The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Our lectures on the Gospel of John will have a twofold aim. One will be to deepen our understanding of spiritual-scientific concepts and to expand them in many directions; and the other goal is precisely this, to bring the great document of John's Gospel itself close to us through the images that arise in our souls. I ask you to keep in mind that the lectures are meant to follow these two lines of thought. They are not intended merely as discussions of the Gospel of John, but we want to use it as a guide to penetrate into the deep secrets of existence, and we want to hold firmly to how the spiritual-scientific approach must actually be constituted when it ties in with any of the great historical documents that have been handed down to us through the various religions of the world.

[ 2 ] One might think that when the representative of spiritual science speaks about the Gospel of John, he wants to do so in the sense that it otherwise often happens: simply take such a document as a basis in order to draw from it the truths that are at issue, and to present these truths on the authority of religious documents. But that can never be the task of a spiritual-scientific world view. It must be a completely different one. If spiritual science is to fulfill its true mission for the modern human spirit, it must show that man, if he only learns to use his inner powers and abilities, the powers and abilities of spiritual perception, that he can then, when he applies them, penetrate into the secrets of existence, into that which is hidden in the spiritual worlds behind the sense world. Modern humanity must become increasingly aware that through the use of his inner faculties man can penetrate to the secrets of existence, that through his own knowledge he can arrive at the creative powers and entities of the universe.

[ 3 ] And so we have to say that the secrets of the Gospel of John can be gained by man independently of every tradition, of every historical document. One would like to express this very clearly in an extreme way. Then one could say like this: Let us assume that through some event all religious documents were lost to man and that he retained only the abilities that he currently has, then he would still have to be able to penetrate the secrets of existence if he only preserved the abilities that he had; he would have to be able to reach the divine-spiritual creative powers and entities which are hidden behind the physical world. And spiritual science must absolutely build on these sources of knowledge, independent of all documents. But then, when one has done independent research, when one has investigated the divine-spiritual secrets of the world independently of all documents, then one turns to the religious documents. Only then does one recognize them in their true value. For then one is in a certain way free and independent of them. Then you recognize in them what you had previously found independently. Anyone who has taken such a path with respect to the religious documents can be sure that these documents will never lose their value for him, never lose any of the reverence and admiration that one can have for them. Let us clarify what this is by comparing it to something else.

[ 4 ] Someone might say: Euclid, the ancient geometer, was the first to give us the geometry that every schoolchild learns today at a certain stage of their schooling. But is learning geometry necessarily bound to this book by Euclid? I ask you, how many people today learn elementary geometry without having any idea of the first book in which Euclid included the most elementary things about geometry? They learn geometry independently of the book by Euclid because it arises from an ability of the human mind. Then, when one has learned geometry from within and comes upon the great geometry book of Euclid afterwards, one appreciates this in the right way; because only then does one find what one has made one's own and learn to appreciate the form in which the corresponding insights first appeared. In the same way, today we can discover the great facts of the world in the Gospel of John through the powers slumbering in man, without knowing anything about the Gospel of John, just as the student learns geometry without knowing anything about Euclid's first geometry book.

[ 5 ] When one approaches the Gospel of John equipped with knowledge of the higher worlds, one asks oneself: What is presented here in the spiritual history of mankind? The deepest secrets of the spiritual worlds are enshrined in a book, given to mankind in a book. And since we know beforehand what truths about the divine-spiritual worlds are, we only then recognize the divine-spiritual nature of the Gospel of John in the right sense, and that will be the right sense in general to approach such documents that deal with spiritual things.

