WAS HE CHRISTIAN? Steiner’s Gnostic Heresies I. When, on rare occasions, supporters of Waldorf education openly acknowledge the schools’ religious nature, they attempt to portray Rudolf Steiner’s belief system as essentially Christian. But the "Christian" impulse underlying Waldorf schools is deeply unorthodox. Consider the following statement by Steiner: Steiner affirms the great significance of Christ, yet he depicts Christ as a pagan god, the god of the Sun. [See "Sun God".] Steiner's gnostic vision, incorporating such doctrines as reincarnation and karma, strays far from the Bible and mainstream Christian teachings. The creed promulgated by Steiner incorporates large swaths of pagan belief as well as teachings adapted from Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and other religions. As a result, Steiner's message is incompatible with the doctrines of all large, established Christian denominations. [2] Let’s consider how closely Steiner’s teachings conform to those of Jesus Christ. Here is a passage from the New Testament:
Compare that with Steiner’s “Christian” attitude:
Imagine, indeed. Steiner's statement is virtually the antithesis of Jesus's directive to love your neighbor as yourself. This difference is even more marked when we infer that Jesus essentially meant we should love all humans — everyone is our "neighbor," we should love everyone as we love ourselves. While Steiner professed Christian virtues, he was also prepared to brand large numbers of people as subhuman — a proposition standing in utter opposition to the call for universal equality, acceptance, and love. Subumans, Steiner said, are supernumerary — they form an unneeded, excess population. We may charitably seek to redeem subhumans, Steiner said; we may show them mercy. But we cannot love them as ourselves — they are fundamentally different from ourselves. A useful guide in considering the true import of Christ’s ministry is BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: CHRIST’S TEACHINGS ABOUT LOVE, COMPASSION AND FORGIVENESS, gathered and introduced by Wendell Berry. [6] In his introduction, Berry writes:
Christ’s message was one of radical love: love extended to everyone. He saw the humanity in everyone. He never conceived of “people who are not human beings,” people who stand outside the circle of humanity. Steiner often asserted the importance of love, yet his preachments take us away from, not toward, the core of Christ’s message. [8] Steiner sometimes differentiated his body of teachings, Anthroposophy, from Christianity. On other occasions, he suggested that his teachings represent "true" Christianity. Thus, for instance, he produced a new, "corrected" holy text, a series of lectures published by his followers as the FIFTH GOSPEL. In these lectures, Steiner gave a revised account of Jesus's life and teachings; in essence, he claimed to correct the four gospels of the New Testament. [9] He learned the hidden truths about Christ, he claimed, through the use of clairvoyance: He consulted the Akashic Record, a celestial storehouse of knowledge written on ether or starlight. [See "Akasha".] Steiner's claims and the resulting tenets of Anthroposophy are largely irreconcilable with Christian religious doctrine and practice. We have already spoken of the Anthroposophical belief in subhumans. Consider a related belief: the existence of inferior races. Steiner taught that the peoples of the Earth span a spectrum of evolutionary levels. The most highly evolved are white Europeans; the least evolved are the subhumans. Between these extremes are races of varying levels. [See "Steiner's Racism".] Fortunately, he said, the lower races tend to die out — as humanity evolves, more and more souls become qualified for incarnation in higher racial forms, while fewer and fewer souls populate the inferior races.
