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• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 3: Theoretical Thinking and Living in the Spirit.
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  • Rudolf Steiner: If we have to start with it, please permit me to make a few points. I ask you however, to link your remarks to those comments I will be making, because obviously some of you here can approach what Dr Rittelmeyer has formulated, from another point of view.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 5: Conceptual Knowledge and Observational Knowledge.
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  • In Anthroposophy we currently have very few people who are engaged in spiritual activity. Anthroposophy is in the beginning of her work and one can admit that in a relatively short time it may work differently into the human soul, compared with today. One thing is quite remarkable today, and perhaps you’ll find that reprehensible, but it is perhaps much better to side with what appears currently than to express it with an abstract reprimand.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 6: Creative Speech and Language.
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  • Should one not be creating knowledge out of these facts that the Gospels have lost their actual power? What have we done in the 19th century? We have analysed the Gospels of Mark, John, Luke and Matthew, we have treated them philologically, we have concluded that John’s Gospel can be nothing, but a hymn and that one can hardly believe it corresponds to reality. We have compared the various synoptists with one another and we have reached the stage which ties to the famous blacksmith where distillation takes place: what is said iniquitously about the Christ is the truth because you won’t find that with mere hymns of praise. — This is the last consequence of this path. On this path nothing else can happen than what has already happened: the destruction of the Gospels will inevitably arise in this way. While we are still so much into discussing the division between knowledge and faith, it will not be sustained if science destroys the Gospels. One must certainly stand within reality and need to understand how to live out of reality, and therefore it is important that the pastor must come to a living meaning of the perceptible representations, the perceptible-in-image representations. The living image must enter into the sermon. That it should be an acceptable, a good image, it obviously must have a purity of mood, of which we will speak about. It’s all in the image; the image is what we need to find.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 7: Formation of Speech.
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  • How do we actually now really speak of a new understanding of the Bible, of a new Bible text? Furthermore, we ask Dr Steiner on occasion to discuss in more detail the two chapters from the synoptic Gospels, Matthew 13 and Mark 13.
  • You see, we have the remarkable appearance of the Fritz Mauthner speaking technique where all knowledge and all wisdom is questioned, because all knowledge and wisdom is expressed though speech, and so Fritz Mauthner finds nothing expressed in speech because it does not point to some or other reality. How harsh my little publication “The spiritual guidance of man and of mankind” has been judged in which I mention that in earlier times, all vowel formation expressed people’s inner experiences, and all consonant unfolding comes from outer observed or seen events. All that man perceives is expressed in consonants, while vowels are formed by inner experiences, feelings, emotions and so on. With this is connected the peculiar manner in which the consonants are written differently to the vowels in Hebrew. This is also connected to areas where more primitive people used to dwell, where they have not strongly developed their inner life, so predominantly consonant languages occur, not languages based on vowels. This extends very far, this kind of in-consonant-action of language. Only think what African languages have from consonants to click sounds.
  • Basically, the Bible no longer exists; we have a derivative which we have put together more and more from our abstract language. We need a new starting point in order to try and find what really, in an enlivened way, is in the Bible. For this I have suggested an approach which I will speak about tomorrow, in the interpretation of Mathew 13 and Mark 13. You will have to state in any case that even commenting on the Bible makes it necessary to deal with the Bible impartially. If it is stated that something is mentioned which had only taken place in the year 70, therefore the relevant place could not have been mentioned before other than what had happened after this event, this could be said only if it is announced at the beginning of the Bible explanation that the Bible will be explained completely from a materialistic point of view; then it may be done like this. The Bible itself does not follow the idea that it should be explained materialistically. The Bible itself makes it necessary that the foreseeing of coming events is first and foremost ascribed to Christ Jesus himself, and also ascribed to the apostles. Thus, as I’ve said, this outlook is what I want to enter into tomorrow on the basis of Mathew 13 and Mark 13, by giving a little interpretation as it has been asked for.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 10: Composition of the Gospels
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  • I once encountered a man with a New Testament. For this New Testament he had acquired four differently coloured pencils and then he had with one pencil, I think it was the red one, underlined everything carefully which appeared as common content in all four Gospels. That meant, as he showed me, very little. He had taken St John’s Gospel. There were four pencils; the other three he had applied to delete what only is contained in the Matthew Gospel, and then, what only was in Mark’s Gospel and finally that which only appeared in the Gospel of Luke. In this way he had in his way created a strange analytical synopsis about which he was extraordinarily proud. I objected, saying such attempts were often made; we also know about it within German literature — it was an Englishman who held this achievement in front of me — where these attempts are made with corresponding places indicated next to one another in columns and blank intermediate spaces left where it can only be found in one of the Gospels. He was a priori convinced that his synopsis was the best.
