The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Christ in the Twentieth Century

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The topic of this evening is undoubtedly one that, in many respects, stands at the center of contemporary intellectual interests. It might therefore easily seem as though it had been chosen with regard to the various partisan opinions and intellectual currents that are currently making themselves felt in relation to this topic. However, those among the distinguished audience before whom I have had the privilege of speaking on spiritual scientific matters on previous occasions will have discerned from the overall attitude and spirit of these reflections that the worldview presented [in these lectures] does not directly intervene in the pros and cons that arise today specifically in connection with such questions. Nevertheless, it is certainly not without interest to hear a word on the topic of “Christ in the Twentieth Century” from the perspective of those who have made it their task to view the spiritual development of humanity and the entire cultural life from the standpoint of objective spiritual science.

[ 2 ] One might perhaps believe that, from the standpoint of objective spiritual science, even the phrase “Christ in the Twentieth Century” is open to question, since the human heart and soul already associate the name “Christ” with something that cannot be subject to the changing views of the centuries. However, if one turns one’s gaze to the history of Christianity, one will, upon reflecting on the various spiritual endeavors of humanity, be able to see for oneself how, over the course of the centuries, a distinct change in views regarding Christ has indeed taken place. And if, in our time, we can speak in a certain sense of a kind of revision of all spiritual questions, then what pertains to spiritual matters in connection with the tasks of the present will surely also have to shed light on the problem of Christ. And if nowhere else, then above all the sometimes quite lively discussions of the present day show how there is a desire in the hearts of today’s humanity to come to terms with this problem, which stands not only at the center of the spiritual present but of the history of human development as a whole.

[ 3 ] When we speak today of evolution in all fields of knowledge, we must also place within the context of evolution all the ideas, sensations, and feelings associated with the Christ problem. Spiritual science aims to be an exploration of all that lies beyond sensory existence, beyond what the intellect—which is bound to the brain—can comprehend. I have often alluded to the sources and the nature of research in this field. Spiritual science does not conduct research in the same way as external science, nor does it observe the world in the same way as one does in external life. Tonight, these matters can only be briefly touched upon. Further details can be found in my book *How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*. Spiritual science is based on the premise that it is possible for human beings to awaken certain powers of knowledge that lie dormant within their souls. It outlines the methods by which these powers can be awakened. The soul that applies these methods to itself does indeed come to engage in an inner life that is independent of the senses and of all physical functions, and is also independent of the intellect, which is bound to the brain. An inner life is possible through which one can look into a spiritual world and observe what is supersensory and what lies behind the events that have unfolded in the course of human evolution. How can one observe without physical organs? That is the methodological question of spiritual science. The results of this method are then what is communicated as spiritual science.

[ 4 ] This spiritual science approaches the public in the same way as the other sciences, which [in laboratories] and observatories [investigate the phenomena of the world through experiments and observe them with instruments, and then contemporaries come along and examine these things with common sense]. Spiritual science, too, makes use of experimentation—spiritual experimentation—and of instruments—the instruments of the soul. What the soul can accomplish on its own once it has detached itself from external physicality and leads an inner life within itself—what it can then explore in the spiritual realm—is communicated just as the findings of astronomy and biological research are communicated. Common sense can then judge this, if only it is willing to engage with it, even though in our time it does not yet feel much inclination to do so. It goes without saying that in a single lecture, not all the paths can be shown that lead the soul—thus freed from the body—to Christ, nor can all the evidence for this path be presented at this time. My sole task this evening is to outline the spiritual scientific perspective on the Christ Being and to evoke an idea of how this spiritual scientific understanding of the Christ problem can be integrated into what the rest of our spiritual culture has to say about Christ.

[ 5 ] Before this is possible, we must take a brief look at how the question of Christ has evolved over the centuries, since the founding of Christianity. The intention is by no means to explore every theological and other religious idea that people have put forward, but rather to highlight only the main themes and major trends.

[ 6 ] A very liberal contemporary scholar, William Benjamin Smith, has pointed out a very curious fact that is likely to correct many of today’s judgments about the times in which Christianity was founded. Thus, one cannot understand the conceptions of Christ that gradually spread during the first centuries without taking a look at what was called Gnostic Christianity in those early centuries. Spiritual science is not a rehash of Gnosticism, but we must engage with Gnosticism because we wish to gain insight into the conceptions of Christ that the past has produced. In particular, attention should be drawn to the following fact cited by Smith. He says: From about fifty years before the founding of Christianity to one hundred and fifty years after its founding—and this is not said by a spiritual scientist or an orthodox theologian, but by a liberal scholar! —the greatest theosophical geniuses lived, those people who made the greatest effort, through their wisdom and science, to fathom what Christ actually is in the context of the entire development of humanity.

