Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 11 July 1904, Berlin

XLIV. Modern Biblical Research

My dear Theosophical friends! The Theosophical movement does not want to create a sect, it does not want to be a sectarian movement, it does not want to found any new religious system, nor does it want to oblige anyone to follow certain dogmas or doctrines, nor does it even want to cause anyone to believe in such doctrines. All the teachings that we spread and represent are only a means to deepen life itself.

Many misconceptions about the theosophical movement have been spread. It is believed that Theosophy is a doctrine, a system of dogmas, a philosophy, a religion, and on the basis of such views, some believe that they will be alienated from their worldview if they devote themselves to Theosophy. This is not the case, and it is not in the plan of those who brought the theosophical movement into being. On the contrary, the theosophical movement is supposed to be one that makes it possible to fully understand what in life is called science or religion, depending on the circumstances into which one is born and which one recognizes as one's own. Just as we survey the phenomena of nature and learn to understand them only by delving more deeply into them, so we also learn about the phenomena of human life only by delving more deeply into them. The various religious systems, the various scientific systems and also the various philosophical worldviews are phenomena of human spiritual life. They show man their exterior. The theosophical movement wants to lead people deeper into the essence of the actual spiritual phenomena. Therefore, no one should believe that they will be estranged from their religious beliefs or scientific convictions if they become Theosophists. Our Theosophical Society is also active in India, and the Indian Brahmins have found that the old depth of their own ancient wisdom has been restored to them through the theosophical movement. At the Congress of Religions in Chicago, the Indian Brahmin Chakravarti emphasized that his people, like other peoples, had fallen into materialism, had strayed from the high spiritual world view that came from the ancient rishis, and that the theosophical movement, by delving into this ancient wisdom, has taught the Indian people again the infinite depth that is revealed when the Hindu or Buddhist religious system is understood in its true essence and not merely on the surface.

Likewise, we can penetrate deeper and deeper into that mighty world view system that we know as the ancient Hebrew system, as that of the ancient Jews. I would like to say that this wisdom is written down in the Old Testament only in broken rays. But the Old Testament nevertheless reveals itself to those who delve into it with a theosophical understanding as a wisdom of extraordinary depth.

Above all, I would like to emphasize that Christianity, the Christian worldview itself, can be fully understood and explored through the theosophical method, through the theosophical life. This Christianity, which for centuries has been the one that has shown countless people the way to their highest goal, this Christianity, which today is still for countless people what they seek in life, what comforts them in death, we certainly understand this Christianity too, when we get to know it as it is presented to us through the various means of the different churches. But, my dear Theosophical friends, Christianity is something that one can delve into and delve into more and more, and each degree of delving always brings us teachings of infinite depth from within Christianity itself. There is no degree of delving that does not bring us ever new things from the depths from which the greatest Christian wisdom springs.

Above all, no one needs to become estranged from his Christianity by becoming a theosophist. Today, for those who might be led astray from Christianity by modern science – by the scientific endeavors of the present and also by the criticism that theological science itself has practiced on this Christianity – today the way to understand Christian truths again is solely and exclusively the theosophical one.

If we look back to the Middle Ages – no one can conjure up the Middle Ages again – but if we look at it psychologically, but not externally like today's psychology, then we will see what passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand what kind of spirituality passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand we realize that they did not have Christian dogmas, but that they more or less sensed what had been expressed by the Christian mystics – they sensed something of the glimmering of the Christ-being, as expressed in the saying of Angelus Silesius: “And if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you would be lost forever.” — It is the same with Meister Eckhart when he demands that man should have experienced the nature of Christ within himself, because only then can he understand what the event in Palestine really means.

For centuries, people have had their emotional and spiritual guidance for experiencing the Christian essence in the Gospel of John, in the Gospel that we call the fourth, in the Gospel that which adheres – seemingly rigidly from today's point of view – to the fundamental Christian truth that the great teacher who once walked in Palestine – Christ Jesus – was the true God-man, that in him the divine principle of our universe became flesh. Today, the saying at the beginning of the Gospel of John is criticized above all from the point of view of so-called man. The enlightened person can hardly connect any meaning with the opening words of the Gospel of John. He does not know what it is supposed to mean: the word - the word that is God at the same time.