[ 6 ] When people approach such documents that deal with spiritual things, people who are very good at understanding everything that lies in such documents in terms of language, such as in the Gospel of John, mere philologists, and even theological researchers of a certain kind today are actually only philologists with regard to the content of such books, how does the representative of spiritual science relate to such researchers? Let us again take the comparison with Euclidean geometry. Who will be the more correct interpreter? The one who is good at translating words in his own way and has no idea about geometric knowledge? Something strange will happen if such a person approaches Euclidean geometry without first understanding anything about geometry! But let the translator be an insignificant philologist, he will, if he understands geometry, be able to appreciate the book in the right way. This is how the representative of the humanities relates to the Gospel of John compared to many other researchers. In many cases, it is explained in the same way that philologists would explain Euclid's geometry. But spiritual science provides insights into the spiritual worlds recorded in the Gospel of John. Thus, the spiritual scientist is in the same position with respect to the Gospel of John as the geometer is with respect to Euclid: he already has what he can find in the Gospel of John.

[ 7 ] We need not dwell on the possible accusation that in this way much is read into the document. We shall soon see that he who understands the content has no need to read into the Gospel anything that is not in it. Those who understand the nature of spiritual interpretation will not be particularly bothered by this criticism. Just as other documents do not lose their value and veneration when one recognizes their true content, so it is also the case with the Gospel of John. To those who have penetrated into the secrets of the world, it appears as one of the most meaningful documents in human spiritual life.

[ 8 ] We can then ask ourselves, when we take a closer look at the content of the Gospel of John: How is it that the Gospel of John appears to the spiritual researcher as such a meaningful document, that it is precisely theologians, who should be called to explain, who are pushing it more and more into the background compared to the other Gospels? This should be touched upon as a preliminary question before we enter into the Gospel of John itself.

[ 9 ] You all know that strange views and opinions have taken hold with regard to the Gospel of John. In ancient times it was revered as one of the deepest and most significant documents that man had about the nature and meaning of the work of Christ Jesus on earth; and in the older times of Christianity it would never have occurred to anyone not to regard this Gospel of John as an important historical monument to the events in Palestine. In more recent times, things have changed, and precisely those who believe they stand firmest on the ground of historical research have done the most to undermine the ground on which such a view of the Gospel of John stood. For some time now, counting in centuries, people have begun to pay attention to the contradictions found in the Gospels. After much wavering, the following has emerged, particularly among theologians. It has been said: There are many contradictions in the Gospels, and it is impossible to understand how it is that the events in Palestine are told in four different ways in the four Gospels. It was said: If we take the accounts given according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have so many different details about this and that that it is impossible to believe that they all correspond to the historical facts. This gradually became the attitude of those who wanted to research these things.

[ 10 ] Now in more recent times the view has been formed that with regard to the first three gospels a certain consistency can be formed regarding the presentation of the Palestinian events, but that the gospel of John differs to a large extent from what the first three gospels tell, and that therefore, with regard to the historical “facts, more credence must be given to the first three gospels and the gospel of John less historical credibility. So it has gradually come to be said that this gospel of John was not written with the same intention as the first three. These gospels only wanted to tell what had happened; but the author of the gospel of John did not have this intention at all, but a completely different one. And for various reasons, it has been assumed that the gospel of John was written relatively late. We will come back to these things. A large part of the researchers believe that the Gospel of John was not written down until the third or fourth decade of the second Christian century, or perhaps as early as the second decade of the second century; and so they said to themselves: So the Gospel of John was written down at a time when Christianity had already spread in a certain form, and perhaps even had opponents. These or those opponents had appeared against Christianity, and those who accept this opinion said to themselves: In the writer of the Gospel of John, we have a person who particularly strove to give a teaching, a kind of apology, something like a defense of Christianity against the currents that had risen against it. But the author of the Gospel of John did not intend to describe the historical facts faithfully, but to say how he related to his Christ. Thus, many see nothing more in the Gospel of John than a kind of religiously inspired poem that the writer wrote out of a religiously lyrical mood in relation to his Christ, in order to inspire others and bring them into the same mood. Perhaps not everyone will admit this opinion in such extreme words. But if you study literature, you will find that this is a widespread opinion that speaks very much to the soul of many of our contemporaries. Indeed, such an opinion is very much in line with the attitudes of our contemporaries.

