The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I tried to say a few things about the unique nature of the early Christian community and how it took shape through the personality of Paul. It is certainly the Easter season that prompts such reflections these days. Yet, precisely because we have seen how meaningless the celebration of Easter has become today for so many people afflicted by materialism, it must have struck us that such an Easter reflection could also be a reflection on our times, when we realize how a kind of Easter season must be ushered in in this Europe—and indeed in this entire modern civilized world—which is currently descending into decadence at such a rapid pace. To recall the manner in which Christianity entered the world is a legitimate Easter reflection today; for today, more than ever, we need to understand how people have distanced themselves further and further from an essential understanding of Christianity, and how this distancing from an essential understanding of Christianity determines everything else—something we have often spoken of and which is very closely connected to the signs of decline in our time. We encounter these signs of decline particularly when we listen today to individual people who sometimes mean well.

[ 2 ] Yesterday, you may have read a strange article in the *Basler Nachrichten* that is capable of making one feel exceptionally sad. It reproduces a letter from northwestern Germany. The author of the letter—whose views, it seems, are to some extent endorsed in this article—points out how forces are at work everywhere today that are simply paving the way for the destruction of the old order without offering anything new in its place, and how people on both the left and the right are succumbing to illusions—and, in fact, are always happy to do so. And the author of the article himself says: Well, it must be that Bolshevism is bound to sweep over Europe, that we must calmly expect it; then that will be the right course of development, and once people have come to know Bolshevism, something worthwhile may well develop from it. — But the author also adds a few lines that deserve attention, and which the average reader skims over, as is so often the case. He adds: One must look at something other than the illusions that people on the left and right are entertaining today. But one should not listen to what individual dreamers say, but rather to what the general impulses are.

[ 3 ] These individual well-meaning people are the ones who are truly difficult to deal with in the present; they fundamentally recognize how things are going from bad to worse, and they are always warning—albeit with deep pessimism—that one should not listen to those who are trying to find a way out of this misery. For these individuals are, in fact, merely the representatives of a very, very broad mass of people who, time and again, once a bit of calm has set in after some acute chaos, are immediately satisfied, because they fail to see that this return to calm holds nothing truly significant, but rather that the path must continue downhill until a sufficiently large number of people fully grasp that a wave of spiritual renewal must sweep over this unfortunate Europe. Otherwise, things cannot get better. It is impossible to make any progress whatsoever by continuing with the old ways, and it is least of all possible to make progress through compromises; for compromises, by compromising the very thing that seeks to assert itself as something new, also corrupt it.

[ 4 ] Even on an emotional level, one could prepare oneself for the state of mind that is necessary there by looking back on the energetic way in which, around the great turning point in Earth’s history, figures such as Paul introduced something entirely new into Earth’s development—something that continues to smolder but is currently covered by a great deal of ash. That was, after all, the very moment that separated the old from the new, even if the transition is not noticeable because it took place gradually—the old, through which, as I already indicated yesterday, people saw the divine-spiritual everywhere when they looked out into nature. But this perception of the divine-spiritual also continued into humanity’s worldviews, into conceptions of the human social order, the configuration of people as they lived as a collective, and how individuals distinguished themselves as rulers or as priestly leaders. We will not now consider how this social structure was regulated by the culture of the mysteries; but this structure was regarded—and was also regulated accordingly—as something given even without human intervention, as it were, as something bestowed by the spirit of nature.

[ 5 ] The person who, by virtue of the particular circumstances and facts present in a given place, was recognized as the leader—this was because people believed that the Divine itself spoke through him with such and such great power. Just as the divine-spiritual was perceived in stone, in mountains, in water, and in trees, so too was it perceived in individual human beings. And I have already explained here that in those ancient times it was simply a matter of course to regard the ruler as God Himself—that is, as the one in whom the divinity truly manifested itself. If people today were only a little more humble and did not, in fact, project their own opinions onto what has been handed down to them from ancient times, these matters would be seen much more clearly. Certainly, today we have no such concrete concept: that a human being is a god. But in those ancient times, people associated a concrete concept with this idea. Just as one did not merely see the flowing stream but the divine moving within it, so too in what took place in social human life, one saw the divine working itself in immediate presence. This perception of the divine-spiritual in immediate presence gradually faded away more and more.

