# Lectures on Christian Religious Work II

## GA 343 — 7 October 1921, Dornach

### Twenty-second Lecture

My dear friends! Yesterday during the afternoon meeting here, a number of things came up that oblige me to say a few words before I move on to the ritual of the consecration and the communion. It seems to me that it is necessary to achieve a very fundamental understanding about certain things, because it would be of no use if this understanding were to remain in the background, so to speak. Here, too, it must be spoken about very clearly. Above all, it is necessary to really understand the essence of a ritual, so that it is not possible to say that what emanates from a ritual can also have a suggestive effect. There is absolute uncertainty today about what has a suggestive effect, and perhaps only the representatives of a religious world view are suited to correct the thoroughly unhealthy conditions that have arisen in this field as a result of our science. Our science has no possibility, if it wants to come to clarity even about the most elementary things of the soul, that through it somehow a correct insight into the facts would arise. It does not have that possibility. One must also have experience in this, my dear friends; these experiences come to one when one participates in something like I did. I was able to observe, I would like to say, the development of psychoanalysis from its very beginning. It was a friend of mine who first wanted to make accessible to science that which is justified in psychoanalysis. Then it came into the hands of Freud. The man who originally had the idea withdrew, and that in itself was proof of how impossible it is to arrive at clarity about these things from the foundations of today's science. Unfortunately, one does indeed experience that these concepts of modern science, which has no discernment at all for what takes place in the soul, are penetrating more and more into religious and theological concepts as well.

Why, my dear friends, is so much care taken in the realization of the rituals from the supersensible? It is done for no other reason than to exclude even the last vestige of suggestion. That is the basic requirement, that even the last vestige of suggestion be excluded. And how is this achieved? You see, all the rituals I have given and will give you are conceived on the principle that they express in words what comes from the supersensible, the normal evolutionary forces, only in their development by man. When one speaks of suggestion here, one applies the term to something to which it is absolutely not applicable, because one would then also have to apply it [for example] to the forces that are involved in the growth of the child — I do not mean those those that come from the parents or the environment, but those forces that work inwardly, from the spiritual-mental, that shape the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen and so on – and one would also have to say of these that they have a suggestive effect on the person. Here it ceases to be possible to associate any meaning with the word 'suggestive'. One can only associate a meaning with this word when it is a matter of an influence being exerted on a person who is separated from the other people by his individuality, which falls outside the straight evolution of natural events, where something flows from one individuality to another. To exclude this is part of the path that must be taken when conceiving rituals. Here, then, we are not dealing with what passes from one person to another, but with a deepening into the divine-spiritual movement of development and the developmental forces of the human being himself, and these are to be brought into the word as they are. So here the possibility of speaking of suggestion ceases, just as in the case of a square the possibility ceases of speaking of the laws of the triangle.

But these are distinctions that can only be made by a more profound science. Today's science is dreadfully dilettantish and dreadfully powerless with regard to the soul, and the things that are said about the soul by psychoanalysts or even by experimental psychologists and other psychologists are maddeningly impotent. One can say that ordinary science somehow does not have the possibility to grasp suggestion.

That is what I have to say in principle first of all. The other thing is that our modern theory of development has led us to limit the content of consciousness so much to the human ego and to develop little interest in how the human ego is connected to the entire universe, so that such things, as I again spoke of yesterday, the necessity of the death of the moral in the downfall of the earth, are no longer felt with the necessary strength at all. It is easy for the modern consciousness to speak of superstition in such cases. But this superstition is based solely on the fact that one has become completely entangled in the selfish conception of the world. And so it happens that one actually does not attach any special importance, my dear friends, to what happens within man himself today. And he who attaches no importance to what happens within man himself will never be able to understand the ritual and never the sacrament in reality.

Look around you, you see the stars, you see the sun and the moon, you see the formations in the air, you see clouds, waves, rivers, you see the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms – all of this will one day no longer be, all of this will one day have disappeared. Heaven and earth will come to an end. Everything you can see with your eyes, perceive with your senses, grasp with your reasoning mind, all that will perish. Only that which is grounded in the individual human being, which the individual human being has taken in, will not perish when the individual passes through death and will live beyond earthly existence. With Christ we say: My words will not pass away. Only that which is within the human skin will not perish. Today, everything else will perish. And as man passes through the gate of death, all mere intellectual effects and experiences perish with it. All that perishes, and only what is the wholly human comprehension can remain. But you cannot come to the wholly human comprehension without going beyond everything that takes place in your environment in earthly existence. If you only perform actions that are realized in earthly existence, no matter how important they may be, then you are only working for earthly existence, and that has only value for man between birth and death. In that case you do not fertilize man's soul, and man's soul gains nothing through you, however well meant everything may be.

