The Development of Christianity in Present Humanity

GA 107 — 15 February 1909, Berlin

From the lecture given here on the more complicated questions of reincarnation, you have been able to see that as we progress further in the spiritual-scientific world view, what could initially be given as elementary truths is modified, that we gradually ascend to higher and higher truths. It therefore remains true that in the beginning the general truths of the world should be presented as simply and as elementary as possible. But it is also necessary to gradually work our way up from the alphabet to the higher truths; for it is only through these higher truths that we will gradually achieve what, among other things, spiritual science is supposed to give: namely, the possibility of understanding and penetrating the world that surrounds us in the sensory, in the physical sphere. We still have a long way to go before we can begin to sketch out some of the spiritual lines and forces that lie behind the sensory world. But much of what has been said in the last few hours will have made this or that phenomenon of our existence clearer and more understandable. Today we want to make a little progress in this regard, and also there we want to talk again about more complicated questions of reincarnation, of re-embodiment.

In addition we want to realize today above all that a difference exists between the entities, which take a leading position in the development of mankind on earth. In the course of our development on earth, we have to distinguish between such leading individuals who, so to speak, have developed with humanity on our earth from the very beginning, only that they have progressed faster. One might say: if one goes back to the time of the primeval Lemurian past, one finds the most diverse degrees of development among the human beings embodied at that time. All the souls that were embodied at that time have gone through reincarnation and re-embodiment over and over again through the subsequent Atlantean period and our post-Atlantean period. The souls have developed at different speeds. There are souls that have developed relatively slowly through the various incarnations and that still have long, long distances to go in the future. But there are also souls that have developed quickly, that, one could say, have made more extensive use of their incarnations, and that are therefore today at such a high level in their soul-spiritual, that is, in their spiritual development, that the normal person of today will only reach such a level in a very, very distant future. But if we remain in this sphere of souls, we can still say that however advanced these individual souls may be, and however far they may project themselves above the normal human being, they have nevertheless gone through a similar course within our earthly development as the rest of humanity; they have just progressed more quickly.

Besides these leading individuals, who are thus similar to other people, only at a higher level, there are also other individuals, other beings, in the course of human development, who have by no means gone through various embodiments in the same way as other people. We can get an idea of the basis for this when we consider that at the time of the Lemurian evolution there were beings who no longer needed to descend as deeply into physical embodiment as the other human beings, such as all the beings that have just been described, beings, therefore, who could have continued their development in higher, more spiritual regions, who therefore did not need to descend into physical bodies for their own further progress. Nevertheless, such an entity can, in order to intervene in the course of human evolution, descend into a body such as human beings have, so to speak, as a representative. So that at any time an entity can appear, and if we examine it clairvoyantly with regard to its soul, we cannot say about it, as we can about other people, that we trace it back in time and find it in a previous incarnation in the flesh , trace it further back and find it again in another incarnation, and so on, but we have to say to ourselves: if we trace the soul of such an entity back in time, we may not come to an earlier carnal incarnation of such an entity at all. But if we do come to one, it is only because such an entity can also descend more often in intervals and embody itself vicariously in a human body. In the Eastern Wisdom, such a spiritual entity that descends into a human body in order to intervene in evolution as a human being, without itself deriving any benefit from this embodiment, without what it experiences here in the world having any significance for itself, is called an avatar. And that is the difference between a leading entity that has emerged from the evolution of humanity itself and one that is called an avatar: an avatar entity has no fruits to draw for itself from its physical embodiments or from the one physical embodiment that it undergoes, because it enters a physical body as an entity for the benefit and progress of people. So, as I said, such an Avatar-Being can enter a human body either only once or also several times in succession, and it is then definitely something other than another human individuality.

