The Essence of Christianity
GA 68a — 4 February 1909, Basel
46. The Importance of Christianity for the Future
My dear attendees! There are certain circles in our present time that claim to be grounded in the latest science and then try to look at Christianity from this point of view, especially in terms of what it could still be for today's people, especially for people in the future. Today, however, we shall not be speaking of these considerations, which sometimes lead to a complete negation, to an obliteration of the Christian conviction, but we shall be considering Christianity from the standpoint of spiritual science or theosophy, as this spiritual research has come to be called, with a view to its effectiveness in the future.
Yesterday we tried to consider the religious development of humanity; today this consideration should culminate in seeing the various religious currents developing and reaching a kind of climax in what is called the Christ impulse.
The misunderstanding that Theosophy is to be understood as a new religion, or as a religion at all, cannot be dispelled often enough. It should be seen as a tool for understanding religions, for seeking the essence in the successive religions. In relation to Christianity, too, spiritual science takes on the role of a tool for understanding it in its full significance.
However, it comes to a different conclusion than that of a negation. That which has emerged as the fruit of religious development has been the most powerful earthly impulse. And the deeper theosophy delves into its inner core, the more it must come to the realization that, despite almost 2,000 years of development of historical Christianity in feeling, sentiment, and interest, Christian development is just beginning within the unfolding of the earth, and that Christianity has within it forces and impulses that point to a broad earthly perspective. This should be the content of our reflection today.
To do this, we will now have to talk about the essence of Christianity. Much of what is distinctive and fundamental, much would have to be said if the whole scope is to be outlined only very briefly, with the intention of one of the characteristic properties of this impulse coming before our soul, which can particularly illustrate this principle.
It is best characterized by the words that describe the contrast between the old law and the new freedom that came into Christianity through the Pauline law. Superficially, this can be characterized as follows: humanity, in its millennia-long development, has gradually become ripe for an ever more intense shaping of its inwardness. In all peoples in earlier stages of development, one finds that the sense of self, the sense of independence, has come very slowly and gradually. Therefore, the basic impulse of Christianity has not always been present in humanity, as it occurred at the beginning of our time. Today's human being can no longer become aware that the way he perceives himself as an independent being, as a being with his own impulses, is something that has only emerged. Among all peoples, however, we have such a starting point that the individual does not feel himself to be an individuality in this intense way, but as a member of a tribe, a people or some other community. Every person of every nation felt this way; he did not say “I” to himself as every person does today. Rather, he said “I” to the whole group, to the whole community, the tribe, the people, as the finger would say “I” to our whole organism, not to itself, if it could speak, would have to consider itself as an organ of a soul-I.
You can still feel this when you read that unique and wonderful product of history, Tacitus' “Germania”. There you can read how the Cheruscan, the Cheruler, knew and felt himself more as a member of his tribe than as an independent ego.
The human soul is only gradually becoming centralized; that is why we also find that in that great culture that prepared for Christianity, within the Hebrew culture, Moses wanted to say something very special with the words: “I and Father Abraham are one”, something with which he pointed to the progenitor of the whole people. For the ancient Hebrew believer, the word meant a great deal: “I and Father Abraham are one.” The blood that flowed from the progenitor of the people was something by which the individual felt supported; he looked in awe and reverence to the source from which he and the other people flowed. It was as if there were a common self, a group self, hinted at in the reference to the father Abraham. I am immersed in it; in the stream of blood flowing down through the generations, I feel as if I am in a continuous one, while in my being between birth and death everything is transient.
What was felt as one in a whole became more and more relaxed, and the result of this was love; and this was therefore connected to feeling one with the whole. What was akin was drawn from person to person. During the education on earth, man should develop more and more in love, and so we see how the individual is more and more separated from the whole. If it had remained only with this separation, if another impulse had not also come into the development of mankind, what would have become of it?
Even within the old Hebrew confession, it was necessary to regulate human coexistence by external commandments, which would have drifted apart more and more if the ego had increasingly separated itself from its whole. The Christ impulse fell into this development of humanity. People no longer reckoned with the old blood ties; they reckoned with the human being as an ego-being. Therefore, Christ substituted for the old Hebrew saying, “I and Father Abraham are one,” the significant saying, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); that which lives in me as an I-being is not only one with an earthly being linked to me by blood ties, but one with a spiritual being.
