The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Anthroposophy and Theology

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! I am compelled to begin with a newspaper clipping that has just been handed to me—a clipping from the *Christliche Welt*—which, since I was not previously aware of it, I naturally had not intended to reference in my opening remarks today. This newspaper article states: “From March 5 to 12, an anthroposophical university course will take place in Berlin. ... The day for theologians is Friday, the 10th—This event on Friday is now an unambiguous challenge from Steiner and his followers to the theologians,” and so on.

[ 2 ] Well, my esteemed audience, today’s event may be many things; but what it certainly is not—and what, if it were a matter of faith, would constitute a profound misunderstanding—is a challenge to theologians. I myself have never been involved in this event in any way other than being asked whether I would like to contribute to this university course—an initiative that did not originate with me—through lectures and introductory reflections. I am the least involved in today’s event—that is, in the inclusion of this program item in the university course—and it would never have occurred to me that what is to be discussed here today could be interpreted as an “unambiguous challenge to today’s theologians.”

[ 3 ] Therefore, my esteemed audience, to prevent all sorts of misunderstandings from arising again—or arising anew—in connection with the few introductory remarks I am about to make here, please allow me to limit myself today strictly to the topic: The Relationship of Anthroposophy to Theology, and that, out of consideration for avoiding new misunderstandings, I will omit certain things that I might otherwise present here, because otherwise I would once again have to witness a misinterpretation of what I intend to convey.

[ 4 ] Ladies and gentlemen, it was never my intention—please forgive me if, due to the challenge that has been presented to me, I am compelled to make a few brief personal remarks in my introduction today— it was actually never my intention to challenge theology in any way, and from its very inception, anthroposophy—insofar as it represents a field of work in which I myself am involved—has never in any way sought to engage with contemporary theology as such within the scope of its work. To the extent that this has happened—and I have truly done so as little as possible—it has occurred solely because there have indeed been very many attacks on anthroposophy from the theological side, and because people—not so much myself as others—sometimes feel compelled to defend themselves. For anthroposophy, as a field of study, has certainly sought—I would say—to remain neutral toward theology; it aims to work in accordance with the current spirit of science.

[ 5 ] At the end of the last century, there was a certain scientific direction, certain scientific methods, and a certain scientific mindset—a mindset and method which, for reasons I have already discussed and which, due to time constraints, cannot be addressed in detail—a method and mindset that, based on the entire historical development of modern times, was applied in particular to scientific research, and through which the greatest possible triumphs—I do not mean this in a trivial sense, but in a deeper sense—were achieved within scientific research for human progress and the well-being of humanity. Philosophy, I might say, stood somewhat at a loss in the face of scientific research during this period. Philosophy had to grapple with those methods that had been applied primarily to the natural sciences and that were not applicable in philosophy, where one is, after all, dealing with an entirely different realm of facts.

[ 6 ] People were not always clear—I would say, from a theoretical and epistemological standpoint—about the sense in which one should apply the methods of the natural sciences to philosophy. Experimental psychology has thus fallen into a certain area where things seem to work more or less—or are more or less correct—but the uncertainty is, in essence, still present. In contrast, anthroposophy developed its own working method from a wide variety of sources. On the one hand, it seeks to take into account what can be achieved through the specific development of modern methods of thought and research in the natural sciences; on the other hand, it addresses human needs for a spiritual world and knowledge of it. On the one hand, we were faced with the fact that we had to fully acknowledge the methods of the natural sciences, and with regard to the treatment of the field of natural science—as I have already stated—I am still as much a Haeckelian today as I was in the 1890s; not in the sense that scientific methods do not need to be further developed, or that science itself should not raise certain objections to what Haeckel wrote—but that leads into an entirely different area of discussion; I mean that, when it comes to dealing with the purely natural world, I am just as much a Haeckelian today as I was then. It is more a matter of what one experiences through the scientific approach—namely, by training oneself in scientific precision and scientific mindset—that is, the ideas and concepts one can develop through this process, which are simply necessary if one wishes to work scientifically. For one thing remains a truth for any worldview—though I cannot provide proof of this now due to time constraints—: If the following statement applies to external sensory observation—“There is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses”—then Leibniz’s statement certainly applies on the other hand: “except the mind itself.”

