The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] When I spoke yesterday about how those figures commonly referred to as the apostles of Christ Jesus experienced a certain resurrection at the moment that marks the beginning of what is known as the Feast of Pentecost, this by no means implies that what I am about to describe as the content of the so-called Fifth Gospel was already present in the consciousness—in the full consciousness—of these apostles at that time, exactly as I am now recounting it. However, when clairvoyant consciousness penetrates the souls of these apostles, it recognizes those images within them. But in the apostles themselves, this lived at that time less as an image; rather, it lived—if I may say so—as life, as direct experience, as feeling and power of the soul. And that which the Apostles were then able to speak—through which they even captivated the Greeks of that time, through which they gave the impetus to what we call Christian development—that which they carried within themselves as a power of the soul, as a power of the spirit, blossomed from what lived in their souls as the living power of the Fifth Gospel. They were able to speak as they did, they were able to work as they did, because they carried the things we now decipher as the Fifth Gospel alive within their souls, even if they did not describe these things in words as one must now describe this Fifth Gospel. For they had indeed received, as through a resurrection, the fertilization by the all-ruling cosmic love, and under the influence of this fertilization they now continued to work. What was at work within them was that which Christ had become following the Mystery of Golgotha. And here we stand at a point where we must speak of Christ’s earthly life in the spirit of the Fifth Gospel.

[ 2 ] It is not entirely easy, in terms of today’s concepts—the concepts of the present—to put into words what this is all about. But we can approach this greatest of earthly mysteries through various concepts and ideas we have already gained through our spiritual scientific reflections. If one wishes to understand the Christ Being, then one must apply certain concepts we already possess from our spiritual scientific investigations to the Christ Being in a somewhat modified form.

[ 3 ] To gain some clarity, let us begin with what is commonly referred to as the baptism of John in the Jordan. In the Fifth Gospel, this event is presented, in relation to the earthly life of Christ, as something akin to the conception of an earthly human being. We can understand the life of Christ from that point onward until the Mystery of Golgotha by comparing it to the life that the human embryo undergoes in the mother’s womb. It is, so to speak, an embryonic life of the Christ Being that this Being undergoes from the baptism by John until the Mystery of Golgotha. We must understand the Mystery of Golgotha itself as the earthly birth—that is, the death of Jesus as the earthly birth of the Christ. And we must seek his actual earthly life “after the Mystery of Golgotha, when the Christ had his dealings, as I indicated yesterday, with the Apostles, while these Apostles were in a kind of altered state of consciousness.” That was what followed the actual birth of the Christ Being. And what is described as the Ascension and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit, we must understand in the case of the Christ Being as that which we are accustomed to regard, in the case of human death, as the entry into the spiritual worlds. And the continued life of the Christ in the earthly sphere since the Ascension or since the event of Pentecost must be compared to what the human soul experiences when it is in the so-called Devachan, in the spirit realm.

[ 4 ] We see, then, my dear friends, that in the Christ-Being we are faced with a Being in whose presence we must completely revise all the concepts we have otherwise acquired regarding the succession of states in human life. After the brief interim period, commonly called the time of purification or the time of Kamaloka, the human being passes into the spiritual world to prepare for the next earthly life. Thus, after death, the human being lives a spiritual life. From the event of Pentecost onward, the Christ Being experienced what meant for it the same as the transition to the spirit realm does for the human being: the ascension into the earthly sphere. And instead of entering a Devachan, instead of entering a spiritual realm, as humans do after death, the Christ Being made the sacrifice of, so to speak, establishing its heaven on earth, of seeking it on earth. Humans leave the earth in order, to use the common expressions, to exchange their dwelling place for heaven. Christ left heaven to exchange his dwelling place for the earth. I ask you to view this in the proper light and to connect to it the sense, the feeling, of what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha, what happened through the Christ Being, in what the actual sacrifice of the Christ Being consisted, namely in leaving the spiritual spheres to live with the Earth and with the people on Earth, and to continue human evolution on Earth through the impulse thus given to them. This already implies that before the baptism by John in the Jordan, this Being did not belong to the Earth sphere. It therefore migrated from the super-earthly spheres into the Earth sphere. And what was experienced between the baptism by John and the event of Pentecost had to be experienced in order to transform the heavenly being of Christ into the earthly being of Christ.

