The Rudolf Steiner Archive

23. Augustine

[ 1 ] My task was to show that Christianity underwent a process of development during the first few centuries, and I emphasized that this process was actually completed relatively late—in any case, much later than the “orthodox” churches imagine.

[ 2 ] This development also took place during a mystical era. The main idea was that throughout the Mediterranean region, in Europe, and deep into Africa, there was a deepening of the religious worldview before our era, before the first century of the Christian era, and that this deepening of religious life moved in exactly the same direction and virtually grew toward Christianity—indeed, for many currents within Christianity, it formed the very foundation.

[ 3 ] When we examine Christian writers of the first century, we cannot say which ideas stem from one source or another. The Apocalypse was nothing more than a popularization of ancient mystery ideas. Those initiated into the mysteries often converted to Christianity later on. They then expressed themselves in the same way as the pagan writers. This became particularly clear to us in the case of Pseudo-Dionysius, Dionysius the Areopagite, who is said to have been converted by the Apostle Paul. The writings of this Dionysius likely date from an earlier time. They are permeated with mystical ideas; theosophical ideas are also found within them. We are dealing here with an ancient Egyptian priest who was initiated into the Egyptian or Eleusinian Mysteries and who then expressed these truths in this manner. Or we may also assume that in Alexandria, mysticism finds expression once again through Dionysius. In the first century, we are dealing with a doctrine that is still in the process of development. In fact, we can say that it was not until the fourth century that the very specific doctrine known in the West as Christianity took hold.

[ 4 ] The first writer to bear witness to the earliest form of purely Christian mysticism was Augustine, whom we are considering today. In him we have the first example of Christian mysticism before us. Thus, the mystery that early Christianity was founded on the mysteries of the ancients will become clearest to us. The Gnostics were Christian mystics of the first century. I said that these Gnostics taught the ancient theosophical doctrines of the Logos—the Logos incarnated in matter—and that they spread what they had gleaned from the ancient mysteries. I said that they proceeded from the premise that human beings can ascend only through the various degrees of knowledge to true vision—they recognized a spiritualized Christ as their own—and that they made use of all the means of Christian sentiment to incorporate as many teachings about Jesus of Nazareth as possible into those teachings that you can still discern today on the basis of the Gospels. There were also various sects among the Gnostics. Those teachings essentially represent nothing other than ancient mysticism translated into popular terms. If we imagine this spirit [of the ancient teaching cast into new forms], then we have what the Gnostics advocated. It was also they who said that the best cannot be entrusted to Scripture, but that the highest levels can only be transmitted from person to person.

[ 5 ] Thus, the Gnostics were the proponents of a spiritualized form of Christianity. We also find such creeds in Alexandria. We could cite a whole series of Christian creeds; however, we can no longer say what the various ecclesiastical writers—who were labeled heretics by the Church Fathers—taught.

[ 6 ] If we were to examine these various opinions, we would find that, in the early years of Christianity, we are indeed dealing with a diverse doctrine—not a uniform one—a doctrine that has drawn influences from all sides. It is therefore the case that we are not dealing with a self-contained doctrine in the first century. Modern Christianity is a product of the two councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

[ 7 ] We must regard Augustine as the most important figure in the development of Christian mysticism, because he sought a depth within himself that no one who came after him was able to attain in the same way—nor could it be surpassed—since later times were [admittedly] more Christian but not more mystical. Augustine represents for us—in the fourth to fifth centuries—the beginning of what can reveal the fundamental difference between what must still have existed in [earlier] Christianity and what later took the place of this original Christianity.

[ 8 ] I would like to state right away that anyone who sets out to study Augustine—his profound inner life—will find the greatest satisfaction. I would like to say that I would not compare any other figure to Augustine in terms of the greatness and acuity of his thought. But even among modern philosophers, there are likely very few—and very little—that I would place on a par with Augustine. Anyone who takes up and studies Descartes, anyone who compares him with Augustine, will find that Descartes represents only a one-sided approach. Augustine, however, ranks among the deepest thinkers of all time.

[ 9 ] What we know about the Gnostics indicates that, in addition to the fundamental beliefs found in ancient religious systems throughout the world, the Gnostics also embraced what was still being disseminated as mysteries; indeed, Gnosticism encompassed everything that we seek to revive today in the teachings of Theosophy. Anyone who attempts to delve into Gnosticism will be unable to conclude anything other than that it is beyond doubt that this Gnostic worldview is still imbued with the feelings and ideas that constituted the essence, the deepest core, of the ancient religious systems—that it is simply the documents that do not speak to us clearly and distinctly enough.

