The AntiChrist by F. W. Nietzsche - HTML preview

errors, but inventive and ingenious only in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life and to the heart—this remains a

spectacle for the gods—for those gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for example, in the

celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their disgust leaves them (—and us!) they will be thankful for the

spectacle afforded by the Christians: perhaps because of this curious exhibition alone the wretched little planet called

the earth deserves a glance from omnipotence, a show of divine interest… Therefore, let us not underestimate the

Christians: the Christian, false to the point of innocence, is far above the ape—in its application to the Christians a well–

known theory of descent becomes a mere piece of politeness…

40.

—The fate of the Gospels was decided by death—it hung on the "cross."… It was only death, that unexpected and

shameful death; it was only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only—it was only this appalling

paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: "Who was it? what was it?"—The feeling of dismay,

of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a refutation of their cause; the terrible

question, "Why just in this way?"—this state of mind is only too easy to understand. Here everything must be accounted

for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple excludes

all chance. Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: "Who put him to death? who was his natural enemy?"—this question

flashed like a lightning–stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in

revolt against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt against the established order. Until

then this militant, this nay–saying, nay–doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared

to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not understood what was precisely the most important thing of

all: the example offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of ressentiment—a plain

indication of how little he was understood at all! All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to

offer the strongest possible proof, or example, of his teachings in the most public manner… But his disciples were very

far from forgiving his death—though to have done so would have accorded with the Gospels in the highest degree; and

neither were they prepared to offer themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death… On the

contrary, it was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now possessed them. It seemed impossible

that the cause should perish with his death: "recompense" and "judgment" became necessary (—yet what could be less

evangelical than "recompense,""punishment," and "sitting in judgment"!). Once more the popular belief in the coming of a

messiah appeared in the foreground; attention was rivetted upon an historical moment: the "kingdom of God" is to come,

with judgment upon his enemies… But in all this there was a wholesale misunderstanding: imagine the "kingdom of God"

as a last act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had been, in fact, the incarnation, the fulfilment, the realization of this

"kingdom of God." It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees and theologians

began to appear in the character of the Master—he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian himself! On the

other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unbalanced souls could no longer endure the Gospel doctrine,

taught by Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children of God: their revenge took the form of elevating Jesus in an

extravagant fashion, and thus separating him from themselves: just as, in earlier times, the Jews, to revenge themselves

upon their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him on a great height. The One God and the Only

Son of God: both were products of ressentiment…

41.

—And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: "how could God allow it!" To which the deranged reason

of the little community formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity: God gave his son as a sacrifice for the

forgiveness of sins. At once there was an end of the gospels! Sacrifice for sin, and in its most obnoxious and barbarous

form: sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What appalling paganism!—Jesus himself had done away with

the very concept of "guilt," he denied that there was any gulf fixed between God and man; he lived this unity between

God and man, and that was precisely his"glad tidings"… And not as a mere privilege!—From this time forward the type of

the Saviour was corrupted, bit by bit, by the doctrine of judgment and of the second coming, the doctrine of death as a

sacrifice, the doctrine of the resurrection, by means of which the entire concept of "blessedness," the whole and only

reality of the gospels, is juggled away—in favour of a state of existence after death!… St. Paul, with that rabbinical

impudence which shows itself in all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this

way: "If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!"—And at once there sprang from the Gospels the

most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality… Paul even preached it as

a reward…

42.

One now begins to see just what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original

effort to found a Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish happiness on earth—real, not merely promised. For this

remains—as I have already pointed out—the essential difference between the two religions of décadence: Buddhism

promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.—Hard upon the heels of the

"glad tidings" came the worst imaginable: those of Paul. In Paul is incarnated the very opposite of the "bearer of glad

tidings"; he represents the genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred. What, indeed, has not

this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Saviour: he nailed him to his own cross. The life, the example, the

teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the law of the whole gospels—nothing was left of all this after that

counterfeiter in hatred had reduced it to his uses. Surely not reality; surely not historical truth!… Once more the priestly

instinct of the Jew perpetrated the same old master crime against history—he simply struck out the yesterday and the

day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the

history of Israel to another falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his achievement: all the prophets, it now

appeared, had referred to his"Saviour."… Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order to make it a

prologue to Christianity… The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death,

even the consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote contact with

reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that whole life to a place behind this existence—in the lie of the "risen"

Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed was the death on the cross, and something

more. To see anything honest in such a man as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when

he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered

from this hallucination himself—this would be a genuine niaiserie in a psychologist. Paul willed the end; therefore he also

willed the means… What he himself didn’t believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots among whom he spread

his teaching.—What he wanted was power; in Paul the priest once more reached out for power—he had use only for

such concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What

was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing priestly

tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the soul—that is to say, the doctrine of "judgment"…

43.

