The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. About the Lost Temple and the One to Be Rebuilt in the Context of the Legend of the True Cross or Golden Legend III

The Legend of the Holy Cross and the World-Historical Significance of Solomon’s Temple

[ 1 ] Having already discussed Christianity and its development in the present and future on several occasions, we have now reached the point where we must also consider the significance of the symbol of the cross—not so much from a historical perspective as from a practical one.

[ 2 ] You know, of course, what a comprehensive symbolic significance the cross has for Christianity; and today I would like to shed light specifically on the connection between the symbol of the cross and the world-historical significance of Solomon’s Temple.

[ 3 ] There is, of course, a so-called sacred legend concerning the entire development of the cross, and in it we have in mind not so much the sign of the cross or the general world symbolism of the cross, but rather that specific, particular cross of which the Christian speaks—precisely that cross upon which Christ Jesus was crucified. But you also know that the cross is a universal human symbol, found not only in Christianity but in the religious beliefs and symbols of all peoples, so that its meaning must be a universal one. What interests us particularly today, however, is how the symbol of the cross acquired this fundamental meaning in Christianity.

[ 4 ] The Christian legend about the cross is as follows; we will proceed from this:

[ 5 ] The wood or tree from which the wood of the cross was taken is not simply wood, but—as the legend tells—was originally a shoot from the Tree of Life that had been cut off for Adam, the first human. Adam’s son Seth planted this shoot in the ground, and this young tree grew three trunks that were intertwined. Later, Moses is said to have fashioned the famous staff from this very wood. Then, in the legend, the same wood plays a role again in connection with King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. It was to be used as an important pillar in the temple’s construction. But then something peculiar came to light. It turned out that it would not fit in any way. It could not be incorporated into the temple, and so it was laid as a bridge across a river. Here it went largely unnoticed until the Queen of Sheba arrived; when she crossed over it, she saw what this bridge timber was all about. Here, too, she was the first to discover the significance of this bridge timber, which lay there between the two realms—the shore of this world and the shore of the next—enabling the crossing of the river. Subsequently, the cross on which the Savior was crucified was fashioned from this timber, and thereafter it embarked on its various further journeys.

[ 6 ] You see, then, that this legend concerns something connected with the origin and development of the human race. Adam’s son Seth is said to have taken that shoot from the Tree of Life, which then sprouted three shoots. These three shoots symbolize the three principles, the three eternal powers of nature—Atma, Buddhi, Manas—which have grown together to form that Trinity that is the foundation of all becoming and all development. It is very significant that Seth, that son of Adam who took the place of Abel, whom Cain had killed, planted this shoot in the earth.

[ 7 ] You know that we are dealing, on the one hand, with the Cain current and, on the other hand, with the current of the descendants of Abel-Seth. The sons of Cain, who work in the outer world, are primarily devoted to the sciences and the arts. It is they who bring the building blocks for the temple from the outer world. The temple was to be built through their art. The descendants of the lineage of Abel-Seth are the so-called Sons of God, who cultivate the true spiritual aspect of human nature. These two currents have always been in a kind of opposition. On the one hand, we have the worldly pursuits of humanity, the development of those sciences that serve human comfort or external life in general; on the other hand, there are the Sons of God, who are concerned with the development of the higher attributes of humanity.

[ 8 ] We must realize that the perspective from which the sacred legend of the Cross emerged makes a strict distinction between what, through science and technology, is merely external construction of the temple of the world, and what acts as a religious permeation, as a religious influence for the sanctification of the entire temple of humanity. Only when this temple of humanity is given a higher purpose—when, so to speak, the outer building, which serves merely a practical function, is transformed into an expression of the house of God—does the outer building become a shell for the spiritual interior, within which the higher tasks of humanity are cultivated. Only when strength is directed toward the pursuit of divine virtue, when the outer form becomes beauty, and when the word—which serves human interaction—is placed in the service of divine wisdom; in other words, only when the earthly is transformed into the divine, does it attain its perfection. If the three virtues—wisdom, beauty, and strength—are the sheaths of the divine, then the temple of humanity will be perfected. This is how the view, which operates in the spirit of this legend, conceived of the matter.