  • Let’s try and enter into this wonderful composition. Let’s go to the three parables only told to the disciples about heaven. According to the total sense in which the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is expressed, out of the spirit of Matthew’s Gospel of Christ Jesus, this is not said to the people. Listen carefully what I emphasize: in the spirit of the Matthew Gospel this would not be told to the people. Try to remember exactly what is said in these parables which are only told to the disciples. Firstly, there’s the parable about the treasure in the field, discovered by a man who then sells all he has in order to buy the field with the treasure in it, so he may own it. Actually, it comes down to this, that he sells everything in order to acquire this treasure; that he gives up everything so that he may have the treasure. This relationship of Jesus to his disciples may not be expressed to the people. Why? Because it contains a certain danger; that of becoming egotistic, the danger of reward-ethics. One could not, without damaging the people, without further ado speak about egoism. Egoism is addressed when one urges good deeds with reference to the reward of the Eternal. Reward ethic, which fundamentally is still present to a marked degree in the Old Testament, this reward ethic is rejected by Christ Jesus. That is why he speaks about this parable — for which the unprepared would look for as reward — only to those who had already progressed far enough that there would no longer be a danger for this parable to indicate its egotistic meaning. The disciples who through their communal life with Christ Jesus had gone beyond egoism, to them this could be said as it is in this parable, to them the heavenly realms could be compared with a treasure. In the disciples the urge for selfishness was not agitated. To the people in this sense of the Matthew Gospel it could not be said, just as little as what follows, which is structured accordingly with the parable
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 11: Insights into the Mystery of Golgotha, Priest Ordination.
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  • The other pole is Faust. He took on the intellect with all his senses, resulting in his deteriorating into the dangers of the intellect, as he entered into all the individual dangers of the intellect. It is not for nothing that these personalities are a kind of landmark for modern mankind: on the one side Luther and what he connected to, and on the other side Faust, and what he associates with. It was truly no small deed of Goethe when he wanted to reshape Faust in such a way that he would not perish. Lessing already thought about it. If freedom is to be achieved for humanity, the intellect needs to be engaged with, but humanity should not be pushed away from the divine. The Faust fragment of Lessing ends with the words (of the angels to the devil): “You shall not prevail!” which Goethe remodelled. He said to himself there should be a possibility not to be separated from the divine when mankind engages with the intellect — but he needs it for the development of freedom. In this terrible battle Luther stood. He saw how the intellect contained within itself the danger that man also strangulates his soul from the divine, how man succumbs to the death of the soul. That which is devoured by the intellect — in anthroposophy we call it “becoming Ahrimanic” — which totally enters into the intellect, becomes devoured, it is cut off from the divine. This is what Luther felt for modern man.
  • Firstly, you’ll discover that it was a world historic mistake for this man to have become the Imperial Chancellor but on the other hand you will learn something about the unusual thoughts modern people had and how these two souls could justifiably live in the same bosom. It is also remarkable that this writing on the principle of Catholicism appears in French. It is therefore extraordinarily interesting that the writer of this work, whose name doesn’t come to my mind at the moment, has a perpetually logical conscience and therefore he has to make a differentiation between the Roman Catholic teaching material and what constitutes the content of outer science. That is why he proposes two concepts next to each other, the idea of truth and the idea of science, which he always sees as two disparate ideas. He says something can very well be scientific, but truth is something else; what is true does not need to be scientific. In some or other way he comes to the conclusion that science doesn’t have anything to do with what one acknowledges directly as containing truth. So on the one hand things worthy of contemplation are mentioned, but are already beaten, on the other hand the most grotesque somersaults are being beaten in order for these two souls to become reconciled with one another.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 12: Prophecy, Dogma and Paganism
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  • Solar and lunar eclipses can be predicted to the second, and these predictive calculations depend upon having a definite insight into the details of the phenomena. In outer materialistic science it relates to this insight of the context of the phenomena being hidden, because it is presented in formulae; the formulae are learnt and one no longer really knows where they came from; they actually originate from observations made in the very same area to which they are applied. Nobody would be able to calculate the solar and lunar eclipse predictions if solar and lunar eclipses were not originally observed, forming a basis for observation and formulas obtained from these, which now continue as based on the belief of a regularity applied to these phenomena. The psychological process which takes place here is far more complicated than one is often aware of today. Things start becoming particularly complicated if they are not applicable only to outer, spatial mechanical or mathematical kinds of laws, but if they deal with what happens inwardly, in the intrinsic sense, in the course of the world. Because these questions are based on the prerequisites of modern consciousness they can barely be studied, that’s why we find modern Bible explanations — and the priest must also be a Bible explainer — so difficult, like chapter 13 of the Mark Gospel and everything relating to this chapter. Besides that, in later translations this particular chapter has become extraordinarily difficult to understand because it relates to circumstances which have become the most corrupt.
