—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.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (44)

The “law,” the “will of God,” the “holy book,” and “inspiration”—all these things are merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his power,—these concepts are to be found at the bottom of all priestly organizations, and of all priestly or priestly-philosophical schemes of governments. The “holy lie”—common alike to Confucius, to the Code of Manu, to Mohammed and to the Christian church—is not even wanting in Plato. “Truth is here”: this means, no matter where it is heard, the priest lies....

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (55)

It will be a marvellous thing — the true personality of man — when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ was one.

‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply ‘Be thyself.’ That is the secret of Christ.

— Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism

When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant, was this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.’

— Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism

It is to be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says to him, ‘You should give up private property. It hinders you from realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.’ To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.

— Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism

There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said that her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because her love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly perfumes on his hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said that it was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or something of that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.

Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and community in a very marked form. ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ was his terrible answer. He would allow no claim whatsoever to be made on personality.

And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. Father Damien was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such service he realised fully what was best in him. But he was not more Christlike than Wagner when he realised his soul in music; or than Shelley, when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type for man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

— Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism

158.

One should not confuse Christianity as a historical reality with that one root that its name calls to mind: the other roots from which it has grown up have been far more powerful. It is an unexampled misuse of words when such manifestations of decay and abortions as “Christian church,” “Christian faith” and “Christian life” label themselves with that holy name. What did Christ deny? Everything that is today called Christian.

159.

The entire Christian teaching as to what shall be believed, the entire Christian “truth,” is idle falsehood and deception: and precisely the opposite of what inspired the Christian movement in the beginning.

Precisely that which is Christian in the ecclesiastical sense is anti-Christian in essence: things and people instead of symbols; history instead of eternal facts; forms, rites, dogmas instead of a way of life. Utter indifference to dogmas, cults, priests, church, theology is Christian.

The Christian way of life is no more a fantasy than the Buddhist way of life: it is a means to being happy.

160.

Jesus starts directly with the condition the “Kingdom of Heaven” in the heart, and he does not find the means to it in the observances of the Jewish church; the reality of Judaism itself (its need to preserve itself) he regards as nothing; he is purely inward.—

He likewise ignores the entire system of crude formalities governing intercourse with God: he opposes the whole teaching of repentance and atonement; he demonstrates how one must live in order to feel “deified”—and how one will not achieve it through repentance and contrition for one’s sins: “Sin is of no account” is his central judgment.

Sin, repentance, forgiveness—none of this belongs here—it is acquired from Judaism, or it is pagan.

161.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart (—it is said of children “for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven”) : Not something “above the earth.” The Kingdom of God does not “come” chronologically-historically, on a certain day in the calendar, something that might be here one day but not the day before: it is an “inward change in the individual,” something that comes at every moment and at every moment has not yet arrived—

162.

The thief on the Cross:—When even the criminal undergoing a painful death declares: “the way this Jesus suffers and dies, without rebelling, without enmity, graciously, resignedly, is the only right way,” he has affirmed the gospel: and with that he is in Paradise—

163.

Neither by deeds nor in your heart should you resist him who harms you.

You should admit of no ground for divorcing your wife.

You should make no distinction between strangers and neighbors, foreigners and fellow countrymen.

You should be angry with no one, you should show contempt to no one. Give alms in secret. You should not want to become rich. You should not swear. You should not judge. You should be reconciled with foes; you should forgive. Do not pray publicly.

“Bliss” is not something promised: it is there if you live and act in such and such a way.

164.

The entire prophet and miracle-worker attitude, the anger, the calling down of judgment is a dreadful corruption (e.g., Mark 6:11. 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. 21:18): 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 forever.” And presently the fig tree withered away.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

“As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labor.

Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. The time during which the laborer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labor-power he has purchased of him.”

— Karl Marx, Capital (Vol I) (Ch. 10, §1)

Capitalists are capital personified

165.

In a quite absurd way, the doctrine of reward and punishment has been crowded in: everything has thereby been ruined.