There is a spiritual essence that underlies all physical existence, and every single ego is also one with this essence. Independently of our other connections, each of us has gained a connection with the spiritual Father principle of the universe.
Before Abraham was, the “I am” was (John 8:58),
that is, there is something in man that is eternal, immortal, that was there in each of us before anything visible was there; before Abraham was there, this spiritual was there.
In every individual ego is a source of activity, of action, of understanding of the world. This had to arise in every human being. When the individual is drawn to seek his connection with the Christ, the human being must be given the opportunity to replace the old love with a new love, a spiritual love that is independent of all blood ties, a love that arises from every soul and goes from every soul to every soul.
Through Christ, a new impulse entered into the development of the earth. When this impulse has fully come to life, it will bring love into every soul and enable every soul to find the right relationship to the world, the right love for people. And it is precisely in this sense, in this respect, that we are at the beginning of Christianity. Through this process of coming to life, every ego becomes freer and freer. Paul said:
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
We must not understand this Christianity in such a way that the old is repealed by the new freedom, by that love, which is a spiritual one; the new love does not want to take something, not dissolve, not destroy the old, but keep the old and still add something new, it should not impoverish the old, but enrich it. The love of one human soul for another is added to blood and kinship ties. This new love, which will ultimately embrace all people when the earth reaches its goal, is the Christ impulse. It is the impulse of the earth-embracing brotherhood and therefore at the same time the content of all that man can conquer on earth.
When Christ appeared, the remnants of ancient wisdom existed; the connoisseurs of religious secrets had a goal. And we find it wonderfully expressed in the early Christian period, when all those equipped with ancient wisdom approach to give expression to Christianity. How did they conceive the relationship between what could be known from the old creeds and Christ Himself? Something quite extraordinary appeared in the Christian being of Jesus of Nazareth. In what the Rishis called Vishva Karman, in what Zarathustra referred to as Ahura-Mazdao, and again in the Egyptian Hermes teaching, where it is said: When the soul passes through the gate of death, it becomes one with Osiris, in that which points to becoming one with Osiris – in all of this, reference is made to the one great being that appeared in the Jesus of Nazareth. And the old sages had the mood in their minds: we must use everything that the old founders of religions have said in order to understand this unique phenomenon.
In that circle, for example, they called Gnosticism whatever was needed to bring together all human perceptions in order to comprehend the Christ. It was far, far removed from today's negating science, which seeks to grasp the uniqueness of the Christ appearance in trivial terms of material life. This was roughly the kind of education that the first Christian teachers gave to the confessors: that no wisdom can reach high enough to comprehend the Christ appearance. This mood also speaks from the Pauline letters and lasts until the fourth and fifth centuries with those who understand Christianity, not with those who corrupt it. What could be taught in this way came into the world as the first fruit of Christianity.
Then came the great phenomena of the Middle Ages. Of course, one could also enumerate the dark sides. But today we want to point out the greatness in the development of the Middle Ages; for the other falls away from the tree of development, the great continues to grow.
What the Christ was, is shown to us in the first stage. In the second stage, the Central European peoples enter into Christianity. A new time begins for Christianity. There we see that much-maligned science of the Middle Ages, which, as a real science, starts from a very definite principle, which one should not mistake. It has the feeling that filled Christianity at the beginning, that the figure of Christ is in harmony with the entire supersensible world in its individual manifestations. The Christian scholars of the Middle Ages regarded it as their task to apply all human ingenuity to understanding what happened in Palestine and how it relates to the entire supersensible world.
An enormous amount of thought has been given to how Christ is connected to the spiritual world and how the other spiritual entities that lie behind this physical world are connected to him, how the good and bad sides of human nature are present in them. So much acumen has been applied to it that modern times consider it far too astute and regard everything that has been applied to it as a scholastic construct, as a fine exercise of the human mind applied to an object that one has accepted as a revelation and to which one should not apply reason. Today, philosophy is so proud to appeal to this intellect and does not go along with this insubstantial scholastic web, and it is regarded as something overcome, which such Christian science of the Middle Ages was. Let us take a moment to consider a point of view – which does not really need to be – to see what is meant by scholastic contemplation. Let us say that it is not at all important to know how Christ relates to the spiritual world, and let us look only at the one thing that cannot be denied historically: that the educated people of the Middle Ages did turn their minds to these problems in the most ingenious way. No matter whether the mind was applied to worthy or unworthy problems, it was educated in the process, educated in something that would not otherwise have developed into human abilities. Let us ask: What has become of it? We see how the intellect of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was able to initiate the modern progress of the material world. For those who are not caught up in prejudice, it is clear that everything we have of much-admired modern science, practice and culture is due to the intellect trained through the Middle Ages. Why was Copernicus able to think so well, to move this intellect so well that he gained the new view of the heavenly bodies? Because the strength of the intellect emerged from this school. Let us now ask: where did the spirit of Kepler, the ingenuity of Galileo, the reformatory power of Giordano Bruno come from? If we look at what these minds have been able to achieve, we find that their powers have been ignited by the Christian development of the Middle Ages.
