with this type
of lower manhood in order to feel anything attractive in him.... The
attitude a man maintains towards the New Testament is a test of the
amount of taste he may have for the classics (see Tacitus); he who is
not revolted by it, he who does not feel honestly and deeply that he is
in the presence of a sort of _fœda superstitio_ when reading it, and
who does not draw his hand back so as not to soil his fingers--such a
man does not know what is classical. A man must feel about "the cross"
as Goethe did.[1]
[Footnote 1:
Vieles kann ich ertragen. Die meisten beschwerlichen Dinge
Duld' ich mit ruhigem Mut, wie es ein Gott mir gebeut.
Wenige sind mir jedoch wie Gift und Schlange zuwider;
Viere: Rauch des Tabaks, Wanzen, und Knoblauch und
Goethe's _Venetian Epigrams,_ No. 67.
Much can I bear. Things the most irksome
I endure with such patience as comes from a god.
Four things, however, repulse me like venom:--Tobacco
smoke, garlic, bugs, and the cross.
(TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.)
]
176.
_The reaction of paltry people_:--Love provides the feeling of highest
power. It should be understood to what extent, not man in general, but
only a certain kind of man is speaking here.
"We are godly in love, we shall be 'the children of God'; God loves us
and wants nothing from us save love"; that is to say: all morality,
obedience, and action, do not produce the same feeling of power and
freedom as love does;--a man does nothing wicked from sheer love, but
he does much more than if he were prompted by obedience and virtue
alone.
Here is the happiness of the herd, the communal feeling in big things
as in small, the living sentiment of unity felt as the _sum of the
feeling of life._ Helping, caring for, and being useful, constantly
kindle the feeling of power; visible success, the expression of
pleasure, emphasise the feeling of power; pride is not lacking either,
it is felt in the form of the community, the House of God, and the
"chosen people."
As a matter of fact, man has once more experienced an "_altération" of
his personality_: this time he called his feeling of love--God. The
awakening of such a feeling must be pictured; it is a sort of ecstasy,
a strange language, a "Gospel"--it was this newness which did not
allow man to attribute love to himself--he thought it was God leading
him on and taking shape in his heart. "God descends among men," one's
neighbour is transfigured and becomes a God (in so far as he provokes
the sentiment of love), _Jesus is the neighbour,_ the moment He is
transfigured in thought into a God, and into a cause _provoking the
feeling of power._
177.
Believers are aware that they owe an infinite amount to Christianity,
and therefore conclude that its Founder must have been a man of the
first rank.... This conclusion is false, but it is typical of the
reverents. Regarded objectively, it is, _in the first place,_ just
possible that they are mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to
Christianity: a man's convictions prove nothing concerning the thing
he is convinced about, and in religions they are more likely to give
rise to suspicions.... Secondly, it is possible that the debt owing
to Christianity is not due to its Founder at all, but to the whole
structure, the whole thing--to the Church, etc. The notion "Founder"
is so very equivocal, that it may stand even for the accidental
cause of a movement: the person of the Founder has been inflated in
proportion as the Church has grown: but even this process of veneration
allows of the conclusion that, at one time or other, this Founder was
something exceedingly insecure and doubtful--in the beginning.... Let
any one think of the _free and easy way_ in which Paul treats the
problem of the personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with it:
some one who died, who was seen after His death,--some one whom the
Jews delivered up to death--all this was only the theme--_Paul_ wrote
the music to it.
178.
The founder of a religion _may_ be quite insignificant--a wax vesta and
no _more_!
179.
_Concerning the psychological problem of Christianity.--The driving
forces are_: resentment, popular insurrection, the revolt of the
bungled and the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is not _born_
of _resentment._ It rather combats resentment because the latter leads
to _action_!)
This party, which stands for freedom, understands that the _abandonment
of antagonism in thought and deed_ is a condition of distinction and
preservation. Here lies the psychological difficulty which has stood in
the way of Christianity being understood: the force which created it,
urges to a struggle against itself.
Only as a party standing _for peace_ and _innocence_ can this
insurrectionary movement hope to be successful: it must conquer by
means of excessive mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts
are aware of this. The _feat_ was to deny and condemn the force, of
which man is the expression, and to press the reverse of that force
continually to the fore, by word and deed.
180.
_The pretence of youthfulness._--It is a mistake to imagine that,
with Christianity, an ingenuous and youthful people rose against an
old culture; the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels of
society, where Christianity flourished and shot its roots, that the
more profound source of life gushed forth afresh: but nothing can
be understood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be supposed
that it was the expression of revived youth among a people, or of
the resuscitated strength of a race. It is rather a typical form
of decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria, amid a general
hotch-potch of races and people that had lost all aims and had grown
weary and sick. The wonderful company which gathered round this
master-seducer of the populace, would not be at all out of place in a
Russian novel: all the diseases of the nerves seem to give one another
a rendezvous in this crowd--the absence of a known duty, the feeling
that everything is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer worth
while, and that contentment lies in _dolce far niente_.