The very thrust of modern development — and that is why the present moment is so infinitely serious — is that everything that is connected with the eternal in man is to be taken away from him. And a human soul to which you make the ritual, the sacrament, accessible, such a human soul simply penetrates more deeply into the eternal through what is experienced in the ritual. He who does not understand this in its full depth will not understand ritual and sacrament. One must look at what is done to the soul of man and to his eternal part. The soul would die with the end of the earth and the soul would sleep after death if nothing were done to this human soul in our time, which lies after the mystery of Golgotha. The idea of resurrection must be taken very seriously, and Paul's conclusion that if Christ had not been resurrected, we would simply have no eternity. This must not be immersed only in the sphere of the intellectual; it must be taken so seriously that we know in fact: we are working to make the soul more and more alive by continuing in ceremony that which took place at Calvary.

But, my dear friends, this is in turn intimately connected with making the word of the gospel come alive. The documentary is not the only thing in the words of the gospel; establish the gospel as you will, you have not yet done everything with it. You have then created the possibility of proclaiming the gospels as they had to be spoken to the contemporaries of the apostles, but you still have no way of making these gospel words as alive as they can and should be in today's living. In what I present to you here as a ritual, nothing lives but the living word of the Gospel. And anyone who believes that the living word of the Gospel does not live in it seems to me like someone who sees a 15-year-old boy and says that he does not know him, that he must first have a picture of him at the age of three and know what he looked like then. We must have the possibility today of having the gospel word within us and of handling it in full freedom, even though Christ lives in it. This must be allowed to flow into the ritual word; only then is the ritual word true in the modern sense. Only then do I truly understand the gospel. Therefore, what is to be achieved today cannot be achieved merely by repeating the gospel. On the contrary, anyone who knows how these things are constituted also knows that if you merely develop the gospel word of this or that soul in the dead, then unfortunately you can contribute to the opposite of what you are striving for. If you do not have a living relationship with the soul to whom you proclaim the gospel word, then the gospel word can be destructive, just as an otherwise healthy area can be destructive for someone who has a weak constitution, because he has not adapted to that area.

We only have to look at these mysteries of existence in the right way. And we must come to something else. We must come to understand, my dear friends, why for all earlier consciousness healing and knowledge were one and the same, or at least belonged to one and the same. In the times when knowledge and religion were one, knowledge was never taken as anything other than an instruction for man to find healing at the same time. Here we come to realize that original sin in reality represents an illness of man. When consciousness is seized with this illness, then healing does not occur, but rather a further illness. We must snatch consciousness, the soul with all its powers, from the sphere of the illness of sin.

We must therefore take into account the possibility that with the end of the earth, everything that is morally grounded could perish if we do not keep it alive through Jesus Christ and lead it beyond the end of the earth to future stages of existence. This awareness must permeate everything that flows into ritual and ceremony. And so you will see that precisely when we approach the mysteries of the sacrifice of the Mass, this beholding, this full human beholding of that which above all works and lives in man himself as the eternal, and of that which must be healed through its connection with Christ Jesus, becomes ever more and more apparent. If someone were to come today and say, “Why should we need the sacraments when we have the Word?” the answer from the anthroposophical standpoint would be, “True, you have the Word, but do you also have the power of the Word?” “Are you sure that your Word will not decay with the death of the earth?” This certainty must be established today! Therefore, he who knows this connection cannot speak about these things as another would who does not know it. It is from this point of view that I ask you to understand what I am now going to say about the continuation of the sacrifice of the Mass in the following. Here too, I must say in advance: some things may still be imperfect, but they are as good as they can be according to my ability today.

So the reading of the Gospel is over, the sacrifice is over. Accordingly, the host is on the altar, the chalice, in which wine and water are mixed, is on the altar, and the host has this form - I am now describing how I think I should describe it (it is drawn on the board) -; it can be broken here, here (see drawing) a piece can be broken off. It is consecrated. We shall have to speak about the consecration later.


