The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Teachings of the Risen One: Reflections on the Mystery of Golgotha

[ 1 ] What I would like to speak about today is a certain aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha, a subject I have often addressed, particularly in more intimate anthroposophical gatherings. However, what there is to say about this Mystery of Golgotha is so vast—it belongs to such an important and rich field—that we will always have to shed light on new and new aspects of this greatest mystery in human evolution on Earth in order to even begin to approach this Mystery of Golgotha from its most diverse angles.

[ 2 ] One can only truly appreciate the Mystery of Golgotha by visualizing before the soul’s eye the entire course of human development that preceded this Mystery of Golgotha, and the subsequent course of human development that has already followed or will follow during the remainder of Earth’s history—that is, by holding these two currents of human development on Earth before the soul’s eye.

[ 3 ] We must make it perfectly clear to ourselves that when we speak of the beginning of Earth’s formation—that is, of that beginning about which we can already say that a kind of thinking—albeit a dreamlike, dream-imaginative thinking, but still a kind of thinking—was already present—and when we speak of these earlier times of humanity’s earthly evolution, one must be absolutely clear about this: people at that time possessed abilities through which they could, if I may put it that way, enter into communication with beings of a higher world order. You know, of course, from my Esoteric Science and from other accounts, what kind of beings these beings of the higher hierarchies are. Today, however, the average human consciousness knows very little about these beings of the higher hierarchies. In a sense, their connection with these beings has been severed. This was not the case in the earlier periods of human development. It would, of course, be wrong to imagine that an encounter with such a being of the higher hierarchies in those ancient times was anything like the way two people meet today while incarnated in physical bodies. That was certainly not the case. It was a completely different kind of interaction. One could only perceive, through spiritual faculties, what these beings communicated to human beings in the primordial language of the Earth. And what these beings were able to communicate to human beings were profound mysteries of existence. These were mysteries of existence that flowed into the human soul of that time and evoked in human beings the awareness: Upward, so to speak, toward that realm where we today see only clouds and stars, earthly existence is connected to the worlds of the gods. — Beings from these divine realms descended in a spiritual manner to the people on Earth and revealed themselves to them in such a way that humanity received what might be called primordial wisdom through the mediation of these superterrestrial beings. Within these revelations of primordial wisdom, which originated with these beings, there was indeed an infinite amount of what human beings could not have fathomed on their own during their earthly lives. At the beginning of earthly existence—as I mean it here—human beings were actually able to fathom very little on their own. That which was kindled within them as insight, as intuitive knowledge, they received precisely from their divine teachers.

[ 4 ] These divine teachings contained much, yet they lacked one thing—something that was not necessary for the people of that time, but which is now among the most important elements of knowledge for humanity today. The divine teachers spoke to people about a wide variety of truths and insights, but they never spoke to them about what actually underlies the two defining realities of human life on Earth; they never spoke to them about birth and death.

[ 5 ] Of course, it cannot be my task today, in such a short time, to speak of all of this—much of which you already know—that the divine teachers spoke of to the human race in those ancient times. But I would like to emphasize strongly that none of these teachings dealt with birth and death, for the simple reason that the people of those earlier times—and for a long time thereafter in the course of human evolution on Earth—had no need to know the wisdom concerning birth and death. The entire consciousness of humanity has, after all, changed in the course of Earth’s evolution. And although we must never equate today’s animal consciousness—not even today’s higher animal consciousness—with what human consciousness was in primitive ancient times, we can perhaps still draw some points of reference from today’s animal life, which lies just below the human level, whereas the early life of primitive man was, in a certain sense, even above the level of today’s human life, even though he had a sort of animal form compared to modern humans. If you observe an animal today with an unbiased eye, you will say to yourself: this animal, because it is in an intermediate state of existence, has no interest in birth or death. If we set birth aside—although it is evident there as well—we need only consider the carefree manner, the lack of interest, the indifference with which the animal faces death. The animal simply allows death to befall it; it accepts this transformation of its existence—that is, the transition from individual existence to group-soul existence—without perceiving it as a profound rupture in life, as is the case with human beings.

