II
The Entrance of Christianity into the Course of
Earth Evolution
Dornach 24th December, 1918
The mood of the present
time is not likely, perhaps, to create in many people that depth of
inner feeling of which legends and sagas speak when they refer to the
Christmas Holy Nights, when the soul that is prepared for it is able to
have some experience of the spiritual world. You know one such impressive
legend from the performances given here, that of Olaf Åsteson.
Many similar things point to Christmas time in the same way.
It is clear, not only to
a more thoughtful student of the human heart, but to anyone who observes
in the external world the general spirit of our time, that a Christmas
mood, a Christmas impulse, must now be sought anew by mankind. What
lives in the celebration of Christmas, in the thought of Christmas,
must take hold of the human soul in a new way. Just think, dear friends
— in order to realize the broader aspects of our contemporary
religious and spiritual mood — how little inclination there is
at this time to contemplate the Christ as such, to direct the eyes of
the soul to Him.
People often believe they
are speaking about the Christ, and yet you will find they have made
hardly any distinction between Christ and God the Father except in name.
While it is true that for many believers the Christ still stands at
the center of their religious creed and that beside Him all else of
a divine nature loses its luster, nevertheless we have seen for some
time now the rise of a theology that has really lost the Christ, that
speaks of a God in general even when Christ is meant. The specific quality
that is essential when the human heart looks up to Christ needs to be
found again. And perhaps the most worthy celebration of the Christmas
Festival at this time is actually to inscribe in our souls how mankind
can find the Christ again. Many historical facts of the evolution of
mankind will first have to be considered — in the spiritual scientific
sense — if a true impulse is to be reawakened that will lead human
souls to Christ.
The Christmas Festival can
not only remind us, as is intended, of the entrance of Jesus into earth
life, but it can also point to the birth of Christianity itself, the
entrance of Christianity into the course of earth evolution. And so
let us today direct our spiritual vision primarily to what might be
called the Christmas of Christianity itself, the entrance, the birth,
of Christianity within the sphere of the earth. The external facts are
known, of course, but our knowledge of them needs to be intensified.
Christianity came into the
world in the person of Christ Jesus, into the midst of the adherents
of the Old Testament. We can observe the phenomena that occurred among
these people when Christianity was born. We see how they were externally
divided into two separate currents, that of the Pharisees and that of
the Sadducees. It is necessary to view all these things henceforth in
a new light. When we consider the general course of development of an
individual or of humanity itself — indeed, the course of the entire
earth — this will become increasingly clear to us if we conceive
it as a continual balancing between luciferic and ahrimanic forces.
But that is merely the designation we use; there has always existed
among the deeper natures of humanity a consciousness of the actual existence
of Lucifer and Ahriman and of the condition of balance between them.
Fundamentally, the contrast of the Pharisaic element and the Sadducean
element in the ancient Hebrew evolution was nothing else than the contrast
of ahrimanic and luciferic elements. Jesus, coming into external earth
life, entered the balancing stream. He entered earthly existence at
that place for which the most important designation up to the time of
the Mystery of Golgotha was that Solomon's Temple had been built
there. In a certain sense we can only understand the nature of Solomon's
Temple if we are able to perceive it in contrast to the Christianity
then being born. It is well-known how quickly after Christianity came
into being Solomon's Temple was destroyed, so far as external
existence is concerned. This memorial of the earlier evolution out of
which the spirituality of Christianity arose was destined to exist no
longer at the place from which that spirituality streamed forth. The
nature of Solomon's Temple and the nature of Christianity present
a strong contrast. Solomon's Temple embraced in marvelous, magnificent,
sometimes gigantic symbols all that was contained in the world conception
of the Old Testament. It was an image of the entire universe so far
as this could be represented by the ancient world conception, in its
conformity to law, in its inner structure, in its permeation by divine-spiritual
beings. It was nonetheless an image of the universe that in a certain
sense and in one direction was extraordinarily one-sided. That is to
say, the Temple was a spatial image of the universe, an image that made
use of spatial forms and spatial relations to express the mysteries
of the universe. But for those who viewed it in the spirit of the Old
Testament, its symbolism was endowed with life.