[ 7 ] People today are not very inclined to hear such a statement; they only like to hear that the Christ-being is a being that even the simplest mind can grasp with full understanding. So why muster comprehensive wisdom and knowledge to approach Christ, who is supposed to be accessible even to the simplest mind? One cannot say that anyone who raises such an objection is necessarily wrong; the power of the Christ impulse truly lies in the fact that it is accessible even to the simplest mind. But such an objection must also be viewed in a different light. One can certainly say: The child, who is still completely without understanding, may rejoice in the flower and will understand this flower with his or her mind—but one can also go further and say: The wise person will admit that his or her highest wisdom is not sufficient to truly understand this flower. – Likewise, the highest wisdom is necessary to truly penetrate the essence of Christ. The theosophical Gnostics, says Smith, were those geniuses who, at the dawn of Christianity, out of the bold courage of their souls, sought to truly understand the Christ-being. That which is still useful today from this Gnosis for the truly open soul should, for once, come before our soul.

[ 8 ] For Gnosticism, the Christ impulse was indeed an impulse that proved to be necessary for the entire development of humanity on Earth and of the Earth itself. It was primarily Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus who advocated this central Gnostic concept of development. Of course, what is today called the monistic theory of evolution may be vehemently rejected by the Gnostic doctrine of spiritual evolution; however, this so-called monistic theory of evolution differs from the Gnostic one in that, by looking back to earlier states, it seeks to acknowledge only the material, whereas the Gnostic theory of evolution goes back to those times when only the spiritual existed as the origin of existence, from which not only the human-soul aspect but also the material aspect—as dependent on the spiritual—subsequently developed.

[ 9 ] I have often pointed out the purely logical contradiction inherent in the materialist theory of evolution. It states: We go further and further back in the sequence of time, reaching periods when primitive human conditions prevailed, then assume that humans evolved from animals, and finally arrive at times when only animals existed on Earth. And we go even further back, to a time when life did not yet exist on Earth at all. We can say that this materialistic theory goes back to such hypothetical states as when the Earth, within the solar system, was part of the cosmic nebula from which the Sun and its planets are said to have developed. The logical flaw in this entire materialistic theory can be seen in a comparison that is very often made when trying to explain this theory to students. This is illustrated by taking a drop of oil floating on water. Then one cuts a small circle of paper, attaches it to a pin, dips it into the oil drop, and rotates it. As smaller droplets separate off, one can demonstrate to the student the formation of a miniature planetary system. It is said that the same thing happened out there with the great cosmic nebula. This provides the basic outline of the monistic theory of evolution. However, a major mistake is made here; the teacher has overlooked something. He has forgotten that the whole system only begins to rotate when he himself sets it in motion. Therefore, the analogy is valid only if one assumes the existence of a great professor in outer space who sets the whole system in motion. Of course, one need not assume this if one takes the standpoint of monism.

[ 10 ] Spiritual science, however, assumes that if we trace the course of time from epoch to epoch, we do not arrive at anything material at all, but rather at the conclusion that the origin of the Earth—and indeed of a planetary system—lies in a constellation of spiritual beings. Spirit is the origin of existence; this was also a fundamental tenet of Gnosticism. And this Spirit, which is the origin of all existence, can be recognized today when the soul is liberated from the body. If one wishes to deny the Spirit behind all existence, then such a denial can be compared to what someone might say who looks into a vessel of water in which pieces of ice are floating and then claims: “That is only ice.”—In the same way, those whose eyes are open only to material existence can see only matter and not the Spirit. But material existence is embedded in the spirit; it has developed from the spirit in accordance with natural laws; it is the condensation of the spiritual, and all material beings have sprung from the spirit. Anyone who wishes to acknowledge only matter overlooks the spiritual simply because they have not opened their spiritual eyes, as Goethe says. In primeval times—according to the Gnostics—nothing material yet existed. This developed through the condensation of the spiritual; it is a consequence of the spiritual, a condensation of the spiritual: all material beings, from stones all the way up to human beings, are products of the spiritual.

[ 11 ] One can trace how the planetary realm and the natural kingdoms gradually emerged from the spiritual realm, and how, at a certain point in Earth’s evolution, human beings also entered the Earth from the spiritual realm. This was the idea of the Gnostics, which true spiritual science still regards as correct today—the Gnostics who, with bold human wisdom, sought to fathom the Christ Being. They assumed that at a certain point in Earth’s development, humanity came into being in such a way that, while a certain sum of what had been predetermined in the spiritual world for humanity — a certain sum of the human-spiritual, which existed in the spiritual world and was destined for physical humanity — had found its way into the earthly human being, so that from a certain point in Earth’s development onward, humanity was endowed with this spiritual-soul aspect that became human. But they also assumed that, when this spiritual-human substance entered human evolution, a portion of it had remained behind in the spiritual world, so that only a part of the total human substance lived on in the generations on Earth. Thus, human beings developed down here on Earth, but not the full spiritual-soul substance was within them; rather, a part had remained behind in the spiritual world and continued to develop there, beyond human beings.