[ 6 ] But let us consider how human beings were able to find themselves as human beings within this worldview. Human beings could find themselves in this worldview because they knew they were embedded in the world of the Divine-Spiritual. They knew that the Divine-Spiritual lives where sensory things are and where human beings are here on the physical Earth. Human beings knew this. They knew that they were born out of the Divine-Spiritual. The statement “I am born of God; we are all born of God” became something entirely, entirely self-evident to human beings, for they saw it. For them, it was the result of their sensory perception.

[ 7 ] People could no longer arrive at such a conclusion on their own, or at least were able to do so less and less frequently during the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was to bring the message of the Divine-Spiritual in a new way. In those ancient times, people could indeed say to themselves: Everything I see in the world shows me that things and beings come from the gods, that their existence is not limited to earthly life. — People were aware of the eternal nature of their own being because they understood their origin in the gods. This insight into a pre-birth spiritual existence is, in fact, what permeates the ancient pagan creeds. Everything that is regarded today by conventional science as a characteristic of paganism is, in reality, more or less mere rhetoric.

[ 8 ] The essence of ancient paganism, before it had fallen into decadence, was that people knew they were spiritual-soul beings before they were born; thus, their existence was not limited to their earthly life. We humans can be certain that we are eternal, for we come from God, and God will take us back to Himself. After all, this was the insight of ancient times, stemming from primordial wisdom. And one can say that this insight from ancient times, stemming from primordial wisdom, was given more or less to every people in its own unique way, for it was bound to an elemental-spiritual worldview—to a perception of the divine-spiritual in the things of the senses. This perception of the divine-spiritual in the things of the senses was, in those ancient times, dependent on blood. And depending on whether a person belonged to this or that bloodline—that is, to this or that tribe, this or that people—a particular form of primordial wisdom about the world had to be given to them.

[ 9 ] Thus we see diverse forms of primordial wisdom spread among the various peoples of ancient times. The only exception was the Jewish people, who, while they too had tied their particular form of primordial wisdom to the blood of their own people, regarded themselves as the “chosen people”—the people who, while possessing a national creed or national insight, held an insight that was the very knowledge of the God of humanity. While the surrounding pagan peoples essentially worshipped their national gods, the Jewish people believed they had the God of the entire earth.

[ 10 ] Well, that was a transitional state. The way Paul now presented his interpretation of Christianity represented a complete break with everything that, by virtue of blood, had determined human knowledge—everything that, by virtue of blood, had to determine human knowledge in ancient times. For Paul first asserted that neither blood, nor the community of the people, nor anything else that had been decisive for knowledge in pre-Christian times could continue to be so; rather, that human beings themselves must establish their relationship to knowledge through inner initiative, that there must be a community of those whom Paul designated as Christians—a community to which one spiritually and soul, into which one is not placed by blood, but into which one, so to speak, chooses to enter oneself.

[ 11 ] This particular way of defining spiritual community across the earth was necessary for Paul because the time was approaching when human beings would inevitably succumb to materialism in their external understanding of the earth. For external knowledge of the Earth, human beings had to gain awareness of their spiritual-soul nature from a source other than the perception of the physical, earthly human being. In ancient times, one need only look at the physical, earthly human being with one’s eyes; through everything that person carried within, the spiritual-soul nature of the human being manifested itself at the same time. That had now come to an end. People sought to gain insight into the spiritual and soul aspects by other means. In other words, they had to learn to understand the problem of death. One had to learn to understand that what one can see of a human being here on earth through sensory perception alone may fall apart and disintegrate into numerous parts, but that within the human being there is a being that is not immediately visible in this physical human being and that belongs to the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] Furthermore, what bound people together in this Christian community could not depend on blood, for the objection would always have arisen against such dependence on blood: “Yes, if people are to recognize their immortality in what is determined by blood, then that immortality would not be assured.” For the ancients, blood may have appeared to reveal the spiritual-soul nature of the human being, but now blood presents itself as the animator and bearer of that which ends with death. It is necessary to point to the spiritual-soul aspect in its purity if one does not wish to abandon altogether an understanding of the problem of death in a non-materialistic sense. Paul was able to gain the strong impetus to speak to people about a spiritual-soul being that is not bound to sensory matter only because the reality of this supersensory being had dawned on him through the event at Damascus.

