{"id":64817,"date":"2025-04-02T20:02:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T18:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=64817"},"modified":"2025-04-02T20:02:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T18:02:20","slug":"christianity-as-mystical-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/christianity-as-mystical-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"Christianity as Mystical Fact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

In Jesus, the Logos itself has become a person.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This book is not the first where Rudolf Steiner \u201cbecame openly completely esoteric.\u201d<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> He\u2019d already taken this step by writing on Goethe\u2019s \u201cFairy Tale\u201d in his Magazin f\u00fcr Literatur<\/em> [Magazine for Literature] in 1899 (Goethe\u2019s 150th birthday). But it is the first explicit presentation of the science of initiation. And thus, Rudolf Steiner set his course from an academic path to a spiritual one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stepping Back through Time<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The book was in preparation for a long time. While still in Vienna, Rudolf Steiner shared his views on the nature of Christ and the reincarnation of the soul in a conversation with Wilhelm Neumann, the theologian, Cistercian priest, and later rector of the university, whom he\u2019d met in the circle around the poet Marie Eugenie Delle Grazie.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In his publications after this conversation, there are no explicit traces of these themes\u2014until this book. We can understand this from Rudolf Steiner\u2019s later statements that philosophical thinking can lead us to the Father-Ground of the world but not directly to Christ.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Initially, he wrote philosophical texts, showing how we can think about the spirit, how we can think about questions of truth and freedom\u2014with the earthly brain. Gradually, along this path, we can find our way into the spiritual world. But henceforth, spiritual remembering becomes more important than philosophical logical reasoning. The esoteric goes back to its origin; in a sense, it walks backward through time to the source of spiritual life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, we have Rudolf Steiner\u2019s first three purely philosophical writings (CW 2, 3, 4), then a writing on Nietzsche, whom he\u2019d just met (CW 5), and next, the book summarizing the spirit of Goethe (a spiritual biography, not a life history in the usual sense) (CW 6), as he couldn\u2019t meet Goethe upon the Earth. At the turn of the century, he wrote Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert<\/em> [Worldviews and life views in the nineteenth century] (Kant and Goethe to Darwin and Haeckel), about the age of Goethe and its consequences (later expanded to CW 18). Then, we have a presentation on the Middle Ages preceding this time, leading into the beginning of modern times in Mystics\u2026<\/em> (CW 7). Only then do we move on to antiquity and the early Middle Ages with Christianity as Mystical Fact<\/em> (CW 8). So, a path backward through time. Let\u2019s follow a few threads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ground of the World and Freedom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s already stated in Goethe\u2019s Theory of Knowledge <\/em>(CW 2): \u201cThe ground of the world has entirely poured itself out into the world; it has not withdrawn from the world to direct it from outside, it drives it from within\u2026. The highest form in which it comes forth within the reality of ordinary life is thinking and with this the human personality.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In that the human being thinks and has spirit, he can raise himself to freedom. The human being initially experiences the spirit only as thought. It is precisely because of this that we are free; because we ourselves think, and the ground of the world leaves the human being free to find the understanding for themselves. We humans find (as at the end of the Philosophy of Freedom<\/em>) the unified ground of the world, the idea as communal divine life in its reality\u2026. The world is God.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Philosophy reaches the Father-Ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Christ is not found here directly. This requires the fruit one has acquired through this philosophical training, \u201cthe intuition\u2026 that the human being lives within a true spiritual world. The pursuit of this book is to justify knowledge of the spiritual realm before entrance into spiritual experience.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The personality is spiritual in nature (this is why the human sciences should be \u201cfree sciences,\u201d as mentioned in Goethe\u2019s Theory of Knowledge<\/em>).<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The philosopher (and anyone who thinks seriously) is unconsciously clairvoyant, because the idea is already spiritual. However, one must free oneself from the effects of the brain to consciously experience the spiritual light\u2014precisely as \u201cunmanifest, unrevealed light\u201d\u2014which does not shine in the light of the senses.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, the further experience of the spirit requires a surrender of the earthly personality. This is where we cross over the threshold and arrive at Goethe\u2019s \u201cFairy Tale.\u201d There, the central act is the sacrifice of the serpent: \u201cWhat a mystic like Jakob B\u00f6hme expressed with the words, \u2018Death is the root of all life,\u2019 Goethe expressed with the sacrifice of the serpent.