A religion like Christianity, which does not have contact with reality at any point, which crumbles as soon as reality is conceded its rights at even a single point, must naturally be mortally hostile toward the “wisdom of this world,” which means science. It will applaud all means with which the discipline of the spirit, purity and severity in the spirit’s matters of conscience, the noble coolness and freedom of the spirit, can be poisoned, slandered, brought into disrepute. “Faith” as an imperative is the veto against science—in practice, the lie at any price.
Paul comprehended that the lie—that “faith"—was needed; later the church in turn comprehended Paul. The “God” whom Paul invented, a god who “ruins the wisdom of the world” (in particular, philology and medicine, the two great adversaries of all superstition), is in truth merely Paul’s own resolute determination to do this: to give the name of “God” to one’s own will, torah, that is thoroughly Jewish. Paul wants to ruin the “wisdom of the world”: his enemies are the good philologists and physicians with Alexandrian training—it is they against whom he wages war. Indeed, one cannot be a philologist or physician without at the same time being an anti-Christian. For as a philologist one sees behind the “holy books"; as a physician, behind the physiological depravity of the typical Christian. The physician says “incurable"; the philologist, “swindle.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 47.
