The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

29 What concerns me is the psychological type of the Redeemer. After all, this could be contained in the Gospels despite the Gospels, however mutilated or overloaded with alien features: as Francis of Assisi is preserved in his legends, despite his legends. Not the truth concerning what he did, what he said, how he really died; but the question whether his type can still be exhibited at all, whether it has been “transmitted.” The attempts I know to read the history of a “soul” out of the Gospels seem to me proof of a contemptible psychological frivolity. M. Renan, that buffoon in psychologicis , has introduced the two most inappropriate concepts possible into his explanation of the Jesus type: the concept of genius and the concept of the hero (“héros”). But if anything is unevangelical it is the concept of the hero. Just the opposite of all wrestling, of all feeling-oneself-in-a-struggle, has here become instinct: the incapacity for resistance becomes morality here (“resist not evil”—the most profound word of the Gospels, their key in a certain sense), blessedness in peace, in gentleness, in not being able to be an enemy. What are the “glad tidings”? True life, eternal life, has been found—it is not promised, it is here, it is in you: as a living in love, in love without subtraction and exclusion, without regard for station. Everyone is the child of God—Jesus definitely presumes nothing for himself alone—and as a child of God everyone is equal to everyone. To make a hero o...