THE CHRISTOLOGY OF RUDOLF STEINER

Charlotte Sturm was a Rudolf Steiner’s follower and in this article I transcribed the summary she made of the explanations given by Rudolf Steiner about his claim that there were two Jesus; and in purple I added my comments.

SHORT EXPLANATION

« The well-known discrepancy between the genealogies of Jesus as they occur in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are due to no errors of transcription or translation, but to the plain fact that there was not one Jesus but two. Two Jesus boys were born at about the same time, of different parents, though the parents of each were named Joseph and Mary.

The first child is known as Jesus of Bethlehem and he is called by Rudolf Steiner “the Royal Child”, because he was a descendant from King Solomon, and this child was the reincarnation of Zoroaster.

The second child is known as Jesus of Nazareth and he is called by Rudolf Steiner “the Pontifical Child”, he was the physical descendant of Nathan, but he was not the reincarnation of any individual, because his Ego was withdrawn from evolution before the fall in order that it might remain incapable of sin.

Rudolf Steiner about this Ego said:

-      “It was an Ego kept free from any luciferian influence, and had been guarded in the centres of Initiation under the name of The Tree of Life, from the Lemurian period, before Lucifer began to influence man” (The Turning Point of Evolution, based on the unpublished works of Steiner, by Walleen).

And the Akashic records, as read by Dr. Steiner, reveal the fact that the etheric body of this Being was descended from the etheric body of Moses, and his astral body from the astral body of Buddha. »

(Occult Review, January 1923, p.41)

MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION

« Statements which when first heard seem to be impossible fictions have a way of becoming self-evident, according to the occult maxim which has become a commonplace proverb:

     -   “Magna est veritas et praevalebit.”

Dr. Steiner’s teaching with regard to the double Jesus has seemed incredible to many, but none can doubt the personal integrity and sincerity of Dr. Steiner himself.

(Given the huge amount of lies and nonsense said by Rudolf Steiner, we can doubt much of his integrity and sincerity.)

It is in the belief that his teaching, regarded from whatever angle, is worthy of the most careful consideration, that I have written the present article.

Dr. Steiner holds Christ to be the highest Initiate of the "Sun Period,” a cycle of cosmic evolution which in his system seems to correspond to the second planetary chain of modern theosophy, or to adopt the nomenclature of Indian scriptures, Brahma’s Body of Light.

The humanity of this period consisted of beings who now, in all systems, are the Archangels. They represent a life-wave which started upon its evolutionary pilgrimage long prior to the system to which we ourselves belong, attaining their “I’’-consciousness in the Sun Period, when we were “cloudy, cup-shaped, plant-like beings with bodies of luminous air,” still in the stage of sleep-consciousness. They have labored in our service in the past; they influence us now in their present capacity of Race Spirits, each having dominion over a group of people.

“To the Christian esotericist the Being that dwelt in the body of flesh of Christ Jesus was one of these Sun Fire-Spirits, the Mightiest, the Regent of the Sun-Spirits” (“Theosophy of the Rosicrucians,” Lecture IX). The position of Christ in the Divine Hierarchy was therefore that of the first of the Archangels.

(As usual, Rudolf Steiner makes a tremendous jumble of Theosophical teaching and adds many falsehoods.)

As a preliminary to the consideration of all that is involved in this statement, it may be profitable to examine such scanty exoteric evidence as seems to be in agreement with it. For such a purpose one naturally turns first to those remains of the Christian Scriptures known to us as the New Testament.

The indirect testimony afforded by these, as is to be expected from the vicissitudes which in translation they have endured at ecclesiastical hands, is vague and fragmentary, but nevertheless of sufficient importance to be noted in passing. We find Christ described as "the first-born of every creature” and as "the beginning of the creation of God,” which is to say that in His genesis He belongs, as noted above, to a life-wave which preceded our humanity.

That He is above the angels is evident from the script: “Let all the angels of God worship Him”; He belongs to the Creative Hierarchy because He is the One “by Whom also He made the worlds”; also because He is the Word, and "the worlds were framed by the Word of God.”

