Price : $54.95
FIRST STEPS IN CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS RENEWAL
Preparing the Ground for The Christian Community
Author : Rudolf Steiner
ISBN : 9780880106221
Publisher : SteinerBooks
Pages : 278
Format : Paperback
Description : The lectures and discussions presented in First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal make up the first of the five "Priest Courses." They record the first steps of the remarkable journey taken in 1921 by a small group of dedicated souls who, out of their own inner needs and guided by Rudolf Steiner, sought a path to Christian religious renewal.
Addressing the group with warm intimacy, Steiner frames their task not primarily in theological terms, but as a need for a renewing “the religious,” or “the working of the religious element as such.” For this, the sermon (or how we speak) is central, for today we must use language in new ways. We cannot reopen the spiritual worlds by starting from “old conditions.” Traditional religious life has become too corrupted, while modern culture has radically changed and become divorced from tradition. In earlier times, people could understand concepts such as “Christ,” “grace,” and “salvation,” but now we need a new starting point, one that begins with the reality that we cannot teach anything we do not believe and have not experienced. When we speak, images and symbols must be experienced as real; we can no longer hold the split view that accepts both modern science as it is and spiritual reality as it is.
In this course, Steiner lays the groundwork for developing actual life in God rather than merely knowledge of God (theology). In addition, he addresses what the group named as its deepest concerns: ritual, the sermon, community building, and the relationship between these and the striving to awaken to the "I" or individuality.
Reading this document, those drawn to Christianity, Anthroposophy, or Rudolf Steiner himself will find new ways of thinking about Christianity - and will find themselves transformed by it.
