Steiner The Gospel of John and the Other Three Gospels

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-85584-706-4
Verlag: Rudolf Steiner Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 117, 194 Seiten

Reihe: The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner

'What is the Christ-event? It is a confluence of all preceding philosophies and religious streams of humanity... united in Palestine; and they were expressed in the Gospels according to the different types of initiation of the one or other Evangelist.' - Rudolf Steiner Speaking two years after his main lecture course on the Gospel of John, Rudolf Steiner discusses initiation traditions in the course of human history, and how the Christ Event unified them all - in particular, those connected to the Western and Eastern mysteries. In addition to esoteric interpretations of passages in the Gospels, Steiner also presents many new and complementary insights on the world-historic significance of Christ's mission, including his initial reference to the Second Coming in the etheric realm. Dense in content, these thirteen lectures - delivered to an audience at the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm - enrich our understanding of Rudolf Steiner's Christology. Only recently published in German, and here in English for the first time, the lectures are accompanied with an introduction by Hans-Christian Zehnter, an appendix of photos and facsimiles, extensive notes and an index. 'The voice rose and the speaking took on a more rapid tempo, while it flowed without stopping in perfectly formed, beautiful sentences, as only a born speaker can produce.' (From a contemporary newspaper review.) Thirteen lectures, Stockholm, Jan. 1910, GA 117a

Autoren/Hrsg.

Steiner, Rudolf

Weitere Mitwirkende

Binder, K.

Leseproben

LECTURE 1

STOCKHOLM, 3 JANUARY 1910

HIGHLY esteemed attendees!

You have asked me to speak about the Gospel of John in the context of the three other gospels in this cycle. That means, you have [embraced] the view1 that the theosophical world view and its way of thinking includes much that can contribute to the understanding of Christianity. These lectures will have to show that this is indeed the case, and that the gospels, especially the Gospel of John, have a special mission for human beings in our time. In particular, they will show how Christianity has developed gradually from distant periods of time, how it has a long future ahead of it, and how theosophy unlocks a new area for research on the gospels by the insights which it is called to reveal.

Indeed, when we look at the position taken by the leaders of the modern spiritual movement towards the gospels, we can only characterize it as increasingly deprecatory. If no sources existed other than those already known, this would well be explicable.

Now what are the gospels supposed to offer a person approaching them? They should provide an illumination, an explanation of the great event which has occurred in the development of humanity: the Christ-event. However, when people of the present day approach the gospels to this end, they do not find a satisfactory presentation of this event. Instead of one presentation they find four, they find differences and contradictions in the gospels. For example: Matthew and Luke narrate [the story of Jesus’ childhood in different ways].2

Consequently, people say: This does not agree, it cannot be true; and our present-day criticism tries to show that [gap in transcript].

It is well known that the authority of the gospels is gradually dwindling under the influence of the above-mentioned viewpoint, and that people believe more and more that it is possible to extract a kind of shared basis from the four gospels, and how people in certain radical circles are even inclined to dismiss the entire thing. The gospel that speaks most deeply to our heart has fared worst in this.3 People say: A historical core can be found in the first three gospels. But the Gospel of John differs so much from the others that it must be assumed that it was written much later and therefore it is without significance. In other circles a certain historical significance is attributed to the synoptics, but the Gospel of John is believed to be a kind of hymn through which the first Christians wanted to express their belief in Christ.

From an entirely external perspective we might pose a historical question: Did people during the first centuries of Christianity possess the gospels, did they really study them? The answer is: even in the Middle Ages, the gospels were not generally read, i.e., studied, in the way they have been for the last few centuries. Only the printers have made it possible that everyone can read the word of the gospel.

When we go back to earlier centuries, we find that only a few people were able to obtain the gospels, and that those few were the ones who were the most educated, the most knowledgeable people: leaders and teachers. Curiously enough, these people did not object to the contradictions which arise between the individual gospels. And if we were to name the predominant feeling that arose from these differences, then it would be deep gratitude for the fact that there was not one document, but precisely four. Contradictions were found only at that moment when the gospels became more popular; only then were people able to be irked by the contradictions.

Should these educated and highly developed adepts of Christianity really have possessed such little insight, such little reason and understanding to be grateful for the contradictions? No, this is impossible. There must be another explanation for this significant fact.

