I. The Doctrine of the Logos

Our lectures[^1] upon the Gospel of St. John will have a double purpose. One will be the deepening of the concepts of Spiritual Science themselves and their expansion in many directions, and the other will be to make this great document itself comprehensible by means of the thoughts that will arise in our souls in consequence of these deepened and expanded concepts. I beg you to hold clearly in mind that it is the intention of these lectures to proceed in these two directions. It should not be simply a question of explanations of this Gospel, but rather that by means of the latter we shall penetrate into the deep mysteries of existence and we should hold very clearly in mind how the perceptive method of Spiritual Science must be developed when we are dealing with any of the great historical records handed down to us by the different religions of the world. In fact we might imagine that if the exponent of Spiritual Science speaks about the Gospel of St. John, he will do so just as others have often done, that is, he will take some such document as this Gospel as a basis in order that he may draw from it the truths that are under discussion and present them on the authority of this religious document. But this can never be the concern of a spiritually scientific, cosmic point of view. It must be a quite different one. If Spiritual Science is to fulfill its true mission in respect of the modern human spirit, then it should point out that if men will only learn to use their inner forces and capacities—their forces and capacities of spiritual perception—they will be able, by applying them, to penetrate into the mysteries of life, into what is concealed within the spiritual worlds behind the world of the senses. The fact that men can penetrate to the mysteries of life through the use of inner capacities, that they are able to reach the creative forces and beings of the universe through their own cognition must be brought more and more into the consciousness of present day humanity. Thus it becomes evident that a knowledge of the mystery of this Gospel can be gained by men, independent of every tradition, independent of every historical document.