WAS HE CHRISTIAN?
Steiner’s Gnostic Heresies
I.
Let’s begin by hearing from Rudolf Steiner. “What, then, is this mysterious impulse making its victorious way through the world? ... It is the Christ himself. He goes from heart to heart, from soul to soul, living and working in the world regardless of whether he is understood as evolution progresses through the centuries.” [1] Here we glimpse Steiner’s unorthodox take on Christianity. Some Christian denominations have reconciled themselves to evolution, but most haven’t. Steiner, on the other hand, taught that evolution is the basic law of biological life, although he mixed it with karma and reincarnation. Thus, few Christians — and no scientists — would endorse Steiner’s views. Still, Steiner placed great emphasis on Christ Jesus and His centrality in human affairs, and he advocated a gnostic approach to the study of Christianity. [2] Anthroposophy can be aptly described a gnostic offshoot of Christianity, with large admixtures of tenets from other faiths.
If Steiner was, in any sense, Christian, then we are justified in asking just how closely his teachings conform to those of Jesus. Let’s take a look at a passage from the New Testament:
16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, 19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [3]
Compare that with Steiner’s “Christian” attitude:
“Quite a number of people have been born ... [who are] human forms filled with a sort of natural demon ... We cannot, however, create a school for demons .... Imagine what people would say if they heard that we say there are people who are not human beings.” [4]
Imagine, indeed.
An extremely useful guide in considering the true import of Christ’s ministry is BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: CHRIST’S TEACHINGS ABOUT LOVE, COMPASSION AND FORGIVENESS, gathered and introduced by Wendell Berry. [5] Berry begins the introduction to his book with these words:
“Any observer would have to say that Christianity is fashionable at present in the United States. This might be a good thing, except that the observer, observing more closely, would have to conclude that, to the extent that Christianity is fashionable, it is loosely fashionable. It seems to have remarkably little to do with the things that Jesus Christ actually taught.” [6]
Berry concludes the introduction by saying:
“Christ told us how to survive when He answered the question, Who is my neighbor? In the tenth chapter of Luke He tells the story of a Samaritan who cared for a Jew who had been badly wounded by thieves. As we know from the preceding chapter, in which the Disciples suggest in effect the firebombing of a Samaritan village, the Samaritans and the Jews were enemies. To modernize the story, then, and so to understand Christ’s answer, we may substitute any other pair of enemies: fundamentalist Christian and fundamentalist Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli, captor and prisoner. The answer: Your neighbor is any sufferer who needs your help.” [7]
Christ’s message was one of radical love: love extended to everyone. He saw the humanity in everyone. He never conceived of “people who are not human beings”, people who stand outside the circle of humanity. Steiner’s gnostic preachments take us away from, not toward, the core of Jesus’s message — just as they take us away from truth, genuine education, and the values of the Enlightenment.
From a Christian perspective, gnosticism is a heresy. From a secularist’s point of view, gnosticism — like all forms of esoteric spiritualism — is nonsense. But a secularist, such as I, need not reject every form of religious teaching. Steiner’s doctrines are dross. By contrast, Jesus’s “eleventh commandment,” to love one’s neighbors, is a superb ideal, toward which we can all aspire. In “Unenlightened: The Inside Story of an Occult Education,” I argue that true reverence deserves great respect. [8] I repeat that assertion now. Humane secularists and humbly devout followers of religion should be able to coexist. We all love our children and wish the best for them. We all are — or should be — seekers of the truth. It is in this spirit that we should establish and operate our schools, whether public or private. As Gary Wills suggests, we should yearn back to the Enlightenment and honor the values of which our nation is a product: “critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences.” [9] That is the path toward truth.
II.
Steiner’s cosmology is odd. The universe he describes bears little relationship to the universe of science or the universe of the Bible. The consequences for Christ’s position, as described by Steiner, are profound.
