The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Christ in the Twentieth Century

Question: If the Bible speaks of both the “Ascension” and “Christ’s descent into hell,” where did Christ’s body go?

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: There are four [main] perspectives on the Bible: First, [there is the perspective of] the believer. Here one simply says: Is the Bible not enough for us? – Second, [we have the perspective of] free thinkers: Here, one considers oneself wiser than the believers. Third, we see the ascent to a higher perspective: Here, the biblical narratives are no longer viewed merely as childish tales, but everything has a “symbolic meaning”—it is myth. Everyone can then interpret the Bible as they please—more or less ingeniously. Fourth, there is the perspective that points to spiritual realities. [If we adopt this perspective, we can say:] It was an earthquake that took place; a fissure opened up into which the body could fall, and which then closed again. The clothes were torn about by the storm and then lay as described in John’s account. This correspondence between spiritual vision and the biblical narrative is truly profound. The “descent into hell” expresses a “transformation” of life between death and new birth through Christ.

Question: Can work in and of itself be a religion?

[ 2 ] Rudolf Steiner: This question strikes me as if someone were asking: Can apples be used to feed everyone? What, then, is work? Everything that is done is work; the most physical activity and the most subtle mental activity are both work. Religion, on the other hand, has a connection to the divine and to immortality. There’s not much to be done with a question like that.

Question: What is meant by the “Ascension of Christ”?

[ 3 ] Rudolf Steiner: Then those closest to Christ began to see that Christ had made the transition into the Earth’s atmosphere. To the clairvoyant souls of his closest followers, this appears as his ascension.

Question: Why do we need the humanities? Isn't the Bible enough?

[ 4 ] Rudolf Steiner: Anyone who speaks this way is speaking out of a personal preference. One must draw from the facts what appears to be one’s duty toward humanity. Only superficial people today will believe they “have” the Bible. One could also say: For the simplest of people, it is nourishment, and for the wisest, it is never fully comprehensible, because it contains such depths.

Question: What does it mean to pray in the Christian sense?

[ 5 ] Rudolf Steiner: Engaging with Christ. It is only problematic when done in a self-centered manner. One person might pray for rain, another for sunshine, and both are praying to the [same] God. [The situation is similar when] two armies face each other, about to fire their guns, and both pray for victory. It doesn’t even have to be the case that the bullets are consecrated, which has, in fact, already happened. “But not my will, but Yours be done”—that is the proper tone that belongs to every prayerful mood.

Question: Is the Buddha a figure similar to Christ?

[ 6 ] Rudolf Steiner: The Buddha marks the end of an epoch; Christ marks the beginning of an epoch. Buddha’s teachings spoke more to the heart: for example, that parable of the chariot, [in which the sage asks the king, who has arrived by chariot, what the chariot actually is—the drawbar, the wheels? And he instructs him: the chariot is] merely a name and a form. Can one—asks Buddha—drive with just the drawbar and the wheels? Can one drive with just a name and a form? [Just as only a name or a form holds the individual parts together—wheels, drawbar, carriage body, and seat—so too, the individual abilities, feelings, thoughts, and sensations of the human soul are not held together by anything that can be described as a specific reality, but are also merely a name or a form.]—Here, Goethe’s words apply:

Whoever wishes to recognize and describe something living,
Must first seek to extract the spirit,
Then he holds the parts in his hand
Unfortunately, only the spiritual bond is missing.

[ 7 ] The Christian way of thinking establishes this spiritual bond everywhere. Six hundred years before Christ, the Buddha said: “Sickness is suffering; death is suffering.” Six hundred years later, the Crucifix—the dead Christ on the cross—became the symbol of life; such are the changes of the times.

Question: Can music convey spiritual life?

[ 8 ] Rudolf Steiner: It can be helpful, but one cannot claim that it contributes to the elevation of the soul today.

Question: [Is Drews right to describe the Greek Logos as “vague”?]

[ 9 ] Rudolf Steiner: We certainly do not agree with Drews [when he] describes the Greek Logos as vague. It is not vague, but [to engage in] a debate [about it] would be [inappropriate] at this time. One must not forget how things have developed over time. Take, for example, modern astronomy with all its knowledge: One could call Copernicus “vague” [by comparison]—that may be true—but he was—especially for modern astronomy—a starting point.

Question: Judging by your lecture, Jesus would not have been considered the Christ until he was thirty years old: Did the essence of Jesus not already possess divinity within itself even before the baptism in the Jordan?

[ 10 ] Rudolf Steiner: She simply did not have that; [Christ] first had to descend from the divine realms. Today, people [often] think that Christ and Adonis are one and the same. That is like mistaking a person who wore certain clothes ten years ago for someone [who is wearing the same clothes today as that person did ten years ago]. A famous theologian in Berlin once said: “Show me a single word in the New Testament that cannot be found somewhere in the Bible already.” [It depends on who utters these words and in what context], for if a schoolboy says the same words as the schoolmaster, it is still not the same thing. In the sayings of Christ, everything that was said before becomes something entirely different, something new. Robertson Smith believes he has identified the Lord’s Prayer as an earlier, [pre-Christian] prayer because the wording sounds somewhat similar. Let’s suppose a child has a poem by Goethe—he cannot understand it because he is too young, even though he may have heard all the words from the poem before. It is painful when such [superficial] judgments are made time and again, for this hinders the progress of culture. [The fact that such judgments are taken seriously] stems solely from people’s belief in authority: “Science has proven it.”

Question: Has humanity been on a downward path since the Mystery of Golgotha?

[ 11 ] Rudolf Steiner: Before [the Mystery of Golgotha], it had been developing downward; then, [after the Mystery of Golgotha,] it began to develop upward again.