The Essence of Christianity

GA 68a — 30 November 1909, Dresden

52. Christ and Spiritual Science

Report in the “Dresdner Nachrichten” of December 2, 1909

Christ and spiritual science was the topic of the lecture that Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave on Tuesday to a large audience at Meinholds Sälen. The speaker is a frail, ascetic figure, but has a pleasant, sonorous voice and speaks fluently and quite freely. Spiritual science, he explained, is a science of real spiritual, real life. It wants to open the sources in which the beginnings of the physical world lie, and to give us knowledge of the supersensible spiritual world that lies behind our sensual world. Only in the last ten years has spiritual science slowly and gradually been penetrating people's minds. Some people believe that spiritual science or theosophy has something to do with ancient superstition. But this is not the case. Nor does spiritual science want to replace any other religious beliefs of mankind with a new religion. It serves to understand religious beliefs, it is an instrument with which one can understand the various religious beliefs, but it wants to be science in the most serious sense. Those who stand firmly on the ground of a religious belief are only led deeper into it by spiritual science. Nor is it a matter of introducing an oriental religious belief, such as Buddhism, into our society. Anyone who wanted to undertake such a task would misunderstand the basis of our entire Western culture. This basis is Christianity. Even those who fight Christianity have received their best from it. The speaker then explained the goals and tasks of spiritual science. The aim is to answer the questions of what the soul is, how it relates to the temporary phenomena of human life, and how it is connected to the supersensible world. The sources of knowledge of spiritual science are quite far removed from our present-day thinking and imagination, but we see with open eyes that not only is there more in the world than meets the senses and is grasped by the mind, but there is also a wealth of spiritual facts and entities. Just as one born blind denies our world full of color and light, so does one whose spiritual eye has not yet been opened deny the spiritual world. There is a rebirth of man, after which the spiritual world appears to him. Finally, the speaker addressed the questions: What is the nature of the presentation of spiritual science and how is the evidence for it provided? In a highly poetic form, he presented an imagined conversation between a superior person and a disciple who is to be introduced to the mysteries of spiritual science by that person. “Die and become!” was the watchword. The black cross entwined with red roses was the symbol of the new life. The audience, which was largely recruited from members of the Theosophical Society, listened devoutly and applauded the speaker enthusiastically.

Question & Answer Session [question not recorded in writing]

Rudolf Steiner: The Gospel of John says of Christ that he is the incarnate Logos because he brought the impulse into the world to fully conquer the human ego, to take up this ego into the spiritual world. Man can experience a threefold Christ. The first Christ is the Christ of Intuition. Expressed in mighty images in the Documents, He speaks of that Entity which actualizes the ideal of the individual ego. This Christ is found independently of every document and external tradition when one ascends to Intuition. As spirit, the same as every I, one finds through intuition Christ, the most perfect original I; incarnated at the beginning of our time. A completely new spiritual research has become possible through the fact that the human being can take his I, the Logos, with him into the spiritual world. The event of Golgotha brought the first impulse for the fullest self-knowledge of the human being. Man can behold his own I and therein see an image of the divine. The word of Christ: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) – when man has grasped the meaning of this word, then he has grasped in himself the Logos, the divine original I. Thus spiritual science finds the Christ, who said yes:

I am with you always.

This Christ is always there: the first Christ, the Christ of intuition. The second Christ is the Pauline Christ. How did the Christ come into the world as knowledge? Who was the first to give him to humanity as knowledge? Paul. He was the one who did not allow himself to be converted through external physical experience, but through a clairvoyant inspiration, through the event of Damascus. To him, Christ revealed himself from the transcendental world. He believed in Christ and proclaimed him with all his strength.

The third Christ is the one of the gospels. There are naive people who take what is written in the Gospels literally. Then there are the clever people who say: the Gospels are for an imperfect stage of human development. And then there is a third type of person who says: the Gospels mean all sorts of things symbolically; they speak of a Christ myth, a Peter myth, and so on – they interpret the Gospels symbolically and allegorically. Finally, there is a fourth level, the spiritual-scientific view of the Gospels, where one starts from what can be known through spiritual research about the events in Palestine. Then, when you read the Gospels, you say: Now you understand them for the first time. And you know what those who wrote them wrote into them. You discover that the Gospels are the most powerful documents of humanity. And you see into a future where, through spiritual science, people will live more and more deeply into the Christ and the mystery of Golgotha.