(Most probably these texts were altered to deify Jesus and hence they do not have to be taken literally.)

When, however, one consults sources which, for various causes, have the advantage of never having received the imprimatur of the official Church, one finds more definite testimony.

We meet with the expressed tradition that the Holy Spirit Who entered the body of Jesus at His baptism was none other than Michael the Archangel of the Presence.  It may be asked where is this statement to be found.

To answer this question would involve a discussion which cannot be entered into here, but I am told that the fact that such a tradition was extant can be absolutely verified by anyone who has access to, and sufficient learning to appreciate, the writings of the Cabalists and Rosicrucians who kept the flame of hermetic knowledge burning through the long ages of ignorance and persecution, and my own personal association with a life-long student of the Cabala leaves no doubt in my mind that this is indeed the case.

(Many things have also been invented in esotericism and that is why we must also be very suspicious of what we read.)

It was in fact an accusation directed against the disciples of Christian Rosenkreuz that they had a saying:

"Christ is the brother of Lucifer.”

But what, if we examine it, does such a statement really involve?

Does it not implicitly contain the very doctrine we are discussing?

Is it more, perhaps, than a memory of Lactantius Firmianus, who, in the second of his Seven Books of Divine Institutes says that the Word is the first-born brother of the Archangel Lucifer? *

(* I am indebted for all my quotations to the student referred to above.)

Christ is therefore Himself an Archangel. Such a tradition, common to all schools of mediaeval Cabalism, not only supports the occult teaching it is desired to elucidate, but furthermore links the Personality of Christ with the Egyptian Osiris. Osiris also was the brother of Set, suffering death at his hands no otherwise than Christ suffered death when Satan entered into Iscariot.

If for a moment we may digress from our main purpose, we may observe that here again, in the account of the defection of Iscariot, is an example of the manner in which apparently figurative expressions in the Scriptures are in reality literal statements of occult truth.

St. Luke says:

     -   “Then entered Satan into Judas sumamed Iscariot.”

St. John, whose gospel contains more of the secret doctrine than any writing which has survived, with the single exception of the Book of the Dead, states the same fact as explicitly, but in more detail:

-      “And when He had dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him.”

Only in St. John do we find any record of the stupendously significant fact that by administering the sacrament of His body to Iscariot, Christ in a manner blesses both the betrayer and the deed of betrayal; and this notwithstanding that He has said:

-      “The Son of Man goeth, as was determined; but woe unto that man by whom He is betrayed.”

At present, however, we are concerned with the definite statement that Satan entered into Judas. Read literally, as it is intended to be read, and as every word in sacred script is intended to be read, it is an instance of the law by which a spiritual being can manifest upon the physical plane only when provided with a physical body. "Nulla res spiritualis descendens inferius operatur sine indumento.”

The Archangel Satan, who was in more than a symbolical sense the fallen star, took possession of the body of Iscariot. And Christ, the incarnating God Who is addressed in the Egyptian Book of the Dead as “Thou Flame Who comest forth and withdrawest Thyself,” had also to assume a mortal body suited to His purpose, and took the body of the man Jesus.

Let us now examine in some little detail the significance of the statement that Christ was the highest of the Archangels. If we follow our argument whithersoever it may lead, it would appear that we arrive at a conception of the Incarnation which solves many of the apparent inconsistencies that have caused the world to reject the childish theology of the existing Church.

As an inhabitant of the ancestral earth as it existed during the Sun Period, Christ had shared in the evolution of that particular cycle. That He was the most advanced of the Archangels who were the humanity of that cycle did not, however, free Him from all the limitations of evolutionary law.

The Archangels had the astral body as their lowest principle; when therefore the time came for the descent of Christ into our world of matter, He was unable in His own identity to manifest upon the physical plane. “It was necessary for Him to take a physical body, to be subject to the same earthly conditions as man, that He might work on earth.”