We see, on the one hand,
in the Judaism of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the externalization of
what had been given to humanity through the Old Testament; on the other
hand, we see in the symbolism of Solomon's Temple the means of
deepening the life of Old Testament humanity. It might be said that
what has flowed into the entire Old Testament revelation came to expression
in these two directions: one outward, exoteric, in the Judaism of the
Pharisees and Sadducees; the other esoteric, through what was represented
in the mysterious symbols of Solomon's Temple. And from this exotericism
and esotericism sprang what became Christianity.
This Christianity was at
first, at the time of its birth, unknown to the world at large, to that
world in which lived the spirituality of the humanity of that time,
namely, the Greek world. Within the expanding Roman empire in which
the Mystery of Golgotha was being prepared through the birth of Jesus,
it was not known what a momentous Event had taken place among the Jewish
people. Nothing was known of the significant Event that constitutes
the meaning of the earth. Nevertheless, although the humanity of that
time allowed it to pass unnoticed outwardly, the most sublime Event
of our earth evolution, inwardly the Christianity that was coming into
being was connected with what was then considered the whole world.
In what ways, dear friends,
was it connected? The meaning that Christmas conceals is revealed later
in the Easter conception. What then is the important aspect of Easter
that really intensifies the meaning of Christmas? It is the contemplation
of the Savior of mankind Who died on the cross: the cross with the dead
God. The intention and the deed originated in humanity: to put to death
the God Who had appeared in their midst. The profound magnitude, the
full power, of this thought should again enter into human souls. Contemplation
of the deed by which the God Who appeared on earth was killed by men:
this should be put into language by which it can be understood. Let
us try to do this, at least from one point of view.
When we look upon the Mystery
of Golgotha, we find it to be a great world-historical confluence of
spiritual streams that had been present in the ancient Mysteries. (You
know this from my book,
Christianity as Mystical Fact.)
What had taken place in the ancient Mysteries as the sacrificial rite, the
rite of initiation, what had taken place in the temple with, one might
say, limited importance, was now set out on the great stage of world
history; it now took place in the realm of our entire earth existence.
In a certain sense, the initiation of humanity itself was brought out
of the temples and presented as historical event before the whole world.
Now let us ask: what were
the thoughts of someone permitted to take part in the initiation rites
of the ancient Mysteries — when these still possessed their true
significance? Through his preparatory instruction such a person knew
with certainty that what is directly apparent in the external world
of the senses, and what can be comprehended by the human intellect,
is a world of mere phenomena, a world of appearance. He knew that what
a human being experiences immediately in his environment during his
waking hours between birth and death is only the outer view, the phenomenal
display, of an inner reality, and that in ordinary life this inner reality
is concealed. In the Mystery rite itself such a person sought true reality
in what streamed to him, as it were, from the depths of existence, in
what could be drawn out and separated from the merely phenomenal, illusory
existence. Someone who took part in the ancient Mysteries could always
say to himself: When I walk through the world and see external nature,
it is illusion. When I experience this or that in the world, it is illusion.
When I do any kind of work for the world, it is illusion. But when I
am permitted to take part in the holy acts of the Mysteries in the Temple,
then something happens that is truth, not illusion. Something is drawn
forth, so to speak, out of the illusory existence of the world and transformed
into a sacramental act; and this act contains exact truth in contrast
to the illusion.
If we wish to be quite clear
concerning this view of the Mysteries, we must compare it to the view
prevailing today in our materialistic age. We must understand that all
that is called reality today in this age of materialism was regarded
as illusion in the conceptions belonging to the Mysteries; while, for
example, the sacramental act performed as the initiation rite, which
most people today consider “fantastic”, was esteemed by
those acquainted with the Mysteries as the only reality in life. Such
an act, therefore, was not performed at random, but at certain times
when it was believed that something of the true nature of things might
push through the phenomena of outer life and, as it were, be captured
through the act. It has often been mentioned that one such important
rite consisted in showing the sacrifice of the God, the death of the
God, and His resurrection after three days. This pointed to the fact
that to someone who penetrates more deeply into the external world,
death can reveal the true nature of this world, that reality must be
sought beyond death.