The power and certainty of the future in the Jew's instinct, its
monstrous will for life and for power, lies in its ruling classes; the
people who upheld primitive Christianity are best distinguished by this
_exhausted condition_ of their instincts. On the one hand, they are
sick of everything; on the other, they are content with each other,
with themselves and for themselves.
181.
Christianity regarded as _emancipated Judaism_ (just as a nobility
which is both racial and indigenous ultimately emancipates itself from
these conditions, and _goes in search of_ kindred elements....).
(1) As a Church (community) on the territory of the State, as an
unpolitical institution.
(2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living.
(3) As a _religion of sin_ (sin committed against _God, being the
only recognised kind,_ and the only cause of all suffering), with a
universal cure for it. There is no sin save against God; what is done
against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon, nor call to account,
except in the name of God. At the same time, all commandments (love):
everything is associated with God, and all acts are performed according
to God's will. Beneath this arrangement there lies exceptional
intelligence (a very narrow life, such as that led by the Esquimaux,
can only be endured by most peaceful and indulgent people: the
Judæo-Christian dogma turns against sin in favour of the "sinner").
182.
The Jewish priesthood understood how to present everything it claimed
to be right as a _divine precept,_ as an act of obedience to God, and
also to introduce all those things which conduced to _preserve Israel_
and were the _conditions_ of its existence (for instance: the large
number of "_works_": circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as the
very pivot of the national conscience), not as Nature, but as God.
_This process continued; within the very heart_ of Judaism, where the
need of these "works" was not felt (that is to say, as a means of
keeping a race distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose
bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of "noble nature"; a
sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to throw its opposite
into strong relief, attaches value, not to the "dutiful acts"
themselves, but to the sentiment....
At bottom, the problem was once again, how to make a certain kind of
soul _prevail_: it was also _a popular insurrection in the midst of
a priestly people_--a pietistic movement coming from below (sinners,
publicans, women, and children). Jesus of Nazareth was the symbol of
their sect. And again, in order to believe in themselves, they were in
need of a _theological transfiguration_: they require nothing less than
"the Son of God" in order to create a belief for themselves. And just
as the priesthood had falsified the whole history of Israel, another
attempt was made, here, to _alter and falsify_ the whole history of
mankind in such a way as to make Christianity seem like the most
important event it contained. This movement could have originated only
upon the soil of Judaism, the main feature of which was the confounding
of _guilt with sorrow_ and the reduction of all _sin_ to _sin against
God._ Of all this, Christianity is the _second degree of power._
183.
The symbolism of Christianity is based upon that of _Judaism,_ which
had already transfigured all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and
artificial unreality--which refused to recognise real history, and
which showed no more interest in a natural course of things.
184.
The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after two of their castes--the
warrior and the agricultural castes, had disappeared from their midst.
In this sense they are the "castrated people": they have their priests
and then--their Chandala....
How easily a disturbance occurs among them--an insurrection of their
Chandala. This was the origin of _Christianity._
Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of warriors except as
their masters, they introduced enmity towards the nobles, the men
of honour, pride, and power, and the _ruling_ classes, into their
religion: they are pessimists from _indignation...._
Thus they created a very important and novel position: the priests in
the van of the Chandala--against the _noble classes...._
Christianity was the logical conclusion of this movement: even in the
Jewish priesthood, it still scented the existence of the caste, of the
privileged and noble minority--_it therefore did away with priests._
Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes the priest ... the
Chandala who redeems himself....
That is why the _French_ Revolution is the lineal descendant and the
continuator of _Christianity--_ it is characterised by an instinct of
hate towards castes, nobles, and the last privileges.
185.
The "_Christian Ideal_" put on the stage with Jewish astuteness--these
are the fundamental _psychological forces_ of its "nature":--
Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers;
The attempt to make those virtues which facilitate the _happiness of
the lowly,_ a standard of all values--in fact, to call _God_ that which
is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man
possessed of least vitality;
Obedience and absolute _abstention_ from war and resistance, justified
by this ideal;
The love of one another as a result of the love of God.
_The trick_: The _denial_ of all _natural mobilia,_ and their
transference to the spiritual world beyond ... the exploitation of
_virtue_ and its _veneration_ for wholly interested motives, gradual
_denial_ of virtue in everything that is not Christian.
186.
The _profound contempt_ with which the Christian was treated by
the noble people of antiquity, is of the same order as the present
instinctive aversion to Jews: it is the hatred which free and
self-respecting classes feel towards those _who wish to creep
in secretly,_ and who combine an awkward bearing with foolish
self-sufficiency.
The New Testament is the gospel of a completely _ignoble_ species of
man; its pretensions to highest values--_yea, to all_ values, is, as a
matter of fact, revolting--even nowadays.
187.
How little the subject matters! It is the spirit which gives the thing
life! What a quantity of stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that
chatter about "redemption," "love," "blessedness," "faith," "truth,"
"eternal life"! Let any one look into a really pagan book and compare
the two; for instance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said,
desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted Christian estimate,
is not sin, or even deadly sin. And yet how happy one feels with the
purer air, the superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the
free overflowing strength which is certain of the future! In the whole
of the New Testament there is not one _bouffonnerie_: but that fact
alone would suffice to refute any book....