[ 6 ] Well, as I said, in a certain sense, early man on Earth—despite his animal-like form—stood above the animal; he possessed an instinctive clairvoyance, and through this instinctive clairvoyance he was also able to communicate with his divine teachers. But, just like today’s animals, he had no interest in the approach of death. If I may put it this way: He simply did not think to give death special consideration. Why should he? He still had within himself a clear experience—even in his instinctive clairvoyance—of what had remained with him after he had descended from the spiritual world into the physical world through birth. He knew within his own being what had entered his physical body, and because he knew this—because, if I may put it that way, he knew exactly that “an Eternal One lives within me”—he was not interested in the transformation that takes place with death. To him, it seemed, at most, like the shedding of a snake’s skin, which must occur when the snake is to replace that shed skin with a new one. The impression of birth and death was something more self-evident and less vehemently impactful on human life. People still had a strong conception of the spiritual realm.

[ 7 ] Today, people have no conception of the spiritual realm. Today, there is hardly any noticeable transition between sleeping and waking in a dream. The dream, with its images, certainly belongs to the realm of sleep today; it is still a half-sleep, whereas what early humans received in dreamlike images actually fell within the waking state—it was a waking state not yet fully formed. People knew that what they received in these dream images was reality. That is how they felt and experienced their inner life. And they could not raise the questions of birth and death with the intensity with which they must be raised today.

[ 8 ] This condition was particularly pronounced in the earliest periods of human development on Earth, but it gradually diminished more and more. If I may put it this way: People gradually became more and more aware that death marks a profound turning point in human life, including spiritual life. And from there, they were compelled to turn their attention to birth. In a sense, in relation to this distinction, earthly life took on a character that became increasingly important to people, because at the same time the inner life of their soul existence was fading more and more for them; they felt themselves becoming more and more detached from their soul-spiritual existence while they dwelt on Earth. And this became stronger and stronger the more people lived toward the Mystery of Golgotha. Among the Greeks, this was already so pronounced that they perceived life outside the physical body as a kind of shadow existence for human beings, and they viewed death with a certain sense of tragedy. But the teachings that people had received from their most ancient divine teachers did not extend to the processes of birth and death. And before the Mystery of Golgotha, people were exposed to the danger that experiences would enter their earthly lives—that the concept, the perception of experiences—birth and death—would enter their earthly consciousness, experiences they did not understand, which were like something completely unknown to them.

[ 9 ] Now let us imagine that, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, those ancient, divine teachers of humanity had descended, they might have revealed themselves to certain disciples or teachers of humanity who had been specially prepared through the Mysteries; they might have communicated the scope of the ancient divine wisdom—which has indeed flowed into the Primordial Wisdom—to prepared Mystery priests: within the entire, vast scope of these teachings, there would have been nothing about birth and death. The mystery of death would not have been brought to humanity at all within this divine wisdom to be revealed—not even in the Mysteries—and out in earthly life, there would have been something observable for human beings—being born and dying—that would have been important to them, of fundamental interest, and yet the gods would have said nothing to them about it! Why not?

[ 10 ] Yes, you really must approach this matter with a certain degree of open-mindedness, set aside some of the ideas that have simply become traditional religion today, and gain clarity on matters such as the following: Those beings of the higher hierarchies who were the divine teachers of primeval man had, after all, never experienced birth and death in their own worlds. For birth and death, in the form in which they are experienced on Earth, are experienced only on Earth—and specifically only by human beings on Earth. The death of an animal and the death of a plant are something entirely different from the death of a human being. And in the worlds of the gods, where the first great teachers of human evolution lived, there is no birth and death; there is only transformation, a metamorphosis from one form of existence into another. So that an inner understanding—one must characterize it this way—of dying and being born was entirely absent among these divine teachers. And among these divine teachers is the entire host of those who were connected to the Yahweh Being, to the Bodhisattva Beings, and to all the earlier founders of human worldviews. Just consider, for example, how in the Old Testament, with a certain tragic quality, the mystery of death—one can grasp it—comes ever more clearly before humanity, and how, in fact, everything that is still conveyed as teaching in the Old Testament does not provide humanity with sufficient, and especially not inner, insight into death. So that if nothing else had happened at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha other than what occurred in the realm of the Earth and the superworlds connected to the Earth prior to the Mystery of Golgotha—if this Mystery had not come to pass—humanity would have faced a terrible situation in its earthly evolution: they would have experienced on Earth the transitions of birth and death, which would now have appeared not merely as a metamorphosis but as an abrupt transition in the entirety of human life, and they would have been unable to gain any understanding of the significance of death and birth in human life on Earth. In order for teachings about birth and death to gradually find their way into humanity, the being whom we call Christ—who belongs to those worlds from which the earlier great teachers also came, but who, by the decree of these divine realms, chose a different destiny than the other beings—had to gradually acclimate himself to life on Earth. whom we call the Christ—who indeed belongs to those worlds from which the earlier great teachers also came, but who, in accordance with the counsel of these divine worlds, chose a different destiny for himself than the other beings of the divine hierarchies connected with the Earth. In a sense, he submitted to the divine decree of the higher worlds to incarnate in an earthly body and to pass through earthly birth and death with his own divine soul.

