The Imitation of Christ

What this work carries

The work distills the late-medieval monastic interiorization of the Christ-impulse into a path of soul-imitation. It carries forward the Pauline 'not I, but Christ in me' as a practical discipline of inner stillness, self-renunciation, and devotional union, mediating the older mystery-substance of the Greco-Latin epoch into a form accessible to lay devotion.

Language frame

Written in late-medieval ecclesiastical Latin within the Devotio Moderna of the Brethren of the Common Life, the work uses short rhythmic chapters and dialogical address between soul and Christ. Its form is meditative and aphoristic rather than scholastic, intended for inward repetition rather than systematic study.

Steiner’s engagement

• GA 68b, 1905-12-09Steiner names Thomas à Kempis's Nachfolge Christi as a profound source on the language of the soul and places the book almost on a par with the New Testament.
• GA 90b, 1906-01-10Steiner lists sentences from the Imitation of Christ among the inner-wisdom books recommended for awakening, alongside the Gospel of John and the Book of Divine Consolation.
• GA 7In the biographical-historical material accompanying his Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Steiner identifies Thomas à Kempis and the Imitatio Christi as a classic inspirational current standing behind the German mystical lineage he treats.
• GA 114, 1909-09-26Steiner describes how the rest of humanity must gradually develop, in imitation of Christ, what lived for three years in the one personality of Jesus — framing imitatio Christi as a real evolutionary task, not a mere ethical metaphor.
• GA 343, 1921-10-06Steiner distinguishes imitation of Christ from mere emulation or model-following, insisting that the relationship to Christ is one of becoming-similar in being rather than copying outward conduct.
• GA 165, 1916-01-16Steiner treats imitatio of the Mystery of Golgotha as an act in which the Christ himself participates and suffers, distinguishing this real participation from the Gnostic denial of Christ's full incarnation.

Cross-tradition congruence

• Pauline 'Christ in me' (Galatians 2:20)Both center on the displacement of the egoic self by an indwelling Christ-being as the heart of the spiritual path.
• Rhineland mysticism (Tauler, Suso, Theologia Deutsch)Shares the doctrine of self-emptying (Gelassenheit) and the soul's quiet receptivity to the divine ground, though in a more practical-devotional rather than speculative register.
• Ignatian Spiritual ExercisesBoth later inform Catholic interior practice through structured meditative imitation of the life of Christ, though Ignatius systematizes what à Kempis offers aphoristically.