The Portable Nietzsche (74 page)

“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 9:1). Well
lied,
lion!

“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
For's:
its “reasons” refute—thus is it Christian.) Mark 8:34.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. . . . With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matt. 7:1
f
.). What a conception of justice and 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?” (Matt. 5:46
f
.). The principle of “Christian love”: in the end it wants to be
paid
well.

“But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:15). Very compromising for said ‟Father.”

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). All these things: namely, food, clothing, all the necessities of life. An
error
, to put it modestly. Shortly 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 6:23).
Impertinent
rabble! They compare themselves with the prophets, no less.

“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, I Cor. 3:16
f
.). This sort of thing one cannot despise enough.

“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, I Cor. 6:2). Unfortunately not merely the talk of a lunatic. This
frightful swindler
continues literally: “Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this lifel”

“Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that the world by its wisdom knew not God in his wisdom, it pleased God by foolish preaching to make blessed them that believe in it. . . . Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to ruin the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to ruin what is strong; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and what is nothing, to bring to nought what is something: That no flesh should glory in his presence” (Paul, I Cor. 1:20
ff
.).
⁵⁰
To understand this passage, a first-rate document for the psychology of every chandala morality, one should read the first inquiry in my
Genealogy of Morals:
there the contrast between a
noble
morality and a chandala morality, born of
ressentiment
and impotent vengefulness, was brought to light for the first time. Paul was the greatest of all apostles of vengeance.

 

46

What follows from this?
That one does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this. We would no more choose the ‟first Christians” to associate with than Polish Jews—not that one even required any objection to them: they both do not smell good.

I have looked in vain through the New Testament to descry even a single sympathetic feature: there is nothing in it that is free, gracious, candid, honest. Humaneness did not even make its first beginnings here—the instincts of
cleanliness
are lacking. There are only
bad
instincts in the New Testament, and not even the courage to have these bad instincts. Everything in it is cowardice, everything is shutting-one's-eyes and self-deception. Every book becomes clean just after one has read the New Testament: to give an example, it was with utter delight that, right after Paul, I read that most graceful, most prankish mocker Petronius, of whom one might say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote to the Duke of Parma about Cesare Borgia:
è tutto festo
—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and well turned out.

For these little prigs miscalculate precisely where it matters most. They attack, but everything they attack is
distinguished
thereby. To be attacked by a “first Christian” is
not
to be soiled. On the contrary: it is an honor to be opposed by “first Christians.” One does not read the New Testament without a predilection for that which is maltreated in it—not to speak of “the wisdom of this world,” which an impudent windmaker tries in vain to ruin with “foolish preaching.”

But even the Pharisees and scribes derive an advantage from such opposition: they must have been worth something to have been hated in so indecent a manner. Hypocrisy—what a reproach in the mouths of “first Christians”! In the end, they were men of
privilege:
that is enough—chandala hatred requires no further grounds. The “first Christian”—I am afraid, the “last Christian” too,
and I may yet live to see him—
is, from his lowest instincts, a rebel against everything privileged: he lives, he fights always for
“equal rights.”
Examined more closely, he has no choice. If one wants to be “chosen by God”—or a “temple of God” or a “judge of the angels”—then any other principle of selection—for example, according to integrity, spirit, virility and pride, beauty and freedom of the heart—is merely “world,”
evil in itself
. Moral: every word in the mouth of a “first Christian” is a lie; every act he performs a falseness of instinct—all his values, all his goals are harmful; but
whomever he hates, whatever he hates, that has value.
The Christian, the priestly Christian in particular, is a
criterion of value.

Need I add that in the whole New Testament there is only a
single
figure who commands respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish affair
seriously
—he does not persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less—what does it matter? The noble scorn of a Roman, confronted with an impudent abuse of the word “truth,” has enriched the New Testament with the only saying that
has value
—one which is its criticism, even its
annihilation:
“What is truth?”

 

47

That we find no God—either in history or in nature or behind nature—is not what differentiates
us
, but that we experience what has been revered as God, not as “godlike” but as miserable, as absurd, as harmful, not merely as an error but as a
crime against life.
We deny God as God. If one were to
prove
this God of the Christians to us, we should be even less able to believe in him. In a formula:
deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio.
⁵¹

A religion like Christianity, which does not have contact with reality at any point, which crumbles as soon as reality is conceded its rights at even a single point, must naturally be mortally hostile against the “wisdom of this world,” which means
science
. It will applaud all means with which the discipline of the spirit, purity and severity in the spirit's matters of conscience, the noble coolness and freedom of the spirit, can be poisoned, slandered, brought into disrepute. “Faith” as an imperative is the
veto
against science—in practice, the lie at any price.