[ 11 ] So you see: What happened in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely an inner human or inner earthly matter; it is at the same time a matter concerning the gods. Through what happened on Golgotha, the gods first came to know death and the mystery of birth on Earth from within, for they had not experienced it before. Thus we are faced with the significant fact that a divine being resolved to walk the path of human destiny in this realm in order to share with humanity the same earthly experiences and the same destinies.

[ 12 ] Well, people have come to know many things about the Mystery of Golgotha. There is a tradition, there are the Gospels, there is the entire New Testament, and humanity today approaches the Mystery of Golgotha primarily by engaging with the New Testament and the interpretations of it available today. But actually, given the way the New Testament is interpreted today, one initially gains very little real insight into the Mystery of Golgotha. It is necessary for people today to engage with this knowledge, which is acquired in an external way, but it is, after all, only external knowledge. People today have no idea at all how differently people looked back on the Mystery of Golgotha in the first centuries after it took place, how differently those who were initiated into this Mystery of Golgotha looked back on it, compared to how later generations were able to do so—because, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha — even though everything I have described had taken place — there were still remnants of an ancient, instinctive clairvoyance present in certain individuals; merely remnants, to be sure, but they were present—these remnants through which one could look back in a completely different way, all the way up to the fourth century A.D., to this Mystery of Golgotha than was possible later. It is no coincidence that those who then appeared as teachers—one can ascertain this, albeit very imperfectly, yet still to some extent, from the historical traditions of the earliest so-called Church Fathers and Christian teachers— placed greater value on having received the account of the life of Christ Jesus from teachers who had seen him face to face—those who, in turn, were themselves disciples of the disciples of the apostles in the earliest times, or disciples of the disciples of the disciples of the apostles, and so on—than on any written traditions. This tradition extended all the way into the fourth century A.D., and so it was asserted that there was still a living connection everywhere among those who were teaching even in the fourth century A.D. As I said, the historical documents have largely been lost; only those who study them carefully can still discern, from external evidence, the importance that was attached to the chain: “I had a teacher who had a teacher,” and so on, and at the end of the line, one would place an apostle who had seen the Lord himself face to face.

[ 13 ] An extraordinary amount has already been lost from that alone. But even more has been lost from the actual esoteric wisdom that still existed—thanks to the remnants of the ancient, clairvoyant insights—during the first four centuries of Christianity. Almost everything that was known at that time about the risen Christ—the Christ who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha and then, in a spiritual body, just as the ancient teachers did among early humanity, instructed individual chosen disciples after his resurrection—has been lost to the outer tradition. At most, the Gospels—though even there only in a rudimentary way—hint at the importance of the teachings the Risen One gave to his disciples, as seen in Christ Jesus’ encounter with the disciples on the road to Emmaus and so on. And finally, Paul’s experience near Damascus is also described by Paul himself as an instruction given to him by the Risen One, through which Saul then became Paul. In those earlier times, people were certainly aware that the Risen Christ Jesus had very special mysteries to impart to humanity. It was simply up to human beings that they were initially unable to receive these revelations. People had to develop those soul forces that would then be put to use through human freedom and the human intellect. This has been particularly evident since the fifteenth century, but the groundwork for it had already been laid as early as the fourth century A.D.

[ 14 ] The question must now arise: What, then, was the content of the teachings that the risen Christ was able to impart to his chosen disciples? — After all, he had appeared to them in the same way that the divine teachers had appeared to early humanity. But now he could tell them—if I may put it that way—in the language of the gods what he had experienced, and what his fellow gods had not experienced; he could tell them, from his divine perspective, about the mystery of birth and death. He was able to teach them that, although such a waking consciousness would indeed arise in the future for earthly human beings—a consciousness that cannot directly perceive the eternal-spiritual aspect of human life and that is extinguished during sleep, so that even in sleep this eternal-spiritual aspect does not appear before the soul’s eye itself— but he was able to draw their attention to the fact that it is possible to incorporate the Mystery of Golgotha into human perception. He was able to make clear to them what I would like to express in the following words. They are feeble, stammering words with which I can express it, because our languages offer no more, but I will try to express it in feeble, stammering words.

