Is Anthroposophy Biblical?
- Jason Pluebell
- 5 days ago
- 42 min read
Continuing the New-Thought topic section, we are going to examine a movement that branched out from another movement mentioned in the last article, namely, the Theosophical Society (1875), founded by Helena Blavatsky. This movement shares a lot of similarities with the teachings from Theosophy, with some differences in the conception of who Jesus was. In as few words as possible, Anthroposophy is practically a repackaged version of an ancient heresy called Gnosticism. The name comes from the Greek words Anthropos (human) and sophia (wisdom), essentially meaning human wisdom, which does encapsulate the overall foundation of truth-making in this philosophy, being the human mind alone. It is fundamentally a spiritual and metaphysical view of reality, where there is an astral (spiritual) realm that is intertwined with our material world and is just as real as it. This is in agreement with Christianity, as we believe there is an overlapping spiritual world through which God and His angels are working for the salvation of mankind and the unfolding of God's will. But this is just about where the agreement ends, as being a new-thought movement, it uses Christian terminology in a radically redefined way.
Three main factors of Anthroposophy sum it up rather well. The first being the spiritual evolution of human souls. The founder of the movement, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), believed humans possess spiritual qualities that can be developed through occult practices like meditation, chants, and studying esoteric texts and synthesizing (mixing) their concepts into Anthroposophy. The main goal is to gain a special Gnosis or secret knowledge about the spiritual through these ritual practices. Sound familiar? The second main factor is the idea of the interconnectedness of reality as a whole. Steiner also believes that a full understanding of reality must take into account the physical and spiritual worlds, which again agrees with Christianity, except Christians accept the reality that metaphysical truth can only originate from God Himself and not through our own abilities. The third being the view of the nature of the universe. Rudolf saw Jesus as some form of cosmic consciousness that pervades the entire universe that we can access by studying different pagan texts and philosophies. Steiner did posit a spiritual hierarchy, but this is expected if we are to cherry-pick concepts from different religions.
The divine, instead of being a personal transcendent being, is nothing more than an evolving substance that operates through the many levels of spiritual beings in the astral world. In other words, divinity is divided among the many entities in the spiritual world, whereas the New Testament explicitly says that Jesus embodies the fullness of the Godhead (a word used by Gnostics to refer to all the spiritual beings). This is why Anthroposophy is repackaged Gnosticism; it is almost identical to it. And since this divine substance is ever-changing, so too are humans through living multiple lives through reincarnation, a concept taken from Hinduism and Buddhism.
Spiritual Science
As a way to verify his radical truth claims about reality, Steiner developed a system he called Spiritual Science. It is almost entirely based on the writings of Steiner, as his pronouncements are never questioned in the Anthroposophical movement, and very little has been added to the concept after his passing