[ 5 ] It says an infinite amount when this mystery is expressed here with the words: Since the event of Pentecost, the Christ-Being has been with human souls on Earth; before that, it was not with human souls on Earth. What the Christ-essence went through between the baptism by John and the event of Pentecost happened so that a God’s dwelling in the spiritual world could be exchanged for a dwelling in the earthly sphere. This happened so that this divine-spiritual Christ-being could take on the form necessary for it to henceforth be in communion with human souls. Why, then, were the events in Palestine carried out? So that the divine-spiritual being of Christ could take on the form it needed to be in communion with human souls on Earth.

[ 6 ] This also serves to highlight that this event in Palestine is a unique one, a point I have already emphasized on several occasions: it is the descent of a higher, non-earthly being into the earthly sphere and the continued presence of this non-earthly being within the earthly sphere until, under its influence, the earthly sphere has undergone the corresponding transformation. Since that time, therefore, the Christ Being has been active on Earth.

[ 7 ] If we are to fully understand the event of Pentecost in the light of the Fifth Gospel, we must draw upon the concepts we have developed in spiritual science. Attention has been drawn to the fact that in ancient times there were mystery initiations, through which the human soul was raised to participate in spiritual life. This pre-Christian mystery system becomes most vivid when one considers the so-called Persian or Mithraic mysteries. There were seven stages of initiation. The one who was to be led up into the higher degrees of spiritual experience was first led to what was symbolically called a “raven.” Then he became an “Occultist,” a “Hidden One.” In the third degree he became a “Warrior,” in the fourth a “Lion,” and in the fifth he was given the name of the people to whom he belonged. In the sixth degree he became a “Sun Hero,” and in the seventh degree a “Father.” For the first four degrees, it suffices today to say that the individual was gradually led deeper and deeper into spiritual experience. In the fifth degree, the individual attained the ability to possess an expanded consciousness, so that this expanded consciousness gave him the capacity to become a spiritual guardian of the entire people to whom he belonged. That is why he was also given the name of the people in question. When someone was initiated into the fifth degree in these ancient mysteries, he had a specific kind of participation in spiritual life.

[ 8 ] We know from a series of lectures I gave here that the peoples of the earth are guided by what we call the Archangeloi, or Archangels, in the hierarchies of spiritual beings. The initiate of the fifth degree was raised into this sphere, so that he participated in the life of the Archangels. Such initiates of the fifth degree were needed; they were needed in the cosmos. That is why there was an initiation into this fifth degree on Earth. When such a personality was initiated into the Mysteries and underwent all the inner soul experiences, receiving the soul content corresponding to the fifth degree, then the Archangel of the people to whom this personality belonged looked down, as it were, upon this soul and read within it, just as we read in a book that tells us certain things which we must know in order to perform this or that deed. What was necessary for a people, what a people needed—this is what the Archangels read in the souls of those who had been initiated into the fifth degree. In order for the Archangels to guide in the right way, initiates of the fifth degree must be created on Earth. These initiates are the mediators between the actual leaders of the people, the Archangels, and the people themselves. They carry, as it were, up into the sphere of the Archangels that which is needed there so that the people may be guided in the right way.

[ 9 ] How, then, could this fifth degree be attained in ancient pre-Christian times? It could not be attained if the human soul remained within the body. The human soul had to be lifted out of the body. The initiation consisted precisely in the soul being taken out of the body. And outside the body, the soul then underwent what gave it the content I have just described. The soul had to leave the earth, had to ascend into the spiritual world in order to attain what it was meant to attain.