[ 15 ] The human body has gradually become so dense, and the forces of death have grown so strong within it, that although human beings can now develop their intellect and their freedom; but this is possible only in a life that clearly passes through death, in which death marks a distinct turning point, and in which, during waking consciousness, the perspective on the eternal soul is extinguished. But you can take into your soul a certain wisdom: this is the wisdom that, through the Mystery of Golgotha, in my own being—so said the divine Teacher, Christ, to his initiated disciples — something has taken place with which you yourselves can be filled, if only you can rise to the insight that Christ descended from extraterrestrial spheres to the people of Earth, if only you can rise to the realization that there is something on Earth that cannot be perceived with earthly means, that can only be perceived with means higher than earthly ones; if you can view the Mystery of Golgotha as a divine event set within earthly life, if you can perceive that a God passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. You can attain earthly wisdom through everything else that takes place on Earth. That would be of no use to you in understanding death in a human way; it would only be of use to you if, like the people of old, you were no longer able to take a deep interest in death. But since you must take an interest in it, you must incorporate into your understanding a power that is stronger than all earthly powers of understanding—a power so strong that it can say: With the Mystery of Golgotha, something happened that shattered all earthly laws of nature. If you can accept in your faith only what constitutes earthly laws of nature, you will indeed be able to see death, but you will never be able to grasp its significance for human life. But if you can rise to the insight that the Earth only acquired meaning when, in the midst of Earth’s evolution, something divine took place with the Mystery of Golgotha—something that cannot be understood by earthly means of insight—then you thereby cultivate a special power of wisdom—and this power of wisdom is, after all, the same as the power of faith— a special Pistis Sophia power, a power of faith and wisdom. For it is a powerful force of the soul when one says: “I believe; through faith I know that which I can never believe or know by earthly means.” It is a stronger power than if I were to claim to know only that which can be fathomed by earthly means. Man is weak—even if he were to acquire all the science of the earth—for he can grasp in his wisdom only what can be grasped by earthly means. The person who is willing to admit that the supernatural lives within the earthly must develop a much greater inner activity.

[ 16 ] Contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha serves as an incentive to develop such inner activity. And time and again, in ever-new variations, this teaching—that a God had walked through human destinies—because the gods had not previously experienced human destinies within their own sphere—and had thus connected Himself to the destiny of the Earth through these human destinies—was proclaimed again and again to the original disciples by the risen Christ. And this exerted a great power. Just try to realize for a moment what kind of power this can exert; try to grasp it in light of today’s circumstances. One expects less from a person who can comprehend everything he has drawn from earthly circumstances in his thinking, as well as from the traditional religious concepts that are generally accepted, than of a person who is expected to use their insight to rise to the understanding that certain categories of gods did not at all possess wisdom regarding death and birth up to the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather appropriated this wisdom themselves only then for the salvation of humanity. It takes a certain strength to—one might say—intervene in divine wisdom. After all, it truly takes no special strength at all to have one’s beliefs handed down from some catechism: God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on. All one needs to do is put the little word “all” in front of it, and one then has the definition of the divine—albeit in the most nebulous state possible—all set. People today do not dare, if I may say so, to meddle in divine wisdom. But this must happen. And such divine wisdom is precisely that which the gods themselves have acquired through the fact that one of their own underwent human birth and human death. And the fact that this was entrusted as a mystery to the first disciples—that was what was immensely important. And the other immensely important aspect that followed from this is that it was made clear to these disciples: Yes, the power to gain insight into the eternal nature of one’s own soul once lived within human beings.

[ 17 ] These insights—these true insights into the eternal nature of the human soul—can never be gained through intellectual knowledge, that is, through the kind of intellectual, rational knowledge that uses the brain as an instrument; nor can they truly be attained unless, as with older people, nature comes to one’s aid through the kind of knowledge that is still acquired through a special training of the rhythmic human system. Yoga did indeed achieve much when it was still supported by the ancient instinctive clairvoyance, when the last instinctive clairvoyants were still practicing yoga. Today’s Easterners—the Indians, whom so many Westerners now look up to in such a fanciful way—do not, when they perform their exercises, come anywhere near attaining what constitutes a true insight into the eternal nature of the human soul. For the most part, he lives in illusions because he temporarily experiences something—even if it is something elementary to earthly life—and because, moreover, he interprets elements from his sacred books into that experience. True knowledge, profound knowledge, fundamental knowledge of the divine nature of the human soul can only be attained in two ways. It can be attained either as primeval humanity attained it, or as human beings can attain it again in a much more spiritual way: through intuitive knowledge—that is, knowledge built upon imaginative, inspired insight and then reaching the level of intuitive insight. Why?