[ 7 ] In the experience of the intellect—that is, in the soul’s movement through the categories of the intellect, in the experience of the ideas with which one examines natural objects, natural facts, and which are ultimately needed to formulate the laws of nature—in the experience of this world of ideas there is something that goes far beyond the experience of the merely sensory, so that when one, as a natural scientist, confronts the natural sciences, one must say to oneself, if one is open-minded enough to do so: Everything that is in the intellect must be drawn from the senses; only the intellect itself cannot be drawn from the senses.

[ 8 ] But once one has truly grasped this, there is no obstacle to now considering what is, so to speak, intuitively perceived in the pursuit of further developing the categories of the intellect through an inner, soul-spiritual process—a process that is, inwardly, quite similar to the external growth processes in plants and animals. One remains entirely true to natural development in one’s outlook when one acknowledges that from the seed one has before oneself in inner contemplation, one gains the truth that the intellect itself cannot be derived from the sensory world. One remains true to what one has learned from natural existence when one attempts to regard the human intellect itself as a seed that can grow inwardly; and when one truly undertakes this attempt, the rest follows directly from what I have described here and elsewhere in recent days regarding the growth of the human intellect through imagination, inspiration, and intuition. This is merely a matter of the further progress of inner human development. Through this, however, a genuine perception of the spiritual world emerges. In anthroposophy, we strive as best we can to put this perception of the spiritual world into words according to today’s linguistic conventions. Of course, we are often compelled—and I readily admit this— to put it into words in an inadequate way, for the simple reason that our language, like all modern languages, has been adapted over the course of the last few centuries to the external, material worldview, and today we have simply oriented the feelings we associate with words more or less toward this worldview.

[ 9 ] That is why one always struggles with words when one is compelled to clothe in words that which has been perceived through imagination, inspiration, and intuition—namely, to clothe it in words in such a way that it can now truly be verified by ordinary, sound common sense, for this, in turn, must be a goal of anthroposophical research.

[ 10 ] Anthroposophy was simply a field of study, and I regard it as such in the strictest sense of the word. To those people—who at first constituted a very small circle—who felt a need to hear about what can be discovered in the supersensible world through such a method of research, I explained and demonstrated what can be found in this way. No one was in any way compelled to participate in this movement by anything other than their own free will. Claims that suggestive methods or the like are used are, in some cases, a conscious slander and, in others, an unconscious one against what the anthroposophical movement actually intends. And it is true that those who, using their common sense, reflect upon what is explored through imagination, inspiration, and intuition become, in a higher sense, freer human beings than people are today. People today, for example, follow the currents of their political parties and allow all manner of things to be suggested to them. Anthroposophy must liberate people precisely from these inner psychological dependencies, because it demands that anyone who wishes to immerse themselves in it not merely remain in ordinary, more passive thinking, but rather make their thinking inwardly flexible, strengthen it, and through this inwardly strengthened thinking, one becomes a truly free person.

[ 11 ] For reasons I do not wish to go into today, it turned out that, at first, very few of the scientifically minded people—on whom anthroposophy had actually counted—were drawn to it. Today, we have made a certain start in this regard. To those who first joined the anthroposophical movement—who were, more or less, naive souls with strong spiritual needs—nothing was ever said other than what could be conscientiously discovered through anthroposophical research. And I was always delighted when people said things to me, such as one highly esteemed individual who is also present here today: “It’s actually strange that you’ve managed to attract a larger audience at all, because you generally avoid speaking in a way that’s commonly called ‘popular’ or ‘accessible to the general public.’ You speak in such a way that people always have to do some inner work while listening, and that’s not what people want these days, so one really has to wonder how you’ve managed to find a larger audience.” — Those were, more or less, the words spoken to me years ago by a person who is also sitting here today, after she had attended a series of lectures at that time. I have truly never sought popularity in my efforts to bring anthroposophy to the world’s attention.

[ 12 ] What was remarkable was that people from all walks of life—and from all religious backgrounds—came to us. And insofar as anthroposophy, simply through its work, came to have a certain relationship with the religious currents of the present, it actually never initially came into any conflict with the religious needs of the people who came to it: people—as I said—from all walks of life. For example, I have often been asked by Catholics in our midst whether, in terms of practical religious practice, it is possible to remain a Catholic while participating in the anthroposophical movement.

