THE THE

CHRISTIAN
COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN
COMMUNITY
The Essence
of Christianity

Frieling’s pithy style condenses into a few pages the riddles of

the human being, the creation of man, the Fall, freedom, and
The Essence
redemption through Christ. This positive approach is an antidote
to modern pessimism regarding the future of humanity. of Christianity
Rudolf Frieling was born in 1901 in Leipzig, Germany. He studied
theology and philosophy and was among those who founded The
Christian Community in 1922. He was its leader from 1960 until his
death in 1986. His other works include Christianity and Reincarnation;
Hidden Treasures in the Psalms; Old Testament Studies and New
Testament Studies.

ISBN 978-086315-819-3 Rudolf Frieling

 THE THE
CHRISTIAN
COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN
COMMUNITY
The Essence
of Christianity

Frieling’s pithy style condenses into a few pages the riddles of

the human being, the creation of man, the Fall, freedom, and
The Essence
redemption through Christ. This positive approach is an antidote
to modern pessimism regarding the future of humanity. of Christianity
Rudolf Frieling was born in 1901 in Leipzig, Germany. He studied
theology and philosophy and was among those who founded The
Christian Community in 1922. He was its leader from 1960 until his
death in 1986. His other works include Christianity and Reincarnation;
Hidden Treasures in the Psalms; Old Testament Studies and New
Testament Studies.

ISBN 978-086315-819-3 Rudolf Frieling

 Rudolf Frieling

The Essence
of Christianity

Floris Books
Translated by Alan Cottrell.
Revised and edited by Jon Madsen

Originally published in German under the title Vom Wesen des Christentums
by Verlag Urachhaus, Stuttgart, in 1948. Third edition 1979.
First published in English by the Christian Community Press in 1971.
Third edition published by Floris Books in 2011.

© 1979 Verlag Urachhaus Johannes M Mayer GmbH & Co KG Stuttgart

This translation © The Christian Community 1971, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced without the prior permission of
Floris Books, 15 Harrison Gardens, Edinburgh
www.florisbooks.co.uk

British Library CIP data available

ISBN 0-86315-039-X

Printed in Great Britain

 Contents

1. Concerning the nature of man 7

2. The creation of man 9

3. Paradise lost 11

4. A world without God 13

5. In the fullness of time 15

6. The Son of God and the Son of Man 16

7. The mystery of the powerless God 18

8. The healing power of Christ 19

9. Christendom 22

10. History and mysticism 26

11. Apocalyptic outlook 29

5
 1 Concerning the nature of man

To enquire about the nature of Christianity means of necessity

to enquire about the nature of man himself. The enigma of
man weighs ever more heavily upon the modern mind: ‘What
is man all about?’ It is no longer regarded as clear-cut and
obvious what being human actually means — it is an open
question: does being human actually have any meaning?
At times it is all too easy to be pessimistic about the sig-
nificance and prospects of actual ‘humanness’ of man on this
earth. Often one is tempted to doubt whether mankind can
even have a future here at all — and then one could easily
despair.
But are we aware of what we would be about to aban-
don and cast away? Do we fully appreciate what hopes we
would be burying? Let us consider for a moment a number
of things to be set against this pessimism. Take, for instance,
our own human body. The sense of wonder we experience
when observing this organism fashioned with such bound-
less wisdom can again and again overcome our pessimism
and awaken in us an inkling that, in the end, something good
may after all come of this human being. Only, we have to
give ourselves time to take in this bodily nature of ours, this
miraculous world which we carry about with us so casually,
without giving it a second thought. And then let us consider
that this organism is inhabited by a soul-life which can express
itself with such rich variety — in sensing and feeling, in will
and thinking; a soul-life which extends ‘upward’ into the spirit
and which, in the course of millennia, has brought forth mar-
vellous and amazing achievements in art, science and technol-
ogy — and above all in the moulding of the human character.
And is not our heart touched when we see the inexpressibly
beautiful dawn of divine promise shining out over the begin-
ning life of every new human child? On every such occasion

7
it is as if a power of hope and love is appealing to us: can we
not, despite everything, summon up trust and faith that a great
salvation is intended for man?
To be sure, we are also confronted by exceedingly grim
impressions of a very different kind. It is only necessary to
indicate these with a few words; they are all too familiar.
How often do we not see the wonderful promise at the dawn
of childhood wither and fade away into the vacuous routine
of the adult everyday world — a promise unfulfilled, unre-
deemed? And we see how the proficiency of the human spirit
has led to the invention of poison gas and the atom bomb, and
how the soul’s potential can be lost in greed and hatred. We
witness the catastrophes resulting from our inability to live in
peace with each other, be it as nations, races, classes, house-
holds, families, marriages, or even the individual’s struggle to
live with himself.
On a walk in the countryside, we have probably all been
tempted to sigh, ‘How beautiful the world would be without
man!’ But that, of course, amounts to saying, ‘How beautiful the
world would be without its crown!’ This paradoxical statement
brings us face to face with the whole troubling mystery of the
nature of man. What is the strange nature of this human being
who, on the one hand, is such a wonder of divine creation, and
who yet can be more malevolent and terrible than the wildest
beast? Surely, there must be something wrong with man? How
are we to make sense of all these contradictory feelings?
It is our very struggle and suffering under this oppres-
sive mystery that matures us and enables us to be open to
Christianity, to recognize Christianity and to look at it afresh
as of great, vitally important concern to mankind.
Although Christianity only entered history at a specific
moment of time, it must be seen in a wide human context;
and from the beginning, of course, the Christian view of the
world included the wisdom of past ages preserved in the
Old Testament. Let us begin by looking at this prehistory of
Christianity.