"Lower races," "higher races." This is not the language of Christian love. II. Many of Steiner's teachings must repel people of good will, whatever their religious views. But for Christians in particular, these teachings should be especially problematic. Indeed, from an orthodox Christian perspective, much of what Steiner taught must be deemed heretical. In discussing mankind's ultimate evolution, for instance, Steiner asserted The notion that we might, in any sense, become God the Father must strike most Christians as sacrilege. But Steiner was quite prepared to go his own way, insisting on the primacy of his personal revelation. Note how, in this instance, he implicitly differentiated his teachings from those of Christianity as it is usually comprehended (“what is called in Christianity...”). Only his own teachings, Steiner claimed, represent the truth about Christ. Perhaps the most extraordinary of Steiner's heresies concerns the identities of Christ and the other members of the triune God worshipped in Christianity. As we have already seen, Steiner said that Christ is the Sun God. Anthroposophy is a polytheistic faith; the universe, as described by Steiner, is vibrant with a multitude of gods. [See "Polytheism".] In a somewhat nebulous sense, Steiner taught, the Godhead presides above the universe. But the Godhead is not the monotheistic God worshipped by Christians. [See "God".] According to Steiner, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost may be understood to be three aspects of a single divine essence; but they are also three separate gods presiding over three separate celestial spheres or periods.
Thus, Steiner rejects Christian monotheism (he tells us that the cosmos is populated by many gods) and he specifically rejects the Christian conception of God (he tells us that the triune God is actually a council of three separate gods). Such heretical concepts are woven throughout Steiner's teachings and practices. Thus, for instance, Steiner used various alternative versions of the Lord's Prayer, the model prayer Jesus taught to his followers. Matthew 6:9-13 gives the version usually recited in churches; Luke 11:2-4 gives the same prayer in somewhat shorter form. The versions Steiner used have little or no basis in Biblical texts. The most extreme version used by Steiner is this: "Amen. The evils hold sway. Witness of egoity freeing itself. Selfhood guilt through others incurred, experienced in the daily bread, wherein the will of the heavens does not rule, because man separated himself from your realm, and forgot your names, you Fathers in the heavens." [13] This, Steiner said, is the prayer that underlies the Lord's Prayer (or the "Our Father") as found in the Bible; this is the "cosmic Our Father" that Jesus learned from pagans to whom he turned for spiritual instruction.
Actually, of course, the reversal runs in the other direction: This "cosmic Our Father" is a reverse image of the prayer quoted in the Bible. The cosmic Our Father runs backward (beginning with "Amen") and it addresses multiple gods ("you Fathers in the heavens"), not the One God of Christianity ("Our Father, which art in Heaven"). Steiner gave this account of the cosmic prayer: Multiple deviations from the Bible are folded into Steiner's account. Not only does his account alter the text of the Lord's Prayer as quoted in the Bible, but Steiner offers a tale of Jesus's travels having no basis in the Bible (Jesus traveled into pagan lands in search of "ancient sacred teachings," Steiner says [16]), and Steiner introduces concepts alien to the Bible (including destiny or karma, and evolution). [17] Most crucially, the cosmic prayer is polytheistic. The "Fathers in the heavens" can be conceived either as the entire company of gods postulated in Steiner's Anthroposophy, or they may be seen as the three gods Steiner identified as the "highest Ruler of Saturn," "the Sun-God", and "the Ruler of the Moon stage." In either case, the cosmic prayer is not addressed to the monotheistic God of Christian belief. III. Steiner's cosmology is, from a mainstream Western perspective, startling. [18] The universe Steiner described bears little relationship to either the universe of science or the universe of the Bible. The consequences for the Anthroposophical conception of Christ are profound. Steiner taught that the Sun is (or was) the physical representation of Christ’s physical presence:
The Moon, according to Steiner, is the residence of Jehovah (otherwise known as Jahveh or Yahweh):
To make sense of this, you need to understand that Steiner taught that Jehovah is the god of the Jews but not the one true God of all creation. According to Steiner, the monotheism exemplified by Judaism is false. Thus, the god of the Jews is just one of many gods; in particular, he is a rather lowly god who reigned over his people from the Moon:
“Human” is a tricky term, as used by Steiner. As we have seen, Steiner taught that some people are not really human; some beings who seem to be human are actually demons in disguise. On the other hand, some beings who were once human have moved on: To be "human," in Steiner's teachings, means standing at a certain evolutionary level. Anyone below this level is subhuman; anyone above it is superhuman. [See "Supermen".] One highly advanced individual who moved from the Earth to another planet is Buddha:
This passage leads us to the core of Steiner’s heresies. He considered the “Christ-event” — that is, Christ's incarnation in the body of Jesus — a hugely important occurrence in universal history. [28] Steiner taught that the Christ-event introduced the “Christ impulse” into human affairs. Through this impulse, we can emulate Christ and evolve toward spiritual perfection. Christ was preceded by other spiritual mentors, such as Buddha, and their work can be compared to His. But they represented prior evolutionary stages — He represents the ultimate stage, a stage that is still very far from completion. We will fulfill the Christ impulse only in the extremely distant future, when we ourselves become gods. [29] Note how little of this resembles orthodox Christianity, which is based on belief in Christ as one of three Persons of God. [30] Implicitly, in the teachings we are considering here, Steiner rejected mainstream Christian belief — he sought hidden knowledge of the spiritual realm, secret knowledge, “mystery” knowledge. It is in precisely this way that his religious teachings are gnostic: They aim at the acquisition of occult spiritual knowledge. [31] According to Steiner, acquiring such knowledge enables us to achieve salvation through our own efforts — a basic misconception according to orthodox Christianity, which teaches that salvation is provided by the Savior, who did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. [32] A set of doctrines that entails people who are not human, spiritual evolution, planetary migrations, reincarnation, a Buddha crucifixion on Mars, people becoming God the Father, and salvation through the acquisition of secret knowledge — this is not Christianity as most Christians, and most Christian churches, understand the term. It is a set of gnostic heresies. Anyone who feels drawn to the spirituality so evident in Waldorf schools should clearly understand the focus of that spirituality. Christians in particular should realize what Rudolf Steiner's followers believe. They revere Christ, yes. But they think Christ’s real identity is something you won’t hear mentioned in many churches. Christ was the highest of the gods who live on the Sun. There are many, many gods in the Steiner religion. The Sun God is one; he is very important; but other gods (Zeus, Thor, Mars) also exist; they are real. According to Steiner, the difference between Christ and such gods as Zeus is that Christ, the Sun being, came down to the physical Earth, whereas they did not. Christ is no more real than Zeus or Thor, but he left the Sun to come to Earth. [35] This is the key "fact" around which the Steiner religion revolves. IV. According to Steiner, Christ will not save humanity in the way that Christians usually understand the concept of salvation. Christ is not the Redeemer, except in a special sense. Rather, he is our Prototype — he is the model we should follow so that we may evolve properly:
Perhaps even more shocking to most Christians is this: Steiner said that by following our Prototype, we humans will ourselves become gods. We will form the "tenth hierarchy," supplementing the nine ranks of gods that loom above us today. As one of Steiner's more prolific followers has explained, Christ did not save us; we will save ourselves. We will earn our ascension to apotheosis. Such teachings fundamentally diverge from the New Testament's account of Christ, his role as Redeemer, and the very process of redemption. Such theachings are, in fact, incompatible with the most crucial, mainstream Christian doctrines. In addition to giving us a revised portrait of Christ (the Sun God who descended to Earth, incarnating in the body of a human being, Jesus), Steiner gave us a radically revised portrait of Jesus. He taught, indeed, that there were two Jesuses who combined in order to become the vessel for the Sun God's incarnation:
The accumulation of gnostic, occult, heretical teachings becomes overwhelming. In Steiner's hands, Christian theology is shattered, leaving few if any recognizable Christian teachings. Instead we have polytheism, the Sun God, karma, evolution, clairvoyance, two Jesuses, Zarathustra, Buddha, the Tenth Hierarchy, astral bodies, Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Wotan, Odin, Thor... You will search in vain for these in the Bible. So, I’ll repeat my question. Was Steiner Christian? The answer should be coming clear. — Roger Rawlings ![]() According to Steiner, this is the occult symbol for Christ.
