Table of Contents
This recording is a lecture by Rudolf Steiner, reported here as his teaching. Real humanity, he says, depends on the soul feeling joined to Christ, and that recognition has to deepen from one life to the next. Christmas fails, in this teaching, if it stays a story about Bethlehem and never happens inside the person. A modern historian can narrate popes, kings, and wars, yet has nothing to say about the events of Golgotha, because those forces sit outside ordinary history. Drawing on a novel of Goethe’s, Steiner separates outer folk history from the inward religion Christ taught. Every person is related to Christ individually, and the feeling of being truly human began with that mystery. Since the middle of the Atlantean age the Earth has been turning into a corpse, its rocks a skeleton. Christ enters that dying world through two boys who are both named Jesus. Union with that being is, in this lecture, the way death is overcome.
Key points
- Steiner teaches that true humanity is an inner union with Christ, deepened across incarnations.
- Christmas, for him, fails unless Christ is born in the person and not only remembered at Bethlehem.
- Ordinary history, in his anecdote, cannot describe the Mystery of Golgotha because the forces are not outer events.
- Folk history is distinguished from the inward religion Christ taught, which touches every human heart.
- From the middle of the Atlantean epoch the Earth is described as a dying body whose rocks are a skeleton.
- Christ is said to enter that evolution through two Jesus boys, and union with him overcomes death.
Topics on this site
Short quotes
Jesus has not become such intense living reality that he could feel his presence
Rudolf Steiner, Steiner on Christ born within
He is describing a learned historian for whom Jesus is not a felt presence. Watch at 4:04
every human being on the earth is related individually to the Christ folk history as it may be called is woven
Rudolf Steiner, Steiner on Christ born within
Each person, in this teaching, stands in an individual relation to Christ. Watch at 7:07
overcome by death but through the two Jesus boys the Christ did enter Earthly Evolution and
Rudolf Steiner, Steiner on Christ born within
Christ’s entry into earthly evolution is said to come through two boys named Jesus. Watch at 18:11
Video by Rudolf Steiner Press Audio. Watch on YouTube.