[ 12 ] So if we consider the evolution of the Earth from the perspective of Gnosis, we can say: From the moment human beings appeared on Earth, there have been two distinct currents of evolution. First, the souls within human beings on Earth evolve from generation to generation, but the full [spiritual] essence that humanity should have received from the spiritual world does not develop. And a second current of development extends beyond material existence, continuing in the cosmos, in the spiritual realm. Then, according to the Gnostic view, something occurred in human development that [could not occur earlier, but] could only occur at a later point in time.

[ 13 ] Why did humanity have to continue developing for a time without its highest spiritual element? This had to happen because human beings were to complete a kind of descent in their development within the material world, to become fully immersed in the material world; they had to become self-aware within the material world so that, when this spiritual element—which had been left behind—eventually approaches them at a later time, they might then perceive and receive it all the more freely and independently. Human beings had to become entangled in the material world so that, by distinguishing the spiritual from the material, they might then feel this spiritual element in its purest sense when it descends.

[ 14 ] When, then, did the Spiritual descend? Gnosis answers: The descent of this Spiritual—which has continued to evolve within the cosmos—is symbolized by what is described in the Gospels as the baptism of John in the Jordan. – To understand this, one might say: Every person can know that the individual does not merely develop gradually, but that for many souls there are moments in their existence when they feel as if something entirely new has entered them, as if something within them has been awakened. In the case of Goethe’s development, for example, it is easy to pinpoint when a turning point occurred in the 1890s, when something entirely new entered the Goethe soul. There are many souls who know that they do not merely progress step by step, but that the soul experiences momentous turning points and moments of development, when it feels as if a whole world were pouring into it, when it takes in something entirely new.

[ 15 ] This is, on a small scale for individual souls, what Gnosis saw on a grand scale in the event of John’s baptism in the Jordan. There, this spiritual force approached the human personality of Jesus of Nazareth. Up to that point, Jesus’s development had proceeded in such a way that he was prepared by it to experience the greatest possible transformation through this baptism by John. Not only did a great transformation take place within this soul, but that which had been left behind in the spiritual-cosmic regions at the dawn of human development—that which had separated and developed independently in the regions of the supersensible—entered into the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. This took possession of him and remained in his soul from then on, for three years, until the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 16 ] Anyone who tries to apply the usual sequence of cause and effect from history to such matters will not be able to understand this, but anyone who takes into account, even to a small extent, the factors outlined in my book *Christianity as a Mystical Fact* will find that factors of a supersensory nature play a role in historical development, and that one cannot dismiss what Gnosticism thus posits as something excessively mystical.

[ 17 ] What, then, did Gnosticism teach? It posited the existence of two currents of development that guide human beings to the point where, through the first, they are encompassed by the material; superimposed upon this material current is a supersensory-spiritual one. The second current approaches the person of Jesus of Nazareth at the time of the baptism in the Jordan in such a way that, through this event, humanity is imbued with that part of the universal human-cosmic essence which it was not yet able to receive at the beginning of Earth’s evolution. What we have here is a spiritual fertilization—the fertilization of humanity with that impulse which had to be left behind to continue developing until humanity had matured sufficiently in the material realm to be able to receive it. Just as there is no contradiction in the fact that any seed in nature must first develop and then be fertilized in order to reach full development, so too is there no contradiction in the fact that humanity must first develop materially and then, at a certain point in time, be spiritually fertilized.

[ 18 ] This is one [of the ideas], and indeed the central idea of Gnostic thought. Today, everyone believes they can move past the Gnostics and dismiss them as fantasists and fanciful mystics, even though theologians—such as Harnack in his *History of Dogma* —say that one must turn back to Gnosticism, because it is, after all, the true starting point for all subsequent religious and theological reflections; and Smith has conceded that it was precisely these Gnostics who were the greatest theosophical geniuses! And if we wish to characterize the fundamental nature and personal stance of such a Gnostic toward the Christ problem, we find that the Gnostics had the bold courage to say: The human soul is capable, through its own efforts and by bringing forth what lies dormant within it, of truly developing such powers of insight that it can oversee the spiritual developmental impulses of humanity. – To put it more simply, we can say: These Gnostics dared to gain insights into the supersensible course of humanity’s development from within their own souls. Such a Christ-idea, as held by these Gnostics, thus confronts us at the beginning of the Christian era. If we then continue to observe the development of the Christ question within the course of human evolution, we come to understand the necessary progression that can be recognized right up to the twentieth century with regard to the Christ problem.