[ 10 ] Once the sixth degree of the ancient initiation had been attained—the degree of the Solar Hero—then something stirred within the soul of such a Solar Hero that was not only necessary for the leadership, guidance, and direction of a people, but was higher than the mere guidance and direction of a people. If you turn your gaze to the development of all humanity on Earth, you will see how peoples arise and fade away again, how peoples, as it were, transform themselves. Just as individual human beings are born and die, so too are peoples. But what a people has accomplished for the Earth must be preserved for the entire development of humanity on Earth. It is not merely a matter of guiding and directing a people; rather, what this people accomplishes as earthly work must be carried forward beyond the people themselves. In order for a people’s achievement to be carried beyond the people by the spirits who stand higher than the archangels—by the spirits of the age—the initiates of the sixth degree, the Sun Heroes, were necessary. For in what lived within the soul of a Sun Hero, the beings of the higher worlds could read that which carried the work of a people over into the work of the entire human race. Thus the forces could be gained that carry the work of a people over into the work of all humanity in the right way. That which lived within the Sun Hero was carried out over the whole earth. And just as the one who was to be initiated into the fifth degree of the ancient mysteries had to leave his body in order to undergo the necessary trials, so too must the one who was to become a Sun Hero leave his body and truly have the Sun as his dwelling place during the time of his departure.

[ 11 ] These are, however, things that sound almost fantastical to today’s sense of time—indeed, they may even be regarded as folly. But the Pauline saying also applies here: what is wisdom with God is often folly to human beings. The Sun Hero thus lived together with the entire solar system during this time of his initiation. The Sun is his dwelling place, just as the ordinary human being lives on Earth as his planet. Just as mountains and rivers surround us, so the planets of the solar system surround the Sun Hero during his initiation. The Sun Hero had to be transported to the Sun during the initiation. In the ancient mysteries, this could only be achieved outside the body. And when one returned to one’s body, one remembered what one had experienced outside the body and could use it as active forces for the evolution of all humanity, for the salvation of all humanity. The Sun Heroes thus left their bodies during the initiation; once they had filled themselves with these forces, they returned to their bodies. When they had returned, they possessed within their souls the forces capable of guiding a people’s work toward the entire development of humanity.

[ 12 ] And what did these Sun Heroes experience during the three and a half days of their initiation? While they—we might as well call it that—were not walking on Earth but on the Sun, what did they experience? The communion with the Christ, who was not yet on Earth before the Mystery of Golgotha! All the ancient sun heroes had ascended into the solar sphere in this way, for only there could one experience communion with the Christ in ancient times. From this world, into which the ancient initiates had to ascend during their initiation, the Christ descended to Earth. We can therefore say: What could be attained by a select few through the entire process of initiation in ancient times was attained, as through a natural event, during the days of Pentecost by those who were the Apostles of Christ. Whereas in the past human souls had to ascend to Christ, now Christ had descended to the Apostles. And the Apostles had, in a certain sense, become souls who carried within themselves that content which the ancient Sun Heroes had held in their souls. The spiritual power of the Sun had poured out over the souls of these people and continued to work in the evolution of humanity from then on. For this to happen, for the working of a completely new power to come upon the Earth, the event in Palestine, the Mystery of Golgotha, had to take place.

[ 13 ] But from what did Christ’s earthly existence arise? It arose from the deepest suffering, from a suffering that transcends all human conception of suffering. In order to gain a proper understanding of the matter at this point, we must once again overcome certain obstacles posed by our present consciousness. I must now make a few digressions in the explanation of the Fifth Gospel.

[ 14 ] A book has recently been published that I would highly recommend reading, because it was written by a very witty man and serves to demonstrate the nonsense that witty people can spout when it comes to spiritual matters. I am referring to Maurice Maeterlinck’s book *On Death*. Among the various nonsensical things it contains is the assertion that once a person has died, they can no longer suffer, since they are then a spirit and no longer have a physical body. But a spirit cannot suffer. It is the body alone that suffers. — Maeterlinck, the witty man, thus succumbs to the illusion that only the physical can suffer and that a dead person therefore cannot suffer. He does not even notice the phenomenal, almost unbelievable nonsense involved in claiming that the physical body, which consists of physical forces and chemical substances, suffers alone. As if suffering were bound to physical substances and forces! Substances and forces do not suffer at all. If these could suffer, then a stone would also have to be able to suffer. The physical body cannot suffer; what suffers is precisely the spirit, the soul. Things have come to such a pass today that people think the opposite of what makes sense about the simplest things. There would be no kamaloka suffering if spiritual life could not suffer. Because the physical body is lacking—truly lacking—that is precisely what kamaloka suffering consists of. Anyone who believes that a spirit cannot suffer will also be unable to form a correct conception of the infinite suffering that the Christ Spirit endured during the years in Palestine. |