8
 2 The creation of man

The ancient wisdom of the biblical creation story depicts the

origin of man in purity within the divine realm. But at the
same time, it also speaks of a definite intention, a quite specific
aim that was in the mind of the Godhead when the human
being was called into existence. God created man ‘in his own
image and likeness.’ To become the image of God — this was
the great aim, an aim worthy of God, which shone out over the
creation of man.
But what is the nature of this likeness to God? If man
were just another ‘creature,’ merely a product of creation,
however perfect: that would not be sufficient to do justice to
the exalted, sacred aim. Man could only deserve to be called
an image of God if he, too, were a creative being — and thus
something more than simply a product of creation. He would
only measure up to the great divine purpose if he had within
him his own creative, personal centre out of which he could
act in freedom and love, in keeping with the goodness of the
divine.
But such a being, free and self-determining out of its own
centre, a ‘personality’ in the highest sense of the word, can-
not simply proceed as a finished product (if we may speak in
prosaic terms) from the creative hand of God. A being like that
cannot simply be ‘made,’ if it is to be more than a created being.
Therefore the Godhead breathed something of his own nature
into man — or, to use another image: in sacrifice, God offered
into the being of man a spark of his own divine, primordial fire
as a germ for the future.
This germ needs a long process of becoming to develop,
eventually, into a free personality in the image of God. In
order to unfold his potential, man needs to acquire a his-
tory. The fact that he is placed within a historical process is
not something that comes at him arbitrarily from outside —

9
rather, it is an essential part of his becoming human. Man only
gradually becomes what he is meant to be by enduring and
moulding his destiny.
This is of fundamental importance: man, in the sense of
being the image of God, is as yet far from being finished and
complete. He is still ‘on the way.’ And in this he is different
from all his fellow creatures on earth. Stone, plant and animal
are ‘complete.’ A rose, for instance, is really fully and entirely
‘a rose.’ It is the complete expression of its purpose and poten-
tial. Yet that is also why, on the other hand, it does not have
a ‘history’; and the same is true of the animals. In contrast to
other creatures, each complete in its own way, man is again
and again beset by the painful awareness of his own imper-
fection. In one sense, he is at a much higher level than the
creatures below him — yet, as regards the extent of his own
perfection, he lags alarmingly behind. He is, as ‘man,’ far from
being what a rose is as ‘rose.’
As far as his bodily form is concerned, man is without
doubt the true crown of creation. In the course of its long evo-
lution the human body has attained a high degree of perfec-
tion, but the inner development man’s nature is as yet only in
its beginnings. This is why it is so difficult to arrive at a clear
answer to the question of man’s real nature, his ultimate worth
or worthlessness — the ‘jury is still out,’ the process of his
becoming ‘man’ is still under way. If we understand ourselves
rightly, we are not yet unequivocally ‘human beings,’ but
rather something for which a a new term is needed, something
like ‘candidates’ or ‘aspirants’ to humanness.
Man as the image of God is a distant goal. The path leading
to this goal is called ‘history.’

10
 3 Paradise lost

Now, among the forces at work in this historical process of

becoming, the adversary powers also make themselves felt
more strongly. Man bears within him the potential for evil,
a potential which has shown itself all too frequently. But it is
important to note that he always feels the evil within himself
as something foreign, something fundamentally alien to his
nature, however great the power it exerts over him at a given
moment: when we give rein to this alien force, we afterwards
‘don’t know what got into us,’ we ‘lost control’ — in our true
nature, every one of us actually wants to be ‘good,’ even if we
perhaps do not admit it.
The elemental feeling that evil is something alien, not a
part of our true being, confirms the truth of the biblical tradi-
tion that evil was not in man from the beginning, but entered
him only at a particular moment in time; it invaded him as a
foreign ‘influence,’ as a kind of ‘infection’ of the soul. The Bible
describes this event as the Fall, in the imagery of serpent, tree
and apple. These are obviously pictures, but they are pictures
which have meaning for supersensible perception. In our day,
we must first translate them into our contemporary language
of thought if we are to attempt honestly to grasp anew the
higher truths hidden within them.
How could a wise and loving God allow the Adversary
to approach the still childlike, innocent human being and, as
it were, infect his soul with egotism, and so open the door to
all the future woes of mankind? We can approach this prob-
lem by recalling the well-known fact that young people are
not helped by being constantly under the protection of their
parents. There comes a time when, if anything is to become
of them, they must free themselves from this protection, and
the parents must overcome their own short-sighted anxieties
and allow them to enter the ‘hostile’ and ‘dangerous’ world

11
outside. The risk has to be accepted as an unavoidable part of
the process. When we think of this kind of situation from ordi-
nary life we open a window through which we catch a glimpse
of profound secrets of the history of mankind. We begin to
sense something of the hazardous, daring nature of this divine
‘enterprise’: the human being.
Had God remained always near to man, it would not have
been possible for him to achieve genuine independence. For
man in his unconscious-natural state there would have been
no choice but to be good, and for his actions to be good like-
wise. But he will only become truly ‘man’ when he himself
voluntarily and in freedom engenders the good from out of
his own innermost being — and only then will the good actu-
ally be ‘good.’ Man’s freedom from sin in ‘Paradise’ is not the
ultimate ‘plan’ for mankind. This innocence is to be regained
eventually at a higher level as holiness, but before that comes
the tragic encounter with guilt and sin.
Man’s ever-increasing separation from the divine worlds
of his origin began with the Fall. He became increasingly
independent and self-aware. As a result of this progressive
severance, man found himself in an increasingly solidifying
and hardening environment. The more material his body
became, the more it closed him off, but it also gave those
human beings who were ‘isolating’ themselves from a world
which was ‘condensing’ and becoming ever more material
the possibility of taking their first steps towards independ-
ence. The Fall of man, then, set in motion a long-lasting
process which even today has not come to an end, inasmuch
as man’s alienation from his divine origin continues to bear
within it the potential to increase and encroach upon ever
wider aspects of existence.
So the ancient dreams of a lost Eden, a bygone golden
age, were in a sense true enough. Only, we must not think of
‘Paradise’ in a crudely-materialistic way; that would be to mis-
understand the picture-language of the ancient, sacred tradi-
tions. It was actually man’s original state of childlike, innocent

