How God died of pity

Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get Nietzsche’s description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and the like. The God of a strong, warlike race—the God of Israel—is a jealous, revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured only by a hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and to lose in sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people that appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love—“soft and mellow,” a lower middle-class deity, who is “pitiful.” He can no longer be a God who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich enough for that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must sacrifice to us. His pity becomes so great that he actually does sacrifice something to us—His only begotten Son. Such a process carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him too as a guest to the cave.