[ 19 ] We can take a brief leap from the Gnostics into the Middle Ages. Is the same situation still present there? For a few individuals, yes, but not to the extent that such bold confidence—[such trust]—in the powers of cognition regarding the supersensible would have existed in the general intellectual life. The medieval view holds that whatever relates to the Christ-being—and indeed, whatever relates to the supersensible in general—has been revealed to humanity in Scripture. This revelation from Scripture is accepted as such. The essence of the medieval view is that it states: Human beings can reach only up to a certain limit through their own powers of cognition; but then all human knowledge must come to a standstill and await what tradition and revelation provide as a supplement to what human beings can explore on their own. Human beings can perceive only nature and what shines forth from it through their powers of cognition, but with regard to the depths of the supersensible, they must rely on what Scripture has handed down to them. Human beings cannot penetrate [with their powers of cognition] into what has been revealed to humanity. – The boldness and confidence of Gnosticism have faded. It is no longer admitted or acknowledged that human beings can penetrate into the supersensible worlds through their spiritual powers. Thus, development continued.

[ 20 ] In more recent times, we have now entered an era that has brought about what the spiritual researcher will always acknowledge: namely, the great achievements of the natural sciences, the understanding of material existence and its laws, and the great achievements of industrial, commercial, and social life. But with regard to the spiritual realm, this material progress has inevitably led to a consequence. It could only have been achieved because human beings turned toward the sensory and the material. As a result, something crept into their thinking habits that caused them to lose their inclination toward the supersensible: While divine revelation was still accepted in the Middle Ages, the modern era was content merely to acknowledge that human beings could not attain the supersensible. But then this judgment was reformulated, and it was said: “So let us abandon the supersensible entirely and stick solely to the external and material.” This continued [from the Middle Ages] well into the nineteenth century.

[ 21 ] The view of religious matters, especially the Christ problem, was similarly [shaped]. What were the consequences of this? People no longer wanted to hear anything about such a being who had developed supernaturally and then entered into human existence. Christ as a supersensible, cosmic being who takes possession of the soul of Jesus of Nazareth—the supersensible Christ within the physical, sensory human being Jesus—the new era was no longer willing to go that far into the supersensible. The consequence of this was that it lost Christ and clung only to Jesus. And the entire current of development took the form that we now see in the waning nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century as the so-called “conception of Jesus.”

[ 22 ] Truly, this view has produced many beautiful and wonderful things. I would like to draw attention to something from very recent times, namely the book by the Nuremberg theologian Rittelmeyer; it is titled *Jesus*. And when one reads through this little book, one gets the impression that the author has found in his conception of Jesus something that corresponds to an ideal personality—one that nourishes his soul and spirit, to which he devotes himself, and which gives him the assurance that all that is great and truly significant in humanity is real, that all great impulses of humanity are not a dream but reality. Rittelmeyer possesses in his soul what one would wish for every soul; with regard to Jesus, he has the certainty that he has a faithful guide. His description is so vivid that it is as if he could look upon the living Jesus as a brother who is both his hope and his salvation. The conception of Jesus has produced such manifestations, but it has also produced other things that have led to significant discussions.

[ 23 ] Purely materialist research emerged, and why shouldn’t it also address this problem? What I mean can be quickly summarized. Historians have become accustomed to stating only what can be truly substantiated and proven from historical sources—that is, what can be supported by historical documents. Western culture is quite peculiar in this regard. I would like to illustrate this with an example. It is said of Ranke, the great historian, that when he was already advanced in years, he said to a friend: “One cannot simply omit the figure of Jesus from history”—and yet, if we look at Ranke’s historical analysis, he leaves the Jesus impulse unaccounted for. Then Ranke himself became puzzled and said: “Just consider this: when we examine the historical facts, the ‘Jesus impulse’ plays a role everywhere in history.”—This did not become apparent to him from the historical sources, but from his instinctive awareness he felt that one could not simply omit Jesus from history.

[ 24 ] But the question is simply this: Was there a Jesus of Nazareth? — This question would have been utterly impossible for the Gnostics. They knew that human beings can develop the capacity to perceive the supernatural, and that, when they contemplate the supernatural in the course of human evolution, Christ then appears to them. One could even say that there is a fundamental kinship between Paul and Gnosticism. Paul, although a contemporary of Christ Jesus, was not convinced by what had happened in Jerusalem. Everything was certainly accessible to him, but that could not convince him; he remained a nonbeliever. What caused him not only to become a believer but also to become the most significant representative and founder of Christianity? A supernatural experience! From the supersensible realm, the truth about Christ appeared to him in the so-called “Event at Damascus.” And as he beheld the Christ event from the supersensible world, he knew that this was no nebulous abstraction. He also knew then that what now lives once more in the supersensible—Christ—had once lived on earth in a human body. From the supersensible realm, he was granted the conviction of the historicity of Jesus. Thus, it was also entirely self-evident to the Gnostics that Christ had lived in Jesus. This view persisted well into the Middle Ages. That is why, at that time, the question of the historical Jesus was not yet significant.

