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."
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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