The greatest Avatar Being that has lived on Earth, as you can see from the spirit of all the lectures that are given here, is the Christ, the Being that we call the Christ and that took possession of Jesus of Nazareth's body in the thirtieth year of his life. This entity, which first came into contact with our earth at the beginning of our era, was embodied in a physical body for three years, and since that time has been in contact with the astral sphere, that is, with the spiritual sphere of our supersensible world. This entity is of quite unique significance as an avataric entity. We would search in vain for the Christ-entity in an earlier human embodiment on Earth, while other, lower avatar entities can indeed also embody themselves more often. The difference is not that they incarnate more often, but that they do not draw any fruit from the earthly incarnations for themselves. People give nothing to the world, they only take. These entities only give, they take nothing from the earth. Now, if you want to understand this matter properly, you have to distinguish between such a high avatar entity as the Christ was and between lower avatar entities.

Such avataric entities can have a wide variety of tasks on our Earth. We can initially speak of such a task of avataric entities. And so that we are not talking about something speculative, let us approach a specific case and illustrate what such a task can consist of.

You all know from the story that revolves around Noah that in the ancient Hebrew account, a large part of the post-Atlantean, post-Noah humanity is traced back to the three patriarchs Shem, Ham and Japheth. Today we do not want to go into what Noah and these three patriarchs want to represent to us in another respect. We only want to realize that the Hebrew scriptures, which speak of Shem, the one son of Noah, trace the entire tribe of the Semites back to Shem as their progenitor. An actual occult view of such a matter, of such a narrative, is everywhere based on deeper truths. Those who can research such a matter from an occult point of view know the following about this Sem, the progenitor of the Semites.

Precautions must be taken from birth, or even earlier, to ensure that such a personality can become the progenitor of an entire tribe. How is it ensured that such an individuality, as for example Shem, can be the progenitor of such a whole community or tribe? In the case of Shem, this happened because he received, so to speak, a very specially formed etheric body. We know that when a person is born into this world, their individuality is surrounded by an etheric or life body, in addition to the other limbs of the human being. For such a tribal ancestor, a special etheric body must be prepared, so to speak, which is, as it were, the model etheric body for all the descendants who follow this individuality in the generations. So that we have a typical etheric body for such a tribal individuality, so to speak, the model etheric body; and then, through blood relationship, the matter goes through the generations in such a way that, in a certain sense, the etheric bodies of all descendants belonging to the same tribe are images of the etheric body of the ancestor. Thus, something like an image of the etheric body of Shem was woven into all the etheric bodies of the Semitic people. How is such a thing brought about in the course of human evolution?

If we take a closer look at this Sem, we find that his etheric body has received its archetypal form through the fact that an avatar has woven itself into his etheric body – not an avatar of such high caliber that we can compare it to certain other avatar entities; but nevertheless, a high avatar entity had descended into his ether body, which was not connected to the astral body and also not to the ego of Sem, but it had woven itself into the ether body of Sem, so to speak. And we can study right away from this example what significance it has when an avatar essence participates in the constitution, in the composition of a human being. What is the meaning of a human being, who, like Sem, has the task of being the progenitor of the whole nation, having an avatar being woven into his body, so to speak? The purpose of this is that every time an avatar essence is interwoven with a physical human being, any limb or even several limbs of this human being can be multiplied, can be split apart.

In fact, the fact that an avatar entity was interwoven with the etheric body of Sem offered the possibility that multiple images of the original could be created and that these countless images could be interwoven with all the people who followed the progenitor in the succession of generations. So one of the purposes of the descent of an Avatar entity is to contribute to the multiplication of one or more members of the entity in question, which is animated by the Avatar. Many images of the original are created, all of which are formed afterwards. As you can see from this, there was a particularly valuable etheric body present in this Sem, a primal etheric body that was prepared by a high avatar and then woven into the Sem, so that it could then descend in many images to all those who were said to be blood relatives of this ancestor.