In the same way, the practice of the first ecclesia militans [militant church], of the apostle and his attitude, has been represented in a quite falsifying way as commanded, as predetermined—.

The subsequent glorification of the actual life and teaching of the first Christians: as if it had all been prescribed and the prenoscription merely followed—

And as for the fulfillment of prophesies: what a mass of falsification and forgery!

166.

Jesus opposed the commonplace life with a real life, a life in truth: nothing was further from him than the stupid nonsense of an “eternalized Peter,” an eternal personal survival. What he fights against is this exaggerated inflation of the “person”: how can he desire to eternize precisely that?

In the same way he fights against hierarchy within the community: he does not promise that reward shall be proportionate to performance: how can he have meant punishment and reward in the beyond!

167.

Christianity: a naive beginning to a Buddhistic peace movement in the very seat of ressentiment — but reversed by Paul into a pagan mystery doctrine, which finally learns to treat with the entire state organization — and wages war, condemns, tortures, swears, hates.

Paul starts from the need for a mystery felt by the broad, religiously excited masses: he seeks a sacrifice, a bloody phantasmagoria which will stand up in competition with the images of the mystery cults: God on the cross, blood-drinking, the unio mystica with the “sacrifice.”

He seeks to bring the afterlife (the blissful, atoned afterlife of the individual soul) as resurrection into a causal relationship with that sacrifice (after the type of Dionysus, Mithras, Osiris).

He needs to bring the concept guilt and atonement into the foreground, not a new way of life (as Jesus himself had demonstrated and lived) but a new cult, a new faith, a faith in a miraculous transformation (“redemption” through faith).

He understood what the pagan world had the greatest need of, and from the facts of Christ’s life and death made a quite arbitrary selection, giving everything a new accentuation, shifting the emphasis everywhere—he annulled primitive Christianity as a matter or principle—

The attempt to destroy priests and theologians culminated, thanks to Paul, in a new priesthood and theology—in a new ruling order and a church.

The attempt to destroy the exaggerated inflation of the “person” culminated in faith in the “eternal person” (in concern for “eternal salvation”—), in the most paradoxical excess of personal egoism.

This is the humor of the situation, a tragic humor: Paul re-erected on a grand scale precisely that which Christ had annulled through his way of living. At last, when the church was complete, it sanctioned even the existence of the state.

168.

—The church is precisely that against which Jesus preached—and against which he taught his disciples to fight—

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

169.

A god who died for our sins: redemption through faith; resurrection after death—all these are counterfeits of true Christianity for which that disastrous wrong-headed fellow [Paul] must be held responsible.

The exemplary life consists of love and humility; in a fullness of heart that does not exclude even the lowliest; in a formal repudiation of maintaining one’s rights, of self-defense, of victory in the sense of personal triumph; in faith in blessedness here on earth, in spite of distress, opposition and death; in reconciliation; in the absence of anger; not wanting to be rewarded; not being obliged to anyone; the completest spiritual-intellectual independence; a very proud life beneath the will to a life of poverty and service.

After the church had let itself be deprived of the entire Christian way of life and had quite specifically sanctioned life under the state, that form of life that Jesus had combatted and condemned, it had to find the meaning of Christianity in something else: in faith in unbelievable things, in the ceremonial of prayers, worship, feasts, etc. The concept “sin,” “forgiveness,” "reward”—all quite unimportant and virtually excluded from primitive Christianity—now comes into the foreground.

An appalling mishmash of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism; continual judging and condemning; order of rank, etc.

174.

The Christian-Jewish life: here ressentiment did not predominate. Only the great persecutions could have developed this passion to this extent—the ardor of love as well as that of hatred.

When one sees one’s dearest sacrificed for one’s faith, one becomes aggressive; we owe the triumph of Christianity to its persecutors.

The asceticism in Christianity is not specifically Christian: this is what Schopenhauer misunderstood: it only makes inroads into Christianity wherever asceticism also exists apart from Christianity.