As an Archangel He had learned to gather about Himself an astral body, but not an etheric body nor a physical body; yet when He came to the physical plane He could, and did, make use of the body of a human being. This elected body was that of Jesus of Nazareth, who during long ages had been dedicated to such a purpose.  By this union Christ became “very God and very man”; the two lacking physical vehicles were added to Him; the immortal part put on mortality.

Now He could manifest in every plane from the lowest physical to the World of God. He was thus the sole Being Who was, as it were, an unbroken bridge between God and man. The saying that there is but one mediator between God and man is therefore not merely a religious formula, but a literal and objective fact.

The explanation for the discrepancies that exist between

the gospels of Matthew and Luke

Once more consulting the record of these events as we find them in the New Testament, we are immediately faced with an apparent discrepancy between the genealogies of Jesus as given respectively by St. Matthew and St. Luke.

Exoteric criticism lays but little stress upon this important matter, usually being content to suppose that both accounts were originally alike but have been corrupted by copyists and translators, or that both are wrong and merely fanciful, or, lastly, that one is wrong and the other right.

That both may be right is a contingency that does not appear to have occurred to the scholarly minds who labour so devotedly at critical exegesis. It certainly appears at first sight that such is an impossibility in logic. But let us examine the position from the point of view of Dr. Steiner.

The gospel of St. Matthew says that Jesus was descended from Solomon, the son of David. The gospel of St. Luke, upon the other hand, states that he was descended from Nathan, the son of David.

This and other contradictions in the two records of so important a matter disappear when we regard them in the light afforded by the teaching of occultism. The explanation of these apparent contradictions is that the two genealogies refer to different persons. That is to say, there were two children named Jesus born from different parents: the descendant of Solomon from a Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem; the descendant of Nathan from a Joseph and Mary in Nazareth.

• The father of the Bethlehem Child (the Royal Child) was Joseph the son of Jacob (Matt 1:16)

• The father of the Nazareth Child (the Pontifical Child) was Joseph the son of Heli (Luke 3:23).

The genesis of the Royal Child of Bethlehem presents no difficulties to the understanding. We know him to have been a reincarnation of a Boddhisattva who was in all probability a spiritual predecessor of the historical Zoroaster, and whom we will call Zoroaster if only for reasons of convenience.

Jesus of Bethlehem, the Royal Child in whom Zoroaster was now incarnate, was the most highly developed being that the human race had up to that time been able to produce. So far as perfection is possible to humanity, he was perfect.

He was the fruit of many incarnations all consciously directed to the elaboration of a perfect physical body, for it was necessary that Zoroaster should for a time be incarnate in such a one so that he might assimilate from its energies the power which he needed for the final stage of his great labour: the preparation of the body of Christ, to which task he had dedicated himself many thousands of years previously.

If Jesus of Bethlehem was a reincarnation of Zoroaster, who or what was Jesus of Nazareth?

To answer that question fully would take many volumes and require more knowledge than the writer possesses. But so far as we at present know, he was in a manner a divinely energized automaton. He was a human being of a highly specialized kind, but cannot be regarded as the reincarnation of any individual, for the ego which inhabited him had been withdrawn from the scheme of evolution before self-consciousness or individuality had been attained by the human race.

We touch here upon a mystery which cannot be fully explained as it is as yet but partly understood, but it will be possible nevertheless to throw some light upon it by making a short digression.

At a certain remote period in the history of this planet, when self-consciousness was just awakening in humanity, certain spiritual entities known to Christian occultism as Lucifer Spirits began to tempt mankind to “evil.”

These, I am told, are the “worms of Restau” who in the Book of the Dead “live within the bodies of men and feed upon their blood.” In luring man into courses which we must for the moment call evil, they acted solely according to the Will of God.

They were not evil in their essence, nor were their activities in any way destructive to the scheme of evolution, but on the contrary necessary to it. They implanted in the astral body of man certain desires which tempted him to become more and more deeply preoccupied with the physical environment which was building its walls about him. Such a “fall” was necessary to him for two reasons.

In the first place it was only by immersion in the material universe that he could develop the self-consciousness which enables him to say “I am I,” that is, to regard himself as an individual. And secondly, the temptation to Wrong Action which was the natural result of individuality in a world of sense, gave birth to Free Will, or the possibility of conscious choice between two courses of action.

