The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life--and so was his death.... He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God--not even prayer. He had rejected the whole of the Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; he _knew_ that it was only by a _way_ of life that one could feel one's self "divine," "blessed," "evangelical," a "child of God." _Not_ by "repentance," _not_ by "prayer and forgiveness" is the way to God: _only the Gospel way_ leads to God--it is _itself_ "God!"--What the Gospels _abolished_ was the Judaism in the concepts of "sin," "forgiveness of sin," "faith," "salvation through faith"--the whole _ecclesiastical_ dogma of the Jews was denied by the "glad tidings." The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to _live_ so that he will feel that he is "in heaven" and is "immortal," despite many reasons for feeling that he is _not_ "in heaven": this is the only psychological reality in "salvation."--A new way of life, _not_ a new faith.... 34. If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only _subjective_ realities as realities, as "truths"--that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of "the Son of God" does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an "eternal" fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the _God_ of this typical symbolist, of the "kingdom of God," and of the "sonship of God." Nothing could be more un-Christian than the _crude ecclesiastical_ notions of God as a _person_, of a "kingdom of God" that is to come, of a "kingdom of heaven" beyond, and of a "son of God" as the _second person_ of the Trinity. All this--if I may be forgiven the phrase--is like thrusting one's fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to _world-historical cynicism_.... But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols "Father" and "Son"--not, of course, to every one--: the word "Son" expresses _entrance_ into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and "Father" expresses _that feeling itself_--the sensation of eternity and of perfection.--I am ashamed to remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism: has it not set an Amphitryon story[13] at the threshold of the Christian "faith"? And a dogma of "immaculate conception" for good measure?... _And thereby it has robbed conception of its immaculateness_-- [13] Amphitryon was the son of Alcaeus, King of Tiryns. His wife was Alcmene. During his absence she was visited by Zeus, and bore Heracles.