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Christianity's Origin
Christianity as antiquity.-- When we hear the ancient bells growling
on a Sunday
morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified
two
thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a
claim is
lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected
into our times
from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas
one is
otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most
ancient piece of
this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage
who bids
men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the
impending
end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious
sacrifice;
someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous
interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god;
fear of a
beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol
in a time
that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross -- how
ghoulishly all
this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe
that such
things are still believed?
from Nietzsche's Human,
all too Human, s.405, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally,
life's nausea
and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed
up as, faith in
"another" or "better" life.
from Nietzsche's
The Birth of Tragedy, p.23, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Change of Cast. -- As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as
its opponents
all those who would have been its first disciples.
from Nietzsche's Human,
all too Human, s.118, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Blind pupils. -- As long as a man knows very well the strength and weaknesses
of
his teaching, his art, his religion, its power is still slight. The
pupil and apostle
who, blinded by the authority of the master and by the piety he feels
toward him,
pays no attention to the weaknesses of a teaching, a religion, and
soon usually has
for that reason more power than the master. The influence of a man
has never yet
grown great without his blind pupils. To help a perception to achieve
victory often
means merely to unite it with stupidity so intimately that the weight
of the latter
also enforces the victory of the former.
from Nietzsche's Human,
all too Human, s.122, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
The first Christian. All the world still believes in the authorship
of the "Holy
Spirit" or is at least still affected by this belief: when one opens
the Bible one does
so for "edification."... That it also tells the story of one of the
most ambitious and
obtrusive of souls, of a head as superstitious as it was crafty, the
story of the
apostle Paul--who knows this , except a few scholars? Without this
strange story,
however, without the confusions and storms of such a head, such a soul,
there
would be no Christianity...
That the ship of Christianity threw overboard a good deal of its Jewish
ballast,
that it went, and was able to go, among the pagans--that was due to
this one man,
a very tortured, very pitiful, very unpleasant man, unpleasant even
to himself. He
suffered from a fixed idea--or more precisely, from a fixed, ever-present,
never-resting question: what about the Jewish law? and particularly
the fulfilment
of this law? In his youth he had himself wanted to satisfy it, with
a ravenous
hunger for this highest distinction which the Jews could conceive -
this people
who were propelled higher than any other people by the imagination
of the
ethically sublime, and who alone succeeded in creating a holy god together
with
the idea of sin as a transgression against this holiness. Paul became
the fanatical
defender of this god and his law and guardian of his honour; at the
same time, in
the struggle against the transgressors and doubters, lying in wait
for them, he
became increasingly harsh and evilly disposed towards them, and inclined
towards
the most extreme punishments. And now he found that--hot-headed, sensual,
melancholy, malignant in his hatred as he was-- he was himself unable
to fulfill
the law; indeed, and this seemed strangest to him, his extravagant
lust to domineer
provoked him continually to transgress the law, and he had to yield
to this thorn.
Is it really his "carnal nature" that makes him transgress again and
again? And not
rather, as he himself suspected later, behind it the law itself, which
must
constantly prove itself unfulfillable and which lures him to transgression
with
irresistible charm? But at that time he did not yet have this way out.
He had
much on his conscience - he hints at hostility, murder, magic, idolatry,
lewdness,
drunkenness, and pleasure in dissolute carousing - and... moments came
when he
said to himself:"It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled
law cannot be
overcome."... The law was the cross to which he felt himself nailed:
how he hated
it! how he searched for some means to annihilate it--not to fulfill
it any more
himself!
And finally the saving thought struck him,... "It is unreasonable to
persecute this
Jesus! Here after all is the way out; here is the perfect revenge;
here and nowhere
else I have and hold the annihilator of the law!"... Until then the
ignominious
death had seemed to him the chief argument against the Messianic claim
of which
the new doctrine spoke: but what if it were necessary to get rid of
the law?
The tremendous consequences of this idea, of this solution of the riddle,
spin
before his eyes; at one stroke he becomes the happiest man; the destiny
of the
Jews--no, of all men--seems to him to be tied to this idea, to this
second of its
sudden illumination; he has the thought of thoughts, the key of keys,
the light of
lights; it is around him that all history must revolve henceforth.
