Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 15 August 1905, Haubinda

18. The Christ

We have seen that the event of the birth of Christ on earth has a cosmic significance; it is central to planetary evolution. The whole astral body of the Earth has undergone a change since Christ appeared on Earth. Before that it was only possible to look into higher worlds through the mysteries and prophetic schools. It was not possible before such an appearance as the conversion of Saul into Paul, [it was not possible] that through the astral the higher worlds were seen. Such a nature initiation was possible only because through the death of Christ the astral substance of the earth had changed. Christ had made Himself a body out of the etheric sphere of the earth at the appearance of Damascus, and in that body He appeared to Paul.

The question is always raised whether Paul was a real initiate or not. In fact, he was from the moment of the appearance, but not like the ancient prophets and initiates, but by an immediate natural event. Through this he was called to his mission. We will understand everything in his sermons when we come to understand the impression that this apparition made on him. Through it he was led to present the relation of Christ to men in the light of grace.

Grace, in the original Christian sense, is exactly the same as what in theosophical language is called the Budhi. Budhi can therefore be called grace: Man is born in ever succeeding incarnations. When he has balanced the karma, his manas is pure and free, so that one can say: Man attains manas through righteousness. Through justice, the balancing of karma is there. The Budhi he receives as a new thing by flowing in from above. Budhi was called Caritas. The ancient prophets and initiates depended on acquiring manas first. Christianity, as it were, drops a ray of Budhi upon men, before which karma is removed, so that men feel it as a grace. And such as Paul especially feel the grace because they have received a great stream of Budhi.

The second important thing for Paul was that for him Christ was the Living One who overcame death. He had not believed in Jesus in his previous life. Everything he heard told from Jerusalem in Tarsus did not convince him. He was only convinced by what he had had as a living experience. He appeals everywhere to the fact that Christ is risen, that he is the living one, to his very own experience. All he assures is that people can reach their goal, that they can be transformed by the living Christ. This is the great magic that comes from Paul. Now Paul first proclaimed the doctrine outside in the world as far as he could, preached everywhere in this sense, moreover founded a secret school in Athens where Christian esotericism was taught. There was his great disciple Dionysius the Areopagite; he was so called because he [belonged to the Areopagus]. This Dionysius also founded the doctrine of the so-called Christian hierarchy. We know that he was a great Christian esotericist who exerted a great influence on later Christian teaching by presenting the dhyanic natures, superhuman entities, cherubim and seraphim, to his disciples. Until the sixth century was taught this doctrine, which he never wrote down. Always every head of such a school was called again Dionysius. It was not until the sixth century that such a Dionysius wrote down the doctrine in books, as far as it could be presented externally. Those who are not esotericists consider Dionysius as not a real personality, deny the matter, and therefore speak of PseudoDionysius. But this is folly.

[I said], Dionysius established the so-called Christian hierarchy alongside Christian esotericism. He says that there are hierarchically ordered groups of spirits. If the church is to have a special meaning, it must be an earthly reflection of this heavenly hierarchy, and so he then arranged the earthly hierarchy. It was a noble idea, not in the sense of the later degenerations.

Two currents now asserted themselves in the Church. One was based on the idea that the higher self should be born out of the personality. It was mainly based on the idea of letting this higher self be born as the Christ in every human being. This was the Arian movement. It was somewhat premature at that time, and the presbyter Arius represented it in vain at the Council of Nicaea, for what Arius taught could only be born out of the devotional personality in the sixth sub-race. As a seed, as a germ, it was present among the Eastern peoples, first appearing among the Goths. Wulfila's translation of the Bible was in keeping with this; the whole East was Arian. It was an early, advanced post — the theosophy of that time.

The other current was Athanasianism. This one built the higher self not on the individual personality, but on the organization of the Church. And there the door was opened to degeneracy. Therefore, from early on we have to distinguish between the external course of the church and the recurring attempt to deepen Christianity. The first important phenomenon is Augustine. He transformed the teaching of St. Dionysius of Areopagita into an inward mysticism, so that in St. Augustine one can find a truly deep theosophical mysticism. But at the same time he emphasized the principle of the Papal State; and equally great are the mystical writings of Augustine as well as the "Civitate Dei". Thus, for the time being, the victory of Athanasianism was definitely given, for by the fact that Augustine, the great Father of the Church, advocated the principle of Church authority, the whole Middle Ages had to be based on this authority. "I would not accept the truth of Christianity if the Church did not compel me to do so." In this saying of Augustine lies germinal the dogma of infallibility. Then we see the teaching of Dionysius once again deepened, meteorically shining forth in the great Scotus Eriugena, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald in France. In his great, important writing "De divisione naturae" he has in a genuinely Dionysiusian manner expounded the doctrine of man and the superordinate entities. For this he was literally pinched to death with pincers by his priest comrades.

Then, via Spain, the ancient secret doctrine reaches Europe: one learned about the mysteries in a certain sense through the Jewish-Arabic Kabbalists, and it became necessary to bring the Christian doctrine into a certain harmony with what had come over. The form of teaching that had come over was a highly spiritual one. Thus Christianity itself had to become highly spiritual. It had to be all worked out in fine terms, and this was done by scholasticism, which thus flourished from the twelfth to the fourteenth century.

Scholasticism is the spiritualization of the intellect. It is paralleled by a spiritualization of the mind; it is expressed in two pages. It begins with the French mystics, the two Saint-Victors and the very learned chairman of the Council of Constance, Gerson, before whom Huss had to answer, and the German mystics from Meister Eckhart to Valentin Weigel. Then in the fifteenth century the doctrine was renewed once again by the German Nicholas of Cusa.

Then came the time when science went its own way, when everything was explained physically, starting from Copernicus, and thus the spiritual part of knowledge was misjudged. The consequence of this was that Luther wanted to protect faith from science and therefore said, so to speak: religion has nothing at all to do with science, it has to base itself only on the letter of the Bible.

And after that came the centuries where science and religion came more and more into opposition. This brought about in the nineteenth century the sharp antagonism between religiosity and materialism, of which theosophy is supposed to be the balance,