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The first Christian.  All the world still believes in the writings of the 'Holy Spirit' or stands in the after-effect of this belief: when one opens the Bible one does so to 'edify' oneself, to discover a signpost of consolation in one's own personal distress, great or small  in short, one reads oneself into and out of it. That it also contains the history of one of the most ambitious and importunate souls, of a mind as superstitious as it was cunning, the history of the apostle Paul³⁰  who, apart from a few scholars, knows that? But without this remarkable history, without the storms and confusions of such a mind, of such a soul, there would be no Christianity; we would hardly have heard of a little Jewish sect whose master died on the cross. To be sure: if this history had been understood at the right time, if the writings of Paul had been read, not as the revelations of the 'Holy Spirit', but with a free and honest exercise of one's own spirit and without thinking all the time of our own personal needs really read, that is to say (but for fifteen hundred years there were no such readers)  Christianity would long since have ceased to exist: for these pages of the Jewish Pascal expose the origin of Christianity as thoroughly as the pages of the French Pascal expose its destiny and that by which it will perish, That the ship of Christianity threw overboard a good part of the Jewish ballast, that it went and was able to go among the heathen  that is a consequence of the history of this one man, of a very tormented, very pitiable, very unpleasant man who also found himself unpleasant. He suffered from a fixed idea, or more clearly from a fixed question which was always present to him and would never rest: what is the Jewish law really concerned with? and, in particular, what is the fulfilment of this law? In his youth he had himself wanted to satisfy it, voracious for this highest distinction the Jews were able to conceive  this people which had taken the fantasy of moral sublimity higher than any other people and which alone achieved the creation of a holy God, together with the idea of sin as an offence against this holiness. Paul had become at once the fanatical defender and chaperone of this God and his law, and was constantly combating and on the watch for transgressors and doubters, harsh and malicious towards them and with the extremest inclination for punishment. And then he discovered in himself that he himself  fiery, sensual, melancholy, malevolent in hatred as he was could not fulfil the law, he discovered indeed what seemed to him the strangest thing of all: that his extravagant lust for power was constantly combating and on the watch for transgressors and goad. Is it really 'carnality' which again and again makes him a transgressor? And not rather, as he later suspected, behind it the law itself, which must continually prove itself unfulfillable and with irresistible magic lures on to transgression? But at that time he did not yet possess this way out of his difficulty. Many things lay on his conscience  he hints at enmity, murder, sorcery, idolatry, uncleanliness, drunkenness and pleasure in debauch  and however much he tried to relieve this conscience, and even more his lust for domination, through the extremest fanaticism in revering and defending the law, there were moments when he said to himself: 'It is all in vain! The torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.' Luther may have felt a similar thing when he wanted in his monastery to become the perfect man of the spiritual ideal: and similarly to Luther, who one day began to hate the spiritual ideal and the Pope and the saints and the whole clergy with a hatred the more deadly the less he dared to admit it to himself  a similar thing happened to Paul. The law was the cross to which he felt himself nailed: how he hated it! how he had to drag it along! how he sought about for a means of destroying it  and no longer to fulfil it! And at last the liberating idea came to him, together with a vision, as was bound to happen in the case of this epileptic: to him, the zealot of the law who was inwardly tired to death of it, there appeared on a lonely road Christ with the light of God shining in his countenance, and Paul heard the words: 'Why persecutest thou me?' What essentially happened then is rather this: his mind suddenly became clear: 'it is unreasonable', he says to himself, 'to persecute precisely this Christ! For here is the way out, here is perfect revenge, here and nowhere else do I have and hold the destroyer of the law!' Sick with the most tormented pride, at a stroke he feels himself recovered, the moral despair is as if blown away, destroyed  that is to say, fulfilled, there on the Cross! Hitherto that shameful death had counted with him as the principal argument against the 'Messiahdom' of which the followers of the new teaching spoke: but what if it were necessary for the abolition of the law!  The tremendous consequences of this notion, this solution of the riddle, whirl before his eyes, all at once he is the happiest of men  the destiny of the Jews  no, of all mankind  seems to him to be tied to this notion, to this second of his sudden enlightenment, he possesses the idea of ideas, the key of keys, the light of lights; henceforth history revolves around him! For from now on he is the teacher of the destruction of the law! To die to evil  that means also to die to the law; to exist in the flesh  that means also to exist in the law! To become one with Christ  that means also to become with him the destroyer of the law; to have died with him  that means also to have died to the law! Even if it is still possible to sin, it is no longer possible to sin against the law: 'I am outside the law.' 'If I were now to accept the law again and submit to it I should be making Christ an accomplice of sin', for the law existed so that sins might be committed, it continually brought sin forth as a sharp juice brings forth a disease; God could never have resolved on the death of Christ if a fulfilment of the law had been in any way possible without this death; now not only has all guilt been taken away, guilt as such has been destroyed; now the law is dead, now the carnality in which it dwelt is dead  or at least dying constantly away, as though decaying. Yet but a brief time within this decay!  that is the Christian's lot, before, become one with Christ, he arises with Christ, participates with Christ in divine glory and becomes a 'son of God', like Christ.  With that the intoxication of Paul is at its height, and likewise the importunity of his soul  with the idea of becoming one with Christ all shame, all subordination, all bounds are taken from it, and the intractable lust for power reveals itself as an anticipatory revelling in divine glories.  This is the first Christian, the inventor of Christianness! Before him there were only a few Jewish sectarians.