[ 9 ] We must therefore imagine, entirely in the spirit of the legend, that until the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, two currents existed. One built the earthly temple, shaping the deeds of humanity so that later the divine Word, which had come to earth through Christ Jesus, could be received. A dwelling place was to be prepared for the appearance of the divine Word on earth. Meanwhile, the Divine itself was to develop through the ages as a kind of secondary current within the second current. Therefore, a distinction was made between the sons of men, the lineage of Cain, who were to prepare the earthly realm, and the sons of God, the sons of Abel-Seth, who nurtured the Divine, until both currents could enter into union with one another. Christ Jesus united these two currents. The temple was first to be built outwardly, until then, in Christ Jesus, the one appeared who could raise it anew in three days. On the one hand, we thus have the current of the sons of Cain, and on the other hand, the current of the descendants of Abel-Seth, both of which prepare the development of humanity so that the Son of God could then unite the two sides, making the two currents into one. This is expressed in a profound way in the sacred legend.

[ 10 ] Seth himself is the one who planted that shoot, which he had taken from the Tree of Life for Adam, into the earth and grew a three-branched tree. What does this three-branched tree signify? At first, nothing other than the Trinity of Atma, Buddhi, Manas—the threefold higher nature of man—which is implanted into the lower principles. But in man it is initially veiled; man is initially, through his three bodies—the physical, etheric, and astral bodies—like an outer covering of the actual divine Trinity of Atma, Buddhi, Manas. You must therefore imagine that the trinity of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies is like an outer representation of the higher forces of Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. And just as the artist shapes outer forms, representing a certain idea in colors, so too do these three sheaths represent, as it were, a work of art. If you imagine that the higher principles are like the idea of a work of art, then you have a rough idea of what constitutes the life of these three bodies.

[ 11 ] Now, man dwells in his physical, etheric, and astral sheaths with his I, through which he is to transform this threefold nature so that the three higher principles may find their proper dwelling place here on Earth and feel at home. The old covenant was meant to ensure this. It was to bring the sons of man into the world through the arts of the race of Cain, and through these sons of man, everything external that serves the physical, etheric, and astral bodies was to be created. What is all this?

[ 12 ] What serves the physical body is, first of all, everything that is established through the technical arts for the satisfaction of the physical body and its comfort. What we then have in terms of social and state institutions and organizations regarding human coexistence, which relates to nutrition and procreation, serves to build up the life body. And acting upon the astral body, we have the realm of moral precepts, of ethics, which are intended to bring the drives and passions into order, to regulate the astral nature, and to raise it to a higher level.

[ 13 ] Thus, throughout the entire Old Covenant, the sons of Cain built this three-tiered temple. It is, as it is composed of our external institutions—you may think of our dwellings, tools, social and political systems, and moral institutions—in all of this, it is the edifice of the sons of Cain, which serves the lower aspects of human nature.

[ 14 ] Alongside this worked the other current, led by the Sons of God, their disciples, and their successors. From there we have the servants of the divine world order, the servants of the Ark of the Covenant. In them we have something that functions as a distinct current alongside the servants of the world. They occupied a special position. Only after the Temple of Solomon was built was the Ark of the Covenant to be placed within it; that is to say, everything else was to be arranged, as it were, in relation to the Ark of the Covenant, grouping itself around it. Everything that was formerly worldly was to become an outer expression, a structure, for what the Ark of the Covenant signifies for humanity. One can best imagine Solomon’s Temple by conceiving of it as something that outwardly, in its physical form, expresses what the Ark of the Covenant is meant to be as a soul.

[ 15 ] What animated the three outer bodies of man, what gave them life, was borrowed by the Sons of God from the Tree of Life. This is symbolically expressed in the timber that was later used for the Cross of Christ. It was first given to the Sons of God. What did they do with it? What does the wood of the cross signify in a deeper sense? There lies an immensely profound meaning in this sacred legend of the wood of the cross.

[ 16 ] What, then, is humanity’s task in its earthly evolution? It is to raise its present three bodies, which it has received, up to a higher level. Thus, they are to raise the physical body into a higher realm, and they are also to raise the etheric and astral bodies into a higher realm. This evolution is the responsibility of human beings. That is its true purpose: to make our three bodies into three higher members of the entire divine world order.

