VI. Christ and the 20th Century

During the first centuries which followed the advent of Christianity into the world’s history, we realize in connection with a certain trend of ideas and spiritual tendency which has been called Gnosis [a term denoting a higher spiritual wisdom claimed by the Gnostics], that grand and mighty concepts were formed with regard to that Being whom we term The Christ. We find, however that the universal acceptance of these exalted gnostic conceptions continued for only a relatively short period as compared with that idea of The Christ which was, as one might say, generally approved and spread among the people, and later became the essence of the Church movement. It will be enlightening to consider briefly those lofty Christ-concepts which were evolved in the form of gnostic conceptions during the first centuries of the Christian era—not, be it understood, because Spiritual Science would seek to cloak those ideas which it has to put forward with regard to The Christ beneath a mantle of gnostic notions; such an assertion could only be made by those who because of the immaturity of their development in the field of Spiritual Science, are wholly incapable of truly differentiating between the nature of the various events and conditions which are met with in spiritual life.