Hypochondriac Christianity, the torturing and vivisection of the conscience, is in the same way only characteristic of a certain soil in which Christian values have taken root: it is not Christianity itself. Christianity has absorbed diseases of all kinds from morbid soil: one can only reproach it for its inability to guard against any infection. But that precisely is its essence: Christianity is a type of decadence.

191.

Christians have never put into practice the acts Jesus prescribed for them, and the impudent chatter about “justification by faith” and its unique and supreme significance is only the consequence of the church’s lack of courage and will to confess the works which Jesus demanded.

The Buddhist acts differently from the non-Buddhist; the Christian acts as all the world does and possesses a Christianity of ceremonies and moods.

193.

“What to do in order to believe?”—an absurd question. What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done.

It is the mean life, but interpreted through the eye of contempt.

195.

“Christianity” has become something fundamentally different from what its founder did and desired. It is the great antipagan movement of antiquity, formulated through the employment of the life, teaching and “words” of the founder of Christianity but interpreted in an absolutely arbitrary way after the pattern of fundamentally different needs: translated into the language of every already existing subterranean religion—

It is the rise of pessimism (—while Jesus wanted to bring peace and the happiness of lambs): and moreover the pessimism of the weak, the inferior, the suffering, the oppressed.

Its mortal enemy is (1) power in character, spirit and taste; “worldliness”; (2) classical “happiness,” the noble levity and skepticism, the hard pride, the eccentric intemperance and the cool self-sufficiency of the sage, Greek refinement in gesture, word, and form. Its mortal enemy is the Roman just as much as the Greek.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

The struggle against the “old faith” as undertaken by Epicurus was, in a strict sense, a struggle against pre-existing Christianity—a struggle against the old world grown senile and sick, already gloomy, moralized, soured by feelings of guilt.

Not the “moral corruption” of antiquity, but precisely its moralization is the prerequisite through which alone Christianity could become master of it. Moral fanaticism (in short: Plato) destroyed paganism, by revaluing its values and poisoning its innocence.—

We ought finally to understand that what was then destroyed was higher than what became master!—

Christianity has grown out of psychological decay, could only take root in decayed soil.

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (438)

The warlike and the peaceful. — Are you a human with the instincts of a warrior in your system? If so, a second question arises: are you by instinct a warrior of attack or a warrior of defense? The remainder of mankind, all that is not warlike by instinct, wants peace, wants concord, wants ‘freedom,’ wants ‘equal rights’: these are only different names and stages of the same thing. To go where one has no need to defend oneself—such people become dissatisfied with themselves if they are obliged to offer resistance: they want to create conditions in which there is no longer war of any kind. If the worst comes to the worst, to submit, obey, acquiesce: anything is better than waging war — thus, e.g., does a Christian’s instinct counsel him. In the case of the born warrior, there is something like armament in his character, in his choice of states, in the development of every quality: in the first type, it is the ‘weapon’ that is developed best, in the latter the armor.

The unarmed, the unarmored: what expedients and virtues they need in order to endure—to triumph.

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (923)

In Summa: domination of the passions, not their weakening or extirpation! — The greater the dominating power of a will, the more freedom may the passions be allowed.

The “great human” is great owing to the free play and scope of his desires and to the yet greater power that knows how to press these magnificent monsters into service.

Education [Erziehung]: essentially the means of ruining the exceptions for the good of the rule. Higher education [Bildung]: essentially the means of directing taste against the exceptions for the good of the mediocre.

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (933)

Man hasst mehr, plötzlicher [...] als Patriot als als Individuum; man opfert schneller sich für die Familie als für sich: oder für eine Kirche, Partei. Ehre ist das stärkste Gefühl für Viele d.h. ihre Schätzung ihrer selber ordnet sich der Schätzung Anderer unter und begehrt von dort seine Sanktion.