Think of all this entering
human souls from the content of the Mysteries at the beginning of our
Christian era, expressing the most important fact in world phenomena!
Someone in that era pondering on the course of our earth evolution would
have been able to say: “In ancient times it was possible for man
to learn something about the divine-spiritual world through atavistic
initiation science. It was formerly revealed to man out of earth evolution
itself. That time is now past. The time has come when nothing more can
be drawn from the content of this world to guide us to the divine-spiritual
world. This world has lost its divine-spiritual life.” That is
what such a soul would have said. Where must one look for the meaning
of evolution for earth-humanity? Where was the real meaning of the earth
at the time when Christianity came into being? Where was the expression
of what was willed in man's innermost being at that time? At Golgotha
on the cross. It was Death! What formerly had gushed forth from earth
evolution for human salvation, was itself dead. To the soul that penetrated
more deeply into cosmic reality, an earth impulse, the most profound
of all earth impulses, was given at the time of the birth of Christianity,
in the contemplation of the dead God.
Only when experienced in
this way does the full magnitude appear of the matter with which we
are here concerned. The ancient world conception, the ancient world-wisdom
had flowed into Solomon's Temple; but it no longer held anything
of what had made it great. Something new had to enter world evolution.
And so in the course of time the destruction of Solomon's Temple
and the rise, the birth, of Christianity exactly coincided. Solomon's
Temple: a spatial symbolic image of the content of the cosmos; Christianity,
comprehended as a time-phenomenon: a new image of the cosmos. Christianity
is not something that appears as a spatial image, as in the case of
Solomon's Temple; one only understands Christianity if one grasps
it in images of time. One must see that earth evolution proceeded
as far as the Mystery of Golgotha; then the Mystery of Golgotha intervened;
then, through the Christ pouring Himself into humanity, evolution moves
on in this way or that. Its deeper content is not to be equated in the
remotest degree with anything appearing in spatial images, not even
in the gigantic, magnificent spatial images of Solomon's Temple.
Nevertheless, Solomon's Temple, as also the inner aspect of Pharisaic
and Sadducean life, contained the soul of the world consciousness of
that time. The soul of the world consciousness two thousands years ago
was to be found in Old Testament Judaism. Into this soul was laid the
seed of Christianity, a new seed that, while growing out of all that
may be expressed in space, can only be expressed in time. The becoming
following the existing: that is the inner relation of Christianity that
was then being born to the soul element of the world of that time, to
Judaism that was embodied in Solomon's Temple, which later collapsed.
Christianity was born into the soul of ancient Judaism.
As Christianity sought
the soul in Judaism, so it sought the spirit in Hellenism.
The Gospels themselves, as transmitted to the world (I refer only to
what has been handed down), have in the main passed through the Greek
spirit. The thoughts through which the world could think Christianity
are the spiritual wisdom of Greece. The first apologia of the Church
Fathers appeared in the Greek tongue. Just as Christianity was born
into the soul that for the humanity of that time lived in Judaism, so
it was born into the spirit provided by Hellenism.
Romanism furnished the body.
It was Romanism that at that time could provide an external organization
for concepts of empire. Judaism soul, Hellenism spirit, Romanism body—body,
of course, in the sense that the social structure of humanity is body.
Romanism is in reality the forming of external inclinations and institutions;
the thoughts concerning external institutions live within them. It is
the corporeal element in historical existence, the corporeal element
in historical development. Just as Christianity was born into the soul
of Judaism and into the spirit of Hellenism, so it was born into the
body of the Roman Empire. Superficial people even think that everything
contained in Christianity can be explained out of Judaism, Hellenism
and Romanism. In the same way, indeed, that materialistic natural scientists
believe that everything in a human being is inherited from parents,
grandparents, etc., ignoring the fact that the soul comes from spiritual
regions and only puts on the body as a garment: so these superficial
people like to say that Christianity consists of what in actual fact
it has only put on as an outer garment. The essence of Christianity
entered the world, of course, with Christ Jesus Himself; but this Christianity
was born into the Jewish soul, into the Greek spirit, and into the body
of the Roman Empire. That, in a sense, is the birth of Christianity
itself, viewed in the light of Christmas thought.