[R.R. sketch, 2010, based on the one in the book.] Although he often said that Christ was unique among the gods in coming to Earth and incarnating here, Steiner sometimes said something rather different:
For more on Christ the Sun God, see "Sun God". To glimpse the Waldorf version of Christmas, please see "Christmas". For the Waldorf version of Easter, see "Easter". For Steiner's depiction of Christ as our "Prototype," supplying the "Christ Impulse," see "Prototype". For Steiner's surprising revision of the Sermon on the Mount, see "Sermon". Steiner taught tat there have been several "Christ Events". To investigate, see "Events". Links to other pertinent pages appear further down on this page. The doctrine of karma is really quite horrid, when taken literally. It tells us that the low, the afflicted, the ill, the impoverished — all these souls chose their fate, it is their karma, we really should not interfere. They have gotten what they deserve or asked for.
So the victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for instance, chose to be victims; it is good for them. We should certainly not interfere in their karma. This, of course, is utter, horrid, inhuman nonsense. And it is wholly incompatible with Christian charity. Even Steiner, when he stopped to think things through, realized that his teachings about karma must not be taken to such extremes.
Yes, we must help those who need our help. Kudos to Steiner for grasping this. What he also should have grasped — or what we must grasp, anyway — is that the imperative to be humane, to help those who need our help, highlights the depravity of the doctrine of karma. Steiner should have renounced the doctrine. He didn't. But we must. ◊ According to Steiner, the Archangel Michael is the warrior god who fights on behalf of Christ. Steiner strove mightily to make belief in karma seem consistent with Christian beliefs. In the process, he offered his own reinterpretations of both karma and Christianity. But his attempted reconciliation of disparate teachings never became convincing. What is Christ's central message to us? According to many theologians, it is this: We should love God above all else, and we should love our neighbors as ourselves. Most Christians, when considering their faith, will think of this injunction. For Rudolf Steiner’s followers, however, the central Christian teaching is quite different. For them, all the statements made by Christ have passed through the mind of Rudolf Steiner and emerged as something not found in the Bible. Here is the Anthroposophical version of Christ's injunction:
Actually, no. Steiner has not paraphrased Christ's words; he has said something very different ("one's humanness depends on devoting oneself...to the three ideals"). And this, gentle reader, is the point. If you are a spiritual person and you want to embrace the spirituality of Waldorf education, fine, do so. Enroll yourself and your children — enter the Waldorf universe. But, please, do so with your eyes open. Know what sort of universe you are entering. It is not the universe of Christianity. Nor that of Judaism. Nor Islam. Nor Buddhism, nor Hinduism, nor even Theosophy. It is the universe of Anthroposophy, which Rudolf Steiner invented. Steiner’s new religion incorporates bits and pieces of many other religions (which is why Waldorf students are required to study so many world religions), but it is identical to none of them. It is something different, something very strange. It is the gnostic, esoteric, occult concoction called Anthroposophy. If you want it, it is available to you. But walk through that door with your eyes open — and send your children through that door only if you are completely sure that you are making the right decision for them. ◊ * Here is Steiner’s explanation of the three ideals. Note that it is polytheistic and thus incompatible with monotheistic Christianity.
The Sun, of course, is supremely important for life on Earth. Nothing could live here but for the Sun. Waldorf students are often led to create paintings of the Sun. Whether they are also led to associate the Sun with Christ, the Sun God, probably varies from school to school. ![]() ![]() Waldorf artwork courtesy of PLANS
— Rudolf Steiner, MAN'S LIFE ON EARTH AND IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS (Health Research, 1960), Lecture 1, GA 211.
— Douglas Gerwin, Introduction, AND WHO SHALL TEACH THE TEACHERS? (Association of Waldorf Schools of North America), report on a conference held in 2005. Some of Steiner's rival leaders in the Theosophical movement proclaimed that an Indian child, Jiddu Krishnamurti, was the "World Teacher" and/or the reincarnated Christ. Steiner rejected this, and partly as a result (other factors were also involved) broke from Theosophy to establish Anthroposophy as an alternative spiritual movement. See "Krishnamurti".
