Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 23

Continuing my examiniation of paragraphy 6 of Peter Staudenmaier's 'Anthroposophy and Ecofascism':

Further, only one example of Steiner's flip-flopping is given, an apparent reversal on the topic of Christianity. This question has been written on at some length by a number of people, though you wouldn't know it from this piece*, and Steiner himself commented on it in his autobiography . Writing in The Course of My Life (New York 1951, page 274) he said:

“Individual assertions regarding Christianity which I wrote or uttered in lectures at this time appear to be contrary to the expositions I gave later. In this connection the following must be noted. At that time, when I used the word “Christianity,” I had in mind the “beyond” teaching which is operative in the Christian creeds. The whole content of religious experience refers to a world of spirit which is not attainable by man in the unfolding of his spiritual powers. What religion has to say, what it has to give as moral precepts, is derived from revelations that come to man from without. Against this my view of spirit opposed itself, desiring to experience the world of spirit just as much as the sense-world in what is perceptible in man and in nature. Against this likewise was my ethical individualism opposed, desiring to have the moral life proceed, not from without by way of precepts obeyed, but out of the unfolding of the human soul and spirit, wherein lives the divine. What then occurred in my soul in viewing Christianity was a severe test for me. The time between my departure from the Weimar task and the production of my book Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache is occupied by this test. Such tests are the opposition provided by destiny (Karma) which one's spiritual evolution has to overcome.”

Asserting that Steiner "changed his mind on many topics" without any supporting evidence is an obvious attempt to portray Steiner as unstable, vacillating, and unreliable. Such a picture is completely at odds with virtually every depiction of the man by his contemporaries and biographers. Staudenmaier is obviously not afraid of going against consensus opinion on Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, but it would help his case if the actual source material even remotely supported his position.

* See, among others the chapter “War Rudolf Steiner in den Jahren vor 1900 Atheist (Was Rudolf Steiner an atheist in the years before 1900)” in Johannes Hemleben, Rudolf Steiner und Ernst Haeckel, Stuttgart 1965 and Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie, Stuttgart 1997, pages 443-454. A nice summary is given by Henry Barnes in his book A Life for the Spirit, page 67:

“Rudolf Steiner had been accused earlier of being Anti-Christian. It was subsequently said that his statements around the turn of the century were inconsistent with what he wrote later. He deals with this criticism in one of the shortest chapters of his biography. There he points out that it is the concept relegating Christianity to the “beyond” that he opposed. For him the view of revelation that comes to the human being from without – from a reality that we may believe in but cannot know – was at odds with his awareness of a world of spirit that could be experienced and known directly through an act of free cognition.”