[ 15 ] But before I speak of this suffering, I must draw your attention to something else. We must bear in mind that with John’s baptism in the Jordan, a spirit descended to Earth, lived for three years in an earthly body, and then underwent death on Golgotha in that body—a spirit who, prior to John’s baptism in the Jordan, had lived in circumstances entirely different from earthly ones. And what does it mean that this spirit lived in circumstances entirely different from earthly ones? This means, in anthroposophical terms, that this spirit also had no earthly karma. I ask you to consider what this means. A spirit lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, who underwent this earthly life without having any earthly karma in his soul. Thus, all the earthly experiences and events that Christ went through take on a completely different meaning than the experiences that, say, a human soul goes through. When “we” suffer, or have this or that experience, we know that suffering is rooted in karma. But for the Christ Spirit, it was not so. He had to go through a three-year earthly experience without any karma weighing upon him. What, then, was this for him? Suffering without karmic meaning, truly undeserved suffering, innocent suffering! The Fifth Gospel is the anthroposophical Gospel and shows us that the three-year life of the Christ is the only life lived in a human body that was lived without karma, to which the concept of karma in the human sense does not apply.

[ 16 ] But a closer examination of this Gospel teaches us to view this three-year life in yet another light. This entire three-year life on Earth, which we have regarded as an embryonic life, did not generate any karma, nor did it incur any guilt. Thus, a three-year life was lived on Earth that was not conditioned by karma and did not generate any karma. One must simply take in all these concepts and ideas that one receives in connection with this in the deepest sense, and one will gain much for a proper understanding of this extraordinary event in Palestine, which otherwise truly remains inexplicable in many respects. Much must be gathered to understand it. For what a multitude of contradictory explanations it has given rise to, and in what ways it has been misunderstood! And yet, how it has brought about impulse upon impulse in the development of humanity! People simply do not always grasp these things in their true, profound significance. One day we will speak of these things quite differently when we come to realize, in all its immense depth, what we have hinted at here by saying that we have before us a three-year earthly life that was lived without karma.

[ 17 ] How thoughtlessly people often pass by things that are actually deeply significant. Perhaps some of you have heard of Ernest Renan’s book *The Life of Jesus*, published in 1863. People read this book without really taking its significance into account. Perhaps people will later wonder that countless people have read this book to this day without sensing what is actually so peculiar and strange about it. What is strange about this book is that it is a hybrid, a mixture of a sublime portrayal and a back-alley novel. That these two things can be mixed together—a beautiful portrayal and a proper back-alley story—will one day be regarded as the height of strangeness. Read Ernest Renan’s *The Life of Jesus* with this in mind; read what he makes of Christ, who for him is, of course, primarily Jesus Christ. He turns him into a hero who initially has very good intentions, a great benefactor of humanity, but who is then, as it were, swept away by popular enthusiasm and yields more and more to what the people want and desire, to what they so love to hear and so love to be told.

