The Rudolf Steiner Archive

41. The Gospel of John from a Theosophical Perspective

Article in den 17 de Mai, April 11, 1908

[ 1 ] Let us assume that it was the Theosophical Society that prompted him to speak on this subject, and he also wished to examine it from a theosophical perspective.

[ 2 ] The Theosophical Movement is barely more than thirty years old, and yet it has long since taken deep root in contemporary intellectual life.

[ 3 ] Nevertheless, the Theosophical Movement is widely misunderstood. In many circles, Theosophy is viewed as a revival of ancient, childish ideas about the world and existence in general—ideas that, naturally, in their eyes contradict all current science.

[ 4 ] Others, on the other hand, view Theosophy as a new religion intended to replace the old one. But this, too, is incorrect. Theosophy is nothing more than a new scientific method of inquiry. Just as every branch of modern science has its own scientific method, so does Theosophy. Theosophy is not a new religion. Theosophy is a working tool, an instrument intended to help humanity penetrate into the world of the spirit—into the spiritual foundation upon which the physical world is built. However, it is also true that religions are a revelation of the spirit, and if Theosophy is to fulfill its purpose, it must also be in harmony with the core of all religion. And we should now attempt to examine, at least to some extent, the connection that exists between the Christian religion—and in particular the Gospel of John—and Theosophy. This document in the New Testament is little appreciated in our day. Among modern people, virtually all understanding of it has vanished.

[ 5 ] For a long time now, we have been so preoccupied with all sorts of historical research, going back and forth about the origin of this Gospel and the connection—or rather, the difference—between it and the other three Gospels, that the true spirit of the work has, as it were, vanished.

[ 6 ] The three Gospels in the New Testament use vivid imagery to describe Jesus Christ—how he conducted himself, taught, and healed—and how he laid the foundation for our own Western culture.

[ 7 ] The Gospel of John, on the other hand, has its own unique way of recounting the story of Christ and his redemptive work.

[ 8 ] Mark, Luke, and Matthew recount—and seek to recount—what took place in Palestine at this or that time—they recount the great historical drama that unfolded back then on the grand stage of life.

[ 9 ] The fourth Gospel, however, seeks to present a picture of Christ and of the idea of Christ as it takes root in the human heart. Like a powerful hymn writer, the author of the Gospel of John depicts Christ—the wondrously great ideal human being—as he transforms and renews the human heart.

[ 10 ] As mentioned, this fourth Gospel has been completely lost to many people. But if Theosophy is to rise to the challenge of its great mission, it must bring this very fourth Gospel closer to people’s hearts.

[ 11 ] Listen to the opening words. Everyone knows these monumental words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

[ 12 ] It has been said that this introduction is purely philosophical and must have been written by a philosopher—that is, that the author of the Gospel of John differed from the other three Gospel writers in that he was well versed in all the scholarship of his time.

[ 13 ] However, this opinion is not well-founded. It is strange that someone should have arrived at such thoughts based on something as plain and simple as these introductory words. Whoever wrote the fourth Gospel was truly not influenced by any particular philosophy. He simply recounts the story in a completely different and heartfelt way. That is why it has also been said that this Gospel was written by the disciple whom the Master loved most—that is to say, the one who understood him best.

[ 14 ] The Gospel of John is the deepest, most spiritual account we have of the Christian mysteries—the account of Christ’s task, of Christ’s mission, here in the world. But to understand this mission, one must look a little more broadly at all of humanity, for his calling is most closely connected to it.

[ 15 ] If one were to use a single word to describe the path of development, the trail that the human race has followed on Earth, that word would be love. Another aspect of this same love is wisdom. Wisdom and love are one.

[ 16 ] One need not look far to realize that wisdom is the fundamental law of the world.

[ 17 ] Consider a plant. How wonderfully it is built, cell by cell, until the entire plant stands there with leaves, flowers, and fruit. Consider the bees. How wonderful their homes are. No structure in the world, built by human hands, can compare to them.

[ 18 ] And if one considers the human body—how each limb has been given its proper function, how the skeletal framework supports the body with the greatest possible strength in the smallest possible space—and sees how every part of the human body is magnificently conceived and arranged—then one truly understands that the human body is, as it were, crystallized wisdom.

[ 19 ] Yes, wisdom is the fundamental law of the entire world—not only on this earth, but in all the realms of the world.

[ 20 ] In human life, the law of wisdom transforms and becomes a law of love that permeates everything. And here on Earth, we can observe how this law of love has gradually been able to transform humanity.

[ 21 ] The form of love that humanity knew exclusively in times long past was the blood tie—the love between those who were closely related by blood. It was the sense of kinship, the tribal bond, the feeling of a shared national community that constituted the first form of love. It was through these kinship ties that people learned their first lesson in loving others. Just how deep the roots of even this primitive form of human love run can be seen in all the legends and myths, which tell of the tragic, sorrowful fate that would befall anyone who married into a foreign family or tribe.

[ 22 ] As modern people, we find it difficult to navigate these ancient systems of thought. We have developed an individual self, a sense of independent personhood. Each of us senses that, deep within, we harbor our own self, our own sense of self-awareness.

[ 23 ] But this was not the case in ancient times. If someone in those days had said “I,” they would have meant their clan, their relatives. Over time, the boundaries had been pushed farther and farther out. It was the people, the community of the people, that had now, as it were, become the higher unity into which the individual was absorbed. And this found its most distinctive expression in the national consciousness of the Old Testament. The Jew felt at one with his people. For him, it was a matter of belonging to the entire lineage: father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on, all the way back to the forefather Abraham. The Jew’s higher self was the collective self of the people—it was all these long lines of blood relatives. He thought something like this: My life has an end, but in the blood that flows through the lineage, I live on. This is how people thought among all nations, among all peoples of the earth.