[ 25 ] It only became significant once Christ had been lost and people clung solely to the material aspect—to Jesus. Then the historian stepped in and demanded documents, and now radical historical criticism has emerged to show that, in the sense in which we today refer to documents as historical sources, the Gospels are not documents. There are no other documents. You must not misunderstand this. The Gospels are fully recognized by spiritual science, but in a sense other than merely a historical one. Through spiritual science, one experiences anew what the writers of the Gospels experienced; for spiritual science, the Gospels are not evidence of the historical Jesus. Harnack said: “All historical traditions about Jesus can easily be written on a single quarto page.” – It is all open to challenge, and when the purely historical method of research is applied to the Gospels, the inevitable result was that Drews demonstrated in a profound way that there is no historical evidence for Jesus. This is the trend that has emerged recently. Drews is not alone in this view; Smith stands on the same ground. They have all made a discovery that was highly startling to them. They first established that the historical Jesus cannot be substantiated. They say: We have no documents, and therefore Jesus might just as well be denied. – But they did make one discovery: they came to the conclusion that there is a Christ, that Jesus was a god. Drews, Smith, and others admit that Jesus, during the period in question, was not merely a human being but a god, and that all the accounts in the Gospels are descriptions of a superhuman-divine being. So what do they do? They direct our attention to the idea of Christ; they return once again to Christ. And you can find the conclusions that follow from this in Drews’ work or in Smith’s *Ecce Deus*, published by Diederichs in Jena.

[ 26 ] [These people say:] What the Gnostics believed, what people believed in the Middle Ages, what Origen believed—none of that applies to a human being. And this proves to us that by “Christ” a superhuman, divine being is meant. So in that being who stands at the origin of Christianity, we are faced not with a human being but with a God—a being to whom only spiritual and supernatural qualities apply, who has a supernatural significance for humanity. But such a being does not exist—so these people say—and therefore one cannot speak of such a being; it did not exist in Jesus! — Thus, this newer spiritual movement has “discovered” the Christ, has recognized that he is a god, and is therefore breaking with the traditional view of Jesus; for now that he is a god, he certainly cannot have existed. Smith says: If the Christ is a god, then it would be childish and naive to still believe in the existence of Jesus at all. – This is how Christ was [re]discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, but in doing so, the entire Christ-being was simultaneously nullified. That is how things stand now!

[ 27 ] Look, what, for example, does Drews offer us as something spiritually alive in place of the living Christ, in place of the living impulse that intervened in the course of human development? Drews is not a materialist, nor is he a monist—he is a man of deep faith—but he assumes a general evolution of humanity; he believes that everyone can undergo an inner development, that everyone can attain a certain inner elevation and religious experience in their soul, so that each person then finds something within themselves, something like a higher self, like a higher human being. This higher self suffers within the ordinary human being and longs to be redeemed from it. — And he goes on to say: At the time when Christianity was founded, this need to give form to the higher human being was particularly strong, and it was then that the shared idea of such a superhuman Christ-being took shape within an early Christian community. This idea of the human being is the actual Christ impulse. Because Christ is a God, he cannot have existed as a human being, but only as an idea. – Drews is, in a certain sense, a spiritualist idealist. He does not deny Christ, but for him Christ is merely an idea. There was no human being named Jesus into whom a particular cosmic being had entered; rather, a human community once embraced the idea that a Higher Being lived within humanity—a human God—and that this was the suffering God who sought to redeem himself within humanity.

[ 28 ] Thus, based on all that the development of contemporary spiritual life has been able to achieve so far, we have an “idea” in place of the living Christ. Just as people in recent times—perhaps out of the mindset of our era—speak of “ideas of history,” implying that only natural human beings exist and not spiritual forces that intervene in history, so too is Christ himself supposed to be merely an idea. This idea of Drews’s is a profound one, but if one delves deeper, one can say: While an idea can indeed be found as a characteristic law of world development, an idea creates no more than a painted painter will create a picture. In relation to what Christ truly is, what has been conceived as a general idea by some community stands in the same relationship as a painted painter does to a real painter who creates a picture. The [mere] idea of Christ could never have produced such an impulse as the Christ event has produced in human beings.

[ 29 ] But that true, real essence that descended at the moment of John’s baptism, that which Paul experienced at the moment of the event on the road to Damascus—that is precisely what the present needs, since it cannot relate to an abstract idea. And that is precisely what makes the contemplation of Jesus so appealing to many people; for how could someone who is troubled in their soul, who is in suffering and distress, ever draw great hope, find comfort and confidence, and believe in the redemption of humanity by looking upon a cold, abstract idea? This is the essential point that makes the view of Jesus so accessible: that we are dealing with a being just like any ordinary human being. However, we are dealing with a supernatural being when we regard Christ as a real, living entity. And this is how spiritual science views him. It does not seek to revive the old Gnostic teachings, but approaches Christ in the same way as other facts of the material and spiritual world. And when spiritual research approaches Christ today, it also finds the development of humanity as it can be understood in the spirit of ancient Gnosticism. And it finds that what a human being can discover as the path to Christ must in fact take its starting point from within the human being. All spiritual research takes its starting point from the inner human being; it says: The soul can develop; it can bring its dormant powers to manifestation, so that it may look into the spiritual world.

