The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Feast of the Epiphany II

[ 1 ] Anyone who views the historical development of humanity solely in terms of a sequence of cause and effect—as is customary today—will not be able to draw from history itself the strength and inspiration it can offer to the individual when one attempts to penetrate the true nature of this historical process. Historical development can truly reveal itself only to those who are able to perceive a wise force at work in the succession of events. Today, it is almost as if people hold the view that anyone who sees a wise process at work in the context of the world in general—and especially in the historical development of humanity—is succumbing to superstitious notions and projecting onto things something that only they themselves have imagined. However, one must not project onto things what one has imagined oneself. One must not impose one’s own way of thinking on things, but must try to let things speak for themselves. When it comes to the course of history, however, if one is open-minded enough, one will perceive something like an active wisdom everywhere—and especially at significant turning points in human development.

[ 2 ] Now, one of the things that has emerged from history is, above all, the establishment of the individual holidays of the year, namely the major holidays. It is certainly striking when we realize that Christmas is a so-called fixed feast day, falling every year around the winter solstice, on December 24 and 25. In contrast, we have Easter, which is a so-called movable feast, determined by the constellation of the sun and moon—its date, in a sense, is derived from the cosmos itself. The fact is that when people take these feast days of the year seriously, they have meaning for their lives and have a profound impact on them. That is precisely what they are meant to be. Meaningful, profound thoughts should arise on this festive day. Profound emotions and feelings should well up from the heart and the soul. It is precisely through what a person can experience inwardly during such festive times that they should feel connected to the course of time and to that which is at work throughout the course of time.

[ 3 ] Now, these festival dates are fixed for certain historical reasons, and one must reflect on the fact that Christmas is a fixed festival while Easter is a movable one, and that Christmas falls during a time when, in a sense, the Earth is most isolated from the influences of the outer universe. When the sun has the least influence on the Earth, when the Earth, drawing on its own reserves of energy—which it has retained from the summer and fall—brings forth its unique “garment” for the shortest days, when, in other words, the Earth creates from within itself what it can with its own forces under the slightest influence from the cosmos—that is when we celebrate Christmas. |

[ 4 ] When, once again, the time begins in which the Earth experiences the most significant influences from the extraterrestrial cosmos—when the Sun’s warmth and light bring forth vegetation from the earth, when, so to speak, the heavens work together with the Earth to weave the Earth’s garment—then we celebrate Easter. And because such observations have emerged from the thoughts of humanity—thoughts that were not arbitrarily conceived in an abstract manner by one person or another, but rather from thoughts that have, so to speak, permeated humanity over long epochs and developed on their own—something has flowed into historical development that, when recognized, simultaneously gives rise to the possibility of revering it deeply, and the possibility of looking back to the times of our forefathers with reverence, devotion, and love. And by drawing attention to such things, one can already say: The perception of active wisdom in historical becoming reveals from this history those forces, those impulses, which can then take root in the human soul in the right way and work within the human soul in the right way.

[ 5 ] Christmas, as we celebrate it today during the shortest days of the year, on December 24 and 25, has only been celebrated in the Christian Church since the year 354. People do not usually give much thought to the fact that even in Christian-Catholic Rome in the year 353, Christmas—the feast of Christ’s birth—was not celebrated on this day. One might say that one of the most interesting aspects of historical reflection is to see how this Christmas celebration took root out of a historical instinct and from deeper sources of wisdom, which may have been at work largely unconsciously.

[ 6 ] Something similar, yet fundamentally different, had been celebrated earlier: January 6, which was the Feast of the Epiphany. And this Feast of the Epiphany commemorated the baptism of John in the Jordan. In the early centuries of Christianity, this feast of John’s baptism in the Jordan had been celebrated as the primary one. And it was only from the point in time I have indicated that the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ—the feast commemorating the baptism by John in the Jordan—began, as it were, to move backward through the twelve holy nights to December 25, where it was replaced by the feast of the birth of Jesus Christ. This is connected to profound, significant inner processes in the historical development of Christianity.