It is important not to
accept these facts as mere external theories, but to relate them deeply
to our thought of Christmas, to learn what their significance really
is in relation to the newborn Impulse that is now entering world evolution
with the Spirits of Personality — as I explained here recently.
[
Note 3 ]
Indeed, dear friends, anything
new that purposes to enter into the course of world evolution must first
struggle through what remains of the old. This is precisely the mystery
of world-becoming, that on the one hand there is a normal, progressive
evolution; on the other hand, retarded luciferic and ahrimanic forces
interfere with it and modify it, but also in a certain sense support
it as it advances. I have often called attention to the fact that we
cannot escape this ahrimanic-luciferic force; we must look straight
at it calmly, and face it consciously. On no account must we simply
submit to these things unconsciously. From world impulses shadows remain
behind that continue to have an effect even after something new has
come into existence; but their luciferic and ahrimanic character must
be recognized. This ahrimanic-luciferic element must accompany evolution,
but it must not be accepted in an absolute sense; its luciferic- ahrimanic
character must be perceived. Something shadowlike has remained behind
from Solomon's Temple, something shadow-like also from Hellenism,
and something shadow-like from the Roman Empire. Nearly two thousand
years ago it was self-evident that from these three — soul, spirit,
and body — Christianity was born. But soul, spirit, and body could
not immediately disappear; they remained in a certain way as after-effects.
Now is the time when this fact must be clearly understood and when the
completely unique character of the Christ Impulse itself must be realized.
A shadow remains behind
from the most important extract of the esoteric Old Testament, from
the Mystery of Solomon's Temple; a shadow remains from Hellenism;
also one from the Roman Empire. We must learn to distinguish the shadows
from the light. It will be mankind's task from this present time
into the immediate future to differentiate between the shadows and the
light in the right way.
We see the shadow of the
Roman Empire in Roman Catholicism. This is not Christianity; it is the
shadow of the ancient Roman Empire into which Christianity had to be
born. In its forms there continues to live what had to be built up at
that time as a framework for Christianity. But we must learn —
humanity must learn — to distinguish the shadow of the old Roman
Empire from Christianity. The essence of Christianity is not to be found
in the organization of the Catholic Church, or indeed of any of the
Christian churches. One sees in their hierarchical aspect what existed
and developed in the Roman Empire from Romulus to the Emperor Augustus.
The illusion arises only because Christianity was born into this body.
In this sense Solomon's
Temple has also remained as a shadow. The Mysteries of Solomon's
Temple have — with a few exceptions — been completely absorbed
into the Masonic and other secret societies of the present time. As
the Roman Church is the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire, so what
continues to exist in these societies — however strongly they
assert to the contrary, even to the extent of excluding Jews —
is the shadow of ancient Judaism, the shadow of the esoteric Jehovah-worship.
Again the shadow must be distinguished from the light. Just as the shadow
expressed in the perpetuation of the Roman Empire in the Catholic Church,
in the churches generally, must be distinguished from the light shining
in Christianity, so the element into which Christianity had to be born
as soul must be distinguished from the shadow that continues to work
in societies founded on symbolism that is reminiscent of Solomon's
Temple.
These things must be
recognized. They must be looked at in the right way. And they must be
illuminated in our time by the new revelations of which we have been
speaking during these days.
The Greek spirit into which
Christianity had to be born — in spite of all the beauty of
Hellenism, in spite of its esthetic and other important content, in spite
of the influence it has upon us — has left its shadow as the modern
world conception of the cultured humanity that has brought this fearful
catastrophe
[
Note 4 ]
upon mankind. When Hellenism
existed with its world conception, it was something different. Everything,
dear friends, is right in its own time. If something is taken in an
absolute sense, and carried on after it has become antiquated, it then
becomes the shadow of itself. And the shadow is not the light; it may
change suddenly into the opposite of the real thing. Aristotelianism
still shows something of the greatness of ancient Greece. Aristotle
in modern raiment is materialism. Christianity was born into the Jewish
soul, the Greek spirit, the Roman body; but the three have left their
shadows behind. The challenge sounds through our time, like the call
of an angel's trumpet, to perceive the true facts, to look through
the shadows to the light.