\u201d<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Historically speaking, mysticism is this overcoming of the personal \u2018I\u2019-consciousness. Rudolf Steiner\u2019s book Mystics<\/em> describes the various ways Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Jakob B\u00f6hme, Angelus Silesius, and others experienced this overcoming of self. The problems of medieval scholasticism and Christian dogmatics are also sharply outlined. God is not only a cognitive image in the soul, rather God lives in the soul itself. One\u2019s own inner life is itself the life of God. Dogmatic theology (Augustine), which indelibly separated God and humanity through the Fall, prevented the mystic from recognizing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We note that Rudolf Steiner avoids dealing with Thomas Aquinas explicitly here. But he includes quotations from Karl Werner and Otto Willmann that indicate he is in the process of clarifying his own thinking about his previous incarnation in the time of scholasticism. The theme of this book and the self-knowledge of individuality go hand in hand here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Recognition of the Christ Impulse<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Whoever finds their way beyond the boundaries of the body into the flooding of suprasensible light will have difficulty maintaining their \u2018I\u2019-consciousness. We learn that this ability to maintain consciousness depends upon the relationship we have formed\u2014in our sensory consciousness\u2014with Christ and His deed on Golgotha.<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In the Christian Middle Ages, it was believed that Christ brought about the resurrection of the believing soul and actually worked in the substratum of the soul, though it was not yet understood in full consciousness. The task that Rudolf Steiner set himself in Christianity as Mystical Fact<\/em> was to grasp the deeds of Christ as the awakener of Lazarus\u2014to understand these deeds both within the course of history and as they stand outside of time, eternally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any impartial observer can see a great difference between the pre-Christian and the Christian Mysteries. The ancient Mystery was the rebirth in the human soul of the divine hidden in nature. The lower nature in the human being had first to be \u201claid in the grave.\u201d The various Mysteries speak of this differently in different times and different lands, yet they remain united in the fact that humans needed to step outside themselves to allow the divine to arise. With Christ, we now have the inverse: initiation occurs in the baptism in the Jordan as an indwelling of the Christ being in Jesus\u2014Word become flesh. Through death and resurrection, when he unveils himself to his community, it becomes clear that the spirit endures in the earthly: \u201cIn Jesus, the Logos itself has become a person.\u201d By fully overcoming the earthly personality through the Logos, the contrast between the soul and the spirit is lifted. Comparing this with the ancient Mysteries, we can say: in Jesus, the ancient tradition of the Mysteries became a personality. The Father became fully active in the soul. In Jesus, Christ became his \u2018I.\u2019 This deification must \u201cappear to human beings as the greatest ideal to which they should unite themselves more and more through their repeated lives in the future.\u201d<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Perhaps, this was all expressed to Father Neumann already back in Vienna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal\u2014Supra-Personal<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the book, we find depictions of the ancient Mysteries, the Gospels, and the Apocalypse, as well as the Mysteries behind Greek philosophy, from Heraclitus to Plato and the Neoplatonists. Concerning Aristotle, the originator of Western scientific philosophy, which will work with pure thought, Rudolf Steiner is silent. But once he\u2019d clarified the position of Christ as the initiator of future cultural epochs, he was then able to let philosophy pass over to anthroposophy, which reckons with the Christ impulse in the human \u2018I\u2019; and then, he was able to become a spiritual teacher for a new schooling path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Event<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Rudolf Steiner lesen und verstehen<\/strong> [Reading and understanding Rudolf Steiner]: Conference of the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities at the Goetheanum, May 1\u20134, 2025, with Andre Bartoniczek, Anna-Katharina Dehmelt, Ariane Eichenberg, Volker Frankfurt, Eckart F\u00f6rster, Christiane Haid, Jaap Sijmons, and Renatus Ziegler.
More<\/strong> Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Jesus, the Logos itself has become a person. This book is not the first where Rudolf Steiner \u201cbecame openly completely esoteric.\u201d He\u2019d already taken this step by writing on Goethe\u2019s \u201cFairy Tale\u201d in his Magazin f\u00fcr Literatur [Magazine for Literature] in 1899 (Goethe\u2019s 150th birthday). But it is the first explicit presentation of the science of initiation. And thus, Rudolf Steiner set his course from an academic path to a spiritual one. Stepping Back through Time The book was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9291,"featured_media":64106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8788,9183,8848],"tags":[11637,8798,11638],"class_list":["post-64817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-en","category-general-anthroposophy","category-literature","tag-ausgabe-11-2025-en","tag-deepening","tag-english-issue-14-2025"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}