# Christianity — Beyond Good and Evil character guide > Christianity in Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. **Role:** supporting **Also known as:** Christianity **First appearance:** 0002-i-prejudices-of-philosophers ## Snapshot The religion Nietzsche treats not as doctrine but as a psychological force — one whose valuations of truth and self-denial he wants to trace back to their instincts. ## Who they are Christianity operates in the book as an inherited moral atmosphere that shapes even the philosophers who believe they have escaped it, quietly determining what counts as certain, true, and worth wanting. Nietzsche's interest is diagnostic rather than devotional: he asks what kind of life needs these valuations, and what they cost. Its importance to the early and middle chapters is structural — it is the background against which the possibility of thinking "beyond good and evil" must be measured, and the chief obstacle to any new values. ## In the story ### [Beyond Atomism: The Soul as Multiplicity](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/12) Identified as the teacher of the most portentous atomism: soul-atomism, the belief in an indestructible, eternal, indivisible soul, which must be expelled from science. ### [III: The Religious Mood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/iii-the-religious-mood) The primary subject of critique; analyzed as a system that preserved the sick, reversed values, and produced a 'dwarfed' species of humanity. ### [Faith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/46) Analyzed as a faith of sacrifice, subjection, and cruelty from its inception, adapted to a tender, fastidious conscience and representing a slave revolt against Roman nobility. ### [49](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/49) Identified as the religion that prepared itself from the later, fear-based popular religious sentiment in Greece. ### [The Old Testament and the Scale of Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/52) Specifically 'cultured' Christianity is associated with tame domesticity; the New Testament is described as a book of grace with an odor of the 'petty soul,' forming a problematic rococo pairing with the Old Testament. ### [54](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/54) The doctrine whose fundamental presupposition (the soul) is the target of modern philosophy's covert attack. ### [The Ladder of Religious Cruelty](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/55) Implied as the primary historical context for the 'moral epoch' where natural instincts were sacrificed, though not named directly. ### [To Love Mankind for God's Sake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/60) Implied as the historical and conceptual framework that produced the sentiment of loving mankind for God's sake. ### [The Cost of Religions as Final Ends](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/62) The primary subject of critique, identified as the most portentous presumption for preserving the weak and reversing natural values. ### [Aphorism 104](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/104) The subject of the aphorism, specifically its modern adherents whose 'love' is diagnosed as a form of impotence. ### [Chapter 168](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/168) The agent that poisons Eros, causing its degeneration. ### [189](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/189) Present as the moral pressure and 'sentiment' under which the sexual impulse was historically sublimated into 'amour-passion' in Europe. ### [191](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/191) Referenced indirectly as equating instinct with 'Faith,' part of the tradition where instinct (or herd morality) has triumphed in moral matters. ### [Chapter 202](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/202) Identified as the religious source that flattered herding instincts, with democracy seen as its political inheritance. ### [IX: What Is Noble?](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/ix-what-is-noble) Credited with providing Europe the discipline and refinement of manners necessary to maintain reverence for profound texts like the Bible, instilling a sense of the holy in the masses. ### [261](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/261) Referenced as a source of external valuation through confessors and the Church, teaching self-appreciation and self-depreciation. ### [The Instinct for Rank and the Test of Reverence](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/263) Credited with providing Europe the 'discipline and refinement of manners' through enforcing external reverence for the Bible. ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/characters/christianity - Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se - All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/characters