What, then, has modern science brought us? Where does today's industry get the possibility to shape itself in its power elements as it is? What has modern trade and commerce brought? It is the thought forms that underlie everything, and they have grown out of the Christian education of the Middle Ages.
We may rightly stand in awe before a technical wonder such as the Gotthard tunnel. Who built it? We ask, not according to outward appearances, but according to the inner essence, for those who built it were guided by those who understand such things. But what must one understand in order to be able to create such a wonder? One must understand what a mind like Leibniz's has laid the foundation for this science. By finding this way of calculating, by incorporating it into all of modern thought, did he not help build the Gotthard Tunnel and all of modern culture? Where else but in the lonely room of the thinker does all this come from? Imagine Leibniz without the entire education of the Middle Ages! If you want to think in real terms; the abilities for all modern culture, insofar as they are intellectual, owe their development to the point in time when Christianity became established in the Central European world.
At first, so to speak, it is spoken to those who are contemporaries, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, of what is physically present, then of what memory has preserved. Then what has developed as an ability emancipates itself and founds all of modern culture.
But we have only come to ourselves with this. We see, however, that Christianity is, in a sense, internalizing itself, moving into people; first as something external that is unthinkable without someone pointing to Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and died in Palestine. It is said that one cannot prove or come close to him through reason. Attention is drawn to facts, to people who have laid their hands on the wounds. Care is taken to point this out, and to those who still sat at the feet of the apostles, who have had the appearance of Christ. — This gradually disappears and gradually moves into the interior.
With Nicholas of Cusa and in science up to Copernicus, up to Galileo and Kepler, everywhere we find that the human intellect is considered capable of grasping what has happened. And further on, we see how the ability, the keen sense that developed in the Christian object, breaks free and becomes modern thinking, the way of life of our new science.
And let us ask: Where is the arsenal of the sharpness of thought and criticism that enabled, for example, David Friedrich Strauß to fight Christianity so strongly? Where is the arsenal of the acumen that gave rise to the whole of biblical criticism? The Christian development itself is the arsenal for these thoughts. Even the critics who turn against Christianity owe their abilities to Christian development. If you take the modern point of view, you will deny it, but for those who actually go through the development, this development becomes proof that cannot be stronger.
Among all the forces that developed and brought the power and splendor of our culture, something else developed that Christianity was to carry even further into the human interior, into the depths of the human soul. In the middle of the Middle Ages, in people like Johannes Tauler, Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius, we see this. We see how these people speak of a Christian manifestation that is no longer based on external facts, nor on memories, nor does it appeal to the intellect, but to the deepest part of the human being: the human ego, by their fervor point out that the Christ impulse can flare up in every ego, that which Paul himself so significantly presented as the Christ in man (Gal 2:20); it can flare up in each and every individual.
We are entering a phase that can prepare a new era for the future. Master Eckhart particularly pointed to the human ego that can experience the Christ within itself. But with such minds, we cannot merely speak of an inner, abstract Christ. Yes, it would suit our moderns to say: We do not care about the outer historical Christ. If he is born within, what do we care about the historical Christ! It is thoughtless to say that he could exist within without the outer Christ.
We need only call another thought before our soul. How often is it repeated today in the subjective school of philosophy: Without the eye, there is no light. Certainly, the blind are not born seeing. Without the eye, the world around us would be colorless; without the ear, there would be no sounds for us. But now let us consider the other side of the matter, the very simple fact that appears again and again when such things are mentioned. There are animals with eyes; they change their way of life, moving into dark caves. There they do not need to see; the eyes atrophy. Other organs become strong, which they need. Only rudiments of the eyes remain. The eyes are reduced by the absence of light.