[ 18 ] Ernest Renan applies to Christ, on a grand scale, what is often applied to us on a smaller scale. For it does happen that when people see something spreading, such as theosophy, they level the following criticism at the teacher: At first he had quite good intentions, but then the evil followers came along, flattered him, and corrupted him. Thus he fell into the error of saying what the listeners wanted to hear. — This is how Renan treats the life of Christ. He has no qualms about portraying the raising of Lazarus as a kind of deception that Christ Jesus orchestrated to serve as a powerful tool for agitation. He has no qualms about leading Christ Jesus into a kind of rage, a passion, and allowing him to succumb more and more to popular sentiment! As a result, a sensationalist novelistic element is mixed into the sublime depictions that are also contained in this book. And the peculiar thing is that a somewhat healthy sensibility—yes, I will say only a little—should actually recoil when presented with a being who initially has the best intentions but ultimately succumbs to popular instincts and allows all manner of swindles to take place. Renan, however, is not at all put off by this, but has beautiful words, captivating words for this personality. Curious, isn’t it! But it is an example of how great the human soul’s inclination toward Christ is, quite regardless of whether it has an understanding of Christ or not, even if it understands nothing of Christ. It can go so far that such a person turns the life of Christ into a sensational novel and yet cannot find enough words of admiration to draw people’s attention to this personality. Such things are only possible in relation to a being who enters earthly evolution in the way that the Christ-being does. Oh, much karma would have been created in the three-year life of Christ on Earth if Christ had lived as Renan describes. But this will be recognized in days to come: that such a description must simply crumble, because it will be recognized that the life of Christ brought no karma with it and created none. This is the proclamation of the Fifth Gospel.

[ 19 ] It was, then, the event at the Jordan—which we refer to as the baptism of John—that can be compared to a conception in the life of an earthly human being. The Fifth Gospel tells us that the words, as they appear in the Gospel of Luke, are an accurate rendering of what could have been heard at that time if a developed, clairvoyant consciousness had listened to the cosmic expression of this mystery that was unfolding there. The words that resounded from heaven were indeed: “This is my beloved Son; today I have begotten him.” These are the words of the Gospel of Luke, and this is also the accurate rendering of what happened at that time: the begetting, the conception of the Christ into earthly existence. This took place in the Jordan.

[ 20 ] Let us, for the time being, refrain from discussing which earthly personality this Spirit of Christ descended upon at the baptism by John. We will speak of that in the coming days. For now, let us simply hold fast to the fact that a Jesus of Nazareth had come, who gave his body to the Christ-being. Now the Fifth Gospel tells us—and this is what we can read through the reversed clairvoyant gaze—that the Christ-being had not yet fully united with the body of Jesus of Nazareth; that from the very first moment of his earthly life, the Christ-being initially had only a loose connection with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The connection was not like the connection between the physical body and the soul in an ordinary human being, where the soul dwells completely within the body, but rather such that at any time—for example, when it was necessary—the Christ-being could leave the body of Jesus of Nazareth again. And while the body of Jesus of Nazareth was somewhere as if asleep, the Christ-Essence made its way spiritually to wherever it was needed at that very moment.

[ 21 ] The Fifth Gospel shows us that whenever the Christ-Essence appeared to the apostles, the body of Jesus of Nazareth was not always present; rather, it often happened that the body of Jesus of Nazareth remained somewhere else, and only the Spirit—namely, the Christ-Spirit—appeared to the apostles. But he appeared in such a way that they could confuse the spiritual apparition with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. They did notice a difference, but the difference was too slight for them to always perceive it clearly. This is not so evident in the four Gospels; the Fifth Gospel tells us this clearly. The Apostles could not always clearly distinguish: Now we have the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth before us, or now we have the Christ as a spiritual being alone. The difference was not always clear; they did not always know whether one or the other was the case. They regarded this apparition—they simply did not think much about it—mostly as Christ Jesus, that is, as the Christ Spirit, insofar as they recognized him as such in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But what gradually took place during the three-year earthly life was that, so to speak, over the course of those three years the Spirit bound itself ever more closely to the body of Jesus of Nazareth, so that the Christ-being became ever more like the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth as an etheric being.

[ 22 ] Notice how, in this case, something different occurred with regard to the Christ-being than with the body of the ordinary human being. If we wish to understand this, we are correct in saying: The ordinary human being is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm, a small image of the entire macrocosm, for that which is expressed in the human physical body—what the human being becomes on Earth—reflects the great cosmos. The opposite is true of the Christ-being. The macrocosmic solar being takes shape according to the form of the human microcosm, compressing and constricting itself, squeezing itself together more and more, so that it becomes ever more similar to the human microcosm. Precisely the opposite of what is the case with the ordinary human being is true here.

