--I shall go back a bit, and tell you the _authentic_ history of Christianity.--The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding--at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The "Gospels" _died_ on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the "Gospels" was the very reverse of what _he_ had lived: "bad tidings," a _Dysangelium_.[14] It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in "faith," and particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian _way of life_, the life _lived_ by him who died on the cross, is Christian.... To this day _such_ a life is still possible, and for _certain_ men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages.... _Not_ faith, but acts; above all, an _avoidance_ of acts, a different _state of being_.... States of consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of anything as true--as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate compared to that of the instincts: strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false. To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the negation of Christianity. _In fact, there are no Christians._ The "Christian"--he who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian--is simply a psychological self-delusion. Closely examined, it appears that, _despite_ all his "faith," he has been ruled _only_ by his instincts--and _what instincts_!--In all ages--for example, in the case of Luther--"faith" has been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a _curtain_ behind which the instincts have played their game--a shrewd _blindness_ to the domination of _certain_ of the instincts.... I have already called "faith" the specially Christian form of _shrewdness_--people always _talk_ of their "faith" and _act_ according to their instincts.... In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing that so much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes an instinctive _hatred_ of reality as the motive power, the only motive power at the bottom of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even here, in _psychologicis_, there is a radical error, which is to say one conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in _substance_. Take away one idea and put a genuine reality in its place--and the whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness!--Viewed calmly, this strangest of all phenomena, a religion not only depending on errors, but inventive and ingenious _only_ in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life and to the heart--this remains a _spectacle for the gods_--for those gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their _disgust_ leaves them (--and us!) they will be thankful for the