3. CHRIST IN WORLD HISTORY - His Threefold Death and Threefold Resurrection

 An immersion into the religious-moral meaning of self-knowledge leads us to the point that we must say to ourselves: We are guilty of the threefold killing of the truth in our worldview and we must atone this guilt again through a likewise threefold self-sacrifice. And just as it happens in our self-knowledge, so it also happens in world history in so far as it is self-knowledge of the whole human race. In the same way that world history is implanted in the self-knowledge of Man, all stages of the self-knowledge of Man are contained in the history of mankind.

Therein as well do we find a threefold gaining of independence attributable to Lucifer that gradually leads into the Ahrimanic abyss. Therein as well does the self-reflection impulse of the Baptist keep watch in the deadly inferno of an ahrimanic desert that suffers in view of a past from a guilty conscience and in view of a future affirms a will to resurrect, a threefold path to resurrection.

And just as we could not reach the goal of self-knowledge, if in the darkness of ignorance we would not become aware of our own ideals, the whole of mankind could not fulfill its mission, if it would not amidst the Ahrimanic ignorance become aware of its great ideal, the all-human Christ. For the great ideal of an all-human self-knowledge is nobody else than Christ, in the same way that He is also the highest ideal of a personal self-knowledge.

And in the same way that we until now asked what Christ means for world history, we can also ask what world history means for Christ. Upon following the history of the fifth epoch with this question in mind, one becomes aware that this history until the point in time of the earthly revelation of Christ is a history of the slow death of Christ. This slow death of Christ in world history, in the worldview of mankind shows namely also three stages that correspond to the three stages of the all-human gaining of independence.

In order to more deeply comprehend this death of the great ideal of mankind in the self-knowledge of mankind, one must clarify what our willing, our feeling and our thinking actually are. Then we will have to say to ourselves that the divine will, which is killed in the worldview of mankind, is in essence a wisdom of the stars. The wisdom of the first hierarchy, which reveals itself through the stellar script, prevails in this willing. And if we therefore would be able to perceive the cosmic will of the Logos killed by us, the whole wisdom of the stars would then become accessible to us. It was this majestic wisdom of the stars that in the first post-Atlantean, in the ancient Indian culture of the Rishis was to blossom. Therefore it can in view of this majestic Indian culture be said that it was Christ, Who at that time revealed Himself through these Chandeliers of the first hierarchy. But since the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is a sort world-conceptional repetition of the history of the whole of mankind, and since in the ancient Indian culture the Luciferic temptation had to be repeated, the ancient Indians were as a result of this temptation unfortunately unable to behold Christ. As a result of the life of the will having gained independence, the cosmic life had to conceal itself from the gaze of the ancient Indians. Thus Christ, before He died on earth, had to first die on the stars. That was His first superterrestial death.

And in the way that the wisdom of the stars of the first hierarchy prevails behind the human will, the wisdom of the sun of the second hierarchy prevails behind human feeling. This wisdom of the sun was revealed by the ancient Persian culture of Zarathustra. At that time Christ could be experienced on the sun. On the sun, in the multitudes of the second hierarchy, Ahura Mazdao-Christ revealed Himself to the ancient Persian initiate. However , light-filled Iran was overcome by dark Turan. Ahriman gained a victory over Ahura Mazdao-Christ. Thus Christ had to also die on the sun. And this was His second superterrestial death.

An in the way that the wisdom of the stars of the first hierarchy hides behind the human will and behind human feeling the wisdom of the sun, the wisdom of the planets through which the third hierarchy is revealed hides behind human thinking. This wisdom of the planet of the third hierarchy was recognized by the leading nations of the third post-Atlantean culture, namely by the Babylonians and the Egyptians. The astrology created by these peoples was a revelation of the mysteries of the third hierarchy through which Christ at that time was active. And one can therefore say that at that time Christ lived on the planets.

The falling silent of this revelation of the planets is described in a scene of the fourth mystery play by Rudolf Steiner. The young Egyptian who is to be initiated into the wisdom of the planets cannot bring himself to behold the Logos on the planets, instead he beholds in supersensible images his own earthly body. In this way the wisdom of the stars too became inaccessible. Christ had to suffer death also on the planets, in the way that He in India on the stars and in Persia on the sun had to suffer that fate. And this was His third superterrestial death.