Steiner taught that the Sun is the physical representation of Christ’s physical presence:
“It is ... important that the deeds of Christ Jesus are always seen in relation to the physical sun, which is the external expression of the spiritual world that is received at the point where Christ’s physical body is walking around. When Christ Jesus heals, for instance, it is the sun force that heals. However, the sun must be in the right place in the heavens: ‘That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.’ It is important to indicate that this healing power can flow down only when the external sun has set but still works spiritually.” [10]
The Moon, according to Steiner, is the residence of Jehovah (otherwise known as Jahveh or Yahweh):
“You know that the Old Testament peoples honored Yahweh. This devotion was aimed at a real being. And this being has a connection with what reveals itself in the physical world as the Moon. Of course it is only an imagistic way of talking, but it does have a reality too, if we say that Yahweh resides on the Moon. Everything connected with Yahweh is connected to the Moon.” [11]
To make sense of this, you need to understand that Steiner taught that Jehovah is the god of the Jews but not the one true God of all. Steiner taught that there are many gods. “Monotheism ... can only represent an ultimate ideal; it could never lead to a real understanding of the world .... ” [12] Jehovah, who is one of many gods, is connected not only with the Moon but, of course, with the Jews: “From the Moon, Jahveh reigned over the heart and soul of the Jewish people ... [O]nly when man views the universe in this way can he have any true conception of the function of the Moon.” [13]
Another significant fact about the solar system is that humans moved to various planets long ago:
“[D]uring the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution [i.e., long ago] only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution ... the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.” [14]
“Human” is a tricky term, as used by Steiner. As we have seen, Steiner taught that some people are not really human. Some people who seem to be human are actually demons in disguise (“[A] number of people are going around who ... have become something that is not human, but instead are demons in human form” [15]), while on the other hand some beings who were once human have moved on: “[T]he moon today is like a fortress in the universe, in which there lives a population that fulfilled its human destiny over 15,000 years ago, after which it withdrew to the moon ... This is only one of the 'cities' in the universe, one colony, one settlement among many .... " [16]
One “human” who moved from the Earth to another planet is Buddha:
“But where is the actual Buddha, the one who lived as Gautama [Buddha's given name]? He became for Mars what Christ has become for the earth.” [17] “The Buddha wandered away from earthly affairs to the realm of Mars. Until then Mars had been the chosen center of forces designated by the Greeks as fearfully warlike ... The Buddha Mystery on Mars did not take the same course as the Christ Mystery on earth, but Buddha, the Prince of Peace, who, during his last earthly life had spread peace and love wherever he went, was transferred to the belligerent realm of Mars. The fact that a being who is fully permeated by forces of peace and love was transferred to a realm of strife and disharmony may in a sense be regarded as a crucifixion.” [18]
As usual, Steiner fudges. The “being” we call Buddha was “in a sense” crucified as Jesus was, but in a different way. Buddha did for Mars what Jesus did for Earth, but in a different way. The main point of interest for us, however, is that Steiner effectively belittles Jesus in these passages. Jesus was not unique, Steiner taught. Jesus was much like Buddha, doing here on Earth what Buddha did on Mars. For Christians, this is heresy.
— Roger Rawlings
◊◊◊◊
For a further discussion of religion at Waldorf schools,
see the two brief essays at the end
of my collection of Steiner quotations:
Click on “quotes” at the top of this page.
For more on Steiner’s cosmology,
including humanity’s past and future,
please visit steiner-predicts.com.
#
ENDNOTES
[1] Rudolf Steiner, THE FIFTH GOSPEL: FROM THE AKASHIC RECORD (Rudolf Steiner Press), pp. 11-12.
[2] See, e.g., Rudolf Steiner, HOW CAN MANKIND FIND THE CHRIST AGAIN? (Anthroposophic Press, 1984), p. 49: “These two things, you see, were engaged in a struggle: the gnostic teaching, wishing to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha through powerful spiritual thinking; and the other teaching, that reckoned with what was to come, when thought would no longer have power, when it would lack the penetration needed to understand the Mystery of Golgotha ... ” Steiner explicitly associates himself with the “powerful spiritual thinking” of gnosticism. (Golgotha — otherwise known as Calvary — is the site of the Crucifixion.)
For connections and distinctions Steiner drew between Anthroposophy and gnosticism, see ANTHROPOSOPHICAL LEADING THOUGHTS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999), pp. 175-180. Steiner held that modern humans cannot simply adopt the gnosticism of the past: We have reached a different level of development. The new “wisdom” he offered, Anthroposophy, extends gnostic teachings into our age with appropriate spiritual refinement/repackaging.