12
unity with God which reverberated in various ways within the
memory of ancient peoples.
This ‘origin in the Light’ is the source of the primordial rev-
elation that slowly faded and became obscured. An afterglow
of it can be perceived in the wisdom of all peoples; there, it is
still recognizable through all subsequent distortions and accre-
tions. The ancient ‘mysteries’ should be seen in this context,
too. In them, a candidate was led through an ‘initiation’ which
enabled him to some extent to overcome the alienation from
the divine world one more time. Insofar as it was still possible,
the mysteries as it were ‘undid’ the consequences of the Fall.
The old pre-Christian religions have their origin in such
after-effects of the primordial revelation. Not only ancient
Israel but also the ‘pagan’ religions were infused with exalted
wisdom, although there, too, the Fall made itself felt. Originally,
the ‘gods’ of the ‘pagans’ were real, higher spiritual beings:
angels, archangels and other supersensible, God-revealing
beings, with whom man could still have tentative contact.
Gradually, however, they were lost to his sight, and the place
of the ‘gods’ was often taken by demons and spectres. So the
mysteries, too, became subject to the general decay.

4 A world without God

As man experienced this ‘twilight of the gods’ and forgot his

supersensible home, so he came to feel at home on earth, mak-
ing it increasingly his world. He gained in personal conscious-
ness and alertness — although the price of this was the loss of
Paradise.
The earthly world took on the character of a ‘vacuum,’ a
void, so to speak, within the all-encompassing divine pres-
ence. Not that, strictly speaking, the earth fell away from this
presence altogether. But of this divine omnipresence — an
often rather vacuous and abstract concept — we must form a

13
more alive notion and develop it further so as to encompass
the idea that there can be something like ‘more’ or ‘less’ within
this omnipresence. To take an example: even in a criminal,
God is present, inasmuch as he has to sustain the criminal’s
existence continuously, too — as he does for every human
being — and inasmuch as he takes account of the crime in
his divine awareness. But God is clearly ‘present’ in an act of
goodness in a very different way and to a much higher degree.
All prayers for the coming of his kingdom and for the doing of
his will on earth would be meaningless if there were not some-
thing like differences of ‘density’ within this omnipresence. It
is in this sense of a ‘diluted’ divine presence (as it seems to our
consciousness) that the earth may be called a ‘vacuum,’ a place
without God. For man, God’s presence is reduced so much
that it is no longer perceptible, diluted to the point at which
it can no longer be felt. Now, it is into this ‘vacuum,’ into this
so distinctively constituted region of existence, that man was
placed in order to develop independence.
That is why so many terrible, appalling things can happen
on earth, and why God ‘allows’ it. Man would never have
been able to stand on his own feet in this world so apparently
without God, if he had not also fully come up against the
possibility of really going astray, of really erring. Without the
serious possibility of error there can be no freedom; and ulti-
mately, without freedom and independence there can be no
real love. God’s acquiescence — ‘and God remains silent’ — is
just not based upon indifference and lack of concern. On the
contrary, it is the unavoidably necessary reverse side of God’s
very great love for man, it is a fact that cannot be changed —
even by a divine being. Admittedly, it is God’s love for man as
he is to become eventually: it is the love of God for the human
being of tomorrow and the day after, a love which cannot
spare us the passage through the realm of evil and death. God
refrains from preventing evil by virtue of his omnipotence; he
allows evil its place — but then, to compensate, he comes to
man’s aid in a different way: by sending Christ.

14
 5 In the fullness of time

The progressive independence of man and his increasing self-

assurance in a world devoid of God would ultimately lead into
an abyss. Man would finally completely forget his divine ori-
gin, the infection of his being by the forces of evil would result
in the total loss of all human qualities, had not divine provi-
dence taken saving measures in order to deprive the Devil of
the ‘fruit’ of man’s development through the Fall, and seize
it for the divine. The Saviour, whose coming was anticipated
everywhere in ancient prophecies, only appeared ‘in the full-
ness of time’ (Gal.4:4). Why not sooner? Why not immediately
after the Fall? Why did so much time have to pass, so much
have to be endured far from God, if God had already decided
upon the saving deed? Here we are looking at the secret of the
divine ‘economy.’ Despite all its disastrous consequences, the
exile from Paradise did actually also have a positive aspect. It
initiated the gradual development of the human personality.
This development had first to reach a certain degree of matu-
rity, so that the intervention could then be made in such a way
as to seize upon what had been achieved so far and transform
it into a pure divine gain. In colloquial, pictorial language: the
Devil had to be made to make his contribution to the building
of the church — he was to be shown to have worked for God
all along.
If God’s intervention had occurred too soon, the adversary
powers (whose intentions are evil, but who are nonetheless
obliged to serve the divine plan in their way) would not yet
have imbued man with the required degree of independence.
If, on the other hand, God’s intervention had occurred
too late, man would by then have become so thoroughly
enmeshed in dependence upon the adversary powers that
there would have been no going back — something against
which his still present paradisal inheritance had so far largely

15
protected him. Had this happened, man, in the conscious-
ness-awakening experience of his twofold state, would have
exchanged, irrevocably, his burgeoning freedom for demonic
possession. Then he would have forgotten that the Devil in us
is always ‘the outsider,’ the alien.
As it is, however, the Saviour appeared at the right cosmic
hour, at the right moment in the history which leads man
towards his distant goal.