[ 7 ] What does the fact that, in the first centuries of the Christian worldview, the memory of John’s baptism in the Jordan was celebrated indicate? What does this baptism of John in the Jordan mean? This baptism of John in the Jordan means that, from the heights of heaven, for extraterrestrial, cosmic reasons, the essence of Christ descends and unites with the essence of the human being Jesus of Nazareth. This baptism of John in the Jordan thus signifies a fertilization of the earth from cosmic expanses. This baptism of John in the Jordan signifies an interplay between heaven and earth. And by celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany, we were celebrating a supersensible birth—the birth of the Christ within the thirty-year-old human being, Jesus.

[ 8 ] In the first centuries of Christian development, attention was focused above all on the appearance of the Christ on Earth, and the earthly birth of the human Jesus of Nazareth—who did not receive the Christ into his own physical being until he was thirty years old—was considered less significant than this vision of an extraterrestrial Christ being appearing in the earthly realm. This was the conception held during the first centuries of Christianity. Thus, during those centuries, people celebrated the descent of the super-earthly Christ. And they sought to understand what actually happened in the course of his becoming human.

[ 9 ] If one allows the course of history leading up to the Mystery of Golgotha to sink in, it becomes apparent that in primeval times humanity was endowed with a primordial wisdom of a supersensory nature—a wisdom for which one must feel the deepest reverence when one is able to contemplate it in all its inner depth and in all its essence. In humanity’s earliest forms of wisdom—which appeared only outwardly in a childlike manner—an infinite wealth of knowledge is revealed, not only about the earthly realm but, above all, about the non-earthly realm and how the non-earthly realm influences the Earth. Then one sees how, in the course of human development, this light of primordial wisdom shines ever less and less in the human mind, and how people increasingly lose their connection to this primordial wisdom. And this primordial wisdom had faded and vanished from the human mind precisely at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching. All the phenomena of historical development in Greek and, in particular, Roman life demonstrate in the most varied ways that it was precisely the best of humanity who were aware: a new heavenly element must enter earthly life so that the Earth, together with humanity, might find its further development.

[ 10 ] To the impartial observer, the entire earthly development of humanity breaks down precisely into these two parts: into the period that awaited the Mystery of Golgotha—awaited not only in the simple, childlike human minds, but awaited with the highest wisdom — and into the period that follows the Mystery of Golgotha, in which we now find ourselves and for which we hope for an ever-wider fulfillment—once again of the supersensible world, and once again of the influence of the extraterrestrial cosmic reality on earthly events within the course of human evolution. Thus, the Mystery of Golgotha stands at the very heart of Earth’s evolution, giving Earth’s evolution its true meaning.

[ 11 ] I have often tried to convey this vividly to my listeners by saying that they should take a look at something like Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, The Last Supper in Milan—a work that, admittedly, no longer exists today in its original artistic perfection. How one sees the Savior there among his Twelve, how he is contrasted on one side with John and on the other with Judas, and how one then perceives the whole composition in its color scheme. Looking at this most characteristic painting from the perspective of the Mystery of Golgotha, one must say: If any being were to descend to Earth from a foreign celestial body, it would be astonished by what it sees in external reality, for we must assume that such a being from another planet would have a completely different environment around it, and it would be astonished by all that humanity has created on Earth. But if it were led before this image, in which the Mystery of Golgotha has once been made visible in the most characteristic way, then it would immediately and intuitively sense something of the meaning of earthly existence from this image, simply through the way in which Christ Jesus is placed among his Twelve, who in turn are the representatives of the entire human race.

