Fall and Rise

The connection between the Fall and the Christ event in Anthroposophy

Part of the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach), showing the initiation into the earthly physical world.

In this article I discuss how the Fall (from Paradise) and the Christ event are related and central in human evolution, according to Anthroposophy.

Following Steiner's cosmology, humanity's mission on earth is the incorporation of the I. This would be successful if the I, which can only arise in a physical body, acknowledges its spiritual roots which are shared with other humans and embedded in the cosmos. This acknowledgement arises through knowledge of the physical world, and of itself and everything spiritual that can be experienced inside itself. The result should be a transformation from a self (I) centered consciousness that only acknowledges the physical world, towards a consciousness that integrates the physical and spiritual. This transformation should be made out of freedom. Freedom as a condition for love of the spiritual divine, in the cosmos and in one another.

For this mission on the earth these steps are necessary: from a unitary world a separation in spirit and matter occurred, leading to free independent beings that identify with a physical body. Some of these independent beings develop a desire (love) to return to unity. They embed themselves back into unity and enrich it with the experience they had as independent beings in the physical world. These embedded but independent beings and their love are the fruit of the earth evolution.

Sketch for the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

This was the outline/plan/design for earth evolution. In this outline there were some degrees of freedom. Earth has developed quite a bit so we can look at how the manifestation of this plan turned out so far. According to Steiner, the Fall from Paradise represented an extremity within the scope of possible unfoldings of the plan, that could have led to an unsuccessful earth evolution. The fall took place around the time that humans were supposed to develop independence. Due to Luciferic intervention this separation happened prematurely. The result was an attachment to matter and a distance from the spiritual divine, too large to be bridged by humans alone. Lucifer's intervention had to be counterpoised by another non-human intervention, otherwise we would have never been able to find the way back to the spiritual. This counterpoise was the Christ event, and only because of this event the mission of humanity may be at least partially successful and not completely doomed.

Sketch for the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

The extreme deviation/separation caused by Lucifer had two effects: first, the separation between man and gods was so large that humanity may not have found its way back. Second, due to this large separation a corresponding extreme independence and freedom arose. The extent of separation determines the extent of freedom.

We can probably best compare the god-human relation with the parent-child relation. If a child wants to develop into adulthood, it has to be separated from its parents to a certain extent. Too little separation would mean too little independence, too much or untimely separation comes with the risk of an unprepared child that doesn’t make it in the outside world. Humanity was that unprepared child that lost its way and had to be helped by a parent to find its way back, enabled through the Christ event.

It is important to note that a certain descent into matter and thus a certain distancing from the divine was needed according to the plan. The way and extent to which this distancing took place would determine the way the independence and freedom would have formed. This could have taken many forms, what we are living now is just one possibility on a spectrum. We could have taken an even more extreme turn, and not been able to be rescued. With a corresponding kind of freedom and independence that may be even more exotic than the one we have now (and in some ways it would have been better even, but more risky). We could also have been on the other side of the spectrum, staying close to the Father, but hardly becoming free.

Sketch for the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

Another result of the amount of independence and freedom humanity developed, is the number of humans who make it back to the divine. Compare it again to a family with a couple of kids. If you send all your kids unprepared into the world, where wars are raging, you may not see any of them back. But if one of them manages to survive it may be a hero that saved its country and turns into a wise king. If you keep all your kids at home and never let them leave your house, they probably all survive, but they will probably not be challenged to develop and bloom as humans. Between these two extremes there is a spectrum of possibilities.

A certain amount of ‘falling’ would have occurred anyway. So the name 'fall’ can easily be misinterpreted as a purely negative and dichotomous (yes/no) event. Also, the lure of Lucifer helped us to become independent, and would have been needed in all scenarios. It is the extent of the fall and the extent of Luciferic influence that became problematic, according to Steiner.

For me, the Christ event, as Steiner depicts it, is the most difficult element of Anthroposophy to 'digest'. But also the Fall as described above, and its connection to the Christ event, are similarly difficult. It is difficult because first, we need to accept that humanity's evolution took a turn, a deviation, from which by its own forces it would not be able to get back on track. I think this is difficult because if you wake up to your own consciousness and being, it is desirable to have a ‘clean slate’ and not be burdened with a corrupt legacy from your ancestors. Second, we can only get back on track by the help of Christ. This means accepting a dependency on him. I know this is not the historical Jesus Christ and I think you can be helped by Christ without even knowing anything about him. Because the Christ event changed something in the human constitution/potential. But still, it is a dependency. So the extreme striving towards freedom resulted in a dependency. Both the Fall and the Christ event have an invisible deterministic character that opposes the free nature I wish for.

Please let me know your thoughts on how you relate to this 'situation'.

The connection between the Fall and the Christ event is described, among others, in GA 131, “From Jesus to Christ” (1911)¹.

Sketch for the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

Sketch for the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

Sketch for the violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

The actual violet north window of the first Goetheanum (Dornach).