188.
The _profound lack of dignity_ with which all life, which is not
Christian, is condemned: it does not suffice them to think meanly of
their actual opponents, they cannot do with less than a general slander
of everything that is not _themselves...._ An abject and crafty soul is
in the most perfect harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness the
early Christians.
The _future_: they see that _they are heavily paid for it.... Theirs is
the muddiest kind of spirit that exists._ The whole of Christ's life is
so arranged as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures: He behaves
in such wise _in order that_ they may be right....
189.
The deceptive interpretation of the words, the doings, and the
condition of _dying people_; the natural fear of death, for instance,
is systematically confounded with the supposed fear of what is to
happen "after death." ...
190.
The _Christians_ have done exactly what the Jews did before them.
They introduced what they conceived to be an innovation and a thing
necessary to self-preservation into their Master's teaching, and wove
His life into it They likewise credited Him with all the wisdom of a
maker of proverbs--_in short,_ they represented their everyday life and
activity as an act of obedience, and thus sanctified their propaganda.
What it all depends upon, may be gathered from Paul: it is _not much._
What remains is the development of a type of saint, out of the values
which these people regarded as saintly.
The whole of the "doctrine of miracles," including the resurrection, is
the result of self-glorification on the part of the community, which
ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed to itself, but in a
higher degree (or, better still, it derived its strength from Him....)
191.
The Christians have never led the life which Jesus commanded them to
lead, and the impudent fable of the "justification by faith," and its
unique and transcendental significance, is only the result of the
Church's lack of courage and will in acknowledging those "_works_"
which Jesus commanded.
The Buddhist behaves differently from the non-Buddhist; but _the
Christian behaves as all the rest of the world does,_ and possesses a
Christianity of ceremonies and _states of the soul._
The profound and contemptible falsehood of Christianity in Europe makes
us deserve the contempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese....
Let any one listen to the words of the first German statesman,
concerning that which has preoccupied Europe for the last forty years.
192.
"_Faith_" or "_works_"?--But that the "works," the habit of particular
works may engender a certain _set of values or thoughts,_ is just as
natural as it would be unnatural for "works" to proceed from mere
valuations. Man must practise, _not_ how to strengthen feelings of
value, but how to strengthen action: first of all, one must be able
_to do something...._ Luther's Christian Dilettantism. Faith is an
asses' bridge. The background consists of a profound conviction on
the part of Luther and his peers, that they are enabled to accomplish
Christian "works," a personal fact, disguised under an extreme doubt
as to whether _all_ action is not sin and devil's work, so that the
worth of life depends upon isolated and highly-strained conditions of
_inactivity_ (prayer, effusion, etc.).--Ultimately, Luther would be
right: the instincts which are expressed by the whole bearing of the
reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only in _turning absolutely
away_ from themselves, and in becoming absorbed in the _opposite_ of
themselves, only by means of an _illusion_ ("faith") was existence
endurable to them.
193.
"What was to be done in order to believe?"--an absurd question. That
which is wrong with Christianity is, that it does none of the things
that Christ _commanded._
It is a mean life, but _seen_ through the eye of contempt.
194.
The entrance into the _real_ life--_a man saves his own life by living
the life of the multitude._
195.
Christianity has become something fundamentally different from what
its Founder wished it to be. It is the great _anti-pagan movement_ of
antiquity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching, and "words"
of the Founder of Christianity, but interpreted quite _arbitrarily,_
according to a scheme embodying _profoundly different needs_:
translated into the language of all the _subterranean religions_ then
existing.
It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus wished to bring the peace
and the happiness of the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the
weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the oppressed.
Its mortal enemies are (1) _Power,_ whether in the form of character,
intellect, or taste, and "worldliness"; (2) the "good cheer" of
classical times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride, eccentric
dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage, Greek refinement in
manners, words, and form. Its mortal enemy is as much the _Roman_ as
the _Greek._
The attempt on the part of _anti-paganism_ to establish itself on
a philosophical basis, and to make its tenets possible: it shows a
taste for the ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above all for
Plato, who was, more than any other, an anti-Hellene and Semite in
instinct.... It also shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially
the work of Semites ("dignity" is regarded as severity, law; virtue
is held to be greatness, self-responsibility, authority, greatest
sovereignty over oneself--this is Semitic.) The Stoic is an Arabian
sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.
196.
Christianity only resumes the fight which had already been begun
against the _classical_ ideal and _noble_ religion.
As a matter of fact, the whole process of _transformation_ is only
an adaptation to the needs and to the level of intelligence of
_religious_ masses then existing:--those masses which believed in
Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and the "great mother," and which demanded
the following things of a religion: (1) hopes of a beyond, (2) the
bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrifice (the mystery), (3) holy
legend and the redeeming _deed,_ (4) asceticism, denial of the
world, superstitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part of
the community. In short, Christianity everywhere fitted the already
prevailing and increasing _anti-pagan tendency_--those cults which
Epicurus combated,--or more exactly, those _religions proper to the
lower herd, women, slaves, and ignoble classes._