[ 12 ] One can perceive, from a wide variety of perspectives, how the Mystery of Golgotha actually gives meaning to the evolution of the Earth. But one only fully realizes that this is the case when one can rise to the insight that, with the baptism of John in the Jordan, a supersensible being—namely, the Christ—entered into a human being. This is how the Gnostics viewed it—not with the worldview we are now once again striving to attain through anthroposophy—but with their own worldview, which was still the last remnant of humanity’s ancient primordial wisdom. One might say that so much remained of humanity’s instinctive primordial wisdom that, in the first Christian centuries after Christ’s appearance, a number of people were still able to comprehend what actually happened with Christ’s appearance in His incarnation. The wisdom possessed by the Gnostics can no longer be ours. Because humanity must be engaged in a process of continuous progress, we must advance toward a much more conscious, less instinctive understanding, even of the supersensible. Yet we look with reverence upon the wisdom of the Gnostics, who had preserved so much of humanity’s original, instinctive primal wisdom that they were able to grasp the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 13 ] It was from this grasp of the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and the central event—the baptism of John in the Jordan—that the establishment of the first great festival arose. But it had already happened once before in the history of human development that the ancient primordial wisdom had faded and become stifled. And it was precisely in the fourth century A.D. that people were unable to make use of this primordial wisdom. Yesterday I described from a different perspective how this primordial wisdom gradually became obscured. The fourth century is, in a certain sense, the one in which human beings first began to be entirely on their own, having nothing around them for their perception other than what the senses can grasp and what the reasoning mind can make of sensory perception. In a sense, in order to attain its freedom—a freedom that could never have been attained due to dependence on supernatural things had primordial wisdom not been dulled—humanity had to lose that ancient primordial wisdom and be cast into a materialistic worldview. This materialistic worldview first appeared in the 4th century A.D. and grew stronger and stronger until it reached its culmination in the 19th century.

[ 14 ] Materialism, too, has its positive aspects in the history of human development. Because the supernatural light no longer shone into the human soul, and because human beings were dependent on what they perceive with their senses in the external world, the independent force within them—one that tends toward freedom—was awakened. The rise of materialism also appeared to be a wise development in the history of human evolution. But precisely at the time when materialism took hold of the human being’s earthly nature, people could no longer understand how the influence of the extraterrestrial, the heavenly, had presented itself to humanity in the symbol of John’s baptism in the Jordan. Thus, people lost, so to speak, their understanding of the meaning of the feast on January 6—the Feast of the Epiphany—and turned to other things for solace. All the feelings and emotional depth they had that were connected to the Mystery of Golgotha were no longer directed toward the super-earthly Christ; instead, they began to direct them toward the earthly Jesus of Nazareth. And the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ became the Feast of the Epiphany of the Child Jesus. However, this development has taken a course that has now reached a turning point, one that must give rise to new necessities in humanity’s striving within our present-day worldview.

[ 15 ] We see how, as early as the 4th century, human wisdom was already confronted with the impossibility of comprehending the phenomenon of Christ. But the human mind, human perception, human feeling, and human will develop over the course of history at a slower pace than thoughts. Even when thoughts had long since ceased to point toward the appearance of Christ, hearts were still turning toward this appearance of Christ. Profound feelings lived on within Christianity. And for many centuries, these deep inner feelings formed the substance of historical development. And these deep inner feelings expressed—as if out of instinctive impulses—the profound significance that the appearance of Christ held for the development of the Earth. The feast of the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth was linked to the Day of Adam and Eve, the feast marking the beginning of humanity on Earth. The Day of Adam and Eve falls on December 24, and the feast of Jesus’ birthday on December 25. In Adam and Eve, people saw the human beings with whom the development of the Earth began—the human beings who descended from spiritual heights, who sinned on Earth, who became entangled in material events on Earth, and who lost their connection to the supersensible worlds. The first Adam was spoken of in the Pauline sense; and the second Adam was spoken of as Christ: that in the post-Christian era, a human being can only be fully human if they unite within themselves the forces that fell away from God through Adam and the forces that, through Christ, bring them back to God. This was what people sought to express by bringing the Feast of Adam and Eve and the Feast of the Nativity of Jesus closer together. The sense of this connection, which gives earthly life its true meaning, has been preserved in a profound way throughout the centuries.