[ 17 ] Higher than what man initially possesses physically lies another realm. But to which realm does man belong according to his physical nature? According to his physical nature, at the present stage of his development, he belongs to the mineral realm. The physical, chemical, and mineral laws govern our physical body. But by virtue of his spiritual nature as well, he belongs to the mineral kingdom, for with his intellect he comprehends only the mineral kingdom. He only gradually learns to comprehend life as such. It is precisely for this reason that official science denies life, because it is still in this phase of development where it comprehends only the dead, the mineral. It is in the process of comprehending this in the most subtle way. Therefore, it also comprehends the human body only insofar as it is a dead, mineral entity. It essentially treats it as a dead product, working with it as one would with a substance in a chemical laboratory. Other substances are introduced into it, just as substances are introduced into a retort. Even when the physician, who today is educated entirely in mineral science, performs surgery on the human body, it is as if the body were nothing more than a mechanical product.

[ 18 ] We are thus dealing with the human body at the level of the mineral kingdom in two respects: the human being is realized in the mineral kingdom through his physical body, and with mere intellect he comprehends only the mineral kingdom. This is a necessary transitional stage for human beings. But if they rely not merely on the intellect but on intuition, on spiritual power, then we will realize that we are moving toward a future in which our dead, mineral body will work against a living one. And our science must lead the way here; it must prepare what is to happen to the physical being in the future. In the near future, it must itself become something that contains the living within it; it must comprehend what lives on Earth as something living. For in a deeper sense, it is true that it is human thoughts that prepare the future. An ancient Indian saying therefore rightly states: What you think today, that you will be tomorrow.

[ 19 ] The entire existence of the world does not spring from dead matter; it springs from living thought. What is external matter is a result of living thought, just as ice is a result of water. The material world is, as it were, frozen thought. We must dissolve it back into its higher elements by grasping life within thought. If we can elevate the mineral into the living, if we can transform the thought of the whole human nature, then we will achieve that our science becomes a science of life and not of dead matter. We thereby raise the lowest principle—first in our understanding and later also in reality—up into the next realm. And thus we raise every member of human nature—the etheric and the astral as well—one step higher.

[ 20 ] What humanity once was, we call in theosophical language the three elemental kingdoms. These precede our mineral kingdom, in which we live today—that is, the kingdom in which our science is exhausted and in which our physical body lives. The three elemental kingdoms are past stages. But the three higher kingdoms, which are built upon the mineral kingdom—the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom—are only in their infancy.

[ 21 ] The lowest principle of man must still pass through these three kingdoms just as it passes through the mineral kingdom today. Just as human beings today, by virtue of their physical nature, dwell in the mineral kingdom, so will they later dwell in the plant kingdom and then ascend to even higher kingdoms. Today, by virtue of our physical nature, we are in the transitional stage from the mineral to the plant kingdom; by virtue of our etheric nature, in the transition from the plant to the animal kingdom; and by virtue of our astral nature, in the transition from the animal to the human kingdom. And only with what we have as a beginning from the region of wisdom, where we extend beyond what is astral nature with our own nature, do we extend beyond the three kingdoms into the divine kingdom.

[ 22 ] Thus, humanity is in the process of ascending. But it is not an external institution, not an external structure that brings this about, but the living force itself that awakens within us, which does not merely assemble the external building blocks, but works in a formative, growing way. This life force must intervene in the process of development, and it must first take hold of the innermost being of the human being; his religious life must be seized by the living force. Therefore, what the sons of Cain accomplished during the Old Covenant for the lower aspects of human nature was like a preparation, and what the prophets, the guardians of the Ark of the Covenant, accomplished was like a prophetic hint of the future. But the Divine was now to descend into the Ark of the Covenant, into the soul, to dwell as the Holy of Holies within the temple itself.

[ 23 ] These living forces, which work to transform and reshape, the forces that are actively at work in the transformation of nature—they had already been given to the first human, Adam, from the Tree of Life. But they were entrusted to those who did not concern themselves with the outer structure, the sons of God, the sons of Abel and Seth. Through Christianity, these forces were now to become common property. The two currents were to unite. And today, essentially everything that stems from the view that no external form, no temple, no house, no social institution should come into being unless it is permeated by inner life—by the life-giving force rather than the merely assembling mineral force—is Christian.

