Steiner, Christ, and Racial Intermarriage
It should be totally unneccessary to document Rudolf Steiner's views regarding racial evolution and intermarriage, because these things are evident throughout his works. Spiritual evolution seen from an anthroposophical perspective is, however, extremely complex, and opponents of anthroposophy have taken advantage of this fact in order to smear Rudolf Steiner and his movement as racist, anti-Semitic, and opposed to racial mixture.
Here are a few quotes from one of Steiner's lectures that make it crystal clear why racial intermarriage is part and parcel of the true Christian message. And Steiner was, first and foremost, a proclaimer of the Christ.
The following quotes have been taken from the cycle The Gospel of St. John And Its Relation to the Other Gospels ("Das Johannes-Evangelium im Verhaltnis zu den drei anderen Evangelien, besonders zu dem Lukas-Evangelium", GA 112), lecture IX.
It's where Steiner speaks about the wedding in Cana, where Christ performed his first 'sign':
"As has been said, the deeper significance of the miracles we shall learn in due time; but here we can ask, for example, why, precisely in the first of the signs [John 2:1-11] it is especially emphasized in dealing with the marriage in Cana of Galilee that this took place in Cana "of Galilee." Seek as you will, you can find in old Palestine within the radius then known no second Cana; and in such a case it would seem superfluous to specify the locality. Why, then, does the Evangelist tell us that this miracle occurred in Cana "of Galilee"? Because the important point to be stressed was that something occurred which had to take place in Galilee. It means that nowhere else but in Galilee could Christ have found just those people whose presence was indispensable. As I said, an influence implies not only the one who exerts it, but the others as well who are appropriately fitted to receive it. Christ's first appearance would not have been possible within the Jewish community proper, but it was possible in Galilee with its mixture of many different tribes and groups. Just because members of so many peoples from various parts of the world were assembled in one spot, there was far less blood relationship, and above all, far less faith in it, than in Judea, in the narrow cirlce of the Hebrew people. Galilee was a heterogeneous racial mixture.
"But what was it to which Christ, in view of His impulse, felt Himself particularly called? We have said that one of His most significant utterances was, 'Before Abraham was, was the I am'; and the other, 'I and the Father are one'. By this He meant: among those who cling to the old forms of life, the ego is entrenched in a system of blood relationships."
(................................................)
"For this purpose, He had to turn to those who, owing to their mixed blood, no longer clung to this old belief: to the Galileans. That is where His mission had to commence. Even though the old state of consciousness was gradually on the wane, still He found in Galilee a medley of peoples that stood at the beginning of the era in which blood became mixed. From all quarters tribes assembled here that had previously been governed solely by the forces of the old blood ties. They were on the point of finding the transition."
(................................................)
"Such were the people to whom Christ turned, people who had just arrived at the point of understanding this, people who, having broken away from the blood ties by intermarriage, needed to find the strong force - not in consanguinity, but in the individual soul, the force that can lead man gradually to express the spiritual in the physical."
(................................................)
"It was in Galilee that the ancient blood ties were severed, that mutually alien bloods came to mingle. Now, Christ's task was intimately connected with this mixing of blood. So, we are here dealing with a union having the object of creating progeny among people who are no longer related by blood."
Steiner then proceeds with an explanation of the new wine that he introduces at this wedding in Cana. The old wine was connected with the magical force engendered by tribal intermarriage, whereby ancient clairvoyance flowed through the blood from the ancestors. With this in mind (this is me speaking at this point), the following words by Christ assume a special significance, I think:
"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. " - Matthew 9:17
You cannot get a stronger endorsement for racial mix and intermarriage than that.
Tarjei Straume
The lecture quoted from above is available online
(in a different translation).
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