52 pages • 1 hour read
Friedrich Nietzsche, Transl. H.L. MenckenThe Antichrist
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1895A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sections 42-52Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 42 Summary
Nietzsche turns his attention to both Saint Paul—the embodiment of Christian doctrine that went against Christ—and the crucifixion, saying that Paul “had no use for the life of the Savior” bar his Resurrection to cultivate the lie of eternal life and mobilize more followers. By recognizing this, Paul repositioned Christianity’s “centre of gravity” to Christ’s death (49).
Section 43 Summary
Nietzsche argues that Christianity’s “centre of gravity” being repositioned into the realm of death made it so nothing positive towards life could have any reverence.
He chastises Christianity for pushing for an “equality of souls,” as it enjoined the Hyperboreans with the masses, declaring them equal and all other realities false (50). In this way, Christianity undermined all values that might assist the Hyperboreans in elevating themselves and helping others look up to them.
Section 44 Summary
Nietzsche compares the psychological effects of the Gospels to the tactics he previously described as being key to Jewish ecclesiasticism. However, while the Jewish people based their ecclesiasticism on their separation from the rest of humanity—grounding their salvation in their race—Christianity stripped this racial focus to promote itself as separate from the exclusivity of Judaism. In using such tactics, early Christians embedded hypocrisy within their own faith.
Section 45 Summary
Nietzsche lists a specific set of passages from the Gospels, which he claims represent the hypocritical morality of Christianity.
His judgment relies on the reader’s comprehension of his earlier dialogues (with him recommending the first part of his On the Genealogy of Morality for greater comprehension), but his argument is that Paul, the scribes, and the translators of the Gospels deviously sculpted a religion that acts in supplication and piety, but is centered on the spirit of revenge and the ressentiment of the masses.
Section 46 Summary
Nietzsche uses antisemitic comparisons to criticize the New Testament as a whole, leading to the deduction that everything it loathes or deems immoral is in fact good. He declares that, in a backwards way, “the Christian […] is thus a criterion of values” (55).
He deems Pontius Pilate the only figure “worthy of honour” in the New Testament, as he scoffed at notions of “truth” in coming to his decisions (55).
Section 47 Summary
Nietzsche declares that he and the Hyperboreans are not “unable to find God,” but instead deny that “God” is God (56).
He declares that Paul’s objective was to erase reality, especially science, through faith. He also declares that the most anti-Christian of scientists are philologians—by which he means those who study human history through the lens of science—and physicians, those who study humans themselves through science.
Section 48 Summary
Nietzsche retells the story of the Garden of Eden as an allegory related to the Hyperboreans. Eden is framed as a project undertaken by God to cure his and Adam’s boredom—but through Eve, the latter began to understand science (with Nietzsche declaring womanhood as key to science). God (i.e., priests) then invented the evil hardships of the world—old age, sickness, and danger in pregnancy among others—to declare war on science via distraction.
Section 49 Summary
Nietzsche claims that once priests recognized science’s dangers to their rule, they denaturized the world by concocting “sins” to enhance humanity’s miseries and thus, heighten its dependence on faith.
Section 50 Summary
Nietzsche argues against the assumption that “faith makes blessed, therefore it is true” by pointing out that faith only promises blessedness, and therefore lies (59).
He equates blessedness to “pleasure” and denies the existence of any evidence indicating that “truth” is in any way linked to said pleasure, or vice versa (59).
Section 51 Summary
Nietzsche claims that those venerated by the Church are often the guiltiest décadents, who turn to convenience in times of crisis as a means of finding comfort and control. He believes Christianity is neither national nor racial but pulls from humanity’s disinherited to castrate the gifted and powerful.
Section 52 Summary
Nietzsche summarizes his notion of Christian ignorance: “‘Faith’ means the will to avoid knowing what is true” (61).
He deems theologians unfit for philology, accusing them of being incapable of seeing good fortune as anything other than the active grace of God—despite the idea of God acting as a “domestic servant” being absurd (62).
Sections 42-52 Analysis
Throughout Sections 42-52, Nietzsche calls out his nemesis—Saint Paul the Apostle—who is considered the first and most effective of the early Christians. Yet to Nietzsche, Saint Paul is also an idea—one in which Christianity must be spread to all people and nations, regardless of cost, as every individual is equal in the eyes of Christ and thus worth saving.
Nietzsche finds this idea foolish as it forms the basis of Christian “equality”—that no soul has greater or lesser worth than any other, regardless of intelligence, skill, or privilege. This flies in the face of Nietzsche’s elitism, which is based on the idea that certain individuals—in this case, the Hyperboreans—are inherently more capable than others, and thus require greater rights to exercise their own will to power and elevate humanity. By championing equality, Paul effectively “declawed” the Hyperboreans and reduced humanity to wretchedness.
To Nietzsche, this wretchedness stems from Paul focusing on Christ’s death rather than his life. This calls back to Nietzsche’s previous notion of modern Christianity being a separate entity from the “teachings of Christ,” which were given during his life. By refocusing on Christ’s death, he believes Paul and the theologians cheapened Christ’s teachings, and so it is hypocritical of them to call themselves “Christians.”
In Section 47, Nietzsche discusses one of his favorite sciences: philology. Philology is commonly defined as the study of language via historical sources, their authenticity, and their meaning. Nietzsche, however, takes this definition one step further, viewing philology as the most objective, scientific means of studying the history of any given culture. Unlike Judaism, Christianity has no central people or nation to bind itself to; Nietzsche argues that it can only subsume and castrate other nations, as Paul set out to do. To Nietzsche, the philologists cut through this cosmopolitan worldview to identify the distinguishing qualities of nations.
Nietzsche’s argument against Christian “blessedness” once again compares the religion to Epicureanism—in which “pleasure” is the ultimate goodness. His act of differentiating pleasure from “truth” calls back to Christianity seeking to denigrate all negative emotion, regardless of its authenticity. He argues that pleasure itself has nothing to do with truth but is merely one way of experiencing it. By pretending that pleasure and truth can be equated, the Christian theologians’ version of truth becomes incapable of anything but lies.
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