Now, as we have already mentioned in the hour mentioned at the beginning, there is also a spiritual economy, in which something that is particularly valuable is preserved and carried over into the future. We have heard that not only does the ego re-embody itself, but that the astral body and the etheric body can also re-embody themselves. Apart from the fact that countless copies of the etheric body of Sem were created, Sem's own etheric body was also preserved in the spiritual world, because this etheric body could later be put to very good use in the mission of the Hebrew people. After all, all the peculiarities of the Hebrew people had originally been expressed in this etheric body. Whenever something particularly important happened for the ancient Hebrew people, whenever someone was entrusted with a special task, a special mission, it was best done by an individuality who carried within himself the etheric body of the progenitor.

And indeed, an individuality who intervened in the history of the Hebrew people later carried the progenitor's etheric body. Here we have indeed one of those wonderful complications in human evolution that can explain so much to us. We are dealing with a very high individuality that had to, so to speak, condescend in order to speak to the Hebrew people in a way that would be appropriate for them and give them the strength for a special mission, rather like when a person who is particularly outstanding in spiritual terms low tribe, he would indeed have to learn the language of this tribe, but one does not therefore have to claim that language is something that elevates him; the person concerned only has to make an effort to familiarize himself with this language. So a high individuality had to familiarize itself with the etheric body of Shem himself in order to be able to give a very specific impulse to the ancient Hebrew people. This individuality, this personality is the same one that you find in the Biblical story under the name of Melchizedek. This is the individuality that, so to speak, donned the etheric body of Shem in order to then give the impulse to Abraham, which you then find so beautifully described in the Bible. So, apart from the fact that what was contained in the individuality of Shem was multiplied by the fact that an avatar entity was embodied in it and then interwoven with all the other etheric bodies of the members of the Hebrew people, Shem's own etheric body was kept in the spiritual world so that it could later be worn by Melchizedek, who was to give an important impetus to the Hebrew people through Abraham.

The facts that lie behind the physical world and that make what happens in the physical world understandable to us are so finely interwoven. We only get to know history by being able to point to such facts: spiritual facts that lie behind physical facts. History can never become understandable from within itself if we only stop at the physical facts.

What we have now discussed becomes of particular importance: that through the descent of an Avatar-being, the constituent elements of the human being who is the carrier of such an Avatar-being are multiplied and transferred to others, appearing in images of the original image. This becomes of particular importance through the appearance of Christ on earth. The fact that the Avatar-being of Christ dwelled in the body of Jesus of Nazareth made it possible for the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth to be multiplied countless times, as well as for the astral body and even the I — the I as an impulse, as it was kindled in the astral body at that time, when the Christ moved into the threefold cover of Jesus of Nazareth. But first, let us consider that the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could be multiplied through the Avataric Being.

Now one of the most significant turning points in human evolution occurred, precisely through the appearance of the Christ principle in the evolution of the earth. What I have told you about Sem is basically typical and characteristic of the pre-Christian era. When an etheric or astral body is multiplied in this way, the images of it will usually pass to people who are blood related to the one who had the original image: the images of the etheric body of Shem were therefore transferred to the members of the Hebrew tribe. This was changed by the appearance of the Christ-Avatar Being. The etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth were multiplied and these duplications were now preserved until they could be used in the course of human evolution. But they were not bound to this or that nationality, to this or that tribe, but wherever in the following period a person was found, regardless of his nationality, who was ripe and suitable for it, in his own astral body or an etheric image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, these could be woven into them. Thus we see how it was possible that in the following period, let us say, the images of the astral body or the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth were woven into all kinds of people like imprints.