One hates more, more suddenly ... as a patriot than as an individual; one sacrifices oneself more quickly for the family than for oneself: or for a church, a party. Honor is the strongest feeling for many, i.e., their esteem of themselves is subordinated to the esteem of others and from there they seek its sanction.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente (1881) (11[130])

Der freieste Mensch hat das größte Machtgefühl über sich, das größte Wissen über sich, die größte Ordnung im notwendigen Kampf seiner Kräfte, die verhältnismäßig größte Unabhängigkeit seiner einzelnen Kräfte, den verhältnismäßig größten Kampf in sich: er ist das zwieträchtigste Wesen und das wechselreichste und das langlebendste und das überreich begehrende, sich nährende, das am meisten von sich ausscheidende und sich erneuernde.

The freest human has the greatest sense of power over himself, the greatest knowledge of himself, the greatest order in the necessary struggle of his powers, the proportionately greatest independence of his individual powers, the proportionately greatest struggle within himself: he is the most ambivalent being and the most changeable and the longest-lived and the most abundantly desiring, nourishing, the most self-shedding and renewing.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente (1881) (11[130])

Love. — Love forgives the beloved even his lust.

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (62)

Will and willingness. — Someone took a youth to a wise man and said: “Look, he is being corrupted by women!” The wise man shook his head and smiled. “It is men who corrupt women”, he exclaimed, “and the failings of women should be atoned for and set right in men – for man makes for himself the image [Bild] of woman, and woman shapes herself [bildet sich] according to this image [Bild]”. “You are too gentle towards women”, said one in the company; “you do not know them!” The wise man replied, “The way of men is will; the way of women is willingness – that is the law of the sexes; truly a hard law for women! All human beings are innocent of their existence; women, however, are doubly innocent. Who could have oil and mercy enough for them?” “Forget oil! Forget gentleness!” shouted someone else from the crowd; “one has to raise women better!” “One has to raise men better”, said the wise man and beckoned to the youth to follow him. – But the youth did not follow him.

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (68)

Capacity for revenge. — That someone cannot defend himself and therefore also does not want to – this is not enough to disgrace him in our eyes; but we have a low regard for anyone who has neither the capacity nor the good will for revenge – regardless of whether it is a man or a woman. Would a woman be able to hold us (or “enthrall” us, as they say) if we did not consider her able under certain circumstances to wield a dagger deftly (any kind of dagger) against us? Or against herself – which in certain cases would be the more severe revenge (Chinese revenge).

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (69)

On female chastity. — There is something quite amazing and monstrous in the upbringing of upper-class women; indeed, maybe there is nothing more paradoxical. The whole world agrees that they should be brought up as ignorant as possible about matters erotic, and that one has to impart in their souls a deep shame in the face of such things and the most extreme impatience and flight at the merest suggestion of them. Really, in this matter alone the “honour” of a woman in its entirety is at risk: what else would one not forgive them? But here they are supposed to remain ignorant deep in their hearts: they are supposed to have neither eyes, nor ears, nor words, nor thoughts for this their “evil”; yes, even knowledge is here an evil. And then to be hurled as if by a gruesome lightning bolt into reality and knowledge, with marriage – and precisely by the man they love and esteem the most: to catch love and shame in a contradiction and to have to experience all at once delight, surrender, duty, pity, terror at the unexpected proximity of god and beast, and who knows what else! There one has tied a psychic knot that may have no equal. Even the compassionate curiosity of the wisest connoisseur of human psychology [Menschenkenner] is insufficient for guessing how this or that woman manages to accommodate herself to this solution of the riddle and to this riddle of a solution, and what dreadful, far-reaching suspicions must stir in her poor, unhinged soul; indeed, how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of woman casts anchor at this point! Afterwards, the same deep silence as before, and often a silence directed at herself; she closes her eyes to herself. Young women try very hard to appear superficial and thoughtless; the most refined among them simulate a kind of impertinence. Women easily experience their men as a question-mark regarding their honour and their children as an apology or atonement – they need children and wish for them in an altogether different way from that in which a man wishes for children. In sum, one cannot be too gentle towards women!

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (71)