[ 11 ] For several centuries, a certain aversion has developed within humanity, which has become more and more materialistic in its outlook, against such a view of historical development as we encounter in the very first words of the Gospel of John. Just bear in mind that the first words admit of no other explanation than that in the Jesus of Nazareth, who lived at the beginning of our era, was embodied a being of the highest spiritual kind. The writer of the Gospel of John, by his very nature, could not help but begin by speaking of Jesus as what he calls the “Word” or the “Logos”; and he could not help but say:

“This Word was in the beginning, and all things came into being through Him.” (1:2-3)

[ 12 ] or through the “Logos”. If we take this word in its full meaning, then we have to say: the writer of the Gospel of John feels compelled to describe the very beginning of the world, the highest that the human mind can aspire to, as logos, and to say: “All things were made through this logos, the source of all things!” And then he continues, saying:

“This Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” (1:14)

[ 13 ] This means nothing other than: You have seen him who dwelt among us; you will understand him only if you take him in such a way that the same principle dwelled in him by which everything around you is made, be it plants, animals or people. If one does not want to interpret in an artificial way, one must say that in the sense of this document, a principle of the very highest kind has once embodied itself in the flesh. Let us compare the challenge that such a conception poses to the human heart with what some theologians say today. You can read it in theological works and hear it in lectures in a variety of ways: We no longer appeal to any transcendental principle; we prefer the Jesus whom the first three Gospels describe, for he is the “simple man from Nazareth” who is similar to other men.

[ 14 ] In a sense, this has become an ideal for many theologians. People strive to place everything that has become historical on the same level as general human events. It bothers people that something so exalted should stand out, as does the Christ of the Gospel of John. Therefore, they speak of this as the apotheosis of Jesus, the “simple man of Nazareth,” who appeals to them because they can say: We also have a Socrates and other great men. — He differs from these others, but they still have a certain standard of ordinary, banal humanity when they can speak of the “simple man from Nazareth.” This speaking of the “simple man from Nazareth”, which you can already find today in numerous theological works, even in theological-academic writings, in what is called “enlightened theology”, is connected with the materialistic sense of humanity that has been developed over centuries; for humanity believes that there can only be the physical-sensual, or that only this has significance. In those periods of human evolution in which humanity still looked up to the supersensible, man could say: outwardly, in his outer appearance, this or that historical personality may indeed be compared with the simple man from Nazareth, but in what was in this personality as spiritual and invisible, there is no equal to this Jesus of Nazareth! But when the ability to see and understand the supersensible and invisible was lost, the standard for everything that rose above the average of humanity was also lost, and this was particularly evident in the religious conception of life. Do not be deceived about this! Materialism has first penetrated into religious life. Materialism is much, much less dangerous for the spiritual development of mankind in relation to external scientific facts than in relation to the conception of religious mysteries.

[ 15 ] We will have to speak – as an example – about the true spiritual understanding of the Lord's Supper, the transformation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, and we will hear in the course of these lectures that the spiritual understanding of the Lord's Supper does not in any way diminish its value and significance. But it will be a spiritual understanding that we will get to know. And that was also the old Christian view, when there was still more spiritual sense among mankind; it was still valid in the first half of the Middle Ages. Then many knew the words: “This is my body...; this is my blood!” (Mark 14:22, 24) to be understood as we will learn. But this spiritual understanding was necessarily lost over the course of the centuries. We will learn the reasons for this. In the Middle Ages there was a very strange current that penetrated deeper than you might believe into the minds of humanity, because you can learn very little from today's story about how souls have gradually developed and what they have experienced. Around the middle of the Middle Ages, there was a deep-seated current in the Christian minds of Europe; for it was from an authoritative source that the former spiritual meaning of the Lord's Supper was reinterpreted into the materialistic. People could only imagine from the words: “This is my body...; this is my blood”, that a material process, a material transformation of bread and wine into flesh and blood was taking place. What had been conceived spiritually was now conceived in a grossly material sense. Here materialism creeps into religious life long before it takes hold of natural science.