[ 13 ] In ancient times, the knowledge of the supersensible—of the spiritual and soul—was bound to the blood; so that, as human beings were permeated by their blood, this blood brought the revelation of the spiritual and soul into the sensory world. This came to an end, and it became necessary for people to turn to something that is not given through the blood. But this entailed a great danger. It entailed the danger that, in the age that was dawning, people would still, in some way, want to reflect back upon themselves in their recognition of the spiritual-soul aspects. In ancient times, one could reflect back upon oneself, for the blood one carried within was the bearer of supersensible knowledge. People had become accustomed to seeing within themselves the bearer of supersensible knowledge. The fact that people would no longer need this was made possible for those of good will through the event at Golgotha. But the general course of development continued for a while such that people carried on this habit—which they had previously been justified in having with regard to the blood—even though they no longer carried the divinely sanctified blood within themselves; they also wanted to recognize the divine-spiritual through that which was just as present within themselves as the blood.

[ 14 ] The danger that emerged consisted of the following, and it is important today that this danger be clarified. One receives one’s blood through one’s ancestry; one receives one’s blood through birth; and when one is twenty-five, thirty, or thirty-five years old, one carries within oneself this blood that one has inherited. By being carried into the world by the forces of the cosmos, one “receives” this blood. If the guarantee for the human soul-spiritual being lives within the blood, then one can rely on this blood. But this blood had gradually lost its capacity to sustain the divine-spiritual being. Yet people still wanted to find the path to this divine-spiritual being within themselves in the same way—simply by virtue of being born. But people were increasingly unable to find the path to the divine-spiritual simply by virtue of being born. For if the blood does not bring into our sensory existence the conviction of the supersensible, then our organism does not bring any connection to the supersensible into our lives. And so it came to pass that people sought to inquire about the supersensible only by relying initially on themselves—that is, on everything they bring with them into earthly existence at birth. But Christianity calls upon us not to rely on what we bring with us into earthly existence at birth, but rather to undergo a transformation within this earthly existence, to allow the soul to develop, to be reborn in Christ, and to receive through education—and through earthly life itself—that which we did not receive at birth. This could not be understood so quickly. Consequently, the echoes of the ancient blood wisdom persisted into the 15th century; from that time on, the custom remained of perceiving the divine-spiritual through lineage; but by the 19th century, people no longer perceived the divine-spiritual through this custom, but only the material. Because people wanted to perceive the divine-spiritual only through the untransformed organism, they ultimately ceased to perceive this divine-spiritual at all; and so the 19th century brought the great catastrophe of humanity’s abandonment by God and its drift away from Christianity, because now, in essence, what had initially been concealed by tradition finally came to light.

[ 15 ] Until the emergence of Protestantism, there was a Christian tradition. What the apostles, their disciples, and the Church Fathers—who preserved a living tradition—passed down was rooted in the revelation of Golgotha. But the foundation of this tradition grew weaker and weaker. On their own, however, people could not arrive at an understanding of the event at Golgotha. Then came the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries; people lost their connection to the tradition. In the end, they placed value only on Scripture. The age of Protestantism arrived, in which value was placed solely on Scripture. Tradition had been abandoned. But in the 19th century, the correct understanding of Scripture also fell into disuse, and, in essence, for the vast majority of those who still claim to be Christians today, what they profess is no longer Christianity at all. Therefore, it was only in the course of the 19th century—when the need arose to rediscover the event of Golgotha—that the final flare-up of the anti-Christian element, which of course had already been present beneath the surface of appearances but had been masked for a time by tradition and scriptural works, came to the fore and reached its peak at the beginning of the 20th century. Scripture and tradition no longer held any significance for most people. Yet they themselves had not yet kindled the light that would lead them to a renewed understanding of the event at Golgotha.