During the consecration, it waits for what is to happen to it, so that the words can be true in the direct experience of the sacramental act, which I shall now communicate to you. First, we have to do with the preparation for the sacramental act. Then, at first, there is speaking without the ceremony being performed:

> Our prayer penetrates to you, O foundation of the world  
> Through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord.  
> Your blessing shines over the pure sacrifice, the sacrifice done in love  
> The sacrifice accomplished with good will.  
> Receive it from our pure thinking, our loving  
> Heart, our willing devotion.  
> We unite in sacrifice, that we may be the community of Christ. Feel the blessing, O Christ, the confession of You and hear our prayers, we who are united in Your name;  
> Receive, O Father God, the Christ sacrifice as it may come to life in us, through us;  
> It is brought for the redemption of souls,  
> For the attainment of true salvation,  
> For walking with Christ.  
> Our prayers unite with all who have gone before us, living Christ in them; may their protective power shine upon us.
> Christ in us.
> Hear us, O Father God, as we pray to you for the acceptance of our sacrifice;  
> This sacrifice is sent to you  
> the Christian community,  
> which freely recognizes Christ as its helping leader.
> Christ in us.
> Father God, in this sacrifice of Christ,  
> let us have life, body and blood  
> of Thy loving Son.

Now, during these words, the ceremony is performed:

> Before His sorrowful departure,  
> He took the bread for the revelation of salvation  
> and He looked up to You, His Father,

— the host is lifted up —

> thanking You and thereby uniting His soul with Yours.  
> Then He gave it to the disciples as food.

The Host is broken, the small triangle taken out and mixed with the wine and water in the chalice.

> And He said:  
> Take, eat, of the bread my body.  
> He took, after the journey's food of bread  
> the chalice to invigorate salvation  
> And He looked up to You, His Father,

— the chalice is raised —

> thanking You and thereby uniting His soul with Yours.  
> Then He gave it to the disciples to drink.  
> And He spoke:  
> Take, then, with this wine My blood.

The ceremony is complete.

> And He continued:  
> With these words the Divine is given back to  
> men, for on the cross the body will bear the new  
> creed; and from the cross will flow in the blood the new faith.  
> Take this up into your thinking.  
> And so let live in our thoughts:  
> The new confession  
> The new faith –  
> So think of us Christ's death of suffering; His resurrection;  
> His revelation through all the following times on earth.
> To you, O Father God, be the sacrifice brought,  
> thinking in purity  
> hoping for salvation  
> acting from Christ,
> Christ reigns:  
> in the bread that bears salvation  
> in the wine that gives strength.
> You, O Father God, once received the sacrifices of those who had not yet  
> received Christ; so receive the sacrifice of those  
> who do it in Christ's name, essence, power.  
> Thy Spirit's grace-power work earthward, as this sacrifice, heavenward strives.  
> Let the bread be Christ's body  
> Let the wine be Christ's blood  
> We would sacrifice thus, that
> Christ may be in us.
> And we would join in prayer with those from whom  
> You received Your Son's sacrifice before us.  
> We cannot do works before You;  
> We would conquer sin before You  
> through Christ, through whom You, O Father God  
> create, heal and inspire  
> through Christ, through whom You, in union with the healing Spirit, perform the  
> revelation, the ordering of space, the course of time.  
> So be it.

The old canon, as it is used, already breathes something of this spirit, but it is focused on the Church, on the particular Catholic Church.

> "You, most gracious Father, we humbly implore through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, that You may bless these gifts, these pure offerings, these presentations that we send to You , thanking You for giving us Your Holy Catholic Church, to whom You give: peace, protection and concord; which You ordain over the whole circle of the earth through Your servant, the Roman Pontiff.

— which is then deleted for the Old Catholics, [instead of which it says] -:

> “together with our most reverend bishop N and all those who live in the true faith and profess the Catholic and Apostolic doctrine.”

Now, of course, masses are read [in the Catholic Church] for people who seek them, for the living or the dead. This is brought about by many externalizations, to which that which is actually the inner life is always exposed. We encounter something here that can hardly concern us, and that does not occur when the ritual is restored today.