[ 13 ] I had to say, especially to Catholics: Of course, it is also possible for a very good Catholic to participate in what anthroposophy has to offer, for anthroposophy exists not to speak about the supersensible world while limiting itself to a particular creed, but simply on the basis of what can be investigated in the supersensible world. So what would suit me best would be to simply share with people what emerges from the supersensible world and not to engage in any kind of polemic at all. For whoever honestly speaks what they perceive knows, after all, what gives rise to polemics and how fruitless they actually are. My original aim was simply to state, plainly and honestly, what can be discovered through anthroposophy, without paying any heed to polemics. But, of course, things don’t always work out that way in life. Yet within the anthroposophical movement, people from all religious backgrounds came together—including Catholics—and so I had to say: Of course, Catholics can also participate in the anthroposophical movement; they will only come into conflict with the practical practice of their religion on a single point, and that is auricular confession. Not because it is auricular confession, for that could be regarded as merely a matter of conscience. I have met enough Protestant clergy who have practically yearned for a form of private confession in order to establish a more intimate relationship with their congregation. Opinions on this may vary. But the issue here is that the Catholic Church denies the sacrament of the altar to anyone who has not first received private confession. And because of this impediment to actively participating in the most important sacrament of the Catholic Church, it is extraordinarily difficult for Catholics to reconcile the convictions they derive from the supersensible world with this behavior—which is one of lack of freedom—and which they must nevertheless follow due to the Roman Catholic Church’s constitution. Confession, as it is practiced—not because of anthroposophy, but because of the Roman Catholic Church’s constitution—tears Catholics away from the free pursuit of the supersensible world.

[ 14 ] A Catholic could avoid this if he could avoid the auricular confession. He cannot avoid it, because otherwise he would not be able to partake of the Eucharist. Herein lies the difficulty faced by the Catholic. Nevertheless, many Catholics have found a way to satisfy the needs of their souls within the anthroposophical movement.

[ 15 ] Ladies and gentlemen, it was only natural that people of all faiths would be drawn to anthroposophy; it was only natural that, simply because of the times we live in, a strong need would arise within the Anthroposophical Society to discuss matters pertaining to Christianity. Now I would like to say the following about this: Just as with all other objects of research—insofar as the supersensible and the sensible in this world converge in these objects—anthroposophy initially considers the content of Christology in precisely this way; and likewise, with the help of its supersensible research into the content of Christology, it seeks to explore and present what can be attained through its methods. Now, it is difficult to say in a few words what characterizes anthroposophy’s position on Christology, but I would like to make the following remarks.

[ 16 ] We view human beings, first of all, here in earthly life between birth and death, as existing with their soul and spiritual life within the physical body; they are bound to their physical body in terms of perceiving and processing what is in their surroundings, as well as in terms of their work itself, in terms of their life of the will, and, in general, in terms of the way they position themselves within this sensory-physical world. Now, when a person turns his gaze back—a gaze that, upon waking, he naturally directs toward his surroundings—he initially receives perceptions simply through the senses of his body and through the intellect, which combines the experiences of these senses with the perceptions of what is in his physical environment.

[ 17 ] But since the mind, the intellect, carries within itself its primordial spiritual essence—its own inherent spirituality—a person—if only he reflects sufficiently on himself, if only he looks away a little from his surroundings and looks within himself— cannot deny that, through his own activity, he arrives at a synthesis that ultimately culminates in a concept that has only a spiritual content, and this spiritual content is—if I may put it this way—the concept of the Divine Father. This is where anthroposophical research must intervene with its methods. I can only briefly describe this; it gradually makes the entire process of human cognition transparent—as will also become clear from the lectures in this course. It also aims to point to what happens within a person when they try to turn their gaze away from the external world in order, so to speak, to look at what they themselves have done and ask themselves: What have you actually done there? What, after all, entitles you to synthesize the external world [into a concept]? And by pursuing this experience far enough, the human being—if I may use the term again—arrives at the experience of the Divine Father. And whoever understands this arrival at the experience of the Divine Father from an anthroposophical perspective comes to a very specific judgment. I ask that you not misunderstand this judgment, which is a fact that I must state in no uncertain terms.