6 The Son of God and the Son of Man

Why is the Saviour called the Son of God? Let us be clear:

all our conceptions of the divine are inadequate in one way
or another; the word ‘Son,’ for example, is a tentative meta-
phor which we must first translate from the language of
imagery into our present-day abstract thinking.
On the one hand, God is a totally self-sufficient, perfect
being — ‘as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ But that is no
reason for us straightaway to want to imprison the divine
in our inadequate intellectual thinking, and to draw the
hasty conclusion that this perfection precludes a ‘becoming’
within the divine being. In reality, beyond all theological
and philosophical concepts, God is just not a prisoner of his
own perfection, which we conceive of as circumscribing and
enclosing him. In fact, as well as being one eternally resting
within himself, he also has the aspect of becoming, of divine
burgeoning and growth. The perfect God eternally resting
within himself is the ‘Father.’ But we can also have another
equally justified and real experience of God: the God who is
in the process of becoming, of growing into the future — the
‘Son.’ That is why he is also the bearer of the creative forces
in the world. As the Prologue to St John’s Gospel (and also
the Epistles of St Paul) express it: the Son is the mediator of
the creation of the world.

16
 It is this God who unites himself with mankind: the
God burgeoning forth into freedom and into things yet
to come — a God with a future. As the Redeemer it is his
desire to unite himself with the developing self, the higher
personality of the human being, to heal it of its ‘infection’
by the demonic powers and to lead it onwards towards its
divine goal. By taking on human form and simultaneously
embodying the divine potential, the future form of man, he
is also the ‘Son of Man,’ the epitome of what ‘can become
of man.’ He is called both the ‘Son of God’ and the ‘Son of
Man,’ for in him divine and human future unite. The stream
of divine becoming is here guided into the river-bed of
man’s becoming. In Jesus Christ, human history and divine
history coincide.
Nature in all her magnificence is the memorial to a
bygone revelation of God. God’s Son becomes man — that
means: God seeks for himself a new, future-orientated
sphere of revelation within the human realm. When on some
occasion we experience a deed of real love and sacrifice, of
true humanity; when in the midst of the desolate wasteland
of egotism we see a glimpse of humanness, then we begin
to sense what is meant by the notion that God is seeking
his future in the human realm. A new revelation of God, an
expression of the divine life — in a form never seen in the
world before — is to arise from out of this humanness. Man
is new territory for God. This coming God, arising out of the
sphere of humanness, is rightly called the Son of Man, for
it is his desire to be ‘born’ from the human sphere into his
new form. In Jesus Christ, that birth became a reality for the
first time, and, beginning with him, this process is now to
take effect within mankind.
Thus all human suffering bears within it the exalted
potential to become the labour-pains of a divine birth —
pains which are also quite literally suffered ‘for God’s sake,’
in order that the Son of God may enter into the world as the
Son of Man. Then human striving and suffering no longer

17
happen far away from the divine, somewhere at the remote
periphery of existence — which is how it must appear to a
world-view (such as, for instance, Islam) that does not rec-
ognize a divine Son.

7 The mystery of the powerless God

How is the intervention of providence on mankind’s behalf,

the entrance of the divine Son into the earthly world, com-
patible with what was said before: that the world of earthly
human beings was ‘emptied’ of God’s omnipotence, that
it became a ‘vacuum,’ so as to further the development of
human independence? Does this ‘intervention’ not violate
man’s germinating freedom?
To answer this weighty question rightly, we must appreci-
ate the particular way in which this entry of God into man’s
world took place: the God who appeared on earth did not
reveal himself in the fullness of his omnipotence — on the con-
trary. The divine sacrifice implicit in ‘tolerating’ evil, is taken
to its ultimate conclusion: the cross of Golgotha. This image
has become over-familiar to us, so that we are hardly able to
grasp how much its paradoxical nature was once bound to out-
rage the feelings of everyone, not least the pious: ‘to the Jews
a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness’ (1Cor.1:23).
A crucified God — that is a powerless God. Let us emphasize
the point once again: this is the same powerlessness of God
which is evinced in his silent ‘toleration’ of all earthly horrors,
only here it is, as it were, taken to its extreme. The important
thing, though, is to recognize this powerlessness for what it is:
not divine weakness, but self-limitation, conscious restraint,
renunciation — for the sake of man’s freedom.
After the Baptism in the Jordan, the Tempter hoped to
entice Christ onto the false path of a ‘convincing display of
power.’ But the Son of God stayed true to the momentous

18
choice of sacrifice. He took it upon himself — and in spurning
the Tempter he sealed his own death-warrant in advance — to
cloak his omnipotence in impotence. He chose to live a life (and
suffer a death) in which divine omnipotence appeared in the
form of a ‘lost cause.’ The crucified God in his powerlessness is
the most profound mystery in the whole of history. The pow-
erlessness of God which can be experienced everywhere again
and again, and which is most clearly and brutally apparent in
the cross: in its offensiveness it is either a reason for us to reject
all belief in God; or, if it is recognized as a mystery of the great-
est love, it becomes an insight tearing aside the veil and afford-
ing a glimpse into the hidden Holy of Holies. The almighty
Godhead achieved the astonishing wonder of not becoming
a victim of its own omnipotence, and thereby having human
beings run after a victorious divine cause for purely outer,
second-rate reasons. For the Devil would, of course, actually
have won his game if human beings had become God’s ‘fellow
travellers,’ as it were — and for just that reason had been lost,
inwardly, to the divine world. ‘Come down from the cross,
and then we will believe in you.’ He did not come down from
the cross. He declined the aid of the ‘twelve legions of angels.’
But precisely because he persevered with his sacrifice until its
fulfilment, the extremity of divine powerlessness could, so to
speak, turn into a power of a higher order — a power of God
that can co-exist with human freedom.

