Nietzsche: Thoughts on Christ

Christ, and Christianity “was a revolt against ‘the good and the just’, against ‘the saints of Israel’, against the social hierarchy – not against corruption of these but against caste, privilege, the order, the social form; it was disbelief in ‘higher men’, a No uttered towards everything that was priest and theologian.”

“…the incapacity for resistance here becomes morality, blessedness in peace, in gentleness, in the inability for enmity. What are the ‘glad tidings’? True life, eternal life is found – it is not promised, it is here, it is within you: as life lived in love, in love without deduction or exclusion, without distance.”

“In the entire psychology of the ‘Gospel’ the concept guilt and punishment is lacking; likewise the concept reward. ‘Sin’, every kind of distancing relationship between God and man, is abolished – precisely this is the ‘glad tidings’. Blessedness is not promised, it is not tired to any conditions: it is the only reality – the rest is signs for speaking of it…”

“It is not a ‘belief’ which distinguishes the Christian: the Christian acts, he is distinguished by a different mode of acting. He is not angry with anyone, does not disdain anyone. He neither appears in courts of law nor claims their protection (‘not swearing’). Under no circumstances, not even in the case of proved unfaithfulness, does he divorce his wife. – All fundamentally one law, all consequences of one instinct.”

“He no longer required any formulas, any rites for communicating with God – not even prayer... A new way of living, not a new belief…”

“This ‘bringer of glad tidings’ died as he lived, as he taught – not to ‘redeem mankind’ but to demonstrate how one ought to live. What he bequeathed to mankind is his practice: his bearing before the judges, before the guards, before the accusers and every kind of calumny and mockery – his bearing on the Cross. He did not resist, he does not defend his rights, he takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him – more, he provokes it… And he entreats, he suffers, he loves with those, in those who are doing evil to him.

"Not to defend oneself, not to grow angry, not to make responsible… But not to resist even the evil man – to love him…”

“If anyone was looking for a sign that an ironical divinity was at work behind the great universal drama he would find no small support in the tremendous question-mark called Christianity. That mankind should fall on its knees before the opposite of what was the origin, the meaning, the right of the Gospel, that it should have sanctified in the concept ‘Church’ precisely what the ‘bringer of glad tidings’ regarded as beneath him, behind him – one seeks in vain a grander form of world-historical irony.”