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The figure of Jesus Christ is a complicated, complex character in Nietzsche’s writings. On the one hand, Nietzsche is obviously opposed to all values Christianity stands for. On the other hand, Nietzsche speaks high praise of Jesus Christ the person.
To completely understand this dichotomy, it’s necessary to make a distinction between Jesus Christ, his life and death, and Jesus Christ as he was later interpreted by his pupils, the Apostles, and subsequentely, the Church and its history.
Like many in the 19th century, Nietzsche was very interested in Jesus Christ beyond his depiction in the Gospels, the four books in the Bible that serve as a sort of biography. The Gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus, and they are not historical documents, but religious ones. What this means is that they are not necessarily an accurate depiction of what Jesus was like. The Evangelists, those who wrote the Gospels, had an agenda. And it’s this agenda that Nietzsche finds problematic, and it’s this agenda that has ruined the figure of Jesus Christ, and which, ironically, gave birth to Christianity.
When Jesus was crucificied, his Apostles could not believe it. The death of Jesus was an unexpected event: here was the Savior of humanity, tortured and put to death in the most humiliating way possible. Were they misled? What happened? This death of Jesus caused them great anguish. In all likelihood, some of them even felt cheated.
Nietzsche tries to understand the psychology of such an apostle.
The death of Jesus is now seen as a sacrifice, now there is need of a resurrection, or a state of life after death… None of which was really mentioned by Jesus himself.
Nietzsche often repeats the sentence “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) which is said by Jesus according to the Gospel of Luke. What Jesus meant is that the Kingdom of God is not a place, or not something that will come in the future. The Kingdom of God is within you, it’s a state of mind.
The Kingdom of God is within you… It’s already here. There is no need for “guilt, “sin”, “resurrection” or no need to be saved, even.
But where does this distortion come from? It’s rooted in ressentiment.
Nietzsche argues that the Apostles, and consequentely, all of Church history, fundamentally misunderstood Jesus. They couldn’t deal with his death, and to make this loss bearable, and justify it to themselves, they invented notions like the afterlife. Now, death does not have the last word… It was a way for the apostles to get back at those who killed their Teacher.
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