For he is from
now on the teacher of the annihilation of the law...
This is the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity. Until then
there were only a
few Jewish sectarians.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s.68, Walter Kaufmann transl.
The persecutor of God. -- Paul thought up the idea and Calvin rethought
it, that
for innumerable people damnation has been decreed from eternity, and
that this
beautiful world plan was instituted to reveal the glory of God: heaven
and hell and
humanity are thus supposed to exist - to satisfy the vanity of God!
What cruel and
insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought
this up first,
or second. Paul has remained Saul after all - the persecutor of God.
from Nietzsche's The Wanderer
and his Shadow, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Christianity's Nature
The everyday Christian. -- If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God,
universal
sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation
were true,
it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to
become a
priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely
on one's own
salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of ones eternal advantage
for the sake
of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any
rate believed
true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a
man who really
cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual
imbecility
does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises
to punish
him.
from Nietzsche's Human,
all too Human, s.116, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
What a crude intellect is good for.-- The Christian church is an encyclopaedia
of
prehistoric cults and conceptions of the most diverse origin, and that
is why it is
so capable of proselytizing: it always could, and it can still go wherever
it pleases
and it always found, and always finds something similar to itself to
which it can
adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning. It is
not what is
Christian in it, but the universal heathen character of its usages,
which has
favoured the spread of this world-religion; its ideas, rooted in both
the Jewish and
the Hellenic worlds, have from the first known how to raise themselves
above
national and racial niceties and exclusiveness as though these were
merely
prejudices. One may admire this power of causing the most various elements
to
coalesce, but one must not forget the contemptible quality that adheres
to this
power: the astonishing crudeness and self-satisfiedness of the church's
intellect
during the time it was in process of formation, which permitted it
to accept any
food and to digest opposites like pebbles.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 70, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
The despairing.-- Christianity possesses the hunters instinct for all
those who can
by one means or another be brought to despair - of which only a portion
of
mankind is capable. It is constantly on their track, it lies in wait
for them. Pascal
attempted the experiment of seeing whether, with the aid of the most
incisive
knowledge, everyone could not be brought to despair: the experiment
miscarried,
to his twofold despair.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 64, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
The compassionate Christian.-- The reverse side of Christian compassion
for the
suffering of one's neighbour is a profound suspicion of all the joy
of one's
neighbour, of his joy in all that he wants to do and can.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 80, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Doubt as sin.-- Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle
and declared
even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without
reason, by a
miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least
ambiguous of
elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps
exists for
something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our
amphibious
nature- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation
of belief and all
reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted
are blindness
and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason
has drowned.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 89, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Other fears, other securities.-- Christianity had brought into life
a quite novel and
limitless perilousness, and therewith quite novel securities, pleasures,
recreations
and evaluations of all things. Our century denies this perilousness,
and does so
with a good conscience: and yet it continues to drag along with it
the old habits of
Christian security, Christian enjoyment, recreation, evaluation! It
even drags them
into its noblest arts and philosophies! How worn out and feeble, how
insipid and
awkward, how arbitrarily fanatical and, above all, how insecure all
this must
appear, now that the fearful antithesis to it, the omnipresent fear
of the Christian
for his eternal salvation, has been lost.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 57, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Christianity's Destiny
But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion
has satisfied
and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can
be
weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress
of
mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for
ones
salvation - all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason
and deserving,
not satisfaction, but obliteration.
from Nietzsche's
Human, all too Human, s.27, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Destiny of Christianity. -- Christianity came into existence in order
to lighten the
heart; but now it has first to burden the heart so as afterwards to
be able to lighten
it. Consequently it shall perish.
from Nietzsche's Human,
all too Human, s.119, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
At the deathbed of Christianity.-- Really unreflective people are now
inwardly
without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of
the
intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say
marvellously
simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything
in a manner
that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes
from us our
virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and
there is no
reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in
short, resignation
and modest demands elevated to godhead - that is the best and most
vital thing
that still remains of Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity
has thus
crossed over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much 'God, freedom
and
immortality' that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition,
and
the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of
disposition
prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 92, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a
cave - a
tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men,
there
may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will
be shown.
-And we- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.108, Walter Kaufmann transl.