Go where the leaders of humanity were, and you will find that the pinnacle of effectiveness was spent understanding, grasping what it means: the Christ has come into the world. That was the yearning of the researchers, to understand what lies in these words. Then, in the times when it was taken for granted that a Christ had lived, that a Christ had been working through the centuries, medieval theology also believed in it, and the theologians did not even remotely think of doubting the true nature of the real Jesus. They all endeavored to build extensive scientific systems that contained the revealed truths, which were simply accepted as they were and as they were prescribed by the church; they were content with interpreting them.

We have the so-called period of scholasticism and, in a slightly different form, mysticism. We have the time when it was established that a Christian can only be a Christian by feeling connected, feeling a living connection with Christ Jesus. Those who sought to reach the summit of the spirit strove to awaken the Christ within themselves, the life and the essence. They lived the profound saying of Goethe, understood in that time:

If the eye were not sunlike,
The sun could never behold it.
If the God-owning power did not lie in us,
How could we delight in the divine?

The spiritual eye must first be made capable of finding God in the outer world. At that time no one would have felt entitled to make statements about the historical Christ Jesus without first having understood the nature of the Christ, without having studied Christology. Just as today no one feels called upon to judge about lightning and thunder without having studied physics, so at that time no one felt called upon to judge about Christology without having studied it.

Something else came up that ties in with the name of the Rosicrucians. This movement is similar to Theosophy. It strove to understand the various religions, but especially Christianity, in their depths. These Rosicrucians differ from us in that we appear openly before the people and communicate to them what we have learned ourselves, while the Rosicrucians worked in secret. But what they wanted to achieve was to make people understand what Christology is. They were inwardly convinced and knew that one can comprehend the phenomena only when one has experienced within oneself the nature of Christ Jesus.

I would like to emphasize one fact of the Rosicrucian movement. Every Rosicrucian had those who wished to become disciples practise one thing above all others. He demanded of the external disciple, who had yet to enter the sanctuary and who only wanted to approach the teachings within the Rosicrucian sanctuary, that he inwardly absorb the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This was the basic principle of this occult training. And anyone who had emerged from the Rosicrucian movement and tried to grasp everything that was there would experience something that not everyone can experience when they delve into the Gospel of John in the sense of what we call “meditation”. They experience a multitude of occult powers, so that the one who places himself under the influence of these sentences undergoes a metamorphosis. He experiences within himself a repetition of the mystery that Jesus exemplified for us. You can relive the life of Jesus point by point, from the washing of the feet to the crucifixion and resurrection, on the basis of the Gospel of John - not through the concepts that are there, but through the occult forces hidden in the concepts.

Just as something cannot be made clear by mere theory, so the Rosicrucians could not merely expound it to anyone. They allowed their disciples to experience it. And there were not a few such disciples in the nineteenth century who experienced real wounds on themselves.

Then there came a time when they knew that these things were more than abstract symbols, that they were to be taken literally. Before one has realized this, one does not know what this gospel is about, one does not know what is hidden in it. So those who wanted to lead their students to Christianity through the occult tried to do so through the Gospel of John. But at the same time they were convinced that the one who is gifted – that is, the one who has developed the corresponding power – is able to release forces in his community when he speaks, even if the community is unaware of it. Public preaching was based on this. In the churches of the Middle Ages, there was still some understanding of this occult side. But even in more recent times, there was still a magical, occult power in the Gospel of John. It was not for nothing that Luther made the Gospel of John his favorite gospel. He knew what it meant, even if he and his friends were not all occultists. But every person experienced a purification that led him to an understanding when he lived with a chapter, so that he sought to live through sentence after sentence, that he did not dwell on a verse for days but for weeks and months, began to love it, began to live with it, so that it filled his whole being without him having to neglect the duties of his outer life.

In the course of modern development, this has changed. Without saying anything against the modern heads of the church, it must be emphasized that the relationship of the religious person to the religious leader has become essentially different in modern times. Look at the figures [of religious leaders] in the Middle Ages up to our century: they were filled with true faith and with sacred secrets and views; they taught through inner experiences. The people who listened to them knew that someone was speaking who spoke from deep knowledge. They were not people who believed in authority. They sensed that something was alive within the religious leader, which flowed through his words, but which cannot be expressed in an abstract and intellectual way. It was more in the words of community life.