[ 24 ] The first attempt made to guide the lower nature of man upward toward the higher was, as we have seen, the Temple of Solomon. The pentagon was to be seen as the great symbol at the entrance, for man was to strive toward the fifth principle; that is, human nature was to evolve from the lower principles toward the higher, and was to ennoble its individual members.

[ 25 ] And here we come to the profound significance of the cross, which led to its finding that fundamental and actual meaning as a symbol in Christianity. What is the cross? There are three realms toward which human nature strives: the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human realm. Today, humanity is realized within the mineral kingdom, which includes plants, animals, and humans. Understand this as it is stated in all wisdom traditions: that humanity, as a soul-spiritual being, is a part of the universal soul—that which, for example, Giordano Bruno called the world soul. Perhaps the individual soul is like a drop of the world soul, which we imagine as a great sea. Now Plato himself spoke of the world soul having been crucified upon the world body.

[ 26 ] The World Soul, as it manifests itself in human beings, is currently spread out across the mineral kingdom. It is meant to rise above this, to evolve upward into the three higher kingdoms. To do so, it must still be incarnated in the plant, animal, and human kingdoms over the next three cycles. The fourth round is nothing other than the embodiment of the human soul in the mineral kingdom, the fifth round that in the plant kingdom, the sixth that in the animal kingdom, and only the seventh round is the embodiment in the actual human kingdom, where the human being will be a complete image of the Deity. Until then, he must still take the world body as his shell three more times.

[ 27 ] When we look toward this future of humanity, it presents itself to us as a threefold materiality: plant, animal, and human. This human materiality, however, is not the materiality we have today, for that is the mineral one; after all, humanity has only just arrived at the mineral cycle. Only when the lowest kingdom becomes the human kingdom, when there will be no more lower beings, when humanity will have redeemed all beings through the power of its own life, will it have reached the seventh round, where God rests because humanity itself creates. Then the seventh day of creation will have arrived, when humanity will have become the image of God. These are the stages in the history of creation.

[ 28 ] Today, plants, animals, and humans, as they stand before us, are merely the seeds of what they are to become. The plant today is only a symbolic hint of something that is to appear in greater glory and clarity only in the next cycle of human development. And when humanity has overcome and cast off its animal nature, then it will be something of which it is today merely a hint. Thus, the plant, animal, and human kingdoms are the three material realms that humanity must still pass through; they are its world-body, and the soul must be crucified upon this world-body.

[ 29 ] Now consider the contrast between plant, animal, and human. The plant is the exact opposite of the human. This has a very deep, meaningful significance when we regard the plant as the exact opposite of the human and the human as the reversed nature of the plant. External science does not concern itself with such things; it takes things as they present themselves to the external senses. But the science that has something to do with theosophy considers the meaning of things in their connection with the rest of evolution. For every thing, as Goethe says, is to be understood only as a parable.

[ 30 ] The plant has its roots in the ground and unfolds its leaves and flower organs toward the sun. The sun today possesses within itself the power that was once connected to the Earth. The sun has, after all, separated from our Earth. The entire power of the sun is thus something with which our Earth was once permeated. Back then, the power of the sun lived within the Earth. Even today, by turning its floral organs toward the power of the sun, the plant seeks to recapture those times when the power of the sun was connected to the Earth. Solar power is the etheric power of the plant. By holding its reproductive organs toward the sun, the plant reveals its deep kinship with the sun; its reproductive principle is occultly linked to the solar power. The head of the plant, on the other hand, which is embedded in the darkness of the earth, is at the same time related to the earth. Earth and sun are two opposing poles in evolution.

[ 31 ] Human beings are the inverted plant; the plant has its reproductive organs turned toward the sun, with its head pointing downward. With human beings, it is exactly the opposite: they hold their heads upward, turned toward the higher worlds to receive the spirit, while their reproductive organs point downward. The animal stands in the middle, between the plant and the human. It has only made a half-turn and thus forms, so to speak, a crossbar to the line of direction formed by the plant and the human. It carries its spine horizontally, thereby intersecting the line formed by the plant and the human in the shape of a cross. Imagine the plant kingdom growing downward, the human kingdom upward, and the animal kingdom growing horizontally; then you have formed a cross from the plant, animal, and human kingdoms.