Truly, anyone who ponders
over this present moment in time, who considers impartially, without
prejudice, what has brought about the fearful, distressing events of
recent years, surely cannot help wondering whether some sort of light
can be sought that would shine into the darknesses of earth in a different
way from those lights which most people still wish to regard as the
only ones. One should find the will to look for a way through the shadows
to the light. For the shadows will assert themselves. They will become
effective through people who perhaps have endured little themselves
of the great suffering of humanity at the present time, who have no
sympathy, or very little, for the terrible agony that has flashed through
the world, agony that is itself proof that many of the thoughts which
have appeared were destined to be shipwrecked. One who tries to examine
with deeper understanding what is really not difficult to see today,
one who has the resolute will to look without prejudice at what is happening
today among men, will feel an impulse to seek the light. He should attach
some importance to this impulse in his soul, not listen to those who
— depending on the place they occupy — wish only to defend
one of the ancient shadows, but listen to his own soul; it will speak
clearly enough if only he does not let its voice drown under the external
assertions of the shadows.
If today one looks compassionately
at what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, one will
be able to see a strange figure standing before men: a distortion of
the truly human form, in garments woven of shadows, a figure uniting
in itself in its thoughts, sensations, feelings, and will-impulses what
has put humanity on a wrong track and gives every promise of taking
it farther on the wrong track. Deep within what is happening outwardly
dwell those three shadow-thoughts that have been described.
Whoever learns to see that
figure in garments woven of shadows, has prepared himself in the right
way to look at something else: to look at the tree that can illuminate
even today's darkness with its lights. Whoever is pure in heart
and does not allow himself to be misled by the threefold shadow-existence
— antiquated symbolism, antiquated ecclesiasticism, antiquated
materialistic science — will see what wills to shine in the darkness
as a real Christmas tree, and lying beneath it the Christ-Jesus Child,
illuminated anew by the Christmas light. This is the real aim of our
anthroposophically-oriented science of the spirit: to seek the Christmas
light, so that the Jesus Child, Who entered the world first to work
and then to be understood, may gradually be understood; to illuminate
in a modest way the greatest of all events in earth existence. This
is the goal of our anthroposophical spiritual science within the religious
currents of humanity. People will not understand the light that this
spiritual science wants to recognize as its Christmas light unless they
have the will really to penetrate the threefold shadow-existence of
our time. The times are serious. And whoever lacks the will to take
them seriously will perhaps not be able in this incarnation to see what
should truly be perceptible at this time to every human being of good
will, there for the healing of the many wounds that otherwise mankind
will still have to suffer. People of good will should take notice of
what may be seen when the anthroposophical science of the spirit enkindles
the Christmas light. The light is truly small, and he who professes
it remains humble. He does not wish to extol it to the world as something
special, for he knows that now it appears small and insignificant, and
many men and many generations must still come, to help what now burns
dimly to become brighter. But even though the light is weak, it shines
on something whose effect within human earthly evolution is not weak,
something that is working powerfully as the deepest meaning of human
evolution. The light illumines what we may call the birth of Christianity,
the Christmas of Christianity. Along with the Easter meaning of anthroposophical
spiritual science may this its Christmas meaning be understood. May
many, many souls look forward in this spirit to the profound experience
of the Christmas Holy Nights. They will then be able to feel that already
a call is sounding through the world to contemplate the appearance of
Jesus, who awaited here on earth that moment when He was to meet death,
in order in His spirit-life after death to give a new meaning to mankind
and to earth evolution.
My dear friends, let us
feel something of this Christmas mood that is to enter our souls from
spiritual science! I would like at this moment to begin Christmas solemnly,
by expressing the wish — as my soul's innermost holy Christmas
greeting — that you may experience the mood of consecration that
wills to receive the new Christ-revelation. I assume that you too are
beginning Christmas with that earnestness of which I endeavored to speak
today, an earnestness appropriate to the present condition of the world.
In this spirit, my dear friends, I wish you with all my heart a holy,
solemn Christmas!
|