Likewise, the eyes were only formed in the course of evolution. That is why Goethe, who saw deeply into these things, says: The eye has been formed in the light for the light. From indifferent organs, the light has gradually formed the eye. Once upon a time in prehistoric times, man was such an organism that there were indifferent points; through the light, the eye has been brought out of it. That is why the same Goethe, who spoke the beautiful word:
If the eye were not sunlike, the sun could not behold it,
Just as there is a light-sensitive power in the eye, so in the soul there is a power that is sensitive to Christ, the power that can perceive the mystical Christ. But how can it develop further in the world? — in the historical Christ! For the mystical development of Christ, He had to be there as an objective entity, as the historical Christ. He had to be there first as the historical Christ, because only from the objective spiritual power does the power come from which the Christ-sensation can come, from which the Christ-experience arises.
Just as the eye perceives sunlight, so the Christ-experience is formed through Christ Himself. When the time comes for the Christ-experience to enter into the evolution of the earth, this experience of Christ in the I will be led more and more to the realization of the great historical figure of Christ. He will be experienced as the eye experiences light. This great ideal now stands before us, and it is through this that I can best point to the future of Christianity.
Let us first look back at the foundation of Christianity. How did it come about? Critics like to refer to the first three gospels to see the Christ in human form because it embarrasses them to look up to the higher, the unattainable. But let us look at the one who has seen the Christ in his true form. Who could know best? — Who has experienced it! — We do not want to disparage the first three Gospels, certainly not.
But let us look further. Did what Saul experienced in Palestine turn him into Paul? Only the event of Damascus (Acts 22:6-8), through which he was transported out of the sensual world, enabled him to experience that this Being, who walked, was crucified and died in Palestine, is real. That the same One who bled on the cross can be found by the spiritual eye is what transformed Saul into Paul.
No one who does not truly appreciate the fact that only the Christ is recognized through supersensible perception and knowledge, through beholding into the spiritual world, can comprehend him. The one who develops the slumbering spiritual eyes and ears can do so. In Paul's case, it happened as if by grace, as if by premature birth, that he was called to see into the spiritual world and to see the Christ who lives there.
This is what will be understood again after the internalization of Christianity to the extent that Christianity will be experienced again. Theosophy or spiritual science is nothing other than the knowledge and message of what can be experienced in the spiritual world. What the spiritual researchers see in the spiritual world is put into words, taught. In the spiritual world, Paul once found the Christ, and in the spiritual world, all true theosophy will find the Christ.
If spiritual science has a future, if it penetrates to the hearts and feelings of people, then it will open up this world to them. And so, like a spiritual fluid, the whole world will be permeated by the Christ-being, that being which is at the same time the historical being, and so imperishable! Only little by little can our time fulfill what Christianity has as an impulse: the whole truth, the whole power and whole love of the Christ.
Only gradually can this be absorbed by the human being. But the more the human ego lets the Christ speak through it in its actions, loves and wills, the more it will learn to do so. We envision the time when peace in people, when the Christ principle has been established, as an ideal. The more people in whom it occurs, the more light the impulse brings into each individual, and the more people have the ability to let brotherly love enter the world. Always preach brotherly love! If the practical principle is not there, it is like preaching to the stove; just burn nicely, dear stove, and do not put any fuel in it. No matter how much you preach, it will not get warm. But if you put wood in and light it, then you don't need to say much. It is the same with people: however much you preach about brotherly love – you can't preach morality in that way – give the soul fuel, put the positive into the soul, which can be kindled by contemplating the great Christ-soul, and the spiritual bond will flow from every soul from person to person. In this way you establish brotherhood by making accessible to every soul what the Christ principle is in its essentiality; if we understand Christianity in its spiritual principles, if we take up the Christ in our soul, we bring about that future which we have in mind as the true goal of the earth.
In Christianity we can find much of what it has already given to humanity; but much more we can find. The deeper we shine a light into it, the more can be brought out. It is greater than anything we can teach today. True are the words that the creator of Christianity has said:
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
Therefore, we can consider Christianity as a living source, as something that always has something new to teach. If we discover Christianity as Paul discovered it, we recognize the word:
I am with you always.
Let us learn from the Christ who is with us always!
If we immerse ourselves in the spiritual development of the earth, we will find him in all time; then we can learn from the same one who lived on earth, who can still be seen today as a living being in the spiritual world, who for all time on earth has given a principle that can always be found, from which everyone can always learn and always find it. This is the significance of Christianity for all future on earth.