Paul comprehended that the lie—that “faith”—was needed; later the church in turn comprehended Paul. The “God” whom Paul invented, a god who “ruins the wisdom of the world” (in particular, philology and medicine, the two great adversaries of all superstition), is in truth merely Paul's own resolute
determination
to do this: to give the name of “God” to one's own will,
torah,
that is thoroughly Jewish. Paul
wants
to ruin the “wisdom of the world”: his enemies are the good philologists and physicians with Alexandrian training—it is they against whom he wages war. Indeed, one cannot be a philologist or physician without at the same time being an
anti-Christian.
For as a philologist one sees
behind
the “holy books”; as a physician,
behind
the physiological depravity of the typical Christian. The physician says “incurable”; the philologist, “swindle.”

 

48

Has the famous story that stands at the beginning of the Bible really been understood? the story of God's hellish fear of
science?
It has not been understood. This priestly book par excellence begins, as is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he knows only one great danger, consequently “God” knows only one great danger.

The old God, all “spirit,” all high priest, all perfection, takes a stroll in his garden; but he is bored. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He invents man—man is entertaining. But lo and behold! Man too is bored. God's compassion with the sole distress that distinguishes all paradises knows no limits: soon he creates other animals as well. God's
first
mistake: man did not find the animals entertaining; he ruled over them, he did not even want to be “animal.” Consequently God created woman. And indeed, that was the end of boredom—but of other things too! Woman was God's
second
mistake. “Woman is by nature a snake, Heve”
⁵²
—every priest knows that; “from woman comes all calamity in the world”—every priest knows that, too. “Consequently, it is from her too that
science
comes.” Only from woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.

What had happened? The old God was seized with hellish fear. Man himself had turned out to be his
greatest
mistake; he had created a rival for himself; science makes godlike—it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such—it alone is forbidden. Science is the
first
sin, the seed of all sin, the
original
sin.
This alone is morality
. ‟Thou shalt not know”—the rest follows.

God's hellish fear did not prevent him from being clever. How does one resist science? This became his main problem for a long time. Answer: out of paradise with man! Happiness, idleness, give rise to ideas—all ideas are bad ideas. Man
shall
not think. And the ‟priest-as-such” invents distress, death, the mortal danger of pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, trouble, and, above all,
sickness—
all means in the fight against science. Distress does not permit man to think. And yet—horrible!—the edifice of knowledge begins to tower, heaven-storming, suggesting twilight to the gods. What is to be done? The old God invents
war
, he divides the peoples, he fixes it so men will annihilate each other (priests have always required wars). War —among other things a great disrupter of science! Incredible! Knowledge, the
emancipation from the priest,
continues to grow in spite of wars. And the old God makes a final decision: “Man has become scientific—
there is no other way, he has to be drowned.”

 

49

I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the
whole
psychology of the priest. The priest knows only one great danger: that is science, the sound conception of cause and effect. But on the whole science prospers only under happy circumstances—there must be a
surplus
of time, of spirit, to make “knowledge” possible. “Consequently, man must be made unhappy” —this was the logic of the priest in every age.

It will now be clear what was introduced into the world for the first time, in accordance with this logic:
“sin.”
The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole “moral world order,” was invented
against
science, against the emancipation of man from the priest. Man
shall not
look outside, he shall look into himself; he
shall not
look into things cleverly and cautiously, like a learner, he shall not look at all—he shall
suffer
. And he shall suffer in such a way that he has need of the priest at all times. Away with physicians!
A Savior is needed.
The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrine of “grace,” of “redemption,” of ‟forgiveness”—
lies
through and through, and without any psychological reality—were invented to destroy man's
causal sense:
they are an attempt to assassinate cause and effect. And not an attempt to assassinate with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hatred and love! But born of the most cowardly, most cunning, lowest instincts. A
priestly
attempt! A
parasite's
attempt! A vampirism of pale, subterranean bloodsuckers!

When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer “natural,” but thought of as caused by the conceptual specters of superstition, by “God,” by “spirits,” by “souls,” as if they were merely “moral” consequences, as reward, punishment, hint, means of education, then the presupposition of knowledge has been destroyed—
then the greatest crime against humanity has been committed
. Sin, to repeat it once more, this form of man's self-violation par excellence, was invented to make science, culture, every elevation and nobility of man, impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.

 

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