Steiner made innumerable references to the “Mystery of Golgotha.” See, e.g., Rudolf Steiner, THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), pp. 48-58. A concise but typically turgid statement of Steiner’s view is this: “a God” [sic: one god of many] “descended in order to enter a human body and in this body suffer death and then unite with the forces of the earth. For since that event, Christ has been united with the forces of the earth. Since the Mystery of Golgotha forces have been united with the earth and especially with human evolution on the earth, Christ-forces which were not there prior to that event ... Christ had to experience death and he did suffer death, and he gained victory over death. In the Resurrection he emerged victorious as a living spirit being, and since then he has continued to live with and for humanity, who would have possessed only dead thinking if Christ had not done these things.” [Rudolf Steiner, RUDOLF STEINER SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998), pp. 38-39.] Some of this is close to orthodox Christianity, but some of it wanders far into heresy. •“A” God descended (Steiner was essentially a polytheist). •Following the Resurrection, this God “unite[d] with the forces of the earth.” •The results have been essential in “human evolution” (evolution is central to Steiner’s teachings). •The resurrected God emerged “as a living spirit being” (one of many). •He enabled humans to escape from “dead thinking” (which Steiner often referred to as logical or scientific thought, occurring in the brain — real “cognition” for Steiner is clairvoyance which occurs in “organs” of clairvoyance).
“Living thinking” of the sort Steiner advocated makes the New Testament unnecessary, since initiated spiritualists can perceive the underlying truths for themselves: “[T]he initiate is no longer dependent on the Gospels ... From the power he has gained, which gives him the awareness already described of his own [future] existence after death, from Inspiration and Intuition, he derives objectively the Imagination and the truth of the world outside himself, so that he would be capable of writing the Gospels himself if they had not already been written.” [Ibid., p. 38.] Thus Steiner affirmed the truth of the Gospels, but he taught that the truth is different from what is generally supposed and can be grasped only by those who have been initiated in mysteries. This is gnosticism.
Note that one’s future “existence after death” is not in Heaven — it is a stage in an alternating series of lives spent in the spirit realm and in the physical realm. Reincarnation is another central tenet in Steiner’s heretical doctrines. See, e.g., Rudolf Steiner, LIFE BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH (Anthroposophic Press, 1998).
[3] Matthew 19: See http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Matthew+19
[4] Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), pp. 649-650.
[5] Wendell Berry, BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: CHRIST’S TEACHINGS ABOUT LOVE, COMPASSION AND FORGIVENESS (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005).
[6] Ibid., p. 3.
[7] Ibid., p. 7.
[8] Click on the tag, “unenlightened,” at the top of this page.
[9] Garry Wills, “The Day the Enlightenment Went Out,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, Nov. 4, 2004, p. 25.
[10] Rudolf Steiner, THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN: The Evolution of Individuality, Lectures from 1909-1916 (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), pp. 65-66.
[11] Rudolf Steiner, SLEEP AND DREAMS (SteinerBooks, 2003), p. 43.
Steiner’s term “imagistic” is tangentially related to his doctrine that imagination, or pictorial thinking, yields spiritual truth. More pertinent, here: It also involves Steiner’s characteristic fudging. Thus, Steiner said that planets, the Moon, the Sun, etc., are physical spheres in the physical universe, but they are also stages of evolution. There is no rational way to reconcile these doctrines — you just have to believe (or not).
[12] Rudolf Steiner, THE MISSION OF THE FOLK SOULS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005), p.115.
[13] Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS: Esoteric Studies, Vol. 2 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974), p. 203.
[14] Rudolf Steiner, OCCULT HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982), p. 36.
Lemuria was a pre-Atlantis Atlantis, a lost habitation for humans on Earth.
[15] FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 650.
[16] Rudolf Steiner, RUDOLF STEINER SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998), p. 93.
[17] Rudolf Steiner, LIFE BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH (SteinerBooks, 1985), p.72.
[18] Ibid., p. 207.
Note that Buddha had more than one life on Earth. Steiner’s doctrines include karma and reincarnation. These are not biblical or Christian concepts.