[ 16 ] One example of this is the emergence of the deeply heartfelt “Paradeisspiele” (Paradise Plays) and “Christi-Geburtsspiele” (Nativity Plays), excerpts of which we have staged here; these date from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, when German tribes—who had previously lived mainly in western regions—brought them with them to the east. Such tribes settled in what is now Hungary. We find them north of the Danube in the Pressburg region; we find them south of the Carpathians in the so-called Spiš region; and we see them in Transylvania. In these regions, we find primarily Alemannic-Saxon tribes. We then find Swabian tribes in the Banat. All these German tribes brought with them from their original homeland that treasure into which had been poured, from the deepest feelings of the heart, what has united humanity over the centuries with the most significant earthly experience.

[ 17 ] But human wisdom increasingly took a course that wove even the Christ event into the materialistic view of the world. In the 19th century, we see the emergence of a “theology that is itself materialistic.” The criticism of the Gospels begins. People lose the ability to have even a inkling—as must be the case in supersensory depictions—that what appears as an imagination of the supersensory differs depending on whether it is viewed from one perspective or another. People have no concept that the sages of earlier centuries must also have seen the so-called contradictions in the Gospels and that they were not criticized for them. People immerse themselves philistinely in these contradictions in the Gospels. One resolves the contradictions; one removes everything supernatural from the Gospels. One loses Christ from the Gospel narrative. One attempts to turn the Gospel narrative into something like an ordinary secular history. Gradually, one can no longer distinguish between what theological historians say and what a secular historian such as Ranke says about the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 18 ] When one looks for the figure of Jesus in the works of the famous historian Ranke—as he portrays him as the simple, yet most outstanding man who ever walked the earth—if one reads all the lovingly described traits in Ranke’s secular history of Jesus—then this differs inwardly hardly at all from what the 19th-century theologians, who had succumbed to materialism, have to say about the figure of Jesus. Theology is becoming materialistic. Christ is disappearing from the human perspective, particularly in enlightened theology. The “simple man from Nazareth” is gradually becoming the sole focus of those who undertake to describe the essence of Christianity. And Adolf Harnack’s description of the essence of Christianity has, of course, become famous.

[ 19 ] In this book, The Essence of Christianity by Adolf Harnack, there are two passages that can truly be devastating for anyone who has a sense of the true essence of Christianity. One is that this theologian, who claims to be a Christian, said: Christ does not actually belong in the Gospels; the Son does not belong in the Gospels; only the Father belongs in the Gospels. — And so Christ Jesus, who walked the land of Palestine at the beginning of our era, becomes merely the human proclaimer of the Father’s teaching. “The Father alone belongs in the Gospels”—so says Adolf Harnack, and in doing so believes himself to be a Christian theologian! One must say: The essence of Christianity has completely vanished from this “essence of Christianity”—I mean the one described by Adolf Harnack—and, in fact, such a view should no longer be called Christian.

[ 20 ] The other aspect of the essay “The Essence of Christianity” that can have a devastating effect struck me once when I was present at a lecture given by a society calling itself the Giordano Bruno Society. In response to remarks made by a speaker there, I had to point out how the most essential aspect of the nature of Christianity has disappeared from modern theology. I had to point out Harnack’s remark in this book, The Essence of Christianity, where he says: Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, the idea of the Resurrection, the faith in Easter, emerged from this event; and to this faith we wish to hold fast. — Thus, the Resurrection itself has become a matter of indifference to modern Christian theologians. They do not wish to concern themselves with the Resurrection itself as a fact. Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, people have come to believe that the Resurrection took place there, and it is not the Resurrection itself but this belief that we wish to hold fast to.