The importance of these remarks, so far as our present purpose is concerned, lies in the fact that the ego of the Pontifical Child was withdrawn from evolution prior to the entrance of the Lucifer Spirits into the cosmological scheme. It was withdrawn that it might remain unaffected by such influences, and be for ever non-individualized.

We may suppose the reason to have been — though without giving undue credence to what in the present state of our knowledge can be no more than supposition — that had the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth possessed full self-consciousness and free will he might have chosen such a course of action as would have resulted in a frustration, at least for a time, of the Divine purpose.

Be that as it may, we know the Ego to have been withdrawn and to have been guarded for ages in the Sanctuary of Initiation under the name (in the Egyptian Ritual) of “the Sycamore of Hathor” and the "Blossom of the Hidden Horizon,” and also to have been worshipped as “ Osiris-whose heart-moveth-not.” The body into which this Ego was born was no less a highly specialized product of deliberately modified evolutionary processes, for its astral body was the astral body of Buddha and its etheric body the etheric body of Moses.

We may recapitulate these perplexing details very simply thus:

The Royal Child, a reincarnation of Zoroaster, known as Jesus of Bethlehem	Physical Body Etheric Body Astral Body Ego	descended from Solomon descended from Solomon descended from Solomon of Zoroaster
The Pontifical Child without free will or self-consciousness, known as Jesus of Nazareth	Physical Body Etheric Body Astral Body Ego	descended from Nathan descended from Moses descended from Buddha non-individualized

The Akashic Records tell how the Ego of Zoroaster left the body of Jesus of Bethlehem for that of Jesus of Nazareth at the age of twelve, and remained there until Christ took possession of it at the baptism in Jordan.

The body of the Royal Child of Bethlehem was not sufficiently pure to receive the Christ, nor was it suitable in other ways. It had sinned, as all sin, in however venial a degree, who are possessed of Free Will. But the Pontifical Child of Nazareth possessed neither self-consciousness nor Free Will, and therefore “knew not sin.”

He was moreover endowed with special capacities from being interpenetrated by the astral and etheric forces of two such teachers as Buddha and Moses, in addition to having been kept free from Luciferian influences in the manner indicated. But such an Ego, by the very reason of its uncontaminated purity, lacked the human experience which is the fruit of man’s battle with temptation, and was hence unable to prepare the body it inhabited for the descent of the Christ.

It possessed the necessary advantages of sinlessness, but lacked the no less necessary ones of human experience. For this reason the Ego of Zoroaster, who had gained the needful experience in the ordinary course of evolution, entered it, and immediately Jesus of Nazareth was able to dispute with the doctors in the Temple.

An obvious point for criticism of this teaching lies in the fact that both Matthew and Luke describe the crucifixion as having been suffered by the Jesus Who is the Hero of their narrative, whereas according to Dr. Steiner only one of the two Jesuses was crucified.

Yet he tells us that every word of sacred script is to be read literally. I do not know how he answers this difficulty; I can only say that the translation of Matthew as we have it is that of St. Jerome, and there is evidence that he altered the original text beyond recognition because it denied the divinity of its chief protagonist.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, ninth edition, Article “Gospels,” states:

-      “It is obvious, for example, that Luke regards Nazareth as the residence of Joseph and Mary from the first, whereas Matthew seems to represent them as selecting Nazareth for their new home after the birth of Jesus and the return from Egypt.”

The passages referred to are these:

Matthew (2:23)	Luke (2:39)
“And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”	“And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.”

Might it be that the moment of fulfillment of the prophecy, after which He is to be called a Nazarene, is the moment when the Ego of Zoroaster passed from the Royal Child of Bethlehem into the Pontifical Child of Nazareth?

»

(Occult Review, March 1923, p.154-160)

~ * ~

(Note: in other articles I will prove that all of these assertions made by Rudolf Steiner about Jesus are pure false inventions due to his delusional mind and his distorted beliefs for wanting to interpret the Bible literally.)