  • The second essential characteristic is that the Second Coming of the Christ is clearly mentioned everywhere in the writings, that is to say, exactly what is referred to in the 13th chapter of Mark’s Gospel in the most delicate sense of the word. It was certainly, one must admit, the belief in the entire spirit of the church fathers’ writings from the 4th century that the Second Coming of Christ can be predicted in the near future. They called people’s attention to how the old world would fall apart and how the Christ would reappear, and added to this, the imagination was created that Christ would appear in a similar way, in the most wonderful way, strolling over the earth, as it had been the case before.
  • These three characteristics you will find in post apostolic literature during the first four centuries: the allegoric explanation of the Old Testament, the reference to the Second Coming of Christ and the destruction of the old world, and the admonition of obedience to the superiors. We need to focus our present interest primarily on the middle one, the reference to the Second Coming of Christ, because to this reference we need to link line 6 of the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Mark: Many will come as though they came in my name and say: I am he, and will lead many astray. — In this chapter you find a remarkable reference; many will come and appear in the name of Christ, and they will forthwith be referred to one or another person who also designate themselves as Christ. Here you see something extraordinary. On this basis it is extraordinary to see — I will speak more closely about these things but I’m leading up to it — that already at this point in the Mark Gospel the reference is linked to the view of the church fathers of the post apostolic time. By presenting it thus, that the Christ will reappear in this way, it is at the same time the fulfilment of the prophecy that tempters will come who all want to be designated as Christs; and this is what also happened in the first centuries, in this sense many came to the fore, who actually referred to themselves as Christ. An astonishing amount of literature has been lost in the first centuries — these things can actually only be found through spiritual science.
  • Now, this leads us on to something else. Later we will talk about the justification of prophecy but now we want to find our way into the situation in terms of contemporary history and so it appears to me, that if we want to understand the 13th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, before anything else, we need to pose this important question: Can the fulfilment of the prophecy be asserted from a correct pursuit of the facts? Surely you first need to be able to understand in what way the prophecy should be fulfilled, and then you could ask, what are the facts? Then, isn’t it true, that with something like the destruction of Jerusalem it is easy to raise a question, but when it comes to the destruction of the world which we are still expecting, and regarding the coming of the kingdom of God, modern thought only has information that it still has not happened, that under all circumstances it must have been an illusion, that you had in all cases to do with false prophesies; and then you only have the choice to either interpret these things out of the Gospels, or to follow what the first church fathers did with the Old Testament through allegorizing, or even to do anything as long as it is abstract. All of this is being done against the total feeling which is necessary in relating to the Gospels, which does not arise here. The most important question seems to me to be the impact of the prophecy, because that helps towards understanding the process of prophecy.
  • We see how it is stated in about the first 3 sentences of the Mark Gospel: After Christ left the temple — the temple in which one also heard something within the outer world of the divine — one of his disciples says to him: ‘Look, what magnificent stones, and wonderful buildings.’ Jesus however said to him: ‘You see only the large buildings. There will not be one stone left on top of another, without man taking part in the process of destruction because from now on, all of the outer, ungodly world begins to become a world of destruction.’ And he went away and spoke intimately. On the Mount of Olives, he spoke either intimately by himself through teaching people how to pray, or he spoke only to his most intimate disciples, to Peter, James, John and Andrew. To Peter, James, John and Andrew he only spoke about spiritual events as observed from the perspective of divine realms in contrast to destructive events in the world facing destruction.
