Sometimes symbolic, more often literal, here as heartless misanthrope, there as brutal intellect, Nietzsche’s multivalent image proved to be an indispensable resource for religious moderns to come to terms with the warring moral impulses both within their faith and between Christianity and secular culture. He gave them an opportunity to dust off what for many had become an artifact of primitive Christianity—the Antichrist—and use it to describe his menacing image for modern society.