8 The healing power of Christ

The powerless God waits for those human beings who now
recognize as a power of a higher order the divine, sacrificial
love hidden within this powerlessness, and who allow it to
take hold of them. The powerless God waits for human beings
to realize, ‘So you are a king after all.’ His answer is, ‘You say
it.’ That is not merely an affirmation such as, ‘You are right,

19
that is the case.’ Within the answer there is also an unspoken,
‘You must say it; you must discover it for yourself, out of your
own being.’
Nor did this inward way of showing strength, a way which
does not overwhelm our growing spiritual freedom, become
any different through the Resurrection. What did not happen
was this: the Risen One appearing triumphantly in his glory
before Pilate or Caiaphas or the Jewish Sanhedrin. No, Christ
only let those ‘who loved him’ gaze into the paradisal Easter
realm of his Resurrection. The outer power-structures were not
changed, but a power had entered upon the scene which could
only be grasped in inner freedom: the ‘healing power of Christ.’
This power was now preparing to take up the fight with the
might of the sickness of sin, with the power of the Adversary.
What was it that had happened? A divine being of the
highest order, the Son, had freely bound up his destiny with
the destinies of human beings on earth. In banal language: he
‘didn’t have to,’ he was outside the great nexus of guilt, the
fatal web spun by the consequences of sin in which mankind
as a whole had become entangled. For him, death was not ‘the
wages of sin.’ For him alone, death was what it otherwise can-
not be for any human being - a death free from all compulsion,
freely chosen and bestowed through love.
It is not the fact that someone died for his convictions that
makes Golgotha so important. There was no lack of martyrs.
The uniqueness of the event of Golgotha is the fact that a
God, knowing no death and at home in a world of deathless
life, voluntarily went through death, the specifically earthly-
human experience. Through this, he truly entered into the
world of the ‘vacuum,’ having now become most profoundly
acquainted with earthly man. In beholding the cross, human
beings could have said — inverting the words from the story
of the Fall (Gen.3:22) — ‘See, God has become like one of us.’
God, now acquainted with death, had become approachable
and close to death-acquainted man. He had established soli-
darity with human beings.

20
 He appeared in the world of the dead, who, since the Fall,
had increasingly forfeited the inherited heavenly radiance of
their souls. They had been too deeply enmeshed in the world
of earth and they experienced their life after death as being
in the shadow of the earth. For the real heavenly existence of
the higher spirits they had become too ‘damaged,’ as it were,
through this close identification with the earthly world. Into
this realm of the shades Christ brought a new light.
On Easter morning he rose again. What had already begun
in the realm of the dead, viz. that now a radiant soul had
overcome that dimming of consciousness — this reached its
culmination when the body, too, the basis of man’s independ-
ent development of personality, was wrested from the pow-
ers of death and won over for eternity to be the transfigured
supersensible organ of man’s selfhood.
The Resurrection Body of Christ underwent a develop-
ment, becoming ever more real, ever more ‘present,’ until at
Ascension, permeated with the deepest forces of the Father-
Ground and surpassing the disciples’ powers of perception, it
was withdrawn from their sight.
It was death that had founded the relationship between
the Son and the earth; Easter and Ascension took it further.
This was not a spiritualization ‘away from the earth’ into
the beyond, but rather the opposite: a union with the heav-
enly forces, in the earth’s favour, ‘for the earth.’ Had the
Ascension been a withdrawal from the earth, it would, of
course, have been a contradiction of the promise, ‘I am with
you always’ (Matt.28:20). It is precisely because he is risen and
has ‘ascended to heaven’ that he is now able to permeate and
transfigure the earthly world by virtue of his acquaintance
with the earth, founded upon death.
The whole Mystery of Golgotha is something like a great
‘transformation.’ It is a recasting of divine into human forces,
of divine into human potential for life. A new principle was
established when this fundamental, portal-opening transfor-
mation initially took place in the one and only Christ Jesus.

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But this healing power is not just poured out over all earthly
and human existence, regardless. Again we come up against
a frequently expressed objection: ‘Well, if that kind of divine
deed is supposed really to have taken place on earth, should
not the earth and mankind look very different? There is not
much sign of a divine act of redemption having taken place!’
Anyone who raises such an objection is imagining a deed
for the redemption of man as being like a chemical process
that happens automatically. Christ’s deed cannot take hold
of earth and mankind in such an automatic way. It has to be
enabled to act afresh, on a ‘case by case’ basis, by the free ‘yes’
of human beings, taking effect on being countersigned, as it
were, by each individual. It can only unfold its full potential
if it does not remain a unilateral affair. Only to the extent that
man provides the opportunity through his bearing and action
can Christ’s deed transform him and the earthly world which
belongs to him.
Richard Wagner’s Parsifal ends with the oracular words:
‘redemption for the Redeemer.’ Among other things, this may
also mean: without our free acceptance, the sacrifice of the
Redeemer would fail to come to full fruition. It is up to man
to redeem the Redeemer from such fruitlessness of his deed
of love.

9 Christendom

The Mystery of Golgotha is followed by the founding of

Christendom at Pentecost. The gospels describe the destiny of
the One, unique, lonely; the Acts of the Apostles can pass on
from the One to the many. Through the Mystery of Golgotha,
what was previously contained within and limited to the One
has become a resource which can be ‘dispensed.’ Now it can
be handed on, gradually, to those human beings who, by their
‘yes,’ make such a transfer possible.