[ 30 ] Now, however, based on its research, this science adds one more element to today’s views—something that is only slowly finding its way back into our current education, but which used to be quite widespread. We first encounter it in Lessing’s *The Education of the Human Race*; he speaks of the reality of repeated earthly lives. Just as we now live between birth and death, so we are not living here for the first time; our soul has already been incarnated in physical bodies many times and will be so many times yet. What is the meaning of all this reincarnation? Its meaning is that our soul, as it progresses from life to life, continually develops different powers, different nuances of being, and different qualities. It is not the case that we always return in exactly the same way. All the souls that are incarnated today were—for my sake—incarnated in the time of the ancient Persians or the ancient Egyptians, and a progression [in the development] of the souls takes place through these repeated earthly lives. When one considers this progression, only then does what the Gnostics said begin to make sense: Our time was preceded by an era in which human beings first had to mature in order to be able to receive the Christ impulse. – From life to life, every soul existed in the pre-Christian era, and from life to life it became increasingly immersed in physical existence, growing ever more mature with each new life. Then came the Christ impulse, and the souls continued to develop.

[ 31 ] Today we can say: We can only understand ourselves as human beings if we look back to times long past. Our present state of consciousness—the way we think today and the worldview we hold—has only developed over the course of time; in earlier periods of Earth’s evolution, consciousness was more dreamlike, but in return, people were clairvoyant. The myths and legends reflect what the clairvoyant soul beheld; they are not fictional. People back then did not yet possess freedom or clarity of consciousness, but in return, they still had something instinctive and divine within them. People back then could not have deduced a divine principle from the orderliness of the world through reasoning alone; rather, the soul was still connected to the divine Spirit. Through clairvoyance, people still had a connection with their God. In certain intermediate states, the soul was, so to speak, lifted out of its body, and then a divine-spiritual light dawned upon it.

[ 32 ] But this was the purpose of further development: that human beings would have to immerse themselves more and more in the material world. Through this, they came to know physical nature, but lost their divine, inner consciousness. The inner God that human beings experienced within themselves began to fade; but it became clear to humanity what can be seen with human eyes and grasped by the human mind. That is why science did not begin in ancient times, but only when people turned their gaze toward their physical surroundings, whereas from ancient times we have myths and legends in which humanity perceived the divine-spiritual through a dreamlike clairvoyance. Such was the descent of the human soul. When we consider this, a statement by John the Baptist takes on a very special depth. He captures the defining characteristic of his time. In the past, the soul had a connection with its God, but now that connection is no longer there. John the Baptist could say: Human consciousness has changed; people have lost their connection with their God. — But he could also say: Human development is not only a descent but also an ascent. — To this end, the Christ impulse was received at a specific point in time; what humanity had left behind in terms of spirituality descended upon Jesus as the Christ and, through him, fertilized humanity. The body of Jesus then had to pass into death. Anyone who wishes to understand that death was necessary for the entire Christ impulse—that is, that the sacrificial death is something supremely real—can reflect on the fact that the seed must first rot before it can produce a new plant and bear fruit. The original divine-spiritual essence, which preceded the two currents of development [of which Gnosis speaks—the one remaining in the spiritual realm and the one leading into matter ], descended, passed through death, and became the seed on Earth in order to fertilize the soul from then on, so that it might rise again from the material realm and find its way back to the spiritual.

[ 33 ] Anyone who finds this repulsive and mystical is free to do so; but they must also find it mystical that infinite chemical and physical effects are concentrated in the sun and extend throughout the entire cosmos and our Earth. Just as material life is concentrated in the sun, so too is the entire spiritual life of our Earth concentrated in that being who, as the Christ Being—through what is symbolized by the baptism of John—flowed into Jesus, lived within him for three years, and then had to go to his death in order to radiate from there and manifest its effects throughout the entire development of humanity—so that linked to the Christ Being is the impulse that entered human development through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Earth has thereby become a different place. When we look back today at the incarnations of human beings before the Mystery of Golgotha, we must say: At that time, human beings were not in a position for what had entered into the spiritual development of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha to take root in their souls.

[ 34 ] Spiritual science points out that behind what a person experiences in their everyday soul life lie the depths of the soul—the subconscious depths of the soul. In what is conscious to a person, in what lives in the upper soul, Christ does not yet dwell directly within many people even today. He has revealed Himself only in exceptional cases, as He did to the Apostle Paul, for example. Paul was able to perceive the truth about Christ through what lived in the depths of his soul. But just as the soul has descended, so too does it ascend again. And anyone who has a sense and insight for this—not just the spiritual researcher who can attain certainty about these matters—may say to themselves: We now stand at an important turning point in the development of the human soul. All the signs are there, if one can look into the present, that the situation is as follows.