[ 10 ] If we consider the doctrine of reincarnation, reincarnation, it is this doctrine alone that corresponds to an eternal world order that is strictly self-contained—the only one that shows us how the world and God can be identical, because only on the basis of this doctrine can a complete balance, a harmony between truth and falsehood—in short, a complete harmony between all seemingly divergent ideas—be possible. I mean that human beings feel at one not only with some divine being, but with the eternal Spirit that pervades the entire world, and perceive this Spirit not only as the one Godhead, but also as the individuality that runs through every single life; I am referring, then, to the reincarnation of the Spirit, which we also encounter in Buddhist teaching, which has not one but many Buddhas. This teaching [of reincarnation] was undoubtedly something that was contained as a fundamental theme in the ancient Gnostic teachings. We now understand why deeply initiated disciples of Dionysius repeatedly adopted this apostolic name for themselves. Like the Pythagoreans, they believed that the spirit of the founder still lived on within them. They recognized him within themselves, just as the Pythagoreans recognized their forefather within themselves. It was not until later that the teachings [of Dionysius] were recorded. The one who recorded them regarded himself as a personality whose spirit reached back to the time of the order’s founding.

[ 11 ] This is the fundamental phenomenon of Christianity: that this doctrine of the universal spirituality of the world—this esoteric view—is gradually being overcome, forgotten, and disappearing. We therefore first encounter, clearly and distinctly in Augustine, a Christianity devoid of this worldview, devoid of this fundamental spirit. He advocates a view that is free from the transformation of the soul and free from the transformation of the spirit. In Augustine, therefore, we encounter the first mystic who deals exclusively with the single, personal human life. What lies between individual personalities—what the ancient religions interposed between the individual personality and the universal unity—has been eliminated in Augustine.

[ 12 ] What is truly great and significant is that, despite this, a figure emerged within the Church who attained immeasurable depth, even though he recognized no intermediate stages between individuality and universal unity. This is what first opens our understanding of the Augustinian teachings. They contain a mysticism without the foundation of an ancient mystical view, a mysticism in which everything that the ancients placed between the two is placed within the Godhead. What lies between human beings and the Godhead is transferred into the Godhead. That is why Augustine also writes: “What people formerly perceived as their world, I have transferred into the divinity.” When a person formerly contemplated the entire world and then his own personal qualities, he said to himself: “This world is not a boundary. It encompasses personalities both before and after; and the balance that I cannot find within myself, I find in the whole world.” What I lack in a single place at a given moment can be replaced for me in another place and at another time. For human beings, therefore, everything is only seemingly limited and isolated, for sooner or later it balances itself out again. This whole question: How is it that a single personality appears with these or those characteristics, appearing in such a way that a particular trait—which destroys others—turns toward the good in this person? — This question stood before Augustine as a great enigma. He solved it in the only way it could be solved. This wise man appears inhuman, seemingly carried away by the worst kind of fanaticism, when he speaks of this question, because he lacks the means to answer it in the spirit of the ancient theosophy. That is why he had to attribute it to a God; that is why he had to say: It is not the personality that determines its own existence in the eternal development of the spirit; this individual personality, he had to tell himself, stands entirely on its own; and what stands opposed to it is the infinite power and perfection [of God]. As a logical thinker, he had to conclude: Thus, all human characteristics—regardless of whether a person is born a sinner or a good person, a genius or mentally disabled—stem from the Divinity. This cannot be explained by anything else in the world. Once all intermediate links are removed, this can lie solely and exclusively in the Divinity. Hence Augustine’s harsh doctrine: Either a person is predestined for eternal bliss or for eternal damnation.

[ 13 ] It would be impossible for a person who suffered as much as he did to have taught such a harsh doctrine unless, within that worldview, he had at the same time sought, with logical consistency, to construct a worldview for himself. In the final lecture—that is, in eight days’ time—we will see how, immediately after Augustine, this doctrine was transformed into a completely different one due to a highly significant inconsistency, in the work of another deeply profound thinker, Scotus Eriugena.

[ 14 ] This is what helps us understand St. Augustine; this is what explains why he clings so rigidly to the idea that human beings are predestined for good or for evil. That intermediate link [—reincarnation—], which the Gnostics still had, has been lost to him. Now begins that Christian development which has eliminated the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the palingenesis.

[ 15 ] Augustine is considered the greatest, most influential, and most significant Doctor of the Church. Let us now consider the great figure of Saint Augustine himself. There has scarcely been a second figure in the Christian Church who has united all three qualities in such a harmonious way. Let us set aside for the moment what the Christian Church had lost at that time, and consider Augustine as a Christian mystic. Clear thinking, firmly grounded in reason; depth of feeling; and, at the same time, the noblest will and the noblest character. These were the qualities that were present in this man in a rare harmony. We therefore also see that his life is a continuous process of self-initiation, which is sought by most mystics. We see how he was raised in the faith by his mother Monica, yet how he was unsatisfied with conventional church teachings; we see how he fell into doubt and, having found no satisfaction in the teachings his mother could impart to him, joined the Manichaeans, a sect.