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 To be able to speak this ‘yes’ of recognition and acceptance
which clears the way for the forces of redemption to reach
him, man needs a certain strength of consciousness. It must in
some form become clear to him ‘who Christ is’ and ‘who he
himself is,’ what his inner state is, how things stand with him.
It will be clear from what has been said so far that a
Christian’s relationship to his Redeemer goes far beyond that
of relating to a mere ‘example’ or ‘model.’ Christ is not so
much a model as an ‘archetype.’ A model remains detached,
external. It can even have a discouraging effect by making
us all too painfully aware of our inability ever to reach the
perfection it represents. An archetype is something different.
For Goethe, the poet and scientist, the archetype of the plant
was a living spiritual being working creatively in all plants on
the earth, its forces actively giving their shape to the plants. In
the same way as a ‘heavenly’ archetype is behind all earthly
plants, so human beings, too, in their multitudinous variety
have their heavenly archetype, their archetypal man. Christ is
the bearer of this human archetype.
There is, however, a fundamental difference. The arche-
typal plant remains in its supersensible spiritual realm. From
there it works down into the earthly world where it causes the
plant to grow and take on form, using the earth’s substances.
This separate earthly plant has no say in the matter, the arche-
type works on its own and therefore produces something
correspondingly perfect. In the case of the developing human
being, the relationship is only similar to this at the initial
stage, that is, when the body/soul foundation of the human
being is being formed. Here the individual human being has
as yet no say, either. The archetype works over his head, so
to speak, and, through a long series of developments, brings
into being a correspondingly perfect human being from out
of the substances of the earth — insofar, that is to say, as he
is a being of nature, a mere ‘creature.’ But at this point, man
is endowed with the spark of his ‘I,’ and it is then that the
actual ‘history’ of his becoming human begins — to which all

23
the ‘natural history’ of his biological development was only a
prelude. From then on his development can no longer simply
be advanced through the archetype’s continuing to work ‘over
his head’ from its remote spiritual sphere; rather, from now
on the human being must be involved with his free will in his
own development.
In the fullness of time, therefore, the archetype of man
descends from his spiritual abode to the earth. As St Paul
says, he ‘puts on’ a human body, and enters into the history
of the world as an individual human being. That makes it
possible for man to meet his own archetype face to face, to be
‘confronted’ by it. He can enter into a conscious relationship
with this archetype — something which is impossible in the
case of plants and animals. In the Christ appearing visibly on
earth, a human being can recognize and acknowledge his own
archetype. He can open himself, ‘expose’ his inner life to the
archetype, in order that Christ may become actively creative
within him and complete the process of moulding him into
a true human being. The imperfect human being gives this
archetype the opportunity to help him advance towards a
higher state through the influx of its radiant being.
That is why man’s becoming human is not a certain,
guaranteed affair, unlike the process by which plants and
animals come into being, ‘guaranteed’ in a one-sided way by
their archetypes. Rather, from a certain point onwards in his
development, man must surrender himself consciously and
voluntarily to his archetype, if it is to make him into a human
being in the true sense of the word. If he opposes and blocks
out the inflow of his archetype, the process of his becoming
fully human is called into question, and in the long run he
will be unable to cope with the forces that entered into him
through the Fall.
Through the Fall an inner rift was opened up within the
originally harmonious and innocent human being: the ‘two
souls’ of Goethe’s Faust. Man experiences ‘the other’ within
himself, he becomes aware of the possibility of his failing to

24
match up to his true image and of ending up by turning into
the travesty of ‘the other,’ a distortion of his being. He sees that
he is on the brink of losing his actual humanity. The agonizing
over this rift, the shock of the looming danger of developing
into this travesty and of being lost into ‘the other’ — all this
nevertheless also has the power to awaken consciousness. This
inner duality gives man the possibility of becoming aware of the
two ways in which he might develop, and, desperately alarmed
that the ‘other’ possibility has already been partly realized, to
stretch out his arms in longing towards the true image of his
humanity as it comes towards him in unblemished purity in the
form of Christ. Thereby man becomes able to do something that
no creature can: to will his own being! A mere creature has no
input of will into the process of its own becoming. It is ‘willed’
from the beyond. Man, also, is ‘willed’ from this realm, but in
his case that is not enough; his own free will must unite with the
divine will. But this free will in its turn requires a corresponding
degree of awareness on man’s part.
The power which acts as an aid to consciousness, showing
man his true archetypal image in Christ, is the Holy Spirit. The
pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit takes place seven
weeks after the Resurrection, on the ‘fiftieth’ day (as the name
Pentecost signifies). In the course of the rhythmical cycles of
passing time, the Mystery of Golgotha has penetrated ever
more deeply into earthly existence and into the reality of the
world. Now it calls forth from higher worlds a power of con-
sciousness that can be conveyed to those human beings whose
hearts are disposed towards Christ; and it is this Holy Spirit
who is to lead Christians ‘into all truth,’ make Christ’s words
inwardly present for them in living ‘recollection,’ and who is
to ‘transfigure’ Christ himself before them — that is, make him
recognizable to them by its light.
In its fundamental nature, Christianity is more than merely
‘Christ’s teachings.’ Christ offers himself, his being and his
deed. In addition there are the teachings of the Holy Spirit
who points to this being and this deed. The pentecostal flames

25
of fire divide, a flame appears above the head of each disciple:
the Holy Spirit intends to work within the single, individual
human being. Christians in community with each other — the
true ‘church’ — can come about precisely because each individ-
ual cultivates and deepens his contact with Christ in the light-
filled element of free recognition. Then Christ’s becoming man
finds its complement in humanity’s becoming one with Christ.

