Table of Contents
Rudolf Steiner says fights over Christianity will someday look baffling, because the pictures people defended changed their sense. In the first centuries the common image was not a body on a cross but a young shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders. Crucifix art took over from about the sixth century, after a council rejected a threefold view of the person as body, soul, and spirit. Early believers, he says, still held that a spirit entered Jesus, and they painted that living presence. Later generations kept the lamb and the label but saw only a human life story. He calls the slide a materialism inside the church. An older sun teaching is tied to the flower, which exists because sunlight meets the ground, and to the moon shown in the Mass. Bread understood as flesh made sense only while a spiritual quality could still be pictured. In central Europe a spring rite stayed less material for longer than in the south. Older mystery schools, he concludes, had already carried the image that Golgotha fulfilled.
Key points
- Steiner says the earliest widespread image was a shepherd with a lamb, not a crucifix.
- He dates the rise of crucifix art to the century when a threefold human being was condemned.
- Early faith, in this lecture, saw a spirit in Jesus, and later faith saw only a biography.
- He links an older sun teaching to the flower, to lunar imagery, and to the meaning of the Eucharist.
- A central European spring rite is described as keeping a less material sense of resurrection.
- Ancient mysteries are cast as prophecies of Golgotha, and education without spirit is called impossible.
Topics on this site
Short quotes
the early Christians did not really use images of Christ crucified
Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner on older ideas of the Christ
He contrasts the first centuries, when the shepherd image dominated, with the later cult of the cross. Watch at 2:34
they did not see the living Christ who is Spirit but only Jesus
Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner on older ideas of the Christ
After the sixth century, he says, pictures kept a man and lost the spirit those pictures once carried. Watch at 6:53
people of the ancient Mysteries were prophets of what happened in the mystery of golgatha
Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner on older ideas of the Christ
The lecture’s historical claim is that older rites already foreshadowed the event Christians later proclaimed. Watch at 21:06
Video by Rudolf Steiner Press Audio. Watch on YouTube.