— Sergei O. Prokofieff, THE FOUNDATION STONE MEDITATION (Temple Lodge Publishing, 2006), p. 54. ![]() The Cross with the Sun at its middle. [R.R. sketch, 2010, based on the one on p. 54 of THE FOUNDATION STONE MEDITATION.] This image seeks to meld pagan and Christian belief — Christ, on his cross, is seen as the Sun God.
Consider what it means for Christ to take up an office previously held by other gods. Steiner's Christ is not the being worshipped by Christians, the unique and incomparable Son of God. Steiner's Christ is very important, he is high, but fundamentally he is one of a vast panoply of gods. Several of those gods have, at various times, ruled or steered human destiny. At this time, Christ fills that role. In the future... ADDENDA I. The relationship between Steiner's new religion and established Christianity has not been happy. Christian clergy and theologians understand how severely Steiner split away from Christian doctrines. The following odd excerpt from one of Steiner's lectures helps illustrate the tensions. Steiner presents his own, defensive response to criticisms leveled at him and at Anthroposophy: For Switzerland and Central Europe, where these things happen, are all part of the world. So, too, is America. I recently received a magazine published in America in which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is characterized, while, at the same time, the Jesuits in Europe denounced spiritual science as a threat to the Catholic Church and to Christianity. You know by now that Reverend Kully [40] stated that there are three evils in the world. One is Judaism, the other Freemasonry, but the third — worse than all of them, even worse than Bolshevism — is what is taught here in Dornach. [41] This originates from the Catholic side, and is how anthroposophy is characterized. What about America? I want to read you a small paragraph from an American publication written at the same time Catholic journals over here printed their view of anthroposophy:
— Protestant sects do not come into consideration; according to the Roman church, these sects stand outside the gates; they are viewed merely as a great number of heretics — [42]
So you see that in America anthroposophy is taken for Jesuitism, while in Europe the Jesuits strongly oppose anthroposophy as the biggest enemy of the Catholic church. [43] That is how the world thinks today! That, however, is also how people think in Europe where they are living side by side; they are just not aware of it. The American article concludes with several more nice sentences:
So you see, sometimes the wind blows from the Roman Catholic corner, sometimes from the American side! It just shows you how things are inside the heads of our contemporaries. Yet, from the thoughts hatched inside human heads, there developed what has led into the decline of the present, and the ascent must truly be sought in a different direction from the one where many seek it today. — Rudolf Steiner, SPIRITUAL SCIENCE AS A FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL FORMS (Anthroposophic Press, 1986), p. 20. ◊◊◊ Anthroposophists have sometimes referred to Steiner's "Christian enemies," as in the title of this book. (The purpose of the book, of course, is to defend Steiner.) ![]() Louis M. I. Werbeck, DIE CHRISTLICHEN GEGNER RUDOLF STEINERS UND ANTHROPOSOPHIE DURCH SIE SELBEST WIDERLEGT (Der Kommende Tag A.G. Verlag, 1924). {THE CHRISTIAN ENEMIES OF RUDOLF STEINER AND THE ANTHROPOSOPHY THAT REFUTES THEM} II. Christians believe that Christ will return. We shouldn't end our examination of Steiner's "Christian" teachings without considering what Steiner said about the Second Coming. To do the topic justice, we need to briefly review some of what we have already seen. “True” Christianity, according to Steiner, is his own teachings. The Bible and the churches are wrong, but Steiner can set us all straight. “True” Christianity is Anthroposophy, which Steiner claimed is a science, not a religion. By using what he called “exact” clairvoyance, Steiner could (or so he said) gather objective factual information about the spirit realm; thus he could know what Christ was and what Christ meant, in a way no one else could without using the same high form of clairvoyance. Thus, Steiner meant to “go beyond historical Christianity and its limitations.” [45] Steiner offered his new, improved Christianity in lectures such as the ones contained in THE FIFTH GOSPEL, his proposed addition to the Bible.
