The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Essence of Christianity

[ 1 ] The fact that the divine, the Word, the eternal Logos no longer confronted them in the mysterious darkness of the Mystery, as Spirit alone, must have had the most profound effect on the confessors of Christianity; but that, when they spoke of this Logos, they were always pointed to the historical, human personality of Jesus. Previously, this Logos had only been seen within reality on various levels of human perfection. One could observe the subtle, intimate differences in the spiritual existence of the personality and could see in what ways and degrees the Logos came to life in the individual personalities who sought initiation, A higher degree of maturity had to be interpreted as a higher stage of development of spiritual existence. One had to look for the preliminary stages in a past spiritual life. And the present life could be seen as a preliminary stage of future spiritual stages of development. The preservation of the spiritual power of the soul, the eternity of this power could be asserted in the sense of the Jewish secret teachings (Book of Sohar): "Nothing is lost in the world, nothing falls to emptiness, not even the words and the voice of man; everything has its place and its destiny." The One Personality was only a metamorphosis of the soul, which changes from personality to personality. The individual life of the personality could only be considered as a developmental link in a chain pointing forwards and backwards. - Through Christianity, this changing Logos has been led from the individual personality to the only personality of Jesus. What used to be distributed throughout the whole world has now been united in a single personality. Jesus has become the only God-man. In Jesus something has thus once been present that must appear to man as the greatest ideal, with which he is to unite himself more and more through his repeated lives in the future. Jesus took upon himself the idolization of all mankind. In him was sought what previously could only be sought in one's own soul. That which had always been found in man's personality as divine, as eternal, had been snatched from him. And one could see all this eternity in Jesus. It is not the eternal in the soul that overcomes death and will one day be resurrected as divine through its power, but what was in Jesus, the one God, will appear and resurrect souls. This gave personality a completely new meaning. The eternal, the immortal had been taken from it. It had remained as such, for itself. If one did not want to deny eternity, one had to ascribe immortality to this personality itself. The belief in the eternal change of the soul became the personal belief in immortality. After all, this personality was given infinite importance because it was the only thing that people held on to. - From then on there is nothing between the personality and the infinite God. One must place oneself in a direct relationship to him. One was no longer capable of deification to a higher or lower degree; one was simply human and stood in a direct but external relationship to God. Those who knew the old Mystery view must have perceived this as a completely new tone in the world view. Numerous personalities of the first Christian centuries were probably in this case. They knew about the nature of the Mysteries; if they wanted to become Christians, they had to come to terms with this old way. This may have brought them into the most difficult struggles of the soul. They may have sought a balance between the two world views in the most diverse ways. The writings of the first Christian centuries reflect this struggle; both those of the pagans who are attracted by the majesty of Christianity and those of the Christians who find it difficult to leave the Mystery Way. Christianity is slowly growing out of the mystery world. Christian beliefs are presented in the form of mystery truths; mystery wisdom is clothed in the words of Christianity. Clement of Alexandria, the pagan-educated Christian writer (died 217 AD) gives an example of this. ) gives an example of this: "God has not denied us to rest from good in the celebration of the Sabbath; to those who can grasp it, he has granted to participate in the divine mysteries and in the holy light; he has not revealed to the multitude what is not suitable for them, but only to a few for whom he deemed it fitting, who can grasp it and form themselves according to it, just as God entrusts the inexpressible to the Logos, not to Scripture. - God has given some to the church as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." In the most varied ways, personalities seek to find their way from ancient views to Christian ones. And those who believe they are on the right path label others as false teachers. At the same time, the church as an external institution became more and more entrenched. The more power it gained, the more the path that it recognized as the right one through council resolutions and external determination took the place of personal research. It decided who deviated too far from the divine truth it had preserved. The term "false teacher" became more and more firmly established. In the first centuries of Christianity, the search for the divine path was much more of a personal matter than in the later centuries. There was a long way to go before Augustine's conviction was possible: "I would not believe in the truth of the Gospels if the authority of the Catholic Church did not compel me to do so" (see page 108).