[ 18 ] One comes to the conclusion that simply the fully healthy human being—the person who is completely healthy in his or her physical body—attains this experience of the divine Father—that is to say, that anyone who does not attain this experience of the divine Father carries within himself or herself some sign of degeneration, however hidden it may be. In other words, through anthroposophical research, one comes to say: Failing to attain the experience of the divine Father constitutes a disease in the human being. This is, of course, a radical statement, because the disease cannot be detected by ordinary physical means; rather, it lies—if I may put it this way—in the subtleties of the human organism. But in fact, for those capable of conducting anthroposophical research, it follows that atheism is a disease.

[ 19 ] What I said yesterday about the development of judgment—which can be right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy—applies here in a very special way. When a person follows this path alone, at first they arrive only at the experience of the divine Father. But if they then continue along the path, if they become aware of the deficiency that dwells in their soul, if they arrive only at this experience of the Father, if they realize that, fundamentally, modern humanity’s limitation to intellectualism also entails a kind of limitation to this divine experience of the Father—then they must come to the realization that they must press on beyond this divine experience of the Father. External observations can be of great help to us here.

[ 20 ] It is a curious fact that precisely in Western countries, where the scientific mindset has, so to speak, reached the peak of its intensity, and where people do not want to allow this scientific mindset to encroach upon the realm of the supernatural—which is to be preserved for religion—it is precisely in these religious movements of Western countries that the spirit of the Old Testament has once again taken hold with particular success, even in our modern times. And we see the West—even as it outwardly accepts and preaches Christianity—doing so entirely in the spirit of the Old Testament; we see it, in a certain sense, recasting Christ as the Father God and failing to perceive the difference between the Father God and Christ.

[ 21 ] In the East, on the other hand, where the separation between religion and science is not as pronounced for the human mind as it is in the West—in the East, where this bridge exists for the human soul more or less as a fundamental inner spiritual experience—we still find it, for example, in the writings of the great philosopher Vladimir Soloviev— there we see how the experience of Christ exists directly as an independent experience alongside the experience of the Father.

[ 22 ] And this is how one comes to say to oneself: Although a completely healthy person cannot be an atheist if he synthesizes what the external world offers him into the concept of God—to which he must give spiritual content—he nevertheless begins with the concept of the Father. However, this concept of the Father does not take one beyond a summary of external natural phenomena; it immediately fails when one attempts to use it to trace one’s own human development; one is then left, as it were, adrift. If one delves into this inner human development from the point one has reached upon having taken the external world into one’s soul—if one traces this inner development—then, provided one follows it with an open mind, one will arrive at the experience of Christ, which initially presents itself as an indefinite inner experience. Anthroposophy, however, traces this experience back to its source. Simply by honestly observing the development of humanity on Earth, a person comes to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha—the historical Mystery of Golgotha—for themselves. They arrive at this through the inner development of spiritual faculties, [which lead them to] imagination, inspiration, and intuition. If one traces, with the help of these methods of research, the path that human development has taken from antiquity to the Mystery of Golgotha, one finds that precisely in religious conceptions everywhere—and not only in the Old Testament conception of religion, but in all religious conceptions—there lived a yearning for the coming Christ Spirit.

[ 23 ] Then, simply through observation, one can come to recognize how this Christ Spirit was not united with the Earth in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. If we trace everything that was sought in the mysteries and what existed in the popular [pre-Christian] religions, we see how the conceptions they formed of the gods ultimately merged everywhere into what the concept of Christ is. We see how people’s minds rose beyond the earth to the supermundane when they turned their souls toward their gods. And we see how, at the very beginning of humanity’s earthly development, simply by virtue of human organization, people were given more than what they could perceive through their senses and their intellect in the context of their earthly existence. What entered the human soul—most strongly in ancient times, then less and less—is what I would like to call instinctive vision, dreamlike vision, a beholding of a spiritual—non-earthly—world to which human beings felt they belonged. At the moment when human beings, through the mysteries or through popular religions, were led to be lifted up with their souls to what they could perceive as otherworldly—and with which they knew themselves to be at one in their deepest inner being—at that very moment, human beings had experienced their rebirth within.