The intimate history of Christian evolution is connected with this fact. What is usually described as the history of Christian evolution is a sum of quite external processes. And therefore, far too little attention is paid to the most important thing, namely to the distinction with regard to real periods in Christian evolution. Anyone who has a deeper insight into the development of Christianity will easily recognize that in the first centuries of the Christian era, the way in which Christianity was spread was quite different from that in later centuries. In the first centuries of Christianity, the spread of Christianity was, so to speak, tied to everything that could be achieved from the physical plan. We only need to look at the first teachers of Christianity to see how physical memories, physical connections and everything that had remained physical were emphasized. Just think of how Irenaeus, who contributed a great deal to the spread of Christian teaching in various countries in the first century, placed great value on memories reaching back to those who had themselves heard the apostles' students. Great value was placed on being able to prove through such physical memories that the Christ had taught in Palestine itself. For example, it is particularly emphasized that Papias himself sat at the feet of the apostle disciples. Even the places are shown and described where such personalities sat who were still there as eyewitnesses to the fact that Christ lived in Palestine. Physical progress in memory is what is particularly emphasized in the first centuries of Christianity.

How much everything that has remained physical is emphasized can be seen in the words of St. Augustine, who stands at the end of this period and says: Why do I believe in the truths of Christianity? Because the authority of the Catholic Church compels me to do so. For him, physical authority is something that exists in the physical world, the important and essential thing is that a body has been preserved that, linking personality to personality, reaches up to those who were companions of Christ, such as Peter. That is the decisive thing for him. We can see, then, that in the first centuries of the spread of Christianity, the greatest value was placed on the documents and impressions of the physical plane.

This changed after the time of Augustine and continued to do so until about the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries. It was no longer possible to rely on living memory and to only use the documents of the physical plane, because they lay too far in the past. There is also something quite different in the whole mood, in the attitude of the people who now adopted Christianity – and this is particularly the case with the European peoples. In this period there is indeed something like a kind of direct knowledge that a Christ exists, that a Christ died on the cross, that he lives on. From the 4th or 5th century until the 10th or 12th century, there were a great many people to whom it would have seemed extremely foolish to tell them that one could also doubt the events in Palestine, because they knew better. These people were spread out over European countries in particular. They were always able to experience within themselves something like the small-scale Paul-like revelation that Paul, who had been Saul until then, experienced on the road to Damascus, and through which he became Paul.

How was it that a number of people in those centuries were able to receive such, in a sense clairvoyant revelations about the events of Palestine? This was possible because during these centuries the images of the multiplied etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been preserved, were interwoven with a large number of people, so that they were allowed to wear them, so to speak. Their etheric body did not consist exclusively of this image of the etheric body of Jesus, but an image of the original of Jesus of Nazareth was interwoven with their etheric body. During these centuries there were people who had such an etheric body and who could therefore directly receive knowledge from Jesus of Nazareth and also from the Christ. But as a result, the image of Christ was also detached from the external historical, physical tradition. And it appears to be most divorced from it in that wonderful ninth-century poem known as the Heliand, which dates from the time of Louis the Pious, who ruled from 814 to 840, and which was written by an outwardly simple man from Saxony. In relation to his astral body and his ego, he could not possibly reach what was in his etheric body. For interwoven with his etheric body was an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. This simple Saxon pastor, who wrote this poem, had the certainty from direct clairvoyant insight that the Christ exists in the astral plane and that He is the same as the One who was crucified at Golgotha! And because this was an immediate certainty for him, he no longer needed to refer to historical documents. He no longer needed physical evidence that the Christ was there. He therefore describes him detached from the whole scene in Palestine, detached from the characteristics of Judaism. He portrays him somewhat like a leader of a Central European or Germanic tribe, and those who are around him as his followers, as the apostles, he describes somewhat like the vassals of a Germanic prince. All external scenery is changed, only what is actually essential, what is eternal about the figure of Christ, what is the structure of the events, that has remained. He, who had such direct knowledge, built on such an important foundation as the imprint of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, was not dependent on sticking very closely to the immediate historical events when speaking of Christ. He clothed what he had as direct knowledge with a different outer setting. And just as we have been able to describe in this writer of the Heliand epic one of the remarkable personalities who had woven into his etheric body an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, so we could find other personalities in this time who had the same. Thus we see how the most important thing is going on behind the physical events, which history can explain to us in an intimate way.

