According to Matthew: The Gospel of Christ's Humanity

Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner #CW 123

by Rudolf Steiner, Catherine E. Creeger (Translator), Richard Smoley (Introduction)

"If we read Steiner's] lectures with an open and attentive inner eye, we may be able to see the Christ mystery, not as a collection of dogmas or facts, but as a spiritual impulse that stretches far beyond the limits of Christ's own time and even of the lifespan of Christianity itself. We may even catch a glimpse of the high powers that govern the life of civilizations and of the great entity known as the human race." -Richard Smoley (from the introduction) For centuries people have been baffled by the varying accounts of Christ's life as presented in the four Gospels and have struggled to reconcile them. In these profound and stimulating lectures, Steiner addresses this conundrum. He shows how each of the Gospels presents a different lens onto Christ's life and message. Here Steiner reveals the Gospel of Matthew as the one that emphasizes Christ's humanity. But he does not stop there; his visionary perspective traces Christ's life and message to spiritual impulses that go back centuries, even millennia, to the legendary civilization of Atlantis, to the mysterious Zarathustra, and to the Jewish sect known as the Essenes. An introduction by Richard Smoley, author of Inner Christianity, puts Steiner's vision into perspective for modern readers. Once you have experienced Steiner's powerful exploration of Matthew, you will never see the Gospels in the same way again.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Author also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...


Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,  differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.

Reviews

[Sea Foam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent text. At one point here Steiner details something about the Hebrew gospel of Matthew being known about to other church fathers such as Jerome. They did not understand the deep intricacies of the gospel of Matthew's mysteries when there was a translation done from the Hebrew gospel. Then I researched extensively in other places on the internet and found that the Ebionite Christians used this supposed Hebrew gospel of Matthew to draw their own conclusions about the nature of the incarnation - which happens to be the same Christology used by Steiner! Phenomenal connection and you really see that Steiner is able to convey the message of a very specific early stream which is contrary and outside of our generally conceived trinitarian worldview. He truly shows the mystery as to how the Christian incarnation was preceded by Zoroastrianism, and is able to weave his framework perfectly into that religion just the same way that Manicheans back then were able to connect Jesus to Zoroaster. Steiner really eloquently brings the Christology of this adoptionist stream - which coincidentally also happened to involve belief in reincarnation!

[Roger Buck]

For reasons indicated here: http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2011/... ...

I do not even want to rate this book. My views on Steiner are so complex and so likely to be misunderstood that I would rather not reduce them to soundbites.

I simply want to say I have read this book and that whilst Steiner served to free me from Eastern Theosophy and the New Age scene I found at Findhorn, Valentin Tomberg, in turn, provided me with a very different hermeneutic with which to engage Steiner.

I hope the above link however can contribute a little to the tangled issues involving Steiner and Tomberg - and why I believe this "very different hermeneutic" is necessary for a world plunging into a cold-as-steel mechanised society ...

[Roger Buck]

For reasons indicated here: http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2011/... ...

I do not even want to rate this book. My views on Steiner are so complex and so likely to be misunderstood that I would rather not reduce them to soundbites.

I simply want to say I have read this book and that whilst Steiner served to free me from Eastern Theosophy and the New Age scene I found at Findhorn, Valentin Tomberg, in turn, provided me with a very different hermeneutic with which to engage Steiner.

I hope the above link however can contribute a little to the tangled issues involving Steiner and Tomberg - and why I believe this "very different hermeneutic" is necessary for a world plunging into a cold-as-steel mechanised society ...

[Andrew]

“When we understand the humanity of the Gospel of Matthew in this way — and hence it is the Gospel which lies most near to us – there streams to us from it the courage to live, the power and hope to stand fast, whatever our life-work may be.”

or in another translation,

“Understanding the human aspect of Matthew— the most accessible of the Gospels—will instill in us the courage, strength, and hope we need to remain upright in our life‘s work.”