This changed in more recent times. The whole way of looking at the world became different. People no longer understood anything like what I said about the Gospel of John today; they no longer knew that there were hidden sides to the gospel. More and more, the Gospels were taken as a scientific object, as a pure object of methodical, historical research. And so, over time, we see a theology emerging that offers a truly tragic history with its research into the Gospels.

Now let me give a brief overview of what today's theology knows about the value and truth of the Gospels. What is taught at the university today wants to be a science like any other. It is no longer the case, as it was even a hundred years ago, when a Schleiermacher still spoke to the educated with the full power of the orator. Today, the word of the gospel is often used for money, but the actual leaders have subjected the gospel to a theology, to a science, which has become tragically peculiar to the gospel.

The first thing to be dropped is precisely this Gospel of John. You all know that a Christian learns about the founder of his religion, about the one from whom the teaching originated, about the Christ himself, through the Gospels. A Christian lets the Gospels work on him. In the Gospels, he is told about the teachings of Christ Jesus, about the teachings and deeds. Through the centuries, what has been told has been accepted because one was convinced of the actual fact that Jesus lived. No value was placed on whether or not they [the Gospels] contradict each other in detail; one sought to deepen one through the other. Whatever they may have done in different ways, the focus was still on the only figure of this God-man. And the Gospels were suitable for leading to this. The wording of the Gospels was not important. It was only in the nineteenth century that the Gospel was examined under the microscope, as is the case with every other work of man. The first question the learned theologians asked themselves was: To what extent can the Gospels be records of the Jesus who lived in Palestine? Are they records that prove the accuracy of the teachings? The objective reality of Jesus of Nazareth was the basis for the research of the nineteenth century. Now the question arose: Can the Gospels be historical records like other historical records? More and more it has been shown that the Gospels were written when Christianity had already begun. No scholar today would take the position that they were written in the first century of our era. It has been found that they were written only later.

The question that interests us most is this: if you compare the gospels and see that the individual evangelists directly contradict each other in their statements, how can we understand these statements as a record of Jesus? What can we do with it when Mark speaks differently than John and Matthew, differently than Mark and Luke? As it became more and more apparent that the gospels contradict each other, it became important to examine whether other testimonies, testimonies and reports from historians, could be found. The result was – as is well known – that no such documents exist. Neither the information Josephus gives us nor that which Tacitus gives us confirms anything about a Jesus of Nazareth.

Protestant theology places little value on Christian tradition. But it is there. And Irenaeus emphasizes that he had known apostles who had known the Lord. But these are traditions that cannot be considered historical. In short, all we have to shape a biography of Jesus are the Gospels. So one had to ask oneself: “What do the Gospels testify to?” Because everything else was found to be worthless.

The next realization was that the Gospel of John reports something quite different in many ways than the other three Gospels. They know that they are called “after” Matthew, “after” Mark, “after” Luke and “after” John. Above all, more and more emphasis was placed on the fact that the image of Jesus of Nazareth, as it emerges from the Gospel of John, is different from that of the other evangelists. Here are some basic features: the Jesus of John's Gospel is understood as God made man. He is the one who does things that can only flow from divine power itself. These are miracles of omnipotence. This gives a different picture than the other evangelists. It gives the picture that he portrayed Jesus as the one who feels within himself that he is God, that he is the God who came into the world to hold people fast to this belief in God.