[ 24 ] Only a few individuals thought differently. To them, the entire human race and all creatures on Earth were relatives and close friends. They had enough love within them to embrace the whole Earth.

[ 25 ] This small group were the “initiates,” who together formed a school, the so-called Mysteries.

[ 26 ] What was the purpose of these mysteries? Indeed, they were meant to be a school in which people could learn to rise to a higher level of self-awareness.

[ 27 ] When one speaks of “initiates,” one refers to people who have freed themselves from all earthly bonds and detached themselves from everything they once loved in the realm of the senses. In this way, they have developed higher senses and powers within themselves.

[ 28 ] After all, human beings are not merely physical bodies, but complex beings. And every single person possesses within themselves the ability to develop senses other than the physical ones.

[ 29 ] Everyone is familiar with the transition between sleep and wakefulness. When one falls asleep, self-awareness fades away—for the time being. Pain, pleasure, and all the thousands of complex emotions that fill our day disappear, for the soul—our sense of self—has left the body and is gone until it descends back into the physical body in the morning. And in the evening, when the body sleeps, the soul withdraws once more; during this time, a person is human only in spirit, and all sensory things fade away.

[ 30 ] Imagine a man who is blind—blind from birth. Everything the world has to offer in terms of light and color is absent to him because he lacks the organ with which to perceive it.

[ 31 ] But if someone with good eyesight were to describe to such a man, born blind, all the wonderful things he sees, and if the man were to say that the other is a poet, a dreamer, and that things like light and color do not exist—we would truly call that nonsense. We would know better.

[ 32 ] And if such a person, born blind, were somehow granted the gift of sight, we could say that this person had been initiated into light, colors, and radiance.

[ 33 ] The same is true in the spiritual world. In the physical world, our eyes are open, but in the other worlds—in the spiritual world—we walk around groping in the dark. In those worlds, almost all people are blind. They have no senses, no eyes, no ears.

[ 34 ] These spiritual worlds certainly exist, but if people are to learn of them, the eyes of those who are blind must be opened—that is to say, they must be “initiated,” or taught to acquire for themselves organs of perception suited to these worlds. In the ancient mysteries, it was precisely the case that they had special methods for developing the soul in such a way that it would acquire spiritual senses. And once it had acquired these, and it descended back into the physical body, it could then remember and make use of what it had learned and experienced in the spiritual worlds. In ancient times, anyone who wished to become an initiate had to submit completely to a guide—the Master. This Master himself was a Master who had long since been initiated and could therefore bear witness from his own experience to what he had seen and heard in those spiritual worlds. Christ was such a Master. His mission on earth was to draw all of humanity into the Law of Love. He came to teach people that they no longer needed to cling to their gender or their people if they were to escape damnation. He taught them to rise above the sense of kinship—up to a Father other than Father Abraham, up to the God who is hidden within their own innermost souls. Love for one’s kin and love for one’s people were to be elevated to love for all people, for all living beings in the world. In the past, love had been particular, fragmented and divided, bound to a specific ethnic group, people, or nation. And the various mysteries or initiations of the peoples had always been intended only for that one people. Hermes, Zarathustra, and Buddha were masters and founders of faith, each for his own people. The ancient pagan mysteries taught people to develop the “Self,” to build themselves up into spiritual beings. But each remained bound to its own people. They did not transcend national sentiment. Yet they served to prepare the world for the greatest event that has ever taken place: Christ’s coming into the world.

[ 35 ] For with Christ, it is different. He did not establish a national religion or a national faith; rather, he established a religion for all people. Christ is the one destined to teach the world and to expand love for one’s own people so that it encompasses the entire human race. He is the one who brought the mysteries into the open and bestowed them upon all.

[ 36 ] And this is particularly evident in the Gospel of John. If we read the opening words correctly, we would see that behind everything physical there is a spiritual world of origin: the divine Father-Thought. And when Christ says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30)—by “Father,” he means precisely this divine spark, which is the breath of life in every human soul.

[ 37 ] And through Christ, every soul has received an impulse, an awakening, to bring forth the eternal within human nature.

[ 38 ] In the era of the Old Testament, the Jew would have had only the bond of blood to cling to—union in the bosom of Abraham would have been his only hope if he wished to escape damnation.

[ 39 ] Jesus, on the other hand, is said to have said: “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” (John 14:2) This is precisely why it is essential to break free from these family ties. “Anyone who does not leave his father and mother is not worthy of me” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29), he said.

[ 40 ] No blood ties matter anymore; only the eternal principle of the Father in every human soul. The Old Testament was expanded through Christ and found its fulfillment in the Gospel of John. But even in the ancient scriptures, one need not search in vain for the same idea: “ ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1) and so on. If one compares these words with the opening words of the Gospel of John, one understands the connection between the physical and the spiritual worlds. The words in Genesis concern the outer, material world, while the words in the Gospel of John speak of the new creation that is necessary within our own souls. The Gospel of John, therefore, is not merely a book like other historical documents, but a book of initiation, a book meant to be brought to life for the soul. Above all, it is a book of devotion, a book of meditation. And every human soul that wishes to be a disciple of Christ must experience these events for itself, must pass through them personally.

[ 41 ] Christ has become the impulse, the driving force, enabling the individual soul to liberate itself. From now on, wisdom is no longer to be drawn solely from the mysteries, reserved for the few. It was no longer necessary to submit oneself to a “Master” in order to be initiated. Christ brought the Christian mysteries to all those who could accept them. The event on Golgotha was a great event in the world, and the blood that was shed there provided the impulse, unleashing forces that would lead the whole world to seek God within its own soul.

[ 42 ] That is why Christianity is the greatest of all religions and can outlast all the others. And the Gospel of John is precisely the cornerstone of this teaching of Christ.