[ 16 ] This sect shows us that the Persian worldview had penetrated Christian doctrine, in which two opposing forces play a role: good and evil. They regard Christ, as the Logos, as a helper who leads people entangled in the bonds of evil back to the good. The Manichaeans are [destined] to explain evil. For them, evil is a primal power that must simply be overcome.

[ 17 ] According to theosophical doctrine, evil arises solely from a sacrifice offered by the Deity itself, through the Deity’s external manifestation—that is, through its incarnation. This gives rise to the appearance of evil, untruth, and error. Error arises because the complete interconnection within the world cannot be made clear to us. It is obscured by the various material intermediaries between individuality and the Whole.

[ 18 ] This Manichaean teaching satisfied Augustine for a time, because in his youth he had experienced evil, the forces that drag one down, and wicked passions, desires, and impulses. He could not explain this to himself in any other way than by acknowledging that these forces exist in the world. But something within Saint Augustine rebelled against this view. Thus it came to pass that a contradiction arose within this doctrine, standing in opposition to him. He could not understand how two primordial elements could exist: a good All-One and an evil All-One. As his thinking progressed, he could not grant error the same validity [as truth].

[ 19 ] Now came something that must befall every person who has advanced to this stage. There comes a period when evil and good, ugliness and beauty, confront him as two forces of equal strength. Mara approaches the Buddha; Satan approaches the Christ. Only life itself, only deepening, can bring about victory. No knowledge given to us beforehand is capable of this. We ourselves must bring about victory through our own inner work. There are two paths. We may, through mystical guidance, perhaps advance toward this victory over evil; or, if this is not available—as was the case for Augustine, who could not receive external mystical guidance—then the only possibility is to fight for that victory from within ourselves and to ascend to that level.

[ 20 ] Augustine found this guidance in Christianity, which he understood as deeply as was humanly possible, [...]. He did not find this path immediately. At first, he could not find anyone who could help him. His own strength was not yet sufficiently developed. He found no one who, drawing from the Christian tradition itself, could have taught him what he later called “the Spirit as opposed to the Letter.” Therefore, it was necessary for him to go through the most terrible doubts into which he now fell. He himself became a doubter, a skeptic, and went through the most bitter doubts of understanding before he became a Christian in the sense that is called “soteric.”

[ 21 ] It was Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who introduced him to the Spirit rather than the letter. We can still see, page by page in his Confessions, the doubts he went through at that time. Everyone—Protestants and Catholics alike—should make it a point to read this work. You will read the book with the greatest satisfaction. And so will anyone else who does not count themselves among those who hold these confessions.

[ 22 ] Luther himself was an Augustinian monk, a Catholic, and regarded [Augustine] as the foremost saint. Anyone who has grown up with theosophical ideas will find in Augustine a mysticism that actually went as far as one can go without the missing teachings I have mentioned. Doubt emerges everywhere between the lines in the Confessions. He shows us how he struggled throughout his entire life. And he emerged victorious over doubt.

[ 23 ] What, then, was the nature of these doubts? Even in our own time, we have skeptics whom we must confront. But one must study Augustine’s doubts, and then one must recognize and acknowledge: There is justification for doubt once one has reached this stage of Augustine’s thought. The doubts that stem from people who do not wish to overcome them, or from people who have derived them from philosophy, appear to us—in contrast to Augustine’s doubts—as a frivolous approach to knowledge. But Augustine’s doubt—which is based on the question of how good and evil can coexist in harmony—is overcome in spite of everything. Under the guidance of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Augustine struggles through this process. He describes this development to us in his Confessions. We see that Augustine achieved everything that could be achieved within the intellectual current into which he had been drawn. We even see echoes of Indian teachings emerging in his work. His path of knowledge unfolds before us in seven stages. Within these seven stages, however, everything that must be missing is absent, since the primordial element is missing.

[ 24 ] Human beings develop out of material existence. At this stage, they are on the same level as plants and animals. This is the first stage. You will find these stages somewhat different from what is known about them in Theosophy. Human beings then develop from this material stage to the organic stage; they develop their organs, their organic functions, their sensory functions, and their memory functions. They now also live in the external world. Here they are on the second stage. They work there, perceiving within the realm of sensation. Then they reach the third stage. They introduce the spirit into the external world. The spirit takes possession of the external world—from simple technical activities all the way up to what appears to us as our manifestation of the spirit in the world, and to that through which the spirit derives its power for practical action. And then, when the human being withdraws again, when he has become a being of strong will, when he perceives the spirit of the Good and the True, he is on the fourth stage. He reaches the fifth stage when he senses that the Divine dwells in the True and receives a “glimpse into the divine thoughts.” He stands on the sixth stage when he not only feels the Divine within himself but senses it permeating his eternal existence. He stands on the seventh stage when, like the Deity, he acts with a strong will.