The “second coming” of Christ, according to Steiner, is the renewed, revived knowledge of Christ that Steiner himself provided. It is not the physical return of Christ to the Earth, but the emergence in the spiritual realm (“the etheric”) of the new Christ impulse that Steiner's doctrines enable. When we “see” Christ in the right way (i.e., Steiner’s way), we will experience Christ’s return: Note the emphasis on knowledge. Steiner taught that we are not “saved” by faith or good works, but by knowledge. This is his gnosticism. The Second Coming, as redefined by Steiner, has already happened.
Speaking before the years he specified, Steiner gave the following preview. By developing our "soul faculties" (clairvoyance) in the way he specified, we will "see" Christ, and this will be the Second Coming, as it were:
Whether Christ will return in physical form is a topic of debate among Christians, but most fundamentalist Christians say that he will. [50] Steiner was no fundamentalist Christian. Protestants, Steiner claimed, misidentify God. The “God” they worship is actually just an angel, a god one level above humans. In Anthroposophic belief, there are nine ranks of gods above us. Angels are the lowest, archangels are a step higher than angels, and other gods occupy still more elevated ranks. According to Steiner, angels guide individual humans; archangels guides peoples, nations, and races. Here is Steiner telling Waldorf teachers how to explain some of this to their students:
Another great problem with Protestantism, Steiner taught, is that the true meaning of ritual has been lost in Protestant churches. Responding to a Waldorf teacher who said the students resisted attending religious services, Steiner said this:
Steiner stressed the importance of ritual. Thus, for instance, he described a supernatural ritual enacted at the beginning of the 19th century. (Somewhat confusingly, he used the present tense to describe this past event.) In this description, we find the fundamental cause of Steiner's dispute with Christianity. Christians believes in a single God, whereas Steiner taught that the universe teems with many gods.
![]() Anthroposophy is certainly a religion, but — despite superficial appearances — it is not a form of Christianity. The influences of Eastern religions are strong, as are those of paganism and occultism. Above we see an angel; below is the Hindu symbol for the mantra "Om" or "Aum." Drawing and painting by Waldorf students [courtesy of People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools]. To follow Steiner's teachings, we need to distinguish between Jesus, the man, and Christ, the god who manifested in the man. Actually, as we have seen, Steiner taught there there were two Jesuses. The Biblical accounts of Jesus’s youth, given in various books of the New Testament, are inconsistent with one another. One solution — adopted by Steiner and some others — is to claim that there were two separate Jesus children, two separate human beings who both contributed to the miracle of Christ's incarnation on the Earth.
Steiner taught that the two Jesus children — the Solomon Jesus child and the Nathan Jesus child — eventually combined, in the sense that the Nathan Jesus received the spiritual essence or Ego of the Solomon Jesus. This Ego was in fact the soul of Zarathustra, since the Solomon Jesus was the reincarnated Zarathustra. The Nathan Jesus child was infused with Buddha forces; he is the Jesus described in the Koran (without reference to Buddha). Thus, after the soul of Zarathustra passed into the Nathan Jesus, this Jesus had been conditioned by both Buddha and Zarathustra, and he was thus fit to serve as host for the incarnated Sun God, Christ. You can decide whether this “explanation” improves upon the Biblical accounts.