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond"—in nothingness—then one has taken

away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct—

henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of

suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life… Why be public–spirited? Why

take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the

common welfare, and try to serve it?… Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path."—"One

thing only is necessary"… That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an

infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots

and the three–fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf—it is

impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence.

And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph—it was thus that it

lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off–scouring of humanity to its side.

The "salvation of the soul"—in plain English: "the world revolves around me."… The poisonous doctrine, "equal rights for

all," has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has

waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first

prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization—out of the ressentiment of the masses it has

forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high–spirited on earth, against our happiness

on earth… To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble

humanity ever perpetrated.—And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon

politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable

pride in himself and his equals—for the pathos of distance… Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!—The

aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the

majority" makes and will continue to make revolutions—it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which

convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the

ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly"lowers…

44.

—The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was already persistent within the primitive community.

That which Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom merely a process of

decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind

every word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against me—that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first–rate joy

to a psychologist—as the opposite of all merely naïve corruption, as refinement par excellence, as an artistic triumph in

psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to them. Here we

are among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive

genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal "holiness" unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this

elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art—all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an

individual, or to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is race. The whole of Judaism appears in Christianity as

the art of concocting holy lies, and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish

technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. The Christian, that ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over again—

he is threefold the Jew… The underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly

practice, the instinctive repudiation of every other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and

utilities—this is not only tradition, it is inheritance: only as an inheritance is it able to operate with the force of nature. The

whole of mankind, even the best minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly human—), have permitted

themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as a book of innocence… surely no small indication of the high

skill with which the trick has been done.—Of course, if we could actually see these astounding bigots and bogus saints,

even if only for an instant, the farce would come to an end,—and it is precisely because I cannot read a word of theirs

without seeing their attitudinizing that I have made an end of them… I simply cannot endure the way they have of rolling

up their eyes.—For the majority, happily enough, books are mere literature.—Let us not be led astray: they say "judge

not," and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way. In letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in

glorifying God they glorify themselves; in demanding that every one show the virtues which they themselves happen to

be capable of—still more, which they must have in order to remain on top—they assume the grand air of men struggling

for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may prevail. "We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good" (—"the

truth,""the light,""the kingdom of God"): in point of fact, they simply do what they cannot help doing. Forced, like

hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a duty: it is on

grounds of duty that they account for their lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their

piety… Ah, that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! "Virtue itself shall bear witness for us."… One may read the

gospels as books of moral seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to morality—they know the uses of morality!

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!—The fact is that the conscious conceit of the chosen

here disguises itself as modesty: it is in this way that they, the "community," the "good and just," range themselves, once

and for always, on one side, the side of "the truth"—and the rest of mankind, "the world," on the other… In that we

observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little abortions of bigots and liars began to claim

exclusive rights in the concepts of "God,""the truth,""the light,""the spirit,""love,""wisdom" and "life," as if these things were synonyms of themselves and thereby they sought to fence themselves off from the "world"; little super–Jews, ripe for

some sort of madhouse, turned values upside down in order to meet their notions, just as if the Christian were the

meaning, the salt, the standard and even the last judgment of all the rest… The whole disaster was only made possible

by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish:

once a chasm began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo–Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self–

preservative measures that the Jewish instinct had devised, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had

employed them only against non–Jews. The Christian is simply a Jew of the "reformed" confession.—

45.

—I offer a few examples of the sort of thing these petty people have got into their heads—what they have put into the

mouth of the Master: the unalloyed creed of "beautiful souls."—

"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a

testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment,

than for that city" (Mark vi, 11)—How evangelical!…

"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged

about his neck, and he were cast into the sea" (Mark ix, 42).—How evangelical!…

"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having

two eyes to be cast into hell fire; Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." (Mark ix, 47.[ 1 5

)—]It is not

exactly the eye that is meant…

"Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the

kingdom of God come with power." (Mark ix, 1.)—Well lied, lion![ 1 6

… ]

"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For…" (Note of a

psychologist. Christian morality is refuted by its fors: its reasons are against it,—this makes it Christian.) Mark viii, 34.—

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." (Matthew vii, 1.[ 1 7

)

]

—What a notion of justice, of a "just" judge!…

"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your

brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?" (Matthew v, 46. [ 1 8

)—]Principle of

"Christian love": it insists upon being well paid in the end…

"But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matthew vi, 15.)—Very

compromising for the said "father."…

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew

vi, 33.)—All these things: namely, food, clothing, all the necessities of life. An error, to put it mildly… A bit before this God

appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases…

"Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their

fathers unto the prophets." (Luke vi, 23.)—Impudent rabble! It compares itself to the prophets…

