159.
The whole of the Christian creed—all Christian "truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first Christian movement.
All that which in the ecclesiastical sense is Christian, is just exactly what is most radically anti-Christian: crowds of things and people appear instead of symbols, history takes the place of eternal facts, it is all forms, rites, and dogmas instead of a "practice" of life. To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology.
The practice of Christianity is no more an impossible phantasy than the practice of Buddhism is: it is merely a means to happiness.
160.
Jesus goes straight to the point, the "Kingdom of Heaven" in the heart, and He does not find the means in duty to the Jewish Church; He even regards the reality of Judaism (its need to maintain itself) as nothing; He is concerned purely with the inner man.
Neither does He make anything of all the coarse forms relating to man's intercourse with God: He is opposed to the whole of the teaching of repentance and atonement; He points out how man ought to live in order to feel himself "deified," and how futile it is on his part to hope to live properly by showing repentance and contrition for his sins. "Sin is of no account" is practically his chief standpoint.
Sin, repentance, forgiveness,—all this does not belong to Christianity ... it is Judaism or Paganism which has become mixed up with Christ's teaching.
161.