[ 16 ] And another example is no less significant. Do not believe that in any of the authoritative explanations of the “History of Creation” in the Middle Ages, the six days of creation were taken as days as they are today, as days of twenty-four hours. It would not even have occurred to any of the leading theological teachers; for they understood what the documents say. They still knew how to connect a meaning to the words of the Bible. Is there any sense at all in speaking of twenty-four-hour days of creation in our present-day way, in contrast to the creation document? What does a day mean? A day is what is brought about by the rotational relationship of the earth to the sun. You can only speak of days in the present sense if the relationships between the sun and the earth and their movement are presented as they are today. But the fact that the sun and the earth were in such a relationship to each other is not told in Genesis until the fourth period, the fourth “day” of creation. Therefore, “days” can only begin on the fourth day of the creation story. Before that, it would be pointless to imagine days as they are today. Since it is only on the fourth “day” that the mechanism by which day and night become possible is introduced, it was not possible to speak of days in the modern sense before! Again the time came when men no longer knew that the spiritual significance of day and night was meant, when it was only conceivable that such a time, which one has to imagine in physical days, is possible. So for a materialistically thinking person, even for a theologian, a day, as it is today, also became the creation “day,” because he only knows that one.

[ 17 ] An older theologian spoke differently about such things. Above all, he said to himself that in the old religious documents, nothing unnecessary is said in important places. As an example of this, let us consider one passage. Take verse 21 of chapter 2 of Genesis; it reads:

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept.”

[ 18 ] The ancient interpreters attached very special importance to this passage. Those who have already studied the development of the spiritual powers and abilities of man will know that there are different types of states of consciousness, that what we today call “sleep” in the average person is only a temporary state of consciousness, which in the future - as is already the case today with initiates - will transform into a state of consciousness in which the human being, freed from the body, looks into the spiritual world. This is why the explainer said: God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and there he was able to perceive what he could not perceive with the physical sense organs. What is meant is a clairvoyant sleep, and what is told is what one experiences in a higher state of consciousness; that is why Adam 'falls into a sleep'. This was an old explanation; and it was said that it would not be mentioned in a religious document either, 'God let a deep sleep fall on man', even if he had fallen into a sleep before. This indicates that it is the first sleep, and that man was previously in a state of consciousness where he could still perceive spiritual things all the time. That is what people were told.

[ 19 ] Today it is a matter of showing that there were once very spiritual explanations of the biblical documents, and that the materialistic sense, when it arose, put into them what enlightened people today fight in the Bible. It was only the materialistic sense that did what it now fights itself. So you see how indeed a materialistic sense has arisen in humanity and how the true, genuine, real understanding of the religious documents has been lost as a result. When spiritual science fulfills its task and shows people what secrets lie behind physical existence, then one will already recognize how these secrets are described in the religious documents. The outward trivial materialism which people today consider so dangerous is only the last phase of the materialism I have described to you. First the Bible was interpreted in a materialistic way. If no one had ever explained the Bible in a materialistic way, no Haeckel would ever have explained nature in a materialistic way in the natural sciences; and what was laid in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the foundation in the religious sense that bore fruit in the nineteenth century in natural science; and that has led to the impossibility of arriving at an understanding of the Gospel of John if one does not penetrate to the spiritual origins. One can only underestimate the value of the Gospel of John if one does not understand it. And because those who no longer understood it were tainted by a materialistic attitude, it appeared to them in the light just described.

[ 20 ] A very simple comparison will explain how the Gospel of John differs from the other three.

