Christianity as Mystical Fact
and the Mysteries of Antiquity
by Rudolf Steiner

Christianity as Mystical Fact: Simultaneously mystical and factual, Christianity is a breakthrough in the historical development of humanity for which the processes of the Mysteries, with the results which they brought about, form a prior evolutionary stage . . . .

During the fall and winter of 1901-02, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures, “Christianity As Mystical Fact,” in the library of Count and Countess Brockdorff, patrons of the German Theosophical Society. These lectures were rewritten and issued in book form in the summer of 1902. They mark a watershed in the development of Western esotericism.

Looking back at this moment in his Autobiography, Steiner wrote:
“My intention was not simply to present the mystical content of Christianity. Rather, my aim was to describe evolution from the ancient Mysteries to the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way as to reveal forces at work in this evolution that were not just earthy, historical forces, but spiritual, extra-earthly impulses. I wanted to show that the content presented in the ancient Mysteries took the form of ritualistic pictures of events occurring within the cosmos, events that were then transferred from the cosmos to the earth in the Mystery of Golgotha as a sense-perceptible fact accomplished on the plane of history.”

This is a fundamental work, both in Steiner’s own development as well as in the development of Western esotericism and our understanding of the Christ event. Here readers will find the evolutionary development from the ancient Mysteries through the great Greek philosophers to the events portrayed in the Gospels.

Because of his sense of the interconnectedness of the spiritual world with nature, art, medicine, and all the rest of life, Rudolf Steiner was a profound polymath. In his seminal study Christianity as Mystical Fact he turned his esoteric genius to interpreting the Christ event as the turning point in the world's spiritual history―an incarnation whose significance he saw transcending all religions.
―Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, Professor of New Testament and Chair of Anglican Studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

Steiner Books
Trans: A. Welburn
Introduction: Christopher Bamford (GA8); 256pp
ISBN: 0 88010 436 8; paperback

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