The gospel of John also differs from the other gospels in its external appearance. We are never told that the mother of Jesus and the disciples were standing at the cross. There are many other points in which it radically differs from the others. That is why it was decided to exclude the gospel of John when it came to the biography of Jesus. The gospel of John is considered to be a confessional writing that cannot claim to be anything other than a hymn-like song. For modern theology, the gospel of John is not considered a historical document. Matthew, Mark and Luke show more agreement among themselves than these three gospels show with the gospel of John. These three gospels are called the synoptic gospels and their authors the synoptics. What is in Mark is to a high degree in all three synoptic gospels. Matthew is therefore the one that could be deleted, and you would find everything in Mark and Luke again. There is nothing in Mark that is not also in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, the gospel of Mark is considered the original. It is also written in very old Greek. Therefore, the researchers pointed out that the Gospel of Mark should be regarded as the first. So the Gospel of Mark was accepted as the first, and the others accordingly took from what Mark said. In Matthew and Luke, there are elements that are not in Mark, so-called “words of the Lord, core sayings, because they come from Christ Jesus. They agree in Matthew and Luke. Since they agree, one can only assume that they come from the same source. These words of the Lord are said to be based on a Greek source, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which they were inserted into what they copied from Mark. The agreement between Matthew and Luke is great, but the layout is quite different. So they could not have copied from each other, but they could have had a common collection of sayings as a basis.

So what do we have? First, the Gospel of Mark, which mainly tells of the deeds of Jesus, starting with the baptism. Second, the Gospel of Matthew and third, the Gospel of Luke. The corresponding words of the Lord were always added to the deeds. But then there is something special about each of the two, Matthew and Luke, that is not found in any of the others. Matthew has insertions that have a distinctly Jewish character. It is this that Matthew has for himself, so that it is to be regarded as a gospel that was intended for the Jewish community. Luke wrote more for others, namely for the poor and the oppressed. Therefore, the entire Gospel of Luke, as far as the words of the Lord and the material of Mark are not considered, gives the impression that it was written for the poor and from a heart full of mercy.

Theology has therefore created strange images. First, that the Gospel of John is out of the question altogether; then, that Matthew and Luke each have something special, and that each can be decisive to a certain extent for the true facts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But where do the words of the Lord come from? There must have been a Greek collection of sayings that were added to the Gospels. Historical research cannot determine the question of where they come from. It is impossible for it to say where this collection of sayings comes from. So we are led back to Mark again. So you have the Gospel of Mark and then the collection of sayings. As for what Matthew and Luke have to say, it could be said that it goes back to Jesus and is a retelling of his deeds, but we cannot prove it. It may be based on true facts, but that is not necessarily the case. Similarly, what is referred to as the words of the Lord may go back to Jesus, but we do not know. And so we are led back to the Gospel of Mark. It recounts deeds, but they are of a peculiar kind. What does modern theology say about this? It says: Let us examine the facts. We find that Mark narrates in a way that someone would have narrated if they had heard it themselves or been an eyewitness. Mark speaks of a work. But then he strings the things together in such a way that this stringing together of the individual facts is an artistic composition. That he has strung the facts together in the way he could best put them together, much like a poet puts the details together to form a whole work. The story itself is the composition of Mark – the facts could be tradition. But they are told in such a way that they have a very general character. – Mark is telling facts that have a general character. We see, then, that the composition is the work of Mark. But the facts are such that he says, for example, “Christ did this or that,” but in such a way that only three or four disciples see it and are not allowed to share it. It is difficult to get the Jews to believe in Jesus. Therefore, Mark seeks to frame the work in such a way that it became understandable to Christians why the Jews found it so difficult to believe in Jesus.

We find two things – so the modern theologian says: firstly, that Jesus is not understood. And this is explained by the fact that Mark makes it difficult for the Jews to understand Jesus. When Jesus performs miracles, he forbids those who have seen it to tell it. The modern theologian is baffled by this. The modern theologian only admits: There must have been some secret tradition here, but it only existed between Jesus and his chosen ones. The modern theologian cannot do anything with this.

We have a tradition that Mark the Evangelist was a disciple of Peter, who recorded what Peter said. There is no doubt that Peter did not write, but that he generally taught Jesus' doctrine and particularly emphasized soaring above earthly facts, so that the copyists were unable to describe anything local. This leads us to a later time when the gospel of Mark was written. A long span of time separates us from the oldest gospel, from the real Jesus. We do not know what we can deduce from the original gospel about the Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot construct a biography of Jesus' life from it.