[ 35 ] In our time, when we have gone the farthest in losing sight of Christ, in denying the historical Christ, when we have lost touch with the Mystery of Golgotha, when we see how souls are being shaped by the scientific mindset of the new age, we also see how this way of thinking, when applied correctly, matures souls for a new knowledge of Christ—the knowledge of Christ found in spiritual science. One must start from the innermost depths of one’s soul in relation to the path to Christ. When the spiritual researcher does this, he comes to truly find something—not in the conscious mind, but in what lives within the unconscious of his soul and what he can perceive as something that was not always on Earth, but entered into Earth’s evolution at the time of the Mystery on Golgotha. If today the researcher of the soul is able to look within and draw the deeper powers of his knowledge from within himself, then he beholds something different than in pre-Christian times. He beholds Christ in the spiritual world; he could not behold him in pre-Christian times. We can find him within ourselves, but the people of pre-Christian times could not find him within themselves. The historical Christ is the cause of the mystical Christ whom we can find within ourselves, just as truly as the external, physical sun is the cause of our eyes. If the sun had never shed its light, then the eyes could not have developed. It is true that the modern human soul, when it applies the methods of spiritual research to itself, finds the Christ within, for in the depths of the soul, the Christ is there. Christ is present in the depths of the soul and reveals Himself to us in such a way that, through this inner Christ, we come to realize clearly: He is within us only because He once existed historically and entered into the development of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 36 ] This Christ is not merely an idea of the higher self, but he is the higher self; he is that with which we are connected in our deepest consciousness. This is the intimate relationship we can attain with the Being who descended into a human body and endured all that is human; but because it endured these things in a divine way, it was able to be a helper to all people, thus becoming at the same time the most intimate reality for the soul. Today, a person can say: What I find within myself, what is most human within me—that lived as Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. He has become my brother; he is closest to my humanity. – One understands the innermost essence of Christ-God only when one makes clear to oneself His activity in the human soul through the following words of Christ: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.” A person is intimately connected to Christ only when [Christ as] the spiritual being who, as a divine being, participated in all that is human, mediates understanding between him and another human being—when the human soul says to itself: “Christ lives within me, and he also lives within you”—when, in one soul, the Christ being can seek out in love the Christ being in the other soul. This is how spiritual science speaks of the Christ. And at the same time, it holds that the human soul does not wander aimlessly from incarnation to incarnation, from life to life, but rather that it continues to develop.

[ 37 ] If one compares the souls of people today, for example, with those of the eighth century, one finds that the powers of the human soul were quite different from what they are today. If we consider the nature of today’s souls in comparison to those of the past, we find that human souls are on the path of seeking within themselves; and the more they seek, the more they find Christ within themselves. Therefore, spiritual science may say: Human souls are on the path to Christ. – In an age in which Christ has been lost as God, in an age in which the historical Jesus is increasingly being lost through radical criticism, human beings—as spiritual science teaches—are driven ever more deeply into their inner selves through the development of the human soul. In the present day, this is still masked and concealed, but the soul’s further development occurs when one thing turns into its opposite, thereby bringing the other into being.

[ 38 ] Materialism, when people take it entirely seriously and when it has reached its zenith, will of its own accord lead to its opposite. When human beings are cut off from the supersensible, the counterforces will awaken, and we are living in the twentieth century, in the time of the awakening of these counterforces. But when these deepest human soul forces awaken, Christ will appear in the souls, and these souls will experience the event of Paul of Damascus. Every soul in our time is moving toward this, and just as it convinced Paul of the historical Jesus, so will this event increasingly evoke in humanity the living conviction that Christ once lived in Jesus. “That is a bold fantasy,” some will say, but I cannot remain silent about it, even if it sounds bold: It is the truth! Such things are not immediately embraced by the times; there will be many obstacles before one works one’s way up to such a conviction, but this can still be offered as a stimulus. [Truly] convinced is the one who has seen through everything. Anyone who looks without prejudice at the souls of our time may [by all means] say that these souls are on the path to the aforementioned recognition of Christ.

[ 39 ] Souls will become increasingly mature so that they may behold Christ in the spirit itself. And this beholding in the spirit—that is the true Second Coming of Christ; that is what one might call the “return” of Christ. What entered the Earth as the Divine-Spiritual through the Mystery of Golgotha will not be seen in any physical sense, but rather because, in the course of human development, souls will become increasingly mature, [and will be increasingly able] to perceive the supersensible as well. Direct participation in the Christ-being, experiencing the Christ-being firsthand, intimate communion with Christ Jesus—this is what lies in store for humanity. By articulating this, spiritual science penetrates directly into people’s hearts; it does not present dry theories, but leads to life in many areas of everyday existence, and to life even where matters of great importance to humanity are at stake.