[ 25 ] The Buddha’s teachings show us how human beings must pass through certain stages. Once they have reached a certain stage, they perceive the cosmic inhalation and exhalation; they see how human beings, as it were, leave one house and later enter another. Thus, the spiritually developed person sees how human beings enter the process of reincarnation from the spiritual world and then return to the spiritual world. This is what had to be distinctly addressed in the Buddha’s teachings. In the teachings of Augustine, which otherwise appear similar to the Buddhist teachings, we lack this moving element, which had been forgotten in Christianity. In Augustine’s sevenfold path, we lack the moving description given to us five hundred years before the birth of Christ in “The Visible Fruits of the Ascetic Life.” It is the one text that no one will read without being deeply impressed by the significance of what existed within the Buddhist community.

[ 26 ] [Are these not words of the deepest insight into Augustine that we encounter in the wisdom of his biography?] What once appeared to us as a bone of contention now appears to us [in Augustine] in a transfigured form. Such is the case with the Trinity, which has led to the formation of countless sects. When this concept appears to us in Augustine, he directs us toward self-knowledge. He says: I delve into my own personality, and it presents itself to me as a triad. I first perceive myself as my “being,” then as the “knower,” and then as the “willer.” I am these three in one person. And just as I am these three in one person, so it is also in that of which the personality is merely a reflection. — The Divine lives within the human being. The human being can therefore find the Divine only by delving into his or her inner self, into the inner truth that we can discover through self-knowledge.

[ 27 ] The fact of thinking is the deepest reality that exists for him. There he finds the most moving words to describe this—words that have also given him the certainty of the divine [Primordial One]. “I look out into the world and see the most diverse things in nature. I was able to find that they are divine, but I could not find that they are God. I see people and finally look within myself. I see that I must be divine, but I also see that I am not ‘God.’ I first had to arrive at complete certainty within myself; I had to become a better person myself. Then I discovered the ‘good within me.’ - Self-reflection must come first: that is true mysticism. If you have not first discovered what is within you, all prior self-knowledge will be of no use to you. First awaken this primordial Oneness within yourself, and then you will also be able to find what is deepest. - He wanted to doubt that he was alive, to doubt that he was thinking; but he cannot doubt that. And what is this primordial Oneness? “I asked the earth, the sea; I asked the winds”—see the Confessions—“they answered: We are not God.” He was unable to recognize the spiritual [there]. He saw it only through symbols. He believed [at first] that this was it. But that was his error. He regards it as the highest good to perceive the spiritual in a spiritual way. — I now perceive the eternal goals, the eternal ideas, as the Pythagoreans saw them. I do not merely perceive countable, conceptualized things; rather, I perceive in such a way that I look into the numbers, into the things themselves, so that I see the purely spiritual itself.

[ 28 ] In Scotus Eriugena, we will come to know yet another figure of infinite, mystical depth. But we must acknowledge that in Augustine we have found such a defining figure for Christianity that, through his teachings and his personality, it becomes clear to us what Christianity has lost in terms of ancient mystical perspectives. It becomes clear to us just how deep it has been able to go, despite what has been lost. Augustine experienced everything that was possible for him, for he was a figure who lived through everything, who discovered the law of truth as the primordial law of life. This is the teaching of Saint Augustine, which cannot be overlooked when speaking of Western mysticism.

FAQ:

[ 29 ] Question: It is indeed peculiar that Augustine, despite his inner contemplation and his mystical immersion, did not arrive at the doctrine of reincarnation.

[ 30 ] Answer: Those who follow the teachings of Augustine achieve a harmony between cognition, feeling, and moral love. This gives them a perspective on the Divine, which they recognize as the innermost essence of humanity. This is a stage of contemplation in which, however, the Divine does not take on a form. However, this becomes possible once the act of beholding has reached the point where the spiritual reveals itself to us at various levels. Its seven levels therefore do not appear to us as containing the most important aspect.

[ 31 ] Through contemplation, he can penetrate into mysticism, and for him, mysticism means life in the divine.

[ 32 ] The Buddha's personality is superior to that of Augustine.

[ 33 ] What is truly mystical has never been lost. The esoteric has permeated the exoteric, both in the time of Buddha and in the early centuries of Christianity.