[ 16 ] It was precisely because things turned out this way that the most unchristian phenomena were able to take hold of humanity well into the 19th century and well into the 20th century. Two of the most unchristian phenomena are precisely those that emerged in the 19th century. There is the first phenomenon, which we see gradually taking shape, emerging in the 19th century and increasingly capturing people’s minds: it is the rise of the principle of nationality. The shadow of the principle of blood is rising. The Christian universal humanity is completely supplanted by the principle of nationality, because the new path to finding this Christian universal humanity had not yet emerged. The anti-Christian element first appears in the form of the principle of nationality. In national consciousness, the old Luciferic principle of blood is revived. And we see the rebellion against Christianity in the nationalisms of the 19th century, which ultimately culminates in Woodrow Wilson’s phrase about the right of nations to self-determination, whereas the only reality in the present could be the overcoming of nationalisms, the eradication of nationalisms, and humanity’s embrace of universal humanity.

[ 17 ] The second point is that people do not wish to derive their understanding of the world from the awakened spiritual realm, but rather from its mere image—the material image of this spiritual realm. The vision of the spiritual realm itself has died, but human beings, as natural beings, are an image of this divine-spiritual realm. This image cannot, of course, give rise to spiritual insights, but it can give rise to intellectual insights. This is, after all, the secret I have often spoken to you about here: that while people must recognize the spiritual by elevating themselves to the spirit, the brain is the actual tool for what is grasped intellectually today.

[ 18 ] One should think of intellectualism in materialistic terms; for everything that is thought—the way modern science thinks, the way modern theology thinks, the way the surrounding modern Christian consciousness thinks—all of that is merely thought by the human brain; it is materialism. On one side are verbal professions of faith; on the other side is Bolshevism. Bolshevism is so destructive to humanity precisely because it is the creed of the mere brain, the material brain. And I have often described to you how this material brain is, in fact, a process of decadence. We can actually only develop our materialism through the fact that there are constant processes of destruction and death taking place in our brains. If we apply what is conceived in this way in Leninism and Trotskyism to the social order, then a process of destruction must result, for the social order is conceived from that which is itself the very foundation of destruction: the Ahrimanic. That is this other side.

[ 19 ] These two forces have emerged to challenge all Christian elements of the 19th and 20th centuries: nationalism, the Luciferic form of anti-Christianity, and that which culminates in Leninism and Trotskyism, the Ahrimanic form of anti-Christianity. These are the shovels with which the grave of Christianity is to be dug today: nationalisms and Leninism. And everywhere where nationalisms and Trotskyism—albeit in a milder form—are being cultivated, there the grave of Christianity is being dug today; there, for the discerning observer, there reigns a mood that is, in the true sense, a Holy Saturday mood.

[ 20 ] The bearer of Christianity lies in the tomb, and people place a stone upon it. People placed two stones upon the representative of Christianity: nationalism and superficial socialism. And humanity must bring about the time of Easter Sunday, the removal of the stone or stones from the tomb. But Christianity will not rise from the tomb until people overcome nationalism and false forms of socialism, until people find the way to seek for themselves what can lead to an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha.

[ 21 ] If people today turn from the spirit of the present age toward the faith of Christ, then—and this would be entirely justified—the angel must appear to them and say the same thing he replied when he was asked at the very time of the Mystery: “The one you seek is no longer here.” He was no longer here at that time because people first had to find their way through tradition and through Scripture in order to arrive at their own understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Today this necessity still exists, for Scripture no longer tells us what we need to know, nor does tradition. Only original human insight can once again tell us what must be known. And the time must be brought about when the angel replies: “The one you seek is here.”—But he will not be here until the antichristian impulses of our time have vanished. Paul wanted to call people together into a community with the awareness that immortality is assured to human beings even through death: “In Christ we die.” Until it is understood once again that only spiritual knowledge can truly lead to an understanding of Paul, no social improvement can come about—only further social decline. This is what must also be understood today with regard to Christianity: that human beings must be educated in spiritual knowledge, just as they were born into spiritual knowledge in ancient times.

[ 22 ] Even when viewed in this light, the full gravity of the present times becomes apparent. Above all, one is struck by the necessity of truly working to spiritualize our culture. Is the bridge to the spiritual world—into which a human being must enter when passing through the gate of death, and where a human being must dwell between death and a new birth—to be severed entirely? Consider that this bridge to the spiritual world is being severed by nationalisms and by false forms of socialism. Consider that these matters are intimately connected with the most fundamental necessities of our time. And whoever cannot come to terms with these matters—who, in other words, wishes to continue in the belief that human beings are merely the product of material processes—is working with all their might to perpetuate decadence. For today is the moment when things must be decided. They must be decided. But they can be decided only through human free will. Free will, however, is possible only on the basis of true spiritual knowledge.