[ 21 ] Imagine a mountain. On the mountain and on the slopes of the mountain, at certain altitudes, there are various people, and these various people – let us say three – now draw what they see below. Each will draw it differently according to where he is standing; but each of these three pictures is certainly true for the point of view in question. And the one who is now standing at the summit and drawing what is below will again gain and describe a different view. Such is the view of the three evangelists, the synoptics Matthew, Mark, Luke, compared to that of John, who describes the event only from a different point of view. And what have learned commentators not brought forth to make this Gospel of John comprehensible! Sometimes one is truly amazed at what the exact researchers say, which would be so easy to see through if our time were not a time of the greatest possible belief in authority. Belief in infallible science has reached its highest point today!

[ 22 ] Thus, the very beginning of the Gospel of John has become very difficult for the materialistically inclined theologian. The doctrine of the Logos or Word has caused people great difficulties. They say to themselves: We would so much like everything to be simple, straightforward and naive, and then along comes the Gospel of John and speaks of such lofty philosophical things, of the Logos, the Life, the Light! The philologist is accustomed to always asking where something comes from. Recent works do no different. Read the works on Goethe's Faust. Everywhere you will find a proven origin of this or that motif; for example, all books from centuries past are tracked down to see where Goethe got the word “worm” that he uses. And so one also asks: where did John get the concept of “logos”? The other evangelists, who spoke to the simple, unadorned human understanding, do not express themselves so philosophically. Now it was said that the writer of the Gospel of John was a person with Greek education, and then it was pointed out that the Greeks had a writer in Philo of Alexandria who also spoke of the Logos. So it was thought that in educated Greek circles, when one wanted to speak of something lofty, one spoke of the Logos, and so John took it up. And so this was taken as further proof that the writer of the Gospel of John was not grounded in the same tradition as the writers of the other gospels, but – so it was said – he had been influenced by Greek culture and had reworked the facts accordingly. And precisely the opening words of the Gospel of John

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[ 23 ] prove that the Philonian concept of the “Logos” had penetrated the mind of the writer of the Gospel of John and influenced the presentation! |

[ 24 ] One would just like to hold the beginning of Luke's Gospel up to such people:

"Since many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,
as they were delivered to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word,
wherefore I thought it necessary to investigate carefully all these things and to write an orderly account of them for you, most excellent Theophilus.

[ 25 ] It is stated right at the beginning that what he is about to relate is handed down from those who were “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”. It is strange that John should have this from Greek culture and that Luke, who according to this view belonged to the simple men, also speaks of the “Logos”! Such things should make even those who believe in authority aware that that it is really not actually exact reasons that lead to such results, but prejudices; it is the materialistic glasses that have brought about this view of the Gospel of John, that it is to be placed alongside the other Gospels in the manner just characterized, which we can easily see from the fact that Luke's Gospel also speaks of it. What is said of those who were eyewitnesses and servants of the Logos means that in ancient times the Logos was spoken of as something that people knew and were familiar with. And that is what we must now particularly bear in mind so that we can penetrate more deeply into the first paradigmatic sentences of the Gospel of John.

[ 26 ] What does the one who used the word “logos” or the word “word” in our sense mean? What does he mean?

[ 27 ] You will not arrive at this conception of the Logos by theoretical explanation and abstract conceptual analysis, but rather you must place yourself, through the mind, in the whole life of feeling of all those who have spoken of the Logos in this way. These people, too, have seen the things around them. But it is not enough for a person to merely look at what is around him; rather, it depends on how the feelings of his heart and mind are attached to it, how he considers this or that to be higher or lower, depending on what he sees in them. You all turn your gaze to the natural kingdoms surrounding you, to minerals, plants, animals and people. You call the human being the most perfect, the mineral the most imperfect creature. Within the respective natural kingdoms, you distinguish between higher and lower beings. At different times, people felt this quite differently.