ONE SUMMATION Steiner's views were complex and, at least potentially, confusing. Here is brief summary of Steiner's teachings on Christianity. I will use the plainest language I can, and I will reiterate key points. Bear with me, please. I will not clutter up the summary with quotations and endnotes; you will find lots of documentation elsewhere in "Was He Christian?" and in other essays on this website. Steiner claimed that he had found the true meaning of Christianity. This meaning is revealed in his worldview, Anthroposophy. Christianity is a religion, but Steiner said that Anthroposophy is a science, not a religion. By claiming that his “science” reveals the deeper truths of “Christianity,” Steiner appropriated the term “Christianity,” applying it in a novel way. Does this make him a Christian? Does calling yourself a Christian make you one? What if I truly think I am a Christian but my beliefs are actually incompatible with the tenets of Christianity as found in the Bible and all major Christian denominations? What, for instance, if my “Christianity” involves belief in many different gods, and reincarnation, and karma, and astrology, and Atlantis, and Zarathustra, and Buddha, and so forth and so on? This is exactly the case for Anthroposophists; the beliefs I have listed are all part of “Christian” Anthroposophy. Steiner’s followers may think their beliefs qualify as “Christian,” but they do not. Claiming to be a Christian is very different from actually being one. Likewise, placing emphasis on Christ does not necessarily make you a Christian. Muslims, for instance, believe in Christ. They assign great importance to Christ. But they are not Christians, obviously — their religion is Islam, not Christianity. The same holds for Anthroposophists. They consider Christ extremely important, but they are not really Christians. Like most words, “Christian” may mean many things. The normal definition contains these elements: Christianity is the religion centered on the divinity of Christ; a Christian accepts Christ as his Lord and Savior; a Christian worships Christ as God (or a Member of the Triune God); a Christian accepts the teachings of Christ as found in the Bible; a Christian is a member of a Christian church. There can be variations and disputes over all elements of this definition. But, by virtually all of the standards of the above definition, Anthroposophy is not Christian. It is (theoretically) a “science,” not a religion; it speaks of evolution, not salvation per se; by their own account, Anthroposophists do not worship Christ, since Anthroposophy is not a religion; Anthroposophy rejects the literal meaning of much if not all of the Bible (Steiner revealed the hidden “Mystery” meaning of Bible passages); Anthroposophy has no churches, per se (unless we count the Goetheanum and other prayer-centered structures such as Waldorf schools). Nutshell: Anthroposophists claim a) Anthroposophy is a science, and b) it is a science in which Christ looms large. The truth is that a) Anthroposophy is a religion, but b) it is not Christian. [54] Here are central Anthroposophical concepts. Note that each one of them violates orthodox Christian faith. There are many, many gods After death, we do not go to our eternal judgment, but we reincarnate Our earthly lives are largely controlled by karma, which we create for ourselves We are evolving — specifically, we are evolving toward becoming the highest gods The stars have powerful effects on us (astrology and horoscopes) There are two devils (who aren’t all bad): Lucifer and Ahriman Christ is the Sun God Buddha performed as the Christ of Mars There were two Jesuses, one of whom was Zarathustra in a previous life The other bore the spirit of Buddha We recently lived on Atlantis and someday we will proceed to Vulcan Ultimately we will become God the Father Calling these tenets “Christian” does not make them so. Virtually no Christian theologian or clergyman would accept them as Christian (except self-proclaimed Anthroposophical “Christians”). The Bible offers little or no evidence that Christ himself would have accepted them. So Anthroposophy is not Christian. But it is a religion. Here are some central indicators: It involves prayers, meditations, and observances It "explains" spiritual matters It describes the will and purpose of the gods It tells us how to live in accordance with the gods' divine plan It depends on clairvoyance (which does not exist); hence, there is no “scientific” basis for any of its tenets; hence, it can be accepted only by an act of faith, belief Steiner stressed the need for belief He stressed the need for gurus People who do not live properly, according to the tenets of Anthroposophy, will be consigned to a form of perdition People who do live properly, according to the tenets of Anthroposophy, will be saved (i.e., they will evolve toward apotheosis) None of this is characteristic of a science; but all of it is characteristic or indicative of religion. The religion followed by Anthroposophists is Anthroposophy. — Roger Rawlings --------------------- THIS PAGE HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY TRUNCATED WHILE I WORK TO CONVERT WALDORF WATCH TO A NEW PLATFORM. |