One way they took possession of Nietzsche’s philosophy was to smuggle his Übermensch out of the broader context of his thought and into Christian theology, and thus transform Jesus into the “Christian Superman” and the “Strong Son of God.”79 In addition, Nietzsche’s religious readers drew analogies between his philosophy and the original gospel of the historical Jesus. They argued that Nietzsche not only reformulated Jesus’s emphasis on the value of human personality but also wanted belief to be less rule-bound and yet more spiritually demanding.