[ 28 ] Those who spoke in the sense of the Gospel of John felt that one thing was particularly significant: they looked down on the lower animal kingdom and let their gaze wander up to man – and followed something very specific in this direction of development. One of the adherents of the Logos doctrine said: “There is one thing that most clearly shows us the superiority of the higher beings over the lower ones: the ability to express inward life outwardly through speech, to communicate one's thoughts to the world around us in words. Such an adherent of the Logos doctrine would have said: ”Look at the lower animal! It is mute, it does not express its pain or its pleasure. Take the lower animals: they chirp or make other sounds, etc.; but it is the external scraping and rubbing of the physical organs that resound, as a lobster can do too. The higher we go, the more the ability develops to manifest the inner self in sound and to communicate what the soul experiences in sound. And that is why, it was said, man stands so high above other beings, because he is not only able to describe in words what his lust or pain is, but because he is able to express in words what goes beyond the personal, what is spiritual, impersonal.

[ 29 ] And now, among these followers of the Logos doctrine, it was said: There was a time before man in his present form existed in which it was possible for him to express his innermost experience in words. There was another time before that. It took a long time for our Earth to develop into its present form. We will hear how this Earth came to be. But if we examine the earlier conditions, we do not yet find man in his present form, nor do we find any beings that can make sounds from within when they experience something. Our world begins with mute beings, and only gradually do beings appear on our planet who can express their innermost experiences outwardly, who are capable of speech. But what appears last in man - said the adherents of the Logos doctrine - was there earliest in the world itself. We imagine that man in his present form was not yet present in earlier states of the earth; but he was present in an imperfect, mute form and gradually developed into a being endowed with logos or word. That he was able to do so stems from the fact that what appears in him last, the creative principle, was present in a higher reality from the beginning. What breaks free from the soul was the divine creative principle in the beginning. The word that sounds from the soul, the logos, was there in the beginning, and the logos has guided development in such a way that ultimately a being emerged in which it could also appear. What appears last in time and space was there first in the spirit.

[ 30 ] If you want to use a comparison to make this clear to yourself, you can say something like this: Here I have this flower in front of me. This corolla, this bell-shaped flower, what was it some time ago? It was a small seed. Within it was the potential for this white bell-shaped flower. If it had not been for the possibility, this white corolla could not have come into being. And where does the seed come from? It comes again from such a corolla. The blossom precedes the seed; and just as the blossom precedes the fruit, so the seed from which this blossom has come has developed out of the same plant. This is how the author of The Logos Teaching viewed man and said to himself: If we go back in evolution, we find in earlier states the still mute man who was not capable of speech; but just as the seed comes from the flower, so the mute seed of man comes from the speaking, word-endowed God in the primeval beginning. Just as the lily of the valley produces the seed and the seed produces the lily of the valley, so the divine creative Word produces the dumb human seed; and when the divine creative Word slips into the dumb human seed, in order to merge with it again, the original divine creative Word resounds from the human seed. If we go back in the evolution of mankind, we meet an imperfect being, and evolution has the meaning that in the end, as a blossom, the Logos or the word that reveals the inner soul appears. In the beginning, the mute human being appears as the seed of the logos-gifted human being, and this emerges from the logos-gifted God. Man originates from the non-word-endowed, dumb man, but in the end is the primordial beginning of the Logos or the Word. — Thus, he who recognizes the doctrine of the Logos in the ancient sense advances to the divine creative Word, which is the primordial beginning of existence, as the writer of the Gospel of John points out at the beginning. Let us hear what he says at the beginning:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[ 31 ] Today, he wants to say, where is the Word today? Today the Word is also there, and the Word is with man! And a human being is the Word! And so the writer of the Gospel of John connects man with God, and we indeed hear a teaching that is easy for every human heart to understand at the beginning of this Gospel of John.

[ 32 ] In this introductory lecture, I wanted to describe to you once more from the point of view of feeling and emotion how a devotee of the Logos teaching originally felt such words of the Gospel of John. And once we have placed ourselves in the mood that was there when these words were first heard, we will be all the better able to penetrate the deep meaning that underlies this Gospel of John.

[ 33 ] We will see further how what we call spiritual science is a true rendering of the Gospel of John, and how spiritual science enables us to understand this Gospel of John all the more thoroughly.