Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of AntiquitySteiner, Rudolf
Religion
Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of Antiquity
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Christianity and other religions; Mysteries, Religious; Mysticism
being, and we love our own being and knowledge. On these three points
no illusion in the garb of truth can trouble us, for we do not
apprehend them with our bodily senses like external things." Man
learns about the divine by leading his soul to know itself as
spiritual, so that it may find its way, as a spirit, into the
spiritual world. Augustine had battled his way through to this
knowledge. It was out of such an attitude of mind that there grew up
in pagan nations the desire to knock at the gate of the Mysteries. In
the age of Augustine, such convictions might lead to becoming a
Christian. Jesus, the Logos become man had shown the path which must
be followed by the soul if it would attain the goal which it sees when
in communion with itself. In A.D. 385, at Milan, Augustine was
instructed by St. Ambrose. All his doubts about the Old and New
Testaments vanished when his teacher interpreted the most important
passages, not merely in a literal sense, but "by lifting the mystic
veil by force of the spirit."
What had been guarded in the Mysteries was embodied for Augustine in
the historical tradition of the Evangelists and in the community where
that tradition was preserved. He comes by degrees to the conviction
that "the law of this tradition, which consists in believing what it
has not proved, is moderate and without guile." He arrives at the
idea, "Who could be so blind as to say that the Church of the Apostles
deserves to have no faith placed in it, when it is so loyal and is
supported by the conformity of so many brethren; when these have
handed down their writings to posterity so conscientiously, and when
the Church has so strictly maintained the succession of teachers, down
to our present bishops?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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