IV. Theosophy and Christianity

He immediately equated his appearance with that on which the higher faith of the other apostles was based. He equated it with the appearance that the apostles had of Christ after he had died. We are therefore dealing with a spiritual apparition; with a spirit apparition that we should not think of in a shadowy way, as a shadowy ideal, but as reality, as the theosophist has in his mental image of the spirit; with an apparition of the spirit that is not physical, but nevertheless more real and true than any external reality perceptible to the senses. If we keep this in mind, then we realize that it cannot be otherwise than that in the first Christian centuries we are dealing with the Word made flesh, that the God-man is not the simple man from Nazareth, but the truly realized higher spirit of God. When we consider this, we are standing completely on the ground of theosophy. And perhaps no one can be called a theosophist in the true sense of the word more than the proclaimer of the miracle of the resurrection: the Apostle Paul. No theosophist can think of the Apostle Paul as anything other than a deeply initiated person, one of those who know what it is all about.