[ 32 ] This is the symbol of the cross.

[ 33 ] It represents the three realms of life into which human beings must enter. The plant, animal, and human kingdoms are the three closest material kingdoms. The whole grows out of the mineral kingdom; today it is the foundation. The animal kingdom stands as a kind of dam between the plant and human kingdoms, and the plant is a kind of counter-image of the human being. This is connected with the fact that human life, that which lives physically in the human being, finds its closest kinship with that which lives in the plant. This could be explained in depth in many lectures, but today I can only hint at it. If humans want to maintain their physical life activity, they can best do so through plant nutrition, because then they take in what is originally related to the physical life activity of the earth. The sun is the carrier of life force, and plants are what grow toward the sun's energy. And humans must unite what lives in plants with their life force. Thus, their nutrients are occultly equivalent to plants. The animal kingdom represents a blockage, a backflow. It therefore interrupts the progress of evolution in a cross-shaped pattern in order to begin a new start.

[ 34 ] Humans and plants are opposites, but they are related to each other. The animal, however – and what is initially expressed in the astral body is the animal – is a crossing of the two principles of life. At a higher level, the human etheric body will provide the basis for the immortal human being, who will no longer be subject to death. Today, the etheric body still dissolves with the death of the human being. But the more the human being perfects and purifies himself from within, the more he gains in permanence, the less he perishes. Everything that is worked on in relation to this etheric body contributes to its immortality. In this sense, it is true that the more natural the development and the more it is directed toward the forces of life—this does not refer to the genital and passionate aspects of the animal—the more immortality takes hold of the human being.

[ 35 ] The animal is a stream that interrupts human life; it was the delay that was necessary for the reversal of the stream of life. Man had to connect himself with the animal for a time because the reversal had to take place. But he must free himself from it again and return to the stream of life.

[ 36 ] At the beginning of our human development, we were given the power of life. This is symbolically expressed in the legend that Adam's son Seth took the sprout from the tree of life, which the sons of God then cultivated further, that threefold human nature that is to be ennobled. Then Moses formed his staff from this wood of life. This staff of Moses is nothing other than the outer law. But what is external law?

[ 37 ] External law exists when the person who is to erect an external structure has a plan—that is, the lawful connections on paper—and then the external building blocks are cut and assembled according to his plan. That which underlies a state plan as law is also external law. Human beings are under the rod of Moses. Even those who obey the moral laws out of fear or hope of reward are only obeying the external law. But even those who view science only in an external way are only obeying the external law. For what else do they have but external laws? All the laws we learn in science are such external laws. Through these, however, we cannot find the transition to the higher human nature, but only obey the law of the old covenant, which is the staff of Moses. But this external law should be a model for the internal law. Man should learn to follow the law within himself. This internal law must become the impulse of life in man; from the internal law he must learn to obey the external law. It is not he who draws up a blueprint who realizes the inner law, but he who builds the temple out of inner impulse, so that the soul passes into the joining together of the building blocks. It is not he who lives in the inner law who merely follows the laws of the state, but he to whom they are the impulse of his life because they have grown together with his soul. And it is not the person who obeys moral precepts out of fear or for reward who is a moral person, but the person who obeys them because he loves them.

[ 38 ] As long as people were not mature enough to accept the laws internally, as long as the rod of Moses was present in the law, forcing people under a yoke, the law remained in the Ark of the Covenant. Until then, the Pauline principle, the principle of grace over man, came and he was given the opportunity to become free from the law. Therein lies the depth of the Pauline view that it makes a distinction between law and grace. When the law is imbued with love, when love has become united with the law, then it is grace. This is how the Pauline distinction between law and grace is to be understood.