> "Look with blessing, O Lord, on your servants and servant N.N. and on all those present, whose faith and prayer reaches you, for whom we send you this sacrifice in joy, for the salvation of their souls, so that they may hope for health and well-being; they send their supplication to you, eternal, true, living God.
> This plea unites with those of those we remember in clarity: Mary, ever virgin, our Lord's mother, divine; Your holy apostles and martyrs Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon , Thaddeus, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Xystus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John, Paul, Cosmas, Damian, and all the saints, through whose works and prayers you may grant us your protection forever; through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

These things are then accompanied by the appropriate ceremonies, which I will discuss later.

> "Hear us, O Lord, as we pray for the acceptance of this sacrifice, which Your entire community sends to You; may Your peace prevail over our days, so that we may not be rejected but may enter into the group that You choose as Your own.
> Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
> Bless, receive, let be welcome, spiritualize, O Lord, this sacrifice, that it may become in us the body and blood of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the day before He suffered took the bread into His holy and revealing hands, , turning his eyes to You, O God, who art his almighty Father, and thanked You for it, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take, eat, all of you, for this is my body.
> And so, after supper, He took the cup into His holy and revelatory hands, thanked You again for it, blessed it and gave it to the disciples, saying: Take and drink from it, for it is the cup of my blood, the newly-made and never-ending communion, the bearer of faith, which will be given for you and for many for the cleansing of sin. And as often as you do the same, take me into your thoughts.

The ceremony is complete.

> "Therefore, we also want to include in our thoughts, we who profess ourselves as Your servants and want to count ourselves among Your holy disciples, Your suffering, O Son of the Father, our Lord, and also Your resurrection and the glorious glorious manifestation of Thy ascension; and we will bring to Thee, who art gloriously triumphant on high, a pure sacrifice, a holy sacrifice, a sinless sacrifice, with the holy bread of eternal life and the ever-saving chalice.
> Let thine eye look with favor and mercy on our sacrifice, and receive it with goodwill, as thou once receivedst with goodwill the sacrifice of thy righteous servant Abel and that of our patriarch Abraham and that which the high priest Melchizedek brought thee, a sinless host.
> In humble supplication we turn to You, Almighty God, send Your holy angel, that his hands may carry to You and lay down the sacrifice upon Your heavenly altar, before Your radiant eye, so that we, who eat the Holy Body and drink the Holy Blood of Your Son at the earthly altar, may be imbued with the breath and grace of heaven.
> And this too through Christ our Lord.
> And hear, O Lord, Thy servants and Thy handmaid N.N.,

— now the names are mentioned again for whom the Mass is being read, if it is for the dead —

> "who have gone before us, bearing well thy cross of confession, and are at rest. To them all, Lord, mayest thou give deliverance, light, and peace.
> Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
> Yes, so be it.
> We implore You to accept us as servants who may be deemed worthy of Your gracious presence in the company of Your holy apostles and martyrs, John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander , Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia, Anastasia and all the saints; in whose company you may admit us, not for merit's sake, but for repentance from sins. Through Christ our Lord, through whom you, Lord, create, sanctify, vivify, and give us everything.
> Through him,
> With him,
> In him,
> Almighty God the Father, in union with the Holy Spirit,
> in all revelation,
> in all world orders,
> through all ages,

The altar server says:

> “Yes, so be it.”

You see what the tradition is, and you see how it seems to me that the sacrament must be endowed with a ritual today. In the Catholic Church, there are some intermediate things that we will talk about, but then we move on to the fourth main part of the Mass, to Communion, which is taken in the two forms, in bread and wine. Before the taking of the bread and wine, the following is spoken:

> Thou, O Christ, hast spoken to those who walk with you: Peacefully I stand by the world; this peace with the world can also be with you because I give it to you.
> So, O Christ, the strength in me that frees itself from the burden of sin and unites with you in thought and will, so that it may stand peacefully in relation to the world and become one with its becoming, that can happen through you in all subsequent circles of time.
> Yes, so be it.
> O Christ, who went forth from the Father God without illness, and who, with the healing Spirit, gives human spirits the gift of continued life, quench the power of the disease of sin through Your body bearing the Holy Spirit; and strengthen me in my struggling soul through Your blood that bestows salvation, so that I may live forever with You. You who carry and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and make it healthy through the Spirit in all subsequent periods of time.
> Yes, so be it.
> May I, who is ill, not receive your body, O Christ, unto death; but unto life of soul and of my formative powers as the healing medicine. This be through you, who bear and order the life of the world as you receive it from the Father and make it healthy through the Spirit in all subsequent circles of time.
> Yes, so be it. I take the bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which you enter is sick; but my soul will be healed by your word. (Three times)

Now the bread is taken.