[ 2 ] The struggle between the Mystery Way and the Christian Way was given a special character by the various "Gnostic" sects and writers. All writers of the first Christian centuries who searched for a deeper, spiritual meaning to the Christian teachings can be understood as Gnostics. (The above-mentioned book by Mead, "Fragments of a Lost Faith", offers a brilliant account of the development of Gnosticism). One understands these Gnostics if one sees them as imbued with ancient mystery wisdom and endeavoring to understand Christianity from the point of view of the mysteries. To them, Christ is the Logos. As such, he is initially of a spiritual nature. He cannot approach man in his primordial being from outside. He must be awakened in the soul. But the historical Jesus must have a relationship to this spiritual Logos. That was the basic Gnostic question. One may solve it this way, the other that way. The main thing remains that it was not mere historical tradition, but the wisdom of the Mysteries, or the Neoplatonic philosophy, which drew from the same source and flourished in the first Christian centuries, that was to lead to a real understanding of the idea of Christ. People had confidence in human wisdom and believed that it could give birth to a Christ against whom the historical Christ could be measured. Indeed, through which it could only be understood and seen in the right light.

[ 3 ] Of particular interest, from this point of view, is the teaching that appears in the books of the Areopagite Dionysius. However, these writings are not mentioned until the sixth century. But what matters is not when and where they were written, but the fact that they contain a presentation of Christianity, completely clothed in the conceptual style of Neoplatonic philosophy and in a spiritual view of the higher world. Under all circumstances, this is a form of representation that belongs to the first Christian centuries. In ancient times, this form of presentation was propagated as an oral tradition; in older times, the most important things were not entrusted to the Scriptures. One could call the Christianity they represent one that should be shown from the mirror of the Neoplatonic world view. Sensual perception clouds man's vision of the spirit. He must go beyond the sensual. But all human concepts are initially drawn from sensory observation. What the sensual man observes, he calls being; what he does not observe, he calls non-being. Therefore, if man wants to open up a real perspective on the divine, he must also go beyond the existing and non-existing, because in his view this also originates from the sensory sphere. In this sense, God is neither existent nor non-existent. He is supersubstantial. He can therefore not be reached by the means of ordinary cognition, which has to do with the existing. One must be lifted above oneself, above one's sensory observation, above one's sensible logic, and find the transition to spiritual contemplation; then one can look forebodingly into the perspective of the divine. - But this supersensible deity has produced the wisdom-filled foundation of the world, the Logos. The lower power of man can also reach him. He is present as the spiritual Son of God in the world structure; he is the mediator between God and man. He can be present in man in various stages. A worldly institution can realize him by uniting people who are filled with him in various ways under a hierarchy. Such a "church" is the sensual-real logos; and the power that lives in it lived personally in the incarnate Christ, in Jesus. Through Jesus, therefore, the church is united with God; in him it has its head and its meaning.

[ 4 ] It was clear to all gnosis: it had to come to an understanding with the idea of Jesus' personality. Christ and Jesus had to be brought into a relationship. Divinity had been taken from the human personality; it had to be found again in some way. It had to be possible to find it again in Jesus. The Myste had to deal with a degree of divinity in himself and with his earthly-sensual personality. The Christian had to do with this and with a perfected God, exalted above everything humanly attainable. If this view is strictly adhered to, then a mystical basic mood of the soul is only possible if this soul, by finding the higher spiritual within itself, has its spiritual eye opened in such a way that the light which emanates from the Christ in Jesus falls into it. Union of the soul with its highest powers is at the same time union with the historical Christ. For mysticism is the direct feeling and sensing of the divine in one's own soul. However, a God who transcends all humanity can never dwell in the soul in the true sense of the word. Gnosticism and all later Christian mysticism represent the endeavor to become a direct partaker of this God in some way in the soul. A struggle always had to arise. In reality one could only find one's divine, but that is a human-divine, a divine at a certain stage of development. But the Christian God is a definite God who is complete in himself. One could find in oneself the power to strive upwards to him; but one could not describe something that one experienced in the soul at any level as one with him. There was a gulf between what one could recognize in the soul and what Christianity called divine. It is the gap between knowledge and faith, between cognition and religious feeling. For the mystic in the old sense, this gulf cannot exist. For he knows that he can only grasp the divine in degrees; but he also knows why he can only do this. He is aware that he has the true, living divine in the gradual divine; and it is difficult for him to speak of a complete, self-contained divine. Such a man does not want to recognize the perfect God, but he wants to experience the divine life. He wants to be divine himself; he does not want to gain an external relationship with the divinity. It is in the nature of Christianity that its mysticism is not unconditional in this sense. The Christian mystic wants to see the Godhead in himself, but he must look to the historical Christ as the physical eye looks to the sun; just as the physical eye says to itself: through this sun I will see what I can see through my powers, so the Christian mystic says: I raise my inner being to divine vision; the light that makes such vision possible for me is given in the Christ who has appeared. He is through whom I can rise to the highest within myself. The Christian mystics of the Middle Ages show their difference from the mystics of the ancient mysteries precisely in this. (Compare my book: Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens. Berlin 1901.)