[ 39 ] Now we can follow the legend of the cross even further. Wood is used as a bridge between two banks because it was not suitable as a pillar in Solomon's Temple. This was a preparation. The Ark of the Covenant was in the temple, but the Word made flesh was not yet there. The wood of the cross is laid as a bridge over a river, but it was only the Queen of Sheba who recognized the value of the wood for the temple, which is to live in the consciousness of the whole human soul. Now the same wood is used to build the cross on which the Savior hangs. The one who unites the two earlier currents, who allows the worldly and spiritual currents to flow into one another, is Christ himself, who is united with the living cross. Therefore, he can carry the wood of the cross as something he takes upon his back, as something that lives outside of him. He is himself united with the wood of the bridge, and therefore he can take the dead wood upon himself.

[ 40 ] Man has now entered into the higher nature. Formerly, he lived in the lower nature. In the sense of Christianity, he now lives in the higher nature, and he carries the cross—the lower nature—like a foreign object through his inner living power. Now religion becomes a living force in the world, now life in the outer nature ceases, the cross becomes completely wood. The outer body now becomes the vehicle of the inner living power. There the great mystery is accomplished: the cross is taken upon the back.

[ 41 ] Our great poet Goethe also expressed the idea of the bridge beautifully and meaningfully in his “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” where he has a bridge built by the snake laying itself across the river like a living bridge. All deeply initiated people have this same symbol for one and the same thing.

[ 42 ] Thus we have come to know the sacred legend of the cross in its deep inner meaning. We have seen how the change was prepared which was brought about by Christianity and which must be completed more and more in later times through the Christianization of the world. We have seen how the cross, insofar as it is the image of the three outer bodies, dies, how it can only establish an outer connection between the three lower and the three higher realms, between the two banks separated by the stream—the wood of the cross could not become pillars in Solomon's Temple—until man recognizes it as his own symbol. Only when he sacrifices himself, makes his own body a temple, and becomes capable of carrying the cross himself, is the connection between the two currents made possible.

[ 43 ] This is why the Christian churches also have the sign of the cross in their design. This is meant to express that the living cross is hidden in the outer temple building. But these two currents, on the one hand the divine life and on the other the worldly mineral, have merged into one in the Savior hanging on the cross, where the higher principles lie in the Savior himself and the lower ones in the cross. And the Apostle Paul expresses particularly deeply that from now on this connection is to be an organic, a living one. Without what we have gone through today, it is impossible to understand the writings of the Apostle Paul. It was clear to him that the old covenant, which established a contrast between man and the law, had to come to an end. Only when man unites the law with himself, takes it upon his back, carries it, will there no longer be any contradiction between the inner nature of man and the outer law. Then what Christianity wants to achieve will have been achieved.

[ 44 ] “Sin entered the world through the law.” This is a profound statement by Paul. When is sin in the world? When there is a law that can be broken. But when the law is so united with human nature that what man does is good, then there can be no sin. Man contradicts the law of the cross only as long as it does not live in him, as long as it is external. Therefore, Paul sees Christ on the cross as the overcoming of the law and the overcoming of sin. It is a curse to hang on the wood of the cross, that is, to fall under the law. Sin and law belong together according to the old covenant; law and love belong together according to the new covenant. It is a negative law that is connected with the old covenant; but a positive law that lives is the law of the new covenant. He who has united it with his own life has overcome the law of the old covenant. But he has also sanctified it.

[ 45 ] This is what is meant by those words of Paul that can be read in the Epistle to the Galatians (chapter 3, verses 11-13): “But that no one is justified before God by the law is evident, for the righteous will live by his faith. The law does not rest on faith, but the man who does it will live by it. But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'”

[ 46 ] With the word “wood,” Paul connects the concepts we have discussed today. Thus, we must delve ever deeper into what the great initiates have said. We do not approach Christianity by adapting it, so to speak, to our requirements, to the materialistic mind of today, which is averse to the higher, but by rising more and more into the heights of the spiritual. For Christianity was born out of initiation, and only then will we be able to understand and believe that infinite depths are contained in Christianity, when we no longer believe that we must bring Christianity closer to the present-day intellect, but when the materialistic intellect, which is averse to the higher, rises again to Christianity. The present intellect must rise from the mineral-dead to the living-spiritual if it wants to understand Christianity.

[ 47 ] I have presented these views in order to arrive at the concept of the New Jerusalem.