> The body of our Lord shall heal my soul, so that it may live. Yes, so be it.
> Take me for giving myself to you.
> I take the cup and do this in the name of the Lord, calling, O Christ, to whom I confess, what has been revealed through You, and You take the power of man's adversary from me. (Three times)

The cup is drunk.

> The blood of the Lord gives strength to my soul, so that it may not die in the future. Yes, so be it.
> What my mouth has received, let it be in my soul, and what has been sacrificed in time, let it be transformed into eternal medicine. May your body, O Christ, which I have received, and your blood, which gives me life, penetrate me, so that the disease of sin may be healed by the healing medicine, the sacrament. May it be done through You, who bear and order the life of the world as You receive it from the Father and, through the Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.
> Yes, so be it.

This is what the act of Communion amounts to and what it says in the Catholic Church:

> "O Jesus Christ, our Lord, who spoke to Your Apostles: My peace be with you, I give you my peace: do not look at my sin-laden person, but at Your Church, which confesses You and give it, according to Your will: peace and unity, You who live in the world and order it as its divine Creator through all the following ages.
> Yes, so be it.

That is the “per omnia saecula saeculorum”. You see, here it is clearly stated how the priest in Catholicism differs from the Church. He stands as a member of the Church before the altar, and according to the dogma, his person is not actually considered at all.

> "O Jesus Christ, Son of the God who gives life to the world, who, according to His will, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, hast given the world life through Thyself, take from me the power of the sins of the world through Thy body, which bears our sins, and through Thy blood, which redeems us, and unite me inseparably to Thyself. You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all the ages to come.
> Yes, so be it.
> May the receiving of Your body, O Jesus Christ, our Lord, by me, an unworthy one, not be for my condemnation, but according to Your mercy for the salvation of soul and body as a healing remedy. You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all the ages to come.
> Yes, let it be so.
> Taking the bread heavenward I call on the Lord's name. © Lord, I am unready for You to enter under my roof; but just say the word and my soul shall be healed. (Three times)
> The body of the Lord brings my soul to life.
> Yes, so be it. What shall I give to the Lord for all that He has given me? Taking the cup, I call on the name of the Lord. Confessing His revelation, I will call upon the name of the Lord with joy and my adversaries will flee from me. The blood of the Lord strengthen my soul in survival.
> Yes, so be it.
> What the mouth has received, may the pure soul absorb, and from the temporal sacrifice may come medicine for eternity. May your body, O Lord, that nourished me, and your blood, that strengthened me, penetrate my soul forever, and in me may the disease of sin be wiped out as the pure and healing sacraments. You who live and reign in all the ages to come.
> Yes, it shall be so.

So you see, the Sacrifice of the Mass is indeed the sacramental fulfillment of the four main parts of which I have spoken to you. And it is important that the entire meaning of Christianity is fully alive in the ritual of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Gospel must live in every single word of the ritual, the Gospel must be alive, and without this life of the living Gospel the ritual would be impossible. Of course, it must be assumed that the following is recognized in order to understand something like this: one is dealing with people who live according to the Mystery of Golgotha, with people, that is, for whom there could never be anything that would be a mere external act, that takes place in the world of the senses, or that is performed by the human being in the world of the senses , and with those, therefore, for whom there could also be nothing that could be spoken out of ordinary human consciousness in an intellectualistic way, that could strengthen the moral world in man so that that which must be conquered can be conquered.

