A New Experience of Christ

GA 69c — 8 February 1914, Pforzheim

6. Christ in the 20th Century

Question: When the Bible speaks of both the “Ascension” and the “Descent of Christ into Hell,” where did the body of Christ go?

Rudolf Steiner: There are four [main] points of view regarding the Bible: Firstly, there is the point of view of the] believing mind. Here one simply says: Isn't the Bible enough for us? Secondly, we have the point of view of the free thinkers: here one becomes wiser than the believers. Thirdly, we see the advancement to a higher point of view: here the Bible stories are no longer viewed merely childishly, but everything has a “symbolic meaning”, is myth. Everyone can then interpret the Bible as they want, more or less ingeniously. Fourthly, there is the view that points to the spiritual facts. [If we take this point of view, we can say:] It is about an earthquake that took place; a crevice opened into which the body could fall and which then closed again. The clothes were blown around by the storm and then lay as described in John. This correspondence between spiritual vision and the Bible story is quite moving. The “descent into hell” expresses a “transformation” of life between death and a new birth through Christ.

Question: Can work alone be religion?

Rudolf Steiner: This question seems to me to be like saying: Can you feed everyone with apples? What is work? Everything that is done is work; the most physical of tasks and the most delicate of spiritual tasks are both work. Religion, on the other hand, has a relationship to divinity and to immortality. There is not much to begin with in such a question.

Question: What is meant by the “ascension of Christ”?

Rudolf Steiner: Those closest to Christ began to see that Christ had found the transition into the earthly atmosphere. This appears to the clairvoyant souls of his closest followers as his ascension.

Question: Why do we need spiritual science? Isn't the Bible enough?

Rudolf Steiner: Those who speak in this way are expressing a preference. One must draw from the facts that which appears to be one's duty towards humanity. Only superficial people today believe that they “have” the Bible. One could also say: it is nourishment for the simplest and can never be fully understood by the wisest, because it contains such depths.

Question: What does it mean to pray in the Christian sense?

Rudolf Steiner: To engage with Christ. It is only questionable when it is done in an egotistical way. One person may ask for rain, the other for sunshine, and both pray to the same God. Similarly, when two armies face each other, about to fire bullets, both pray for victory. It does not even have to be the case that the bullets are consecrated, which has indeed happened. “But not my will, but yours be done” - that is the good tone that belongs to every prayerful mood.

Question: Is the Buddha a similar phenomenon to the Christ?

Rudolf Steiner: Buddha stands at the end of an epoch, Christ is the beginning of an epoch. Buddha's speeches were more heartfelt: for example, the parable of the chariot, [in which the sage asks the king, who has come by chariot, what the chariot is: the shaft, the wheels? And he teaches him: the chariot is] only name and form. Can you - Buddha asks - drive with the shaft and the wheels alone? Can you then drive with name and form alone? [Just as only a name or a form holds the individual parts together - wheels, shaft, carriage body and seat - so also the individual abilities, feelings, thoughts and sensations of the soul of man do not hold together anything that can be described as a special reality, but is also only a name or a form.] – Goethe's words apply here:

Whoever wants to recognize and describe something living,
first seeks to expel the spirit,
then he has the parts in his hand
Unfortunately, only the spiritual bond is missing.

The Christian way of thinking provides this spiritual bond everywhere. Six hundred years before Christ, the Buddha said: illness is suffering, death is suffering; six hundred years later, the crucifix, the dead Christ on the cross, became the symbol of life; such are the changes of the times.

Question: Can music convey spiritual life?

Rudolf Steiner: It can be a help, but one cannot claim that it contributes to the elevation of the soul today.

Question: [Is Drews right when he describes the Greek logos as “vague” ?]

Rudolf Steiner: We certainly do not want to agree with Drews when he describes the Greek logos as vague. It is not unclear, but it would be inappropriate to enter into a debate about it at this time. We must not forget the development of time. Take today's astronomy with all its knowledge, for example: one could call Copernicus unclear in comparison, but he was a starting point, especially for today's astronomy.

Question: Judging by your lecture, Jesus could only be considered the Christ from the age of thirty: didn't the Jesus being already have divinity within it before the baptism in the Jordan?

Rudolf Steiner: It did not; [the Christ] first had to descend from the divine worlds. Today, people often think that Christ and Adonis are the same. This is like confusing a person who wore certain clothes ten years ago with a person who is wearing the same clothes today as that person wore ten years ago. A famous theologian in Berlin said: “Show me a single word in the New Testament that cannot be found somewhere else in the Bible.” [It depends on who says these words and in what context], because when a schoolboy speaks the same words as the schoolmaster, it is not the same. In the sayings of Christ, everything that has been said before becomes something quite different, something new. Robertson Smith believes that he has found the Lord's Prayer as an earlier, [pre-Christian] prayer because the wording sounds somewhat similar. Let us assume that a child has a poem by Goethe – it cannot understand it because it is too young, even though it may have heard all the words from the poem before. It hurts when such [superficial] judgments are made over and over again, because they hinder the progress of culture. [That such judgments are taken seriously] stems only from people's belief in authority: science has proven it.

Question: Has humanity deteriorated since the Mystery of Golgotha?

Rudolf Steiner: Before [the Mystery of Golgotha] it deteriorated, then [after the Mystery of Golgotha] it improved.