10 History and mysticism

History and mysticism can unite harmoniously in Christianity

because of its twofold nature: its essence is the Deed of
Golgotha — and man’s freely developed relationship to it.
In the development of Christianity there has often been
tension between these two elements — history and mysticism
— due to one-sided points of view. On the one hand, the estab-
lished Church quite rightly stressed that what matters is the
historical, objective deed of redemption which occurred at the
beginning of our present, Christian era. However, this deed of
salvation gradually came to be regarded as a merely external
event, to be accepted via tradition and to be ‘believed’ on the
authority of this tradition, be it the authority of a priesthood
or a holy book.
On the other hand, there have always been Christian souls
who were not content to settle for the historical aspect alone
of Christ’s deed. It seemed to them that the gospels do indeed
appear to be describing a historical event, yet is there not
something quite different behind this apparently historical
account? What is shown as historical events, as the biogra-
phy of a certain Jesus of Nazareth: does it not seem strangely
familiar to someone who is acquainted with mystical inner
experience? Are not the gospels a description of inner events
which can occur anywhere and at any time within the soul
of a mystic? Then the gospels can be regarded as ‘mystical

26
picture-books’ which are actually presenting timeless truths
in the guise of a historical report. God on the cross: is not a
god crucified in every human being? And is not perhaps this
crucified god in man also capable of rising again and ascend-
ing? Many another aspect becomes ‘transparent’ in this way.
And this gave rise to the feeling: What use to us is the birth of
a child many centuries ago in Bethlehem, if the ‘birth of God’
does not take place within our own soul? Thus the historical
event of Golgotha faded in significance in comparison with the
glowing immediacy of the inner mystical experience.
On the basis that the life of Christ was ‘exemplary’ in all its
aspects, we can combine these two inner attitudes — the histori-
cal and the mystical — in a higher unity. The German philoso-
pher Lessing (1729-81) speaks of the contrast between ‘merely
fortuitous historical truths’ — truths which can only be taken on
trust, on the authority of tradition — and ‘eternally valid truths,’
those which can be experienced by every human being in mys-
tical-inward independence. In Christianity, rightly understood,
there is actually no such contrast at all. Notwithstanding their
historical nature, the Christ-events were most certainly not ‘for-
tuitous’ or ‘chance’ events. Christ did indeed enter history at a
particular moment in time and his life became a part of history.
But the events of that life were structured by Providence in
such a way that they were also ‘transparent’ for certain timeless
truths concerning man’s innermost being. Here was the Word
becoming flesh — the Word! This, in turn, made it possible for
the flesh to become Word. Over and above their evident his-
torical reality (‘under Pontius Pilate’), the Christ-events are also
images which reveal deep mysteries of man’s being. There is,
for example, nothing arbitrary about the death by crucifixion,
it is meaningful. Celsus, an opponent of the Christians, was of
the opinion that if Christ had been hanged instead of crucified,
then the Christians, rather than speaking of the sacred cross,
would now be talking about the ‘noose of salvation.’ But it is
not so. It is precisely because the cross is the basic shape of the
human form that it has a mysterious pictorial value, a runic

27
significance. It was through the working of Providence that
the Redeemer died in just this particular way. Christ himself
foretold his death in this form. In the Gospel of John we find
these words: ‘He said this to show by what death he was to die’
(John 12:33). In these events of destiny it is not chance at work
but rather higher, divine necessity. It could not have happened
in any other way.
Because these events are ‘transparent,’ they are, as it were,
‘mystically applicable.’ They are structured in such a way that
human beings can make them their own, experiencing them
vicariously and mystically-inwardly in a truly organic man-
ner. St Paul shows that he knows about this ‘mystical applica-
bility’ when he speaks of being ‘crucified with Christ,’ ‘dying
with Christ,’ ‘being buried with Christ, ‘rising again with
Christ’ — without it detracting in any way from the historical
significance of Golgotha. In fact, it was, of course, also Paul
who said, ‘If Christ had not risen, our faith would be without
substance.’ (1Cor.15:14).
The gospels describe the factual event through which
a power, hitherto not active on the earth, appeared in the
domain and within reach of earthly man. This event signifies a
turning-point in time. After it, the world was a different place.
Since then, the Risen One can be found as a real being who can
be encountered as a person, and who can be received, mysti-
cally, into man’s inner experience. He came as a new power,
to be ‘added’ to the remnant of the divine still present within
man from Paradise.
So, on the one hand it is true that Christ’s birth in Bethlehem
is of no use to us unless it is followed by his birth within our
own soul. But on the other hand: this inward birth of God
could not come to full realization without that historical event
in the Holy Land. Similarly, the Resurrection is of no use to
us if it remains an event external to ourselves and does not
gradually take hold of us as an inner experience. But it could
not do so if the event in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea
had not taken place. That bygone event is history — history

28
that has the potential to become active within each individual
Christian soul as a formative force and as the substance of
mystically deepened experience.
It would be an unjustified restriction to claim that, because
he is endowed with a personal ‘I,’ mysticism is not possible for
a modern human being. Mysticism in the sense of inwardly
deepened experience is by no means bound up with the
extinction of personal identity. Admittedly, that was the case
in pre-Christian settings, and it is still so in non-Christian con-
texts. But it is important to realize today that there are deeper
forces — as yet lying dormant — within the human ‘I.’ Being
an ‘I’ does not only give someone the possibility of closing
and isolating himself. Indeed, at the same time it also offers
him the possibility of consciously inviting what is outside
himself to be a guest within, of taking it into the sanctuary
of his ‘closed’ personality and receiving it there. The Gospel
of St John is suffused with this ego-based, personality-based
mysticism; for it is this very ability of the ‘I’ to set boundaries,
to include, to ‘lock’ and ‘unlock,’ that is a prerequisite for the
Johannine ‘in’ — without it, there would be no personal-inner
space. Only someone who can consciously close himself off
can also consciously open himself. It is in the nature of the true
‘I’ that it can set boundaries for itself and is itself also able to
remove them again. ‘I in the Father, and you in me, and I in
you’ (John 14:20).