[ 24 ] Well, my dear friends here today, when we trace the development of humanity up to the Mystery of Golgotha from an anthroposophical perspective, it becomes clear that precisely these abilities, which were once present within the human being, actually grew weaker and weaker and had ceased to exist by the time the Mystery of Golgotha took place on Earth. Certainly, remnants always remained, because development does not proceed in such sudden leaps. Individual human beings retained—if perhaps only an imprecise vision—yet nonetheless an instinctive awareness of what had once been seen; this can be traced all the way into art. Then the Mystery of Golgotha came to Earth. And in the Mystery of Golgotha, anthroposophy sees precisely the inflow into a human body of that Spirit who previously could only be sought in the extra-earthly realm: the inflow of Christ into the human body of Jesus. How this can be conceived in detail is a matter that can only be discussed with those who engage positively with research in this field. Here, anthroposophy shows how, from that time onward—from the Mystery of Golgotha onward—a new era began on Earth, the era of which all the ancient religious traditions [spoke]. And the Christ who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ whom Paul beheld on the road to Damascus—that Christ has since remained within the Earth among humanity. This is what the words mean: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”—He lives among us; he can be found again. The Paul-experience can be renewed again and again with a certain degree of preparation. But when the path to Christ is sought in this way, by looking inward at their own inner development, people experience through direct perception the very Christ who has been walking on Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha; then, in their inner experience, they find Christ just as they find the Father God through their experience of the outer world—provided they are not pathologically atheistic.

[ 25 ] Thus, I can only very briefly and sketchily hint at how anthroposophy, through genuine research, arrives at the Christ event as an objective fact. In every possible detail, anthroposophy seeks to present the Christ event as the most important fact of humanity’s earthly life, as that which objectively took place. That is why the entire spirit in which the Christ event is presented in anthroposophy is such that this event can simply be accepted as a fact. And we have experienced, precisely within the anthroposophical movement, that, for example, adherents of Judaism in the truest, most genuine, and most honest sense have come to acknowledge the Mystery of Golgotha. But with this, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps the anthroposophical movement has already anticipated what must inevitably occur in the future development of humanity: that by pointing directly to what can be beheld in the Mystery of Golgotha, the path to Christianity can be rediscovered.

[ 26 ] It is certainly worth asking whether there is not, after all, a profound significance to what is contained in the book by Friedrich Nietzsche’s friend Overbeck—namely, that modern theology is no longer Christian at all. If there were any truth to this, one might perhaps be justified in saying: Anthroposophy is capable of leading people in a living way to the experience of Christ. It portrays the time in which the Christ event took place in such a way that there was still so much of the ancient instinctive views remaining in individual people that the spiritual foundation—I would say, the spiritual substance—of the Mystery of Golgotha could be perceived and acknowledged in the early Christian centuries. We then see how this diminishes more and more; we see it fade away entirely with a figure such as Scotus Erigena, we see medieval theology taking shape more and more, in which an attempt was made to grapple with what modern humanity had to develop: the intellect, which—when left entirely to its own devices and not developing further inwardly—cannot approach the supersensible worlds. It divided what sought to enter the human soul, so to speak, into that which human beings can know through the intellect, and into the unknowable, which human beings cannot reach on their own, but only through revelation.

[ 27 ] It is from these foundations that one can understand the whole of medieval theology, especially Thomistic theology, which was regarded by Catholicism as the sole authoritative source. Much can be said about this today. What anthroposophy has always sought to do—and continues to do—is nothing other than to express, in a simple and unadorned way, what is present in spiritual perception.

[ 28 ] And just as anthroposophy arrives at the statement that atheism is actually a hidden illness, so it arrives at the second statement: Not finding Christ, not finding a connection to Christ, is a fate, a misfortune, for human beings! Atheism is an illness; failing to find Christ is a misfortune of fate; for one can find him through inner experience. But then he reveals himself as the being who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. One can come to Christ through inner experience alone; one does not need anthroposophical research to be a religious person in the Christian sense. But once one comes to Christ, one becomes a member of the spiritual world, and one can truly speak of a resurrection of the human being in the spiritual world, of an expansion of the soul in the experience of the spiritual world; and one can say that the person who does not find Christ is, in a certain sense, limited in terms of their worldview. Atheism is a disease! Not coming to Christ is a fate; not coming to the Spirit is a limitation of the soul!