1. From https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA131/English/RSP1973/19111007p01.html:

“These happenings have originally something to do with events that took place before such a life-thread as our human one had passed into a physical human organization. We must go back to the ancient Lemurian time, into the age wherein human individualities, coming from Divine heights, incarnated for the first time in earthly bodies; back to the event which is indicated for us in the Old Testament as the Temptation through the Serpent. This event is of a very remarkable kind. From its outcome all men suffer as long as they are subject to incarnation. For if this event had not happened, the whole evolution of mankind on the earth would have been different, and men would have passed in a much more perfect condition from incarnation to incarnation. Through this event, however, they become more closely entangled in matter, allegorically designated as the ‘Fall of Man’. But it was the Fall that first called man to his present individuality; so that, as he goes as an individuality from incarnation to incarnation, he is not responsible for the Fall. We know that the Luciferic spirits were responsible for the Fall. Hence we must say that before man became man in the earthly sense, there occurred the divine, super-sensible event by which a deeper entanglement in matter was laid upon him. Through this event man has indeed attained to the power of love and to freedom, but through it something was laid upon him that he could not lay upon himself by his own power. This becoming entangled in matter was not a human act, but a deed of the Gods, which happened before men could cooperate in their own fate. It is something which the Higher Powers of progressive evolution arranged with the Luciferic powers. We shall have to go into all these events and characterise them more exactly. Today we will place only the chief point before our minds.

What happened at that time needed a counterpoise. The pre-human event—the Fall of Man—needed a counterpoise, but this again was a concern not of human beings, but of the Gods among themselves. And we shall see that this action had to take its course as deeply in matter as the first action had taken place above it. The God had to descend as deeply into matter as He had allowed man to sink into matter.

Let this fact work upon you with its full weight; then you will understand that this incarnation of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth was something that concerned Christ Himself. And what part was man called upon to take in it? First of all, as spectator, to see how the God compensates for the Fall, how He provides the compensating act. It would not have been possible to do this within the personality of an Adept, for an Adept is one who by his own efforts has worked his way out of the Fall. It was possible only in a personality who was truly man—who, as man, did not surpass other men. This personality had surpassed them before he was thirty years of age—but no longer. Through that which then took place, a Divine event was accomplished in the evolution of mankind, just as had been done at the beginning of human evolution in the Lemurian time. And men were partakers in a transaction which had taken place among Gods; men could look upon it, because the Gods had to make use of the world of the physical plane in order to let their transaction play itself out to the end. Hence it is much better to say: ‘Christ offered to the Gods the atonement which He could offer only in a physical human body’, than to use any other form of words. Man was a spectator of a Divine occasion."

From: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA131/English/RSP1973/19111014p01.html

“If we wish to make a graphic picture of what happened in ancient Lemuria for the earth-evolution of man, we can say: That was the time when man descended from Divine Heights: it was ordained for him that he should develop further in a certain way, but through the Luciferic influence he was cast down more deeply into matter than he would have been without that influence. Thereby his path in evolution became different.

When man had gone downwards to the lowest stage, a powerful impetus in the upward direction was required. This impetus could come about only because in the higher worlds the Being whom we designate as the Christ-Being had formed a resolution which He would not have needed to take for His own evolution. For the Christ-Being would also have attained His evolution if He had taken a path far, far above the path that men were pursuing. He could have passed by, so to speak, far above the evolution of humanity. But if the upward impulse had not been given, human evolution would have been compelled to continue on its downward path. The Christ would have had an ascent, but humanity a downfall. Only because the Christ-Being had taken the resolution to unite Himself at the time of the Events of Palestine with a man, to embody Himself in a man and to make the upward path possible for humanity—only this could bring about the Redemption of humanity, as we may now call it: redemption from the impulse brought by the Luciferic forces and designated symbolically in the Bible as ‘original sin’, the Temptation by the Serpent and the original sin that was its consequence. Christ accomplished something that was not necessary for Himself.

What kind of Act was this?

It was an act of Divine Love. We must be quite clear that no human feeling is capable of realising the intensity of love that was needed for a God to make a decision—a decision He had no need to make—to work upon earth in a human body. Thereby, through an act of love, the most important event in human evolution was brought about. And when men grasp this act of love by a God, when they try to grasp it as a great ideal in contrast with which every human act of love can be but small, then, through this feeling of utter disproportion between human love and the Divine Love needed for the Mystery of Golgotha, they will draw near to the building up, to the giving birth within them, of those Imaginations which place before our spiritual gaze the momentous Event of Golgotha. Yes, verily, it is possible to attain to the Imagination of the mount on which the Cross was raised, that Cross on which hung a God in human body, a God who out of his own free will, out of Love, accomplished the act whereby the earth and humanity could reach their goal.

If the God who is designated by the name of the Father had not at one time permitted the Luciferic influences to come to man, man would not have developed the free Ego. With the Luciferic influence, the conditions for the free Ego were established. That had to be permitted by the Father-God. But just as the Ego, for the sake of freedom, had to become entangled in matter, so then, in order that the Ego might be freed from this entanglement, the entire love of the Son had to lead to the Act of Golgotha. Through this alone the freedom of man, the complete dignity of man, first became possible. For the fact that we can be free beings, we have to thank a Divine Act of Love. As men we may feel free beings, but we may never forget that for this freedom we have to thank this Act of Love. Then, in the midst of our feeling, the thought will arise: ‘You can attain to the value, the dignity, of a man; but one thing you may not forget, that for being what you are you have to thank Him who has brought back to you your human prototype through the Redemption on Golgotha.’ Men should not be able to lay hold of the thought of freedom without the thought of Redemption through Christ: only then is the thought of freedom justified. If we will to be free, we must bring the offering of thanks to Christ for our freedom. Then only can we really perceive it. And those who consider that their dignity as men is restricted when they thank Christ for it, should recognise that human opinions have no significance in face of cosmic facts, and that one day they will very willingly acknowledge that their freedom was won by Christ."