For this, an action is needed that goes beyond everything that lies within the bounds of our present-day possibilities for action and speech, if we are not to move on to an awareness of the sacramental. I know, my dear friends, how much is said against the sacramental in the hearts of modern people, but anyone who has experience in these matters may also say something else. One could think that my annoyance at the ceremonial, which is so common among modern people, might even come from a Christian or Protestant consciousness. But I must confess to you – it is a personal comment, but in this case it is very factual – I have actually never seen a person in whom what was angry against the sacramental came from love and from goodness, but always from secret evil that is in human nature. Of course, this is a process that we see occurring in many cases today, but what is primarily angry is actually the resistance, the resistance to salvation, of human nature. It is the incitement by the same forces that say in the Gospel: we recognize you – and then begin to fight Christ Jesus because they recognize him. I would not say this at all if it were not a thoroughly observable fact. Whoever overcomes that which asserts itself as evil in his soul is given the strength to overcome. But whoever cannot overcome this evil is also deprived of what strength he had to overcome before. These things are quite serious, and in the human soul things are constantly happening that cannot be grasped by ordinary external consciousness. One might say that the human soul is actually constantly walking over an abyss. That is indeed the case, it is just not aware of it. But it must become aware of it, and how it is to become aware of it must be guided in the right way. As long as we merely have the belief that we are to moralize the human soul, and as long as we have the belief from our present consciousness that we could do this with the powers that are present in the outer world, so long we have no idea of what the human soul actually is in the whole context of the world.

Therefore, do not take something like an externality when certain sentences are spoken three times in Communion. Why are they spoken three times? The first time is spoken:

> I take this bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which You enter is sick; but through Your word my soul shall be healed.

The first time the word is spoken so that it may be taken up into one's understanding. The second time the word is spoken:

> I take the bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christe, the dwelling into which You enter is sick; but through Your word my soul shall be healed.

so that we experience this in our feeling. And only the third time can the word be spoken in such a way that our volition is sufficiently kindled through our thinking and feeling, so that the word may also live in our volition:

> I take this bread and do it in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which you enter is sick; but through your word my soul will be healed.

Likewise with the words of the cup:

> I take this cup, and do this in the Lord's name, calling: © Christe, to whom I profess myself, what through Thee is revealed, and the power of man's adversary Thou takest from me.

The second time:

> I take this cup, and do this in the Lord's name, calling to mind that Thou takest away the power of Thine enemies.

The third time:

> I take the cup and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christe, to whom I profess my faith, what has been revealed through you, and you take away from me the power of man's adversary.

All details are important in such a ritual, and if they are incorrect, it is already roughly the same as if, let us say, any limb of the human body is wrongly formed due to a malformed development. We must have the feeling that these things are alive in truth. Of course, what lives in the succession of time changes its body in the succession of time, precisely because it is alive, but this change of body is precisely only a consequence of the living.

With the help of the point of view just mentioned, it is now quite easy to find the differences that exist between what is in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass and what is in the ritual that I spoke of as possible today. But it is also clear to see how it is almost impossible to truly depict the full concrete experiences through a mere translation, even if it attempts to restore the old words' values. This is because, in fact, for the entire civilization of modern times, the actual meaning of the original words has been lost. We no longer live in the life that the words once had. We live in words, in that they have become mere signs for us. We no longer listen inwardly to the words either. The sensation of the sound of the words has become for us a sensation of a sign of memory. I have already spoken about these things from a different point of view. But such a ritual cannot be performed without coming back to the real listening to the words.

I have told you: When we read in the Gospel of John today, “In the beginning was the Word,” we have to say that according to a literal translation. But what we associate with the word “Word” today is not at all what was once associated with the word “Word.” And when we translate the old word logos as wisdom, then the two are even further apart, for wisdom is something much more abstract than logos was. And by translating logos as wisdom we actually enter the sphere, well, not of Christ, but of the spirit. And while we can still feel the word to some extent in the “verbum” [the Latin translation], if “logos” were translated as “wisdom”, we would actually have to feel spirit, “sapientia”. These things should actually be thoroughly brought to perception in today's theology classes. Many have an enormous fear of this. Because they have learned that one should be a theo-logian, and they fear that if something else comes over their outer perception of “logia,” it is “sophia,” and then they are terribly afraid that they might come to theosophia instead of theologia. This is a terrible fear that is present in theologians today. They consider it an insult to be called “theosophists”. Why? Because they have no belief that the Christ works through the spirit that lives in wisdom, because they would like to deny the spirit; and the denial of the spirit, in many respects, is what causes such a feeling.

We must see these things in their true light, only then can we also feel - and we will come back to this, my dear friends - how different our direct experience can be with regard to the Father-God and to the Christ Himself.