[ 29 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, based on these underlying principles, anthroposophy is essentially concerned only with religion—[not with theology]—and with religion only insofar as people who have religious needs that cannot be satisfied by current denominations turn to anthroposophy. Anthroposophy seeks only to do what is necessary in light of today’s needs—and what others do not do. You can glean the underlying attitude—which I must repeatedly characterize—from the following.

[ 30 ] Many years ago, I once gave a lecture on “The Bible and Wisdom” in a city in southern Germany—at that time it was a German city, but today it is no longer one. Two Catholic priests were also present at this lecture. After the lecture, the two of them came up to me and said: “We actually didn’t find anything in your lecture that could be contested from a Catholic standpoint.” — I said, “If only I could always be so fortunate!” — To which they replied, “Yes, but one thing struck us; it’s not what you say, but the way you present it, and in that regard we must say: You speak to people who are, in a certain sense, prepared. You are speaking to a kind of congregation that has a certain level of education; but we speak to all people.” — I said: “Reverend, it does not matter that we decide this based on our subjective feelings, but rather that we, as human beings, embed our work within the course of history; that we do not imagine we speak for all people, but rather that we answer such a question based on what objectively lives within human development.” Just as I might imagine that I speak for all people—and could be very much mistaken in that—so you might imagine the same. It is very good for enthusiasm to have this imagination. But let us ask: Do all the people who today feel a need to hear something about Christ still come to you in church? — The two of them could not say yes, for of course they knew that many people who were also seeking the path to Christ did not come to their church. So I said: “You see, for those who do not come to you, yet are seeking the path to Christ—it is for them that I speak.” — That means defining one’s tasks in light of the times, and not imagining that one speaks for all people, but rather asking oneself: Are there minds out there that are willing to receive this or that in a particular way?

[ 31 ] Anthroposophy has never, with any other intention, aligned itself with any religious denomination. Although we in the Waldorf school have come to shape the very practice of our teaching based on anthroposophy, we have nevertheless refrained entirely from turning the Waldorf school into a school through which anthroposophy would be instilled in the children’s minds. With regard to religious instruction, we have Catholic children taught by a Catholic priest and Protestant children by a Protestant pastor. Only for children from non-denominational backgrounds has a form of free religious instruction been established, but it is entirely in the Christian spirit. However, we do not present abstract anthroposophy there—nor concrete anthroposophy, as it might be presented to adults—but rather we strive with all our might to present to the children what corresponds to their actual stage of development; yet all of this must first be sought out and discovered in terms of both content and method. Through the free religious education classes we have established, we have succeeded in bringing even those children—who otherwise would have no religious instruction at all—back to Christianity, and they come in droves to participate in this form of Christian religious education. But we have never engaged in any kind of religious propaganda within the anthroposophical movement, and certainly nothing has ever been undertaken from within anthroposophy against individual theological systems.

[ 32 ] For what can be the sole responsibility of anthroposophy in this regard is to make the various theological systems understandable in their differences, and not to oppose them. I have always seen this as my task when speaking to people who have come to anthroposophy: to make it understandable why Catholicism has become Catholicism, Protestantism Protestantism, Judaism Judaism, and Buddhism Buddhism, and how within them all—I believe this is a Christian concept—lives that being who, by virtue of his destiny, is able to experience the true Christian within his soul.

[ 33 ] Thus, had the attacks not come from other quarters, there would have been no need for a dispute to arise between anthroposophy and theology; and even today, I speak these words only because it was requested by those organizing today’s Theologians’ Day. However, the sole task that Anthroposophy sets for itself is the proclamation of anthroposophical research findings concerning the supersensible world. That is why I have always been particularly reserved in the face of attacks coming from the theological side. For Anthroposophy does not wish to enter the arena as a combatant; rather, it seeks to satisfy the legitimate needs of the human soul that our times demand. And all who wish to collaborate with anthroposophy in this spirit to satisfy these legitimate human soul needs—which are welling up from the depths of the soul to the surface—all who wish to work with it in this spirit are welcome!