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of

God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." (Paul, 1 Corinthians iii, 16.[ 1 9

)—]For

that sort of thing one cannot have enough contempt…

"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge

the smallest matters?" (Paul, 1 Corinthians vi, 2.)—Unfortunately, not merely the speech of a lunatic… This frightful

impostor then proceeds: "Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?"…

"Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew

not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe… Not many wise men after the flesh,

not men mighty, not many noble are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;

and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the

world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

That no flesh should glory in his presence." (Paul, 1 Corinthians i, 20ff.[ 2 0

)—]In order to understand this passage, a

first–rate example of the psychology underlying every Chandala–morality, one should read the first part of my

"Genealogy of Morals": there, for the first time, the antagonism between a noble morality and a morality born of

ressentiment and impotent vengefulness is exhibited. Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge…

46.

—What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much

filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose "early Christians" for companions as Polish Jews: not that one

need seek out an objection to them… Neither has a pleasant smell.—I have searched the New Testament in vain for a

single sympathetic touch; nothing is there that is free, kindly, open–hearted or upright. In it humanity does not even make

the first step upward—the instinct for cleanliness is lacking… Only evil instincts are there, and there is not even the

courage of these evil instincts. It is all cowardice; it is all a shutting of the eyes, a self–deception. Every other book

becomes clean, once one has read the New Testament: for example, immediately after reading Paul I took up with

delight that most charming and wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom one may say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote of

Cæsar Borgia to the Duke of Parma: "è tutto festo"—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and sound… These petty

bigots make a capital miscalculation. They attack, but everything they attack is thereby distinguished. Whoever is

attacked by an "early Christian" is surely not befouled… On the contrary, it is an honour to have an "early Christian" as

an opponent. One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses—not to speak of

the "wisdom of this world," which an impudent wind–bag tries to dispose of "by the foolishness of preaching."… Even the

scribes and pharisees are benefitted by such opposition: they must certainly have been worth something to have been

hated in such an indecent manner. Hypocrisy—as if this were a charge that the "early Christians"dared to make!—After

all, they were the privileged, and that was enough: the hatred of the Chandala needed no other excuse. The "early

Christian"—and also, I fear, the "last Christian,"whom I may perhaps live to see—is a rebel against all privilege by

profound instinct—he lives and makes war for ever for "equal rights."… Strictly speaking, he has no alternative. When a

man proposes to represent, in his own person, the "chosen of God"—or to be a "temple of God," or a "judge of the

angels"—then every other criterion, whether based upon honesty, upon intellect, upon manliness and pride, or upon

beauty and freedom of the heart, becomes simply "worldly"—evil in itself… Moral: every word that comes from the lips of

an "early Christian" is a lie, and his every act is instinctively dishonest—all his values, all his aims are noxious, but

whoever he hates, whatever he hates, has real value… The Christian, and particularly the Christian priest, is thus a

criterion of values.

—Must I add that, in the whole New Testament, there appears but a solitary figure worthy of honour? Pilate, the

Roman viceroy. To regard a Jewish imbroglio seriously—that was quite beyond him. One Jew more or less—what did it

matter?… The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom the word "truth" was shamelessly mishandled, enriched the New

Testament with the only saying that has any value—and that is at once its criticism and its destruction: "What is truth?…"

47.

—The thing that sets us apart is not that we are unable to find God, either in history, or in nature, or behind nature—but

that we regard what has been honoured as God, not as "divine," but as pitiable, as absurd, as injurious; not as a mere

error, but as a crime against life… We deny that God is God… If any one were to show us this Christian God, we’d be

still less inclined to believe in him.—In a formula: deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio.—Such a religion as

Christianity, which does not touch reality at a single point and which goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its rights

at any point, must be inevitably the deadly enemy of the "wisdom of this world," which is to say, of science—and it will

give the name of good to whatever means serve to poison, calumniate and cry down all intellectual discipline, all lucidity

and strictness in matters of intellectual conscience, and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. "Faith," as an

imperative, vetoes science—in praxi, lying at any price… Paul well knew that lying—that "faith"—was necessary; later

on the church borrowed the fact from Paul.—The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who "reduced to

absurdity""the wisdom of this world" (especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth

only an indication of Paul’s resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one’s own will the name

of God, thora—that is essentially Jewish. Paul wants to dispose of the "wisdom of this world": his enemies are the good

philologians and physicians of the Alexandrine school—on them he makes his war. As a matter of fact no man can b