Nietzsche states that “hitherto one has always attacked Christianity not merely in a modest way but in the wrong way” (144-45). These attacks have focused on the truth of Christianity. For example, they have examined the historical truth behind the legends surrounding Jesus, like David Strauss, or the plausibility of Christian miracles, like David Hume. More commonly, such critiques question God’s existence. Some philosophers suggest that the gratuitous suffering in the world is incompatible with a benevolent and omnipotent being. Yet, Nietzsche claims these efforts are misguided, not merely because after Darwin most arguments for the existence of God look weak, but because these issues are “a matter of secondary importance as long as the question of the value of Christian morality is not considered” (145).

Why does Nietzsche see the question of Christian values and their worth as more critical? First, these values are insidious and destructive. Second, and relatedly, these values have become deeply ingrained in our culture. They continue to affect individuals regardless of their belief in God. But what does Nietzsche see as so bad about Christian morality? To answer this, we must first inquire into the origin of these values. We must ask from whom they originated.

Nietzsche’s answer is threefold. It is “(a) the oppressed of all kinds, (b) the mediocre of all kinds, (c) the discontented and sick of all kinds” (126). These groups coalesced around the teachings of Jesus as reinterpreted by Paul and the apostles. They forged a morality that both served their interests as weak, oppressed, and mediocre, and valorized these traits. They set up humility, passivity, and peacefulness as virtues. They preached love for one’s neighbor, equality, and, ultimately, redemption from life as the highest good. Thus they “attempt to make the virtues through which happiness is possible for the lowliest into the standard ideal of all values” (111). They turned their inability to act into a “choice” to be “good.” They celebrated their weakness, suffering, and cowardice as signs that they are “moral people.” Conversely, they condemned as “evil” all activity, aggression, and extraordinary talent that might expose their deficiencies.

Still, it is not immediately clear what is wrong with this celebration of meekness. If such a morality allows those who are weak, sick, or oppressed to endure life, then surely it is a good thing. For Nietzsche, the opposite is true. Christian morality, by valorizing the weak and setting up everyone as “equal before God” (142), promotes extreme egotism. Combined with belief in the immortal soul, it allows those who have done nothing to imagine that they are of great worth. Nietzsche argues that “the species endures only through human sacrifice” (142). In other words, the species flourishes because those who are unable to confront life as it is either perish or are ignored and do not pass on their life-denying ideas to others. Yet Christian morality allows those who are too weak, mediocre, or cowardly to make something out of themselves to infect others with their perspective. It allows culture to be dominated by values and persons who are antithetical to cultural creation and human flourishing.

Eventually, Christian values affect and weaken potentially nobler and stronger people. In saying that to be “good” means being like the weak, mediocre type, Christianity undermines the confidence and conscience of the nobler type, who “freely accept a life more full of peril” (146), and who dare to take large risks with themselves and their strength to potentially create something great. Since the attitudes and emotions necessary to this creation (aggressive, domineering, pitiless), are “non-Christian,” these would-be creators feel tension and guilt over them, especially in “their bad hours and their occasional weariness” (146). Christian values eventually sabotage the personality and creative strength of many potentially noble types and, in doing so, deny the human species the benefits of its strength and capacities.