When we try to look into the souls of the first believers of Christianity, we find that the feeling they had towards the Christ mystery was that this is something that one cannot understand without further effort, and thus they told themselves that it was good that four delineators have described what they understood of it. If, for example, we photograph this lectern from this side, then someone else may also photograph it from the opposite side; then we have two photographs of it. In the same way one can photograph it from the two other sides. Then we have four pictures of the lectern. If you put together a picture of the whole based on these four pictures, you can say that you know what the lectern looks like.

In the same way the great Christ-event has been described by four individuals and we have to take these four pictures together. Then we can ascend step by step to a total understanding of the event.

Now the question arises: How can there be four different documents? What does each gospel want to say about the great Christevent? Each gospel starts from the premise that this event cannot be grasped through external cognition and that it is necessary to look at it from the viewpoint of an initiate. Each gospel has been written from the perspective of a seer.

There were four kinds of initiation in pre-Christian times, four schools of seers. And only if we consider that there were four kinds of initiation, we can grasp that each gospel has been written on the basis of a particular initiation.

What exactly is an initiate? Someone whose forces of apprehension are not confined to external reality, who has developed their spiritual organs in such a way as to be able to look into the spiritual worlds.

Now only that which is already present in the form of innate abilities can be developed in the human being. We distinguish three basic forces in the human being: the force of thought, the force of feeling and the force of the will. In the ordinary human life these three basic forces are only developed up to a certain degree. In an initiate they were much inflated through what are called the mysteries. But since it was found that the three forces could only be developed evenly up to a certain level in one and the same person, the candidates for initiation were put in three groups depending on their innate abilities. In each of these only one of the three forces was especially developed. In the Egyptian, Persian and Greek mysteries it was said: We train certain people in such a way that the force of thinking becomes particularly strong [gap in transcript] until they become seers [gap in transcript] in other people the force of the will [gap in transcript].

This resulted in three groups of initiates in the Ancient world:

the initiates of thinking—the ‘wise’,

the initiates of feeling—the ‘therapists’ or ‘healers’,

the initiates of the will—the ‘magicians’.

These initiations were one-sided, but precisely because of a [renunciation],4 resignation, of the other forces the individual initiate was able to develop the highest powers in their domain. The wise had the great overview over the world, they were able to search the spiritual world and knew its laws; the therapist healed people; not by external remedies but with the help of their spiritual and psychic powers; and the magician ruled the physical world and knew its laws.

To unite these three categories of initiates, a fourth category was formed. These were the individuals in whom their personality was not as highly developed but in whom all three forces worked in harmony with each other: the harmonious people. They were always heard whenever anything of importance had to be decided.

There is a deep secret underneath this. What was the opinion regarding the fact that people turned to those who were less advanced with respect to the individual forces? It was well known in the ancient mysteries that everything can be found in nature. Wasps had long invented paper, for their nest is the true paper. In the wasp there is thus the wisdom that the human being has acquired later. In this way there is also wisdom in the human being and through this the human being is ruler over the forces of nature. But there is more of the divine in the less initiated than in those more deeply initiated. The initiated ‘human being’ was the fourth group of initiates.

We meet these four categories of initiates in the four gospels. Each initiate can only research the great fact from a certain angle: the wise—John—from one side of the Christ-event; the magician—Mark—from another perspective; and the healer—Luke—again from a different angle. The harmonious human being Matthew has an overview over the whole. Wisdom goes far, much beyond everything which the human being can reach. This is why John has as his symbol the eagle who flies high above earthly events. And the healer, what kind of forces does this person want to develop? Not external remedies, but [he worked] as a psychic healer who [developed] the forces of sacrificial love.5 Human beings become healers to the degree that they shed egoism and become able to sacrifice themselves for others: the ability to sacrifice themselves, that is the nature of the healer in the psychic realm; if someone is so far developed that they give everything for the other person, then they are a healer. In this way the Evangelist Luke. That is why tradition says that Luke’s Gospel was written by a doctor.

For this reason, the symbol of Luke: the sacrificial bull, that means, the personality of a human being who sacrifices themselves. The magician finally aims to develop the forces of the will. In this way the Evangelist Mark; [his]...