[ 23 ] At the beginning of Christ’s earthly life, immediately after his baptism in the Jordan, the connection with the body of Jesus of Nazareth was still the loosest. The Christ-being was still entirely outside the body of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time, what the Christ-essence was working through as it walked upon the earth was still something entirely supernatural. It performed healings that no human power could accomplish. It spoke to people with an intensity that was a divine intensity. The Christ-Being, binding itself to the body of Jesus of Nazareth, worked as a super-earthly Christ-Being. But more and more it made itself like the body of Jesus of Nazareth, pressing itself, drawing itself ever more deeply into earthly conditions, and thereby causing the divine power to wane more and more. The Christ-Essence underwent all this by becoming like the body of Jesus of Nazareth, a development that was, in a certain sense, a descending development. The Christ-Essence had to feel how the power and strength of God increasingly slipped away as it became like the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Little by little, God became a human being.

[ 24 ] Just as someone who, in endless agony, sees his body wasting away more and more, so did the Christ-Essence see its divine content wasting away as it became, as an ethereal essence, ever more like the earthly body of Jesus of Nazareth, until it had become so similar to it that it could feel fear like a human being. This is what the other Gospels also describe when Christ Jesus went out with his disciples to the Mount of Olives, where the Christ-essence in the body of Jesus of Nazareth had beads of sweat on his brow. That was the humanization, the becoming ever more and more human of the Christ, the assimilation to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. To the same extent that this ethereal Christ-being became ever more like the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to that same extent did the Christ become human. His spiritual miraculous powers of God faded away. And there we see the entire Passion path of the Christ Being, which began from that moment on, when he came to the Jordan shortly after John’s baptism, where he healed the sick and cast out demons through his divine powers, where the astonished people who had seen what Christ was capable of said: No being on earth has ever accomplished this. — That was the time when the Christ-Being was still little like the body of Jesus of Nazareth. From this astonished sensation among the admirers all around, the path unfolds over three years to the point where the Christ-Being had become so similar to the body of Jesus of Nazareth that, in this ailing body of Jesus of Nazareth to which it had become like, it could no longer answer the questions of Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas. So much had it come to resemble the body of Jesus of Nazareth—the body that was growing ever weaker and weaker, ever more frail and frail—that in response to the question: “Did you say that you would tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days?” — the Christ-Essence no longer spoke from the decaying body of Jesus of Nazareth and remained silent before the high priest of the Jews, that she remained silent before Pilate, who asked: “Did you say that you are the King of the Jews?” — That was the path of the Passion from the baptism in the Jordan to powerlessness. And soon afterward, the astonished crowd, which had previously marveled at the supernatural miraculous powers of the Christ-Essence, no longer stood admiringly around him, but stood before the cross, mocking the powerlessness of the God who had become man, with the words: “If you are a God, come down.” You have helped others; now help yourself! — From divine power to powerlessness, that was the Passion of God. A path of infinite suffering for the God who had become human, to which was added the suffering for humanity, which had brought itself to the state it was in at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. And that was at a time of high intellectual development for humanity, as was indicated yesterday.

[ 25 ] But this suffering gave birth to the Spirit that was poured out upon the apostles at Pentecost. Born of this suffering is the all-pervading cosmic love, which descended at the baptism in the Jordan from the extraterrestrial, heavenly spheres into the earthly sphere, which became like a human being, like a human body, and which endured the infinite suffering that no human mind can conceive, which endured the moment of the highest, divine powerlessness, in order to give birth to that impulse which we then know as the Christ impulse in the further evolution of humanity.

[ 26 ] These are the things we must take into account if we are to understand the deeper meaning, the full significance of the Christ impulse, as it will need to be understood in the future of humanity—what the future of humanity will require in order to move forward on its path of culture and development.