[ 18 ] Well, in what constitutes the human nervous-sensory system, the thinking part of the soul has, during earthly life, flowed out; it is no longer present in and of itself; it has formed this plastic structure and is no longer present in and of itself. And in the rhythmic system, it is only half present. One could therefore gain, at most, points of reference from which to draw further conclusions. It is only in the metabolic system—the most material aspect of earthly life—that the true, eternal part of the human soul is hidden. What is regarded here on Earth as the most material—that which lives in the metabolic system—is indeed the most material outwardly; but precisely because it is the most material, the spiritual remains separate from it. The spiritual is absorbed by the other material aspects—the brain and the rhythmic system—and is not present there. It is present in the grossly material realm. But a person must be able to see, perceive, and observe through this grossly material realm. This was present in early humanity and, while not desirable today, is still occasionally present in pathological states. Very few people know, for example, that the secret of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra style lies in the fact that he ingested certain substances—poisons—and that these poisons produced within him the peculiar rhythm, the peculiar style of Zarathustra. A very specific materiality was at work within Nietzsche. This is, of course, something pathological, even if in a certain sense it is also something magnificent. However, one must have no more illusions about these things—if one wishes to understand them—than one should have about their opposites, such as intuition and so on. One must be clear about what it means that Nietzsche ingested certain poisons—which must not be imitated—that simply act upon the human organism in such a way as to lead to an ethereality, to an ethereal mode of existence within the human organism, that they permeate the system of thought and thereby bring about what we can trace in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The intuitions enable one to perceive the spiritual-soul aspect separately from matter as such. Nothing material is at work anymore where this intuition is described, as in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds or in Occult Science. These are the two opposing poles.

[ 19 ] But in those mysteries into which the risen Christ spoke, people still knew: There once existed among human beings a supreme knowledge of matter, a knowledge of metabolism. Not in the same way that primeval humanity did it, nor in the degenerate way that the hashish-eaters and others later did it—to gain insights from the effects of the material world that cannot be gained without it—not in this way did they wish to revive the ancient knowledge of matter for a certain purpose, but rather in a different way: by enveloping it in ritual, in specific mantric formulas—above all, by enveloping the entire structure of the mystery of the Offertory, the sacrifice, transubstantiation, and Communion—by enveloping the mystery of Golgotha within these structural forms, and by presenting the Lord’s Supper to humanity as bread and wine. Not by giving them poison, but by offering them the Lord’s Supper and, first and foremost, by enveloping this Lord’s Supper in that which emanates from the mantric formulas of the Mass sacrifice and from what lies within the fourfold structure of the Mass—the Gospel, the Offering, the Consecration, and Communion. For after Communion, once the fourth part of the Mass is over, the actual communion of the faithful was to take place, and the intention was to provide at least a hint that a knowledge must be regained—one that leads to what the ancient knowledge of metabolism had instinctively pointed toward. Yes, this knowledge of metabolism—people today find it very difficult to grasp, because they have no idea, for example, how much a bird—even if not in an intellectual, abstract, or rational form—knows more than a human being, or how much even a camel knows more than a human being, an animal that lives entirely within its metabolism. It is merely a dull knowledge, a dreamlike knowledge. What remains today is a degeneration of what the primordial human possessed in his metabolism. But the sacrament of the altar is indeed intended as a guiding force—derived from the earliest Christian teachings—to guide us toward regaining a knowledge of the Eternal within the human soul.

[ 20 ] Back when Christ, who had passed through death, was teaching his initiated disciples, people could not arrive at such knowledge on their own. But he taught it to them. And during the first four centuries of Christianity, this knowledge was still alive in a certain sense. Then it became ossified within the Roman Catholic Church, which, while retaining the Mass as a sacrifice, no longer had an interpretation for it. The Mass, conceived as a continuation of the Last Supper as described in the Bible, naturally makes no sense unless one first interprets a meaning into it. The fact that the Mass, with its wondrous liturgy and its imitation of the four chapters on the Mysteries, was instituted stems precisely from the fact that the risen Christ was also the teacher of those who were able to receive these teachings in a higher, esoteric sense. For the centuries that followed, all that could remain was, so to speak, a kind of childlike instruction regarding the Mystery of Golgotha. A capacity was developed that initially veiled and concealed this knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. People were first to become fully grounded in that which is connected with death. This is the first medieval civilization. Traditions have been preserved. In some secret societies of the present day, people still gather who have formulas in their writings that—for those who understand them and can thereby recognize the truth anew—are quite reminiscent of the teachings of the risen Christ to his initiated disciples. But those people who today unite in all manner of Masonic lodges and secret societies do not understand what lives within their formulas; they have, in essence, no idea about it. Yet one could glean much from these formulas, for much lives within them even in dead letters—only it does not happen. But after humanity has passed through a period in its development that was, in a sense, a kind of darkness in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, the time has now come when human longing demands that we also gain a deeper knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. And this can only happen in the anthroposophical way. It can only happen through the emergence of a new kind of knowledge that operates in a purely spiritual manner. Then we will once again arrive at a fully human understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then we will once again come to understand that the most important teachings for humanity were not given by the Christ who lived in a physical body up to the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather, after the Mystery of Golgotha, by the risen Christ. We will gain a new understanding of the words of an initiate such as Paul: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain.” — He had known since his experience on the road to Damascus that everything depended on comprehending the risen Christ, on uniting the power of the risen Christ with the human being in such a way that the human being could then say: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