[ 23 ] At the time the Mystery of Golgotha took place, Rome actually showed a remarkable tolerance toward all religious beliefs. Gradually, after a long period of not doing so, it even began to show a certain tolerance toward Judaism. Rome was very tolerant at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was gradually becoming integrated into the development of humanity—that is, into the development of that era—yet it was precisely toward the Christians that intolerance grew ever stronger. In Rome, intolerance toward the Christians gradually became as pronounced as the intolerance that has developed today among individual nationalities toward other nationalities. In fact, the model for how nationalities behave today is the Romans’ intolerance toward the emergence of true spiritual knowledge; for everything, so to speak, rebels against it. Today there are quite interesting alliances—even if they are not yet apparent on the surface—between Jesuitism and the most radical elements here and there. But in their rejection of spiritual insight, the most radical communists are ultimately in complete agreement with the Jesuits. This, too, is reminiscent of Roman intolerance toward Christianity, and both then and now it is fundamentally connected to the same thing. Then and now it is connected to the fact that, deep down in their unconscious human nature, people hate the spirit—truly hate the spirit. This hatred of the Spirit—it confronts us forcefully on the part of both nationalism and false socialism—this hatred of the Spirit, this unconscious hatred of the Spirit. For one need only imagine what hatred of the Spirit means today, and what nationalism means today! In ancient times, nationalism had a purpose, for spiritual knowledge was linked to blood. When people today are nationalistic in the sense that they are, it is completely meaningless, for the blood connection no longer has any real significance. This blood connection, as it appears in nationalism, is merely a fantasized significance. It is a mere illusion.

[ 24 ] That is why people today, if they cling to such things, have no right to speak of an Easter celebration in any way. Speaking of the Easter celebration is a falsehood, and the truth must lie precisely in the fact that the angel can say once again—or that the angel can say only now: “The one you seek is here.”—But he will surely only agree to something that applies to all people. The situation today is the same as it was with the Romans, who were the most intolerant toward the Christians. For what did everyone else do, except the Christians? Everyone else except the Christians still paid lip service to the Emperor of Rome as a god and even offered sacrifices to him. The Christians could not do that. The Christians could recognize only the universal Christ Jesus as their sole King.

[ 25 ] This is one of the points that have carried this linear continuation into the present. This is the point. Yes, one need only put it this way: What, after all, does the individual—say, in England—still have in common with that which is expressed in the formula from which every ministerial decree in England flows: “In the name of His Majesty the King”? If one were to substitute the truth, as the spirit demands, that simply could not be the case. After all, what does what might interest a true Frenchman today have to do with Clemenceau’s nationalism? What inner hypocrisy lies in Clemenceau’s nationalism! It would be Christian today to admit such things to oneself. But people are intolerant of such an admission.

[ 26 ] You see, this is where we come to the point where falsehood takes deep root in people’s souls. And this untruth shapes the other stones of nationalism and false socialism into a single stone that is rolled onto the grave, covering it. It will remain covered until people, through the truth, come to spiritual knowledge, and through spiritual knowledge, return to an understanding of universal Christianity. Until then, there is no Easter. Until then, there is no possibility that the black color of mourning will be seriously replaced by the red color of Easter; for until then, such a replacement is a human lie. One must strive toward the Spirit. That alone can still give meaning to our existence as human beings today.

[ 27 ] It is precisely those who understand the course of human development as it has unfolded into our time who must correctly articulate the message for the present age: “My kingdom is not of this world.” No, that which we must strive for—so that we may once again find hope for the future—must not be of this world either. But this certainly goes against human complacency! It is certainly more comfortable to fashion old habits into ideals and then derive inner spiritual pleasure from doing so. This is certainly more comfortable than telling oneself: We must look to the great responsibility we bear toward humanity’s future—a responsibility that can be fulfilled only by incorporating the pursuit of spiritual knowledge into our human impulses.

[ 28 ] Thus, in light of what people should recognize in our time, Easter will have to remain a festival of remembrance rather than a festival of joy. And in fact, those who are serious and sincere in their concern for humanity should not say the traditional Easter words today—“Christ is risen”—but rather they should say: “Christ shall and must rise.”