  • You see, I’m neither speaking allegorically, nor symbolically. If you felt that way, you would be putting it in my words. I’m speaking directly out of the situation experienced as it occurred, by me trying, certainly in the words of current speech, to indicate these things. I ask you to now take note of the situation. In order to experience the content of the 13th chapter of St Mark we are taken up the Mount of Olives. It ends with the word: “Awake!” — immediately followed by us being taken to the Last Supper — we are led to the first impetus for the coming of the divine kingdom through Christ placing it in front of us.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 13: The Sacraments, Evolution and Involution
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  • However, all these things which have been brought forward now — and I ask that you make notes in advance of such questions and remarks — are actually in need of real and factual answers before we can continue to enter into the essence of the sacraments. Allow me, as if by insertion, to enter a little into the essence of the sacraments today. In this way we will possibly find it easier to discover answers regarding the consecrated water, sign of the cross, the Eucharist, mass offering and so on.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 14: Gnostics and Montanists
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  • y dear friends! Yesterday we started by addressing a wish which licentiate Bock had expressed at the beginning of our course and we find that what we need to build on to what I said yesterday afternoon about sacramentalism relevant to today, can be discovered if we link the possible reflections, which are necessary, to the 13th chapter of the Gospel of St Mark. It is important for us to certainly try again, in all seriousness, to derive specific meaning from what is expressed in living words. To me it is impossible that pastoral care can be developed in the future, without yourself developing the application of living words and even experiencing living words. However, it is impossible for current mankind which is so strongly gripped by materialism, to be able to handle the living Word in itself, without a historical deepening. It is simply so, that in dealing with intellectualistic concepts and ideas we are only dealing with dead words, with the corpse of the Logos. We will only deal with the living Word when we penetrate through the layer in which man lives today, only, and alone, by penetrating through the layer of the dead, the corpse-like words.
  • We must let this rise out of history because the important things do not happen in a way, we can control it, by taking a document in hand which has lain in the archives, or by looking at the entire history of these fore-mentioned men from outside — that is an outer assessment of history. The most important part of history takes place in the human soul, in human hearts. We need to look into the soul of Basilides, into the soul of Montanus, into the soul of Faustus, into the soul of Augustinus, if we want to look into what really happened in the historic fields which one then can develop into what actually became a covering of Christianity in the Church of Constantine. The Constantine Church took on the outer life of worldly realms in which the spiritual no longer lived — in the sense of the 13th Chapter of the Mark Gospel — depicted as an already un-deified earth, a perished earth, into which the divine kingdom must again live as brought by him in its real spiritual soul form.
  • The origin of the St John Gospel has really come about through an immense spiritual time context. I can’t do otherwise, my dear friends, than to make a personal remark here, that I need to experience it as the greatest tragedy of our time, that theologians do not experience the majesty of the John Gospel at all, that out of a deep struggle preceding it, out of a struggle, the big question arose: How can mankind manage to, on the one hand, find a way to his soul-spiritual in the spiritual-supersensible where his own soul-spiritual nature originated from? On the other hand, how can mankind reach an understanding for how his soul is within the physical-bodily nature?
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 15: Ordination and Transubstantiation
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  • Well, the catholic consciousness has basically always acted quite consistently according to these prerequisites; quite consistently. In order not to be misunderstood regarding what follows, I would like to introduce it like this. When today we want to prepare someone — in fact, I mean for something which we see as a new ritual — when we, today, want to prepare someone to perform ceremonial actions, then we would for those who stand outside Catholicism in the world, no longer with full inner devotion be able to integrate a person into the apostolic succession. As I’ve mentioned to you, there have been remarkable Theosophists like Leadbeater and similar ones, who have likewise tried to place themselves in the apostolic succession, but that’s going to resist any man who’s honest with the world, if he is not imbued with Catholic consciousness.
• Title: Foundation Course: Summaries of Lectures
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  • About predicting future events. Characteristics of literature of church fathers: allegorical interpretation of Old Testament, references to Christ’s return, element of law in church. Relationship of Catholic clerics to dogma and saints. Prophesies in Mark’s Gospel: fall of world and rise of God’s kingdom. Herman Grimm: the abyss between understanding Roman and Greek history. Heathen sensitivity of the divine in paganism, Judaism and Christianity, the ungodly in Roman Caesarism. Christianity today.