[ 21 ] In contrast, it is all too characteristic that in the nineteenth century a “theology” emerged that no longer wants to know anything at all about the risen Christ. It is, after all, a significant symptom of the times that a professor of theology in Basel, Switzerland—Nietzsche’s friend Overbeck—wrote a book as a theologian on the “Christianity” of contemporary theology, in which he attempts to prove that this contemporary theology is no longer Christian. There may still be some Christian elements—as even such an expert on Christianity would concede—but the theology taught by Christian theologians is certainly not Christian. That is roughly the view of the Christian theologian Overbeck, and he demonstrates this view very insightfully in his book.

[ 22 ] Humanity has reached a point in its understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha where, ironically, those who are officially appointed by their churches to speak to people about this Mystery of Golgotha are the ones who know the least about it today. From this arises the longing—the human longing—to experience something of what everyone can nevertheless experience within themselves: the need for Christ.

[ 23 ] As was evident from the previous lectures, anthroposophy has many services to render to humanity today. One important service will be the religious service. It is not the intention to establish a new religion. With the event in which a God passed through the human destiny of birth and death, the Earth has received its meaning in such a way that this event can never be surpassed. After Christianity—and this is quite clear to anyone who knows the foundations of Christianity—a new religion can no longer be established. One would misunderstand Christianity if one believed that a new religion could be founded. But as humanity itself advances further and further in supersensible knowledge, the Mystery of Golgotha—and with it the Christ Being—will be understood ever more deeply. It is precisely to this understanding that anthroposophy wishes to contribute what, in the present, perhaps only it can contribute. For hardly anywhere else can one speak in this way about the relationship in ancient times of the divine Primordial Teachers of humanity—who spoke of everything except birth and death, because they themselves had not undergone birth and death—and about that Teacher who still appeared to his initiated disciples in the form in which the divine Primordial Teachers of humanity had appeared, but who, in his crucial teachings, had precisely the experience of sharing in the human fate of birth and death as a god. From this message from a god to humanity, people are to draw the strength to view death—which they must now concern themselves with—in such a way that they can say to themselves: This death is here, but it cannot harm the soul. The Mystery of Golgotha existed so that people could say this to themselves. Paul knew: If it were not there—if Christ had not risen—the soul would be entangled in the fate of the body, that is, in the dissolution of the body’s elements into the elements of the earth. Had Christ not risen, had he not united himself with the forces of the earth, then the human soul would, between birth and death, unite with the human body in such a way that this soul, too, would become bound to all the molecules that, through fire or decomposition, become bound to the earth along with the human body. It would eventually come to pass that, at the end of the Earth’s evolution, human souls would follow the same path as the Earth’s matter. But by undergoing the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ rescues human souls from this fate. The Earth will follow its course in the universe. But just as the human soul can emerge from the individual human body, so too will the sum total of human souls be able to detach itself from the Earth and move toward a new cosmic existence.

[ 24 ] In this intimate way, Christ is connected to earthly existence. But one can only understand this by approaching the mystery in precisely the same way.

[ 25 ] Some may still be left wondering: What about those who cannot believe in Christ? To offer some reassurance, I would like to add this at the end: Christ died for everyone, even for those who cannot connect with him today. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective reality to which human knowledge contributes nothing. But this human knowledge strengthens the inner forces of the human soul. And all the means of human cognition, human feeling, and human will must be applied so that, in the course of further earthly development, the presence of Christ in earthly evolution may also be subjectively experienced through direct knowledge within human beings.