[ 40 ] If one views Christ correctly—if one regards him as a matter of humanity, not merely as a personal matter—then one can also find the path to the historical Jesus through him. However, the recognition of repeated earthly lives is a fundamental prerequisite for truly grasping the Christ principle. If one asks, “Was it not unfair to pre-Christian people that they could have no relationship with Christ?”—then one does not acknowledge repeated earthly lives. We, however, answer: In pre-Christian times, people were not yet ripe for the Christ experience; they died and then returned to Earth, gradually maturing to the point where they could receive Christ within themselves. — This is how Christ enters the entire course of human development—gradually into every soul—and thus Christ becomes a vital impulse for human development by becoming a vital impulse for each individual human being. But whoever allows the soul to be present only once can, at most, rise within the soul to an idea of Christ. Therefore, it is true that contemporary theoretical philosophy can arrive only at an idea of Christ. It is the living human soul, passing from life to life, that gains a relationship with the living Christ.

[ 41 ] And how this idea of Christ—which will be the experience of Christ in the twentieth century—expands into something of wondrous beauty, something that is still little understood today! If this idea of Christ is to be the defining one of the twentieth century, if it takes root in people’s souls, then something else will follow. This idea will be just as alive as a person of flesh and blood. It bears the hallmark that Christ is truly historical, just as Paul recognized long ago. But there is something else connected to this idea of Christ.

[ 42 ] This idea of Christ cannot be conceived of in any other way than as the human being expanding their gaze from the individual human soul to all human souls. Thus, on the one hand, the human being looks toward Christ, to whom they can turn in their most intimate moments as the one most akin to the human soul; People will experience what is a direct source of strength within them, but they will also experience that he is the impulse that has poured out over the entire earth and all of humanity—and this latter aspect will be something very beautiful when it is truly understood by people. However, it will be understood only slowly! But once it is understood, people will say: Christ is a reality, and insofar as he is a reality, he is so not merely for those who recognize him, but for all of humanity. – Then we will be able to face anyone of a different faith—whether they are a Hindu or a Chinese, whether they hold this or that belief—and we will be able to regard them as Christians, simply because they are human beings. When Christians come to understand that, in truth, all people are Christians—when the “Christ problem” is truly understood—then calling a person a Christian will no longer depend on their religious profession. Regardless of whether people know this or not—Christ is the all-encompassing One who fulfills all of humanity! And this correct understanding of Christ will confirm the words that Christ spoke: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

[ 43 ] Some sayings attributed to Christ can easily be misunderstood, such as this one: “Whoever does not leave father and mother for my sake cannot be my disciple.” This was not meant to break the old law, nor to sever the blood ties that once founded love alone; rather, it was meant to add the universal human dimension to the intimate human one. And to be a disciple of Christ means to find within oneself that which concerns all of humanity—that which is both all-encompassing and intimate in every human soul, relating to both the earth and humanity. As simply as this can be stated, it is still scarcely understood today. But when the Christ problem is grasped spiritually, then Christ will shine forth and flow into the souls and hearts of human beings. This lies today like a seed within human evolution. There are, in fact, spiritually minded researchers today who work with the deepest scientific seriousness—such as Smith, whom I cite as a typical example. They have discovered that what is recounted in the Gospels concerns not a human being but a God. Now they say—and one cannot blame them for this—that it would be childish and naive to believe in an earthly existence for this God. Therefore, they argue, Christ is merely a symbolic fiction, and this alone proves that Christ could not have lived in physical form.

[ 44 ] Well, spiritual science must today, admittedly, allow itself to be called childish and naive by the most learned scientists, for it made the discovery that Christ was not merely a god, a spiritual being, but that he truly entered into a human life. And to this one human being, he became what he has always been to countless people and will continue to be to ever more. And spiritual science knows very well that what Christ is must be found within the soul, just as the sun can be found only through the eye. Spiritual science says, with Goethe:

If the eye were not like the sun,
It could never behold the sun;
If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
How could the divine delight us?

[ 45 ] But it does not merely say that we must have an eye to see the sun; it also says: If we had lived only in darkness, we would have no eyes at all. The sun brought eyes out of humanity’s primal states; through the sun, through the light, humanity received eyes. It is true that human beings cannot find Christ unless they find him within themselves. But it is also true that Christ can be found within us only because he was once on Earth and lived here. It is historically accurate that Christ is the sun of Earth’s spiritual development and that rays emanate from him which have sunk into us. By restoring what has been lost, spiritual science returns Christ to the twentieth century as a living being, recognizing both the historical Christ and the [living] Christ whom one can find—when one delves deep within oneself—as the spiritual sun. If what Goethe said about the unity of the inner and the outer, about the sun and the divine, is true, then something else is also true—something to which Goethe would undoubtedly have given his approval. Let us, then, summarize Goethe’s saying entirely in the spirit of our present reflection and express it in words that might read as an extension of Goethe’s

[ 46 ] Saying:

If the world were not blessed with the sun,
How could eyes blossom in living beings?
If existence were not God’s revelation,
How would people come to fulfill God?