7. How Do We Understand Illness and Death?

GA 68b/1907-01-21/p013 ·1907-01-21 · English High

Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

In this context, “sin” means something quite different from what we call moral transgression today. And anyone who understands sin in the way that it is understood in today's church doctrine does not understand this word. We arrive at an understanding if we imagine what Paul called a doctrine of development. I would like to tell you about it not in a scholarly way, but only in outline. It is a superstition of modern science that the word “development” was only discovered in the last few centuries. People have always talked and thought about development, about the emergence of the perfect from the imperfect. It is just that the secret scientists of the time from which Paul grew up said: living beings represent a sequence of stages, from the most imperfect being up to the most perfect being. The human organism was literally thought of as a goal towards which all other living beings strive. They become more and more perfect in order to become like the human organism.

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Cite: GA 68b/1907-01-21/p013 · edition English