The totally Godforsaken, dead worldview of mankind became now the only place where God could still be beheld and heard and where one could still become aware what mankind through gaining her independence has done to God.

Thus God had to suffer death for the fourth time and this time on earth in order to reveal to mankind its true relation to the Logos being.

Through His earthly death, Christ marks an end to the path of the all-human guilt against the divine truth. It is shocking to recognize how just through this earthly death Christ contradicts Lucifer and Ahriman. For Lucifer as well as Ahriman deemed it impossible that the divine truth could reveal itself on earth. That world namely in which mankind after the threefold death of Christ dwelled was already no longer a real world, but an out and out illusionary worldview. How could Christ now appear in this illusionary worldview, He who can after all only reveal Himself in truth?

Were the sun to descent into the darkness, the darkness would either disappear as such or the sun would have to become extinct itself – thus both opposing powers could say to themselves:

“If the sun would now become extinct, then that would mean that the darkness is mightier than the light,” Ahriman reckoned. “Would on the other the darkness yield to the light, then that would mean that the light is nevertheless unable, in the darkness where mankind dwells, to be present,” reckons Lucifer.

And both opposing powers concluded from that that Christ could not appear in mankind. And notwithstanding did Christ enter into the illusionary worldview where He, according to the conviction of his opponents, is not able to be, and yet He appears in this worldview in such a form that repudiates the designated contradiction.

For He enters into the earthly, illusionary worldview in a form that is a true expression for His absence in this world. He is not in this illusionary world and yet He is in it. He is silent and yet He speaks through His silence to all. For ultimately Christ did only enter into this dead world when He died on the cross of Golgotha. And just through this death did the true relation of the truth to this dead world obvious. The Logos can in this world of death only hang dead on the cross. In a world of death, the truth can only be beheld in the form of death.

That is why the image of the Logos crucified in the world of death is an image that speaks most powerfully to human conscience. However, this image of the Crucified One is followed by another, even more powerful image, that of the Risen One. And in the way that in the image of the Crucified One is expressed what mankind has done to God in its self-knowledge, so in the second image, in the image of the Risen One, is expressed what mankind is to do to Christ in the future. Christ is in the New Testament to resurrect in mankind in the same way that He in the Old Testament has died in mankind.

Truly, the resurrection of Christ in Palestine is the deepest and highest mysterium in world history. This mysterium is so profound that, in order to fathom it, mankind will have to tread a long, long path of New Testament-like self-conquest. Mankind must itself resurrect in order to comprehend the resurrection of Christ, for only through a resurrection of the truth in mankind can the truth of the resurrection through mankind be experienced. The knowledge of the truth of the resurrection is, after all, at the same time also a resurrection of the same truth, so that it is only in an act of the resurrection of the truth that the content of this truth – the mystery of the resurrection – can be fathomed. For the resurrection is nothing else than the complete self-knowledge of the human race and as such the result of a reality-to-be. It is something without precedent, a new creation, an energetic connection of mankind with its high ideal, with its I, with Christ.

And in order to attain this union with the great ideal of mankind, mankind must tread the threefold path of self-sacrifice. For the resurrection of Christ in mankind must also have three stages, the order of which are to be opposed to the three stages of His superterrestial death.

Thus Christ is to resurrect in the fifth post-Atlantean culture in the wisdom of the third hierarchy, which we may already expect today as His etheric revelation. The time is already approaching when Christ will resurrect on the planet earth.

In the sixth cultural epoch, when the wisdom of the sun of the second hierarchy, the wisdom of Zarathustra will reappear, Christ will resurrect on the sun. And finally, the seventh cultural epoch may experience His resurrection also in the first hierarchy, on the stars.

In this way, everything that in the time before Christ has died, will in the time after Christ be able to be resurrected again and the cosmic death of Christ will be followed by His cosmic resurrection. And all that is only a content of the all-human self-knowledge, the key of which we can find in our own self-knowledge. For truly, the self-knowledge of Man and of the whole of mankind is an abyssal Christian mysterium at the bottom of which is the axiom:

        “Only in truth is freedom to be comprehended,
        only in freedom is truth to be established.”