If we now follow the Christian development further, we come up to about the 11th, 12th to 15th centuries. There was now a quite different mystery which carried the whole evolution further. First it was, so to speak, the remembrance of what was on the physical plane, then it was the etheric that interwove itself directly into the etheric bodies of the bearers of Christianity in Central Europe. In the later centuries, from the 12th to the 15th century, it was particularly the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth that was interwoven in numerous images with the astral bodies of the most important representatives of Christianity. Such people then had an ego that could have very wrong ideas about all sorts of things, but in their astral bodies lived an immediacy of power, of devotion, an immediate certainty of sacred truths. Deep fervor, very direct conviction, and possibly also the ability to substantiate this conviction, lay in such people. What sometimes strikes us as so strange about these personalities is that their ego was often not at all equal to what their astral body contained, because it had woven into it an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes their ego's actions seemed grotesque, but the world of their feelings and emotions, their fervor, was magnificent and sublime. St. Francis of Assisi, for example, is such a personality. And precisely when we study St. Francis of Assisi and cannot understand how, as modern people, we have his conscious ego and yet must have the deepest admiration for his entire emotional world, for everything he did, it becomes understandable from this point of view. He was one of those who had woven an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. This enabled him to accomplish precisely what he has just accomplished. And many of his followers from the Franciscan Order, with his servants and minorites, had similarly woven such images into their astral bodies.

All the strange, otherwise mysterious phenomena of that time will become clear and luminous to you if you properly visualize this mediation in the world between past and future. It now depended on whether the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was more interwoven with what we call the sentient soul or more with the intellectual soul or what we call the consciousness soul. For the astral body of man must, in a certain sense, be thought of as containing these, as encompassing the I. The whole sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth was in Francis of Assisi, so to speak. The whole sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth was in that wonderful personality, whom you will follow biographically with all your soul when you know the secret of her life: in Elizabeth of Thuringia, born in 1207. There we have a personality in which an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth is interwoven with the sentient soul. The riddle of the human form is solved for us precisely through such knowledge.

And above all, you will realize the significance of the fact that in this period the most diverse personalities had the sentient soul, mind soul or consciousness soul woven into them as images from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth: it will become understandable to you that science, which is otherwise so little understood and so much maligned today, which is usually referred to as scholasticism. What was the task that scholasticism set itself? It set itself the task of finding evidence and proof for what had no historical connection, no physical mediation, and for what there was no direct clairvoyant certainty, as there was in previous centuries through the interwoven etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. These people had to set themselves the task of saying to themselves: We have been informed by tradition that that entity known as Christ Jesus appeared in history, and that other spiritual entities intervened in the development of humanity, as attested to by religious documents. From their intellectual soul, from the intellect of the image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, they set themselves the task of proving with fine and sharply developed concepts all that was present in their writings as mysterious truths. Thus arose that remarkable science which the greatest acumen and intellect of mankind has endeavored to accomplish. For several centuries — one may think as one will about the content of scholasticism — simply by pursuing this subtle, subtle differentiation and contouring of concepts, the ability of human reflection was cultivated and imprinted on the culture of the time. It was in the 13th to 15th century that humanity, through scholasticism, acquired the ability to think perceptively and with penetrating logic.

In those in whom the consciousness soul was more strongly imprinted, or rather the image of it that lived as the consciousness soul of Jesus of Nazareth, there arose – because the I resides in the consciousness soul – the special realization that the Christ can be found in the I. And because they themselves had the element of the consciousness soul from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth within them, the inner Christ shone within them. And through this astral body they recognized that the Christ within them was the Christ Himself. These were the ones you know as Meister Eckhart, John Tauler and all the bearers of medieval mysticism.