11 Apocalyptic outlook

Whoever opens himself to the being of Christ is on the way to

overcoming egotism, the caricature of true selfhood. Egotism
cannot be ‘cured’ by an absence of ego; rather, it is a matter
of establishing a selfless ‘I.’ Self-seeking and a strong ‘I’ are
by no means inextricably linked; it just seems like that to us
because at first we only know the ‘I’ in the distorted form

29
caused by the Fall. Not until the coming of Christ did the pure,
divinely-willed ‘I am’ appear on earth in unsullied form for
the first time, and here it revealed itself as an organ of selfless,
loving sacrifice. Whoever can truly say ‘I am,’ is in posses-
sion of himself, right into the depths of his being, he is aware
of himself and has achieved mastery of himself. That is also
why only then can he give of himself and offer himself in the
highest sense. One can only truly ‘give’ of what is one’s own.
Only someone as fully at one with himself’ as Christ was, is
able to give of himself to such an extent and to speak the great
‘Take ...’
As a human being is gradually permeated by Christ, he is
also by degrees set free from the hostile powers which, since
the Fall, have embedded themselves as alien forces within him.
This healing and recovery from the sickness of sin is thanks to
Christ, and it is only through this that man can achieve his
true stature — the stature intended and meant for him by
God. Before the Fall, man dreamed his life in undifferenti-
ated union with God. But it is a condition of being a complete
human being that man should have awareness of his human-
ness. Having been shaken out of his dream-relationship with
God through the Fall, he attains and activates this awareness
through his consciousness of the sickness of sin — and by
overcoming it ‘in Christ.’ Man’s becoming man can only be
achieved through the overcoming of a mortal illness — that is
the highly risky nature of the divine ‘enterprise man.’ But over
against the desperate danger that man might be brought down
by this sickness before reaching his distant goal, that he might
be destroyed by it before he has become stronger by conquer-
ing it — against that is set the healing power of Christ’s sacri-
fice. By virtue of this sacrifice, the evil that God has permitted
can become meaningful, in the sense that, being transformed
and ‘worked over,’ as it were, by the Christianized human
being it can now actually confer background and depth,
warmth and fervour upon the Good. Transformed evil can
become the ‘greatest Good.’

30
 It can become that — but on the other hand it might not.
Again we stand before the limitation that the divine omnipo-
tence has imposed upon itself for the sake of our freedom. The
history of Christianity is marred by so much tragedy and guilt
because this mystery of freedom was not understood; it was
thought that Christianity could be helped along, as it were, by
the use of force — often, no doubt, with the best intentions.
Therefore — as we have already mentioned — it is no valid
argument against Christianity that evil continues to work within
mankind for the time being, and is indeed becoming increasingly
powerful. The Fall is an on-going process, man’s alienation from
his divine origin continues — wherever the healing power of
Christ cannot reach, wherever man prevents its ‘access.’ The ‘Fall
of man’ continues, just as a vehicle rolling down a slope keeps on
rolling in accordance with the law of inertia.
Christianity has the most sober weltanschauung conceiv-
able, in that it is able to do full justice to reality, without any
glossing-over or side-stepping. Contemplating the Passion of
Christ, it has absolutely no illusions about the power of dark-
ness. But it also knows the other side of reality: the power
of redemption. Only someone who knows both the Fall and
Christ can form an adequate conception of the factors at work
in the history of humanity.
The Revelation to John, the ‘Apocalypse,’ shows aware-
ness of the secret of the increasing power of evil. The ‘beast,’
the possibility of the sub-human, rises out of the abyss when
Christ is rejected permanently. Yet it is the mission of this
increasingly powerful, apocalyptic evil to ‘provoke’ the great-
est Good (the Latin pro-vocare means to call forth) — to chal-
lenge it, and by this means help it to come to realization.
As evil increases in intensity, so Christianity, too, is to grow
ever stronger. It is to become ever more mature and awake,
ever more clear and capable of transformation. Only an ‘apoc-
alyptic’ Christianity will have the capacity to see us through
apocalyptic events. It will be able to place us in the right rela-
tionship to the apocalyptic event of the Second Coming.

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 What does this ‘coming’ of Christ mean? Has he not
since the Resurrection been ‘with us all the days’? Indeed,
but so far his presence has been more or less hidden from
man. As Christian awareness advances, man is gradually to
develop organs of sight, eyes of the soul and of the spirit,
which will bring him into a direct relationship to this super-
sensibly present Christ — as St Paul, one ‘born prematurely’
(1Cor.15:8), beheld the Risen One and had his definitive
knowledge of Christ from personal, direct revelation, not from
what he was told by the Apostles. The ‘coming’ of Christ, then,
as the coming of one already present, though hidden, is the
lighting up within the waking consciousness of human beings
of something that is already there. Christ as a living reality
takes on ever more significance. ‘Apocalypse’ means ‘uncover-
ing’: the hidden presence stands revealed.
The Christian Community has the task of serving this
Second Coming of Christ with its rituals, whose forms are
suited to our contemporary consciousness. Through its sacra-
mental working in a world which to modern earthly humanity
appears devoid of the divine it seeks to enable the being of the
Risen Christ to ‘condense’ into a tangible Presence — and to
help fashion the eyes of soul and spirit with which to see into
the world of Christ. At the heart of this contemporary sacra-
mental sphere is the renewed altar sacrament in the form of
the ‘Act of Consecration of Man.’ In this name is expressed the
fundamental link between the secret of man and the secret of
Christ — the relationship between Christianity and humanity.
What is conveyed by the name ‘Act of Consecration of Man’ is
this: as yet we are not fully ‘man’; being human is an exalted
aim. We shall only be able to attain it if we let ourselves be
guided by Christ, if we seek communion with his being, right
into our very body and blood. Then he consecrates us as
human beings worthy to be called ‘the image of God.’

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