[ 21 ] I pointed out at the time that the essence of Christianity was articulated by Paul, who said, based on his experiences on the road to Damascus: “And if Christ had not risen, we would all be lost.” — It is not the man Jesus who is the essence of Christianity, but the supernatural being who, through John’s baptism in the Jordan, entered into the man Jesus, who rose from the tomb at Gethsemane, and who became visible to those who possessed the faculties to perceive Him. Paul, as the last of these, saw Him, and it is the risen Christ to whom Paul refers. I therefore had to point out at that time how, precisely because of a remark by one of the most famous modern so-called Christian theologians, the very essence of Christianity—its supernatural nature—is overlooked. The chairman of the society replied to me at that time in a most peculiar manner. He told me: That could not possibly be in Harnack’s book, for Harnack was a Protestant, an Evangelical theologian, and if Harnack were to assert such a thing, it would be equivalent to the kind of assertion that could only come from the Catholic side—for example, regarding the Holy Robe in Trier. For Catholics, it does not matter whether one can actually prove that this Holy Robe in Trier truly originated in Jerusalem; what matters is that faith is rooted in this Holy Robe.—The chairman of this society was so biased that he would not even admit that this remark appears in Harnack’s book. I told him that, since I did not have the book at hand at the moment, I would write the page number on a postcard for him the next day. This is, moreover, characteristic of the modern thoroughness with which books—which are of paramount importance—are read. One reads a book, believes it makes a significant impression on one’s life, and yet one of the most important remarks doesn’t even register; instead, one considers it impossible that it could be in there. Yet it is indeed in there! All of this, however, proves to us how the transcendent Christ has been cast out of human development by an increasingly materialistic theology, and how people have clung solely to the outward, physical appearance of the man Jesus.

[ 22 ] Well, the festive customs and celebrations of the simple, unpretentious people who turned to the Christmas plays were beautiful; they sprang from sacred feelings. Even if people could no longer fully comprehend the entire meaning of the mystery of Golgotha, they still felt it in their hearts, even as they outwardly focused on the physical appearance of the infant Jesus. And portrayed in this way, the celebration of Christ’s birth is beautiful and heartfelt.

[ 23 ] The idea that destroys the Christ within the man Jesus is not beautiful, and from the highest perspective—even that of the Christian worldview—it is not true. It is as if the wise guidance of humanity had first taken into account what had to happen so that the materialistic worldview—and with it, humanity’s development toward freedom—could begin and continue. Just as materialism itself had to come about for the liberation of humanity, so too did the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6—which can only be understood through a supersensible perspective—have to be moved back to the Feast of the Nativity of Jesus on December 25.

[ 24 ] The twelve holy nights lie in between. In a sense, humanity retraced its path through the entire zodiac by, at least symbolically, passing through a cycle of twelve during the observance of this festival.

[ 25 ] Today, by bringing together everything that connects us to Christ through the human being Jesus, we can certainly unfold all the intimacy and depth of feeling inherent in the Christmas celebration. And in my Christmas reflection yesterday, I sought to express in words what is most meaningful in this regard for our time. But now that materialism has celebrated its greatest triumphs in theology, now that Christ Jesus has become, especially for enlightened theology, merely the simple human being Jesus, we must once again find our way back to a sense of the supernatural, otherworldly Christ-being.

[ 26 ] If one adopts this view, one inevitably makes an enemy of the materialistic theology of our time. Just as the sun physically sends down its light from extraterrestrial cosmic expanses, so did Christ, as the spiritual sun, descend to humanity and unite with Jesus of Nazareth. Just as one sees the revelation of a person’s soul and spirit in their outward appearance, in their facial features, and in their gestures, so too can one see in what takes place in the cosmos—in the gestures inscribed in the cosmos by the course of the stars, in what manifests outwardly as the inner soul warmth of the universe through the sun’s rays—the outer physiognomy of that which spiritually and soulfully permeates the entire world. And one can see in what is spiritually concentrated in the descent of Christ to Earth the inner reality corresponding to the outward manifestation of the concentrated rays of the sun streaming down upon the Earth. And one will understand correctly when it is said: “The solar being of Christ descended to Earth.”

