II. The Night-Person and the Day-Person. How the I-Being Can Be Inserted into Pure Thinking (continued)
But at that time anthroposophy had to struggle out of the modern conception of the spiritual, which, I might say, tended more towards theosophy in the broadest sense: towards the reintroduction of old methods of initiation. The grotesque way in which these old methods of initiation do not correspond to the demands of modern civilization was shown very clearly when, around the years 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, this spiritual movement, which had a theosophical character, approached the Christ problem. Then the theosophical movement produced the absurdity of an incarnated Christ Jesus in a present-day human being. And all the other absurdities that the theosophical movement produced were based on that. From the very beginning, anthroposophy, in contrast to theosophy, had to lead to a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, in the first period of anthroposophical life, the explanation of the Gospels was given preference, the guidance to a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And at a time when the other spiritual movement, with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha, fell into the worst absurdities, the anthroposophical movement approached more and more a real, real conception of the Mystery of Golgotha and went its way with this conception of the Mystery of Golgotha, while the theosophical movement could no longer be connected to it.