The only thing that theology believes is to gain a clue to an oldest piece of the Gospel of Mark. This is a passage contained in the 13th chapter:

But when they lead you and deliver you up, do not worry about what you are to say, or how you are to defend yourselves. But whatever is given you at the time, that speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father child; and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. But when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing where it should not (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. And let him that is in the house not come down into the street, neither enter into his house, to take any thing out of his house. And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. [Mk 13,11-16]

From this point, modern theology believes that it could have been written immediately under the impression of the impending destruction of Jerusalem. There must be something here that is old, so old that we could place it in the time before the destruction of Jerusalem. It is said to have been a pamphlet, a flyer, to warn people and tell them how to behave when this event occurred. Mark may have used this flyer and incorporated it into his gospel.

Yet another passage is of particular importance to the modern theologian. This is a passage in Luke, chapter 11, verse 48:

Thus ye bear witness and consent to the deeds of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their tombs.

If you read this passage in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 15, the comparison is very interesting:

Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city.

In Matthew it is a saying of Jesus, in Luke it is a quotation. Therefore, the wisdom of God is speaking. The latter must therefore come from a source that is called the “wisdom of God.” Theology assumes that it was a collection of sayings, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which the theologian quoted and taught by saying, “Thus speaks the wisdom of God.” Matthew does things differently. The so-called words of the Lord are traced back to the collection of sayings by modern theologians.

Take a rough overview of the sketchiness that is necessary and compare it with what remains of scholarly gospel research. – Nothing remains. The Gospel of John is eliminated, Matthew and Luke are traced back to the collection of sayings. The collection of sayings can be traced back to Greek sources and cannot be followed further; we lose the thread. Mark can only have been written long after Jesus. Therefore, the modern theologian says: We cannot gain anything from the gospel. We cannot gain a biography of Jesus, we cannot gain what Jesus taught, we cannot gain what he taught about the intermediate court and the kingdom of God. Modern people say that the gospels tell us nothing about any of this. And what they tell us cannot be decisive in the sense of materialistic science.

I call this research into the Gospels a tragic story. You see, you have measured the Gospel by the standards of external science, and now the whole truth - as a result of research - is not there.

This indicates a very different point of view today between the believer and the theologian than was previously the case. In the past, the believer looked up to the theologian, who only proclaimed the truth of the Gospels. He was the authority. Even Harnack's book, which caused such a stir, is based on this modern theology. Today, believers face the theologian who does not know what is in the words of the Gospels, but can only say: I am unable to say scientifically what the founder of Christianity taught, whether he lived at all, and so on. - Science has produced a completely negative result in this direction. From this you can see that it is quite difficult for those who rely on Christianity [of the theologians] to build on it. If you believe the theologians whose science says that, you may begin to waver.

So it must be considered a new source of wisdom, hypothetically, when the theosophical movement now again delves into the Gospel of John and tries to bring the Gospel of John back to true understanding. The theosophical movement does not depend on riding Buddhist dogmas forever. They are only means, dogma is only a means. Today a movement is being born out of the bosom of the Theosophical Society that will bring a true understanding of Christianity, of the gospel hidden in the gospels, which is not understood in the ordinary sense.

Those who have experience may speak about it. I myself can hint at it with a few words, by saying that I have titled my new book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. I have not written this book from historical sources, I have deliberately written it without any historical source. I have left the historical sources alone and relied only on the occult sources. This book is written from the Akasha Chronicle, one might say. If you look at things from the point of view that Annie Besant has adopted in the book 'Esoteric Christianity' and that I have adopted in the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', then things take on a completely different effect. Next time I will show you what a completely different picture we get. This science will lead us from a different point of view to the greatest possible depth, to the revival of Christian truth. A parallel current is striving for this revival, and it is first of all the revival of the Gospel of John that is at stake. These great words, with which I would like to conclude today – in a translation that is reasonably accurate – will be understood again next time, when I will start from them again.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In this was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that through him all might believe. He was not the Light, but a witness of the Light. The true Light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. It was in the world, and the world was made through it, yet the world did not recognize it. It came to the individual people [up to the I-people], but the individual people [I-people] did not accept it. But those who accepted him [it] could reveal themselves as children of God through him. Those who trusted in his name were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God. And we have heard his teaching; the teaching of the only son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

Those who understand these words correctly will see that research can only find the right word from this understanding. One should not find fault with the word. And we want to understand this word again, the greatest word:

And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.