[ 27 ] We must return to this spiritual understanding of Christ. Despite the heartfelt reverence we wish to preserve for the feast of Jesus’ birth—for what Christmas has come to be solely—we must learn once more to direct our attention to the other birth, which takes place as a transcendent birth through John’s baptism in the Jordan. Let us also learn to understand what is presented to our souls through John’s baptism in the Jordan as a significant historical symbol, just as we understand what took place in the stable in Bethlehem or in Nazareth. Let us learn to interpret the words, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, in the proper way: “This is my Son; today he is born to me.” — Let us learn to understand the mystery of Christmas in such a way that it may once again become for us the source of understanding for the appearance of Christ on earth. Let us, alongside the memory of the physical birth, also learn to understand the spiritual birth.

[ 28 ] Only gradually, through a truly spiritual grasp of the mysteries of the universe, will such an understanding be able to emerge. We must gradually strive once more toward a spiritual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. To do this, however, we need insight into the origin of such impulses within the earthly evolution of humanity—such as the one that occurred in the 4th century A.D., when, out of the innermost need of evolving humanity, the Feast of the Epiphany was moved from January 6 to December 25, the day of Jesus’ birth. One must learn to see how the wise guidance of human history is at work here. One must learn to surrender oneself, as a whole human being, to this historical unfolding. Then, without superstition and without introducing self-invented fantasies into history, one will recognize the wise guidance in the history of humanity. One must learn not only to delve into history with abstract ideas and to examine cause and effect, but one must learn to surrender oneself, as a whole person, to this historical unfolding. Only then will one understand what makes our time a true period of transition—a time in which a spiritual worldview must once again emerge from the materialistic perspective, and a natural ascent toward the supersensible must once again take hold. And an expression of this ascent toward the supersensible will be a new understanding of the appearance of Christ on earth, of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 29 ] Thus, for people today who are truly able to immerse themselves in the spirit of the times, Christmas has a twofold meaning: It is that which has emerged through recent history since the 4th century A.D., that which has produced such wondrous beauties precisely in simple, unadorned folk traditions, that which still elicits a heartfelt delight in us today when we behold it anew in the revival of such folk plays as we are currently attempting to create through our anthroposophical science. It is all that human warmth that has poured into life throughout those centuries, during which the idea of Christianity took on increasingly materialistic forms, until it reached a point in the 19th century where it had to turn back on itself due to its own absurdity and return once more to the spiritual. — This gives us, as people of today, the second aspect of the Christmas festival: alongside the sentiment we feel toward traditional Christmas—which has developed since the 4th century A.D.—and this heartfelt emotion that we wish to share, a new Christmas is to be born out of our contemporary understanding—a second Christmas alongside the old one.

[ 30 ] Christ is to be reborn anew through humanity. Christmas is, in memory, a celebration of Jesus’ birthday; in spirit, it is to become a celebration of the birth of a new understanding of Christ—new not in comparison to the first centuries, but new in comparison to the centuries since the 4th century A.D. And so Christmas itself should not merely be a festival commemorating a birth, but—as it is experienced year after year in the coming time—it should become an immediate, present-day birthday celebration, the celebration of a present-day event. This birth of the new idea of Christ is to take place. And Christmas is to gain such intensity that every year, at this very time, people may reflect anew and with particular focus on this truth: A new idea of Christ must be born.

[ 31 ] Christmas must evolve from a festival of remembrance into a festival of the present, a night of consecration for that which human beings experience in their immediate present as a birth. Then it will truly become part of our recent historical development; then it will become increasingly affirmed in this historical development of humanity, extending into the future as well—a future that will so desperately need it—and then it will become a Night of the Consecration of the World.