Thus you see how the most diverse phases of the astral body, multiplied by the fact that the high Avatar-being of the Christ had moved into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, continued to work in the following period and brought about the actual evolution of Christianity. Incidentally, it is also an important transition in other respects. We see how humanity in its development is also dependent on preserving these pieces of the Jesus of Nazareth being incorporated into itself. In the first centuries there were people who were completely dependent on the physical plan; then in the following centuries there were people who were receptive to having the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth incorporated into their own etheric body. Later, people were more attuned to the astral body, so to speak; therefore, the image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could now be incorporated into them. The astral body is the bearer of the power of judgment. The power of judgment awakens particularly in the 12th to 14th centuries. You could also see this from another phenomenon.

Until that time, it was particularly clear what mystery depths the Lord's Supper contained. The Lord's Supper was accepted in such a way — at most there was a little discussion about it — that one could understand everything that was in the words: “This is my body and this is my blood...” because the Christ pointed out that he would be united with the earth, would be the planetary spirit of the earth. And because the most precious part of the physical earth is its dust, man came to regard the bread as the body of Christ, and the juice that runs through the plants and the vines as something of the blood of Christ. This knowledge did not diminish the value of the Lord's Supper, but increased it. During those centuries something of these infinite depths was sensed, until the power of judgment awoke in the astral body. From that time doubt also first awakens. From that time also the controversy about the Lord's Supper began. Think about how it is discussed in Hussitism, in Lutheranism and its divisions into Zwinglianism and Calvinism, what the Lord's Supper is supposed to be! Such discussions would not have been possible in the past, because in those days there was still direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper. But there we see a great historical law come true, which should be particularly important for scholars:

As long as people knew what the Lord's Supper was, they did not discuss it; only when they lost the direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper did they begin to discuss it. Do you consider it a sign that you actually don't know something when you start discussing it? When there is knowledge, the knowledge is shared, and there is actually no particular desire to discuss it. Where there is a desire to discuss, there is as a rule no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only with not-knowing, and it is always and everywhere a sign of decline with regard to the seriousness of a matter when discussions begin. The disintegration of the current in question always announces itself with discussions. It is most important that we should learn to understand this again and again in the field of spiritual science, that the will to discuss may actually be regarded as a sign of ignorance; on the other hand, we should cultivate the will to learn, the will to gradually understand what is at stake.

Here we see a great historical fact confirmed in the development of Christianity itself. But we can learn something else as well, when we see how, in these centuries of Christianity, the power of judgment — that which is in the astral body — this keen intellectual wisdom, is developed. If we consider realities, not dogmas, we can learn from what Christianity has actually done in its development. What has become of scholasticism when we consider it not in terms of its content but as the cultivation and education of abilities? Do you know what has become of it? Modern natural science has become of it! Modern natural science is inconceivable without the reality of medieval Christian science. Not only that Copernicus was a canon, that Giordano Bruno was a Dominican friar, but all the thought forms with which one has been dealing with natural objects since the 15th and 16th centuries are nothing other than what was cultivated and bred from the 11th to the 16th centuries by the Christian science of the Middle Ages. They do not live in reality, but in abstractions, looking up things in the books of scholasticism, comparing them with the newer natural science and then saying: Haeckel and so on claim something completely different. It depends on realities! A Haeckel, a Darwin, a Du Bois-Reymond, a Huxley and others would all be impossible if the Christian science of the Middle Ages had not preceded them. That they can think in this way, they owe to the Christian science of the Middle Ages. That is the reality. Mankind has learned to think in the true sense of the word.

The matter goes even further. Read David Friedrich Strauß. Try to see the way he thinks. Try to understand his train of thought: how he wants to show that the whole life of Jesus of Nazareth is a myth. Do you know where he got the sharpness of thought? He got it from the Christian science of the Middle Ages. Everything that is used today to fight Christianity so radically has been learned from Christian science in the Middle Ages. Today there could not be an opponent of Christianity who could not easily be shown that he could not think as he does if he had not learned the forms of thought from Christian science in the Middle Ages. That would mean, however, looking at world history realistically.

And what has happened since the 16th century? Since the sixteenth century, the self has increasingly asserted itself, and with it human selfishness and materialism. People have forgotten and neglected everything that the self has taken in. They have had to limit themselves to what the self can observe, what the instrument of the senses can give to the ordinary mind, and only that could be taken into the inner home. Since the sixteenth century, culture has been a culture of egoism. What must now enter into this I? The Christian development has gone through a development in the outer physical body, a development in the etheric body, one in the astral body, and it has penetrated as far as the I. Now it must absorb into this I the mysteries and secrets of Christianity itself. Now it must be possible to make the I into an organ receptive to the Christ, now that the I has learned to think through Christianity and to apply thoughts to the outer world. Now this I must in turn find the wisdom, which is the original wisdom of the great Avatar, the Christ Himself. And how must this come about? Through the spiritual deepening of Christianity. Carefully prepared by the three stages of physical, etheric and astral development, it would now depend on the organ within opening up to the human being, in order to now look into his spiritual environment with that eye that the Christ can open for him. As the greatest Avatar Being, the Christ has descended upon Earth. Let us adjust to this perspective: let us try to look at the world as we can look at the world when we have taken in the Christ within us. Then we find our entire world evolution glowing and flooded with the Christ-being. That means we describe how, little by little, the physical body of the human being came into being on Saturn, how the etheric body appeared on the sun, the astral body on the moon, and then the I and we find how all this strives towards the goal of becoming ever more independent and individualized in order to incorporate the wisdom that passes from the sun to the earth, the earth's development. For the liberated I of the modern age, Christ and Christianity must become the perspective center of the world view, so to speak.

Thus you see how Christianity has gradually prepared itself for what it is to become. Christianity was taken up by the human being with his physical faculty of knowledge in the first centuries, then later with his etheric faculty of knowledge and with his astral faculty of knowledge throughout the Middle Ages. Then Christianity in its true form was pushed back for a while until the I had been educated by the three bodies in the course of post-Christian development. But now that the I has learned to think and to look out into the objective world, it is also ripe to see in this objective world, in all its manifestations, the spiritual facts that are so intimately connected with the central being, with the Christ-being: to see the Christ in the most diverse forms everywhere as the foundation.

This brings us back to the starting point of spiritual-scientific understanding and knowledge of Christianity, and we recognize what task, what mission, this movement has been assigned for spiritual knowledge. At the same time, we recognize the reality of this mission. Just as the individual human being has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I, and gradually ascends to ever higher heights, so it is also in the historical development of Christianity. One might say that Christianity also has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. This ego can even deny its origin, as it can in our time, and it can become selfish. But it is still an ego that can at the same time take in the true essence of Christ and ascend to ever higher levels of existence. What the human being is in detail is what the great world is in its totality as well as in the process of its historical becoming.

When we look at it this way, a broad perspective of the future opens up for us from a spiritual-scientific point of view. And we know how this can capture our hearts and fill them with enthusiasm. We understand more and more what we have to do, and we also know that we are not groping in the dark. We have not concocted ideas that we want to arbitrarily impose on the future; rather, we want to have and follow only those ideas that have been gradually prepared by the centuries of Christian development. Just as it is true that the I must first appear and gradually develop upwards to a spirit self, spirit of life and spiritual man, after the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body were first present, so it is true that the modern human being with his ego form, with his present-day thinking, could only develop out of the astral, etheric and physical forms of Christianity. I has become Christianity. Just as this was a true development from the past, so it is true that the ego-figure of humanity can only emerge after the astral and etheric forms of Christianity have been developed. Christianity will continue to develop in the future, it will offer quite different things to humanity, and the Christian development and the Christian attitude to life will arise in a new form: the transformed astral body will appear as the Christian spirit self, the transformed ether body as the Christian life spirit. And in a radiant future perspective of Christianity, the star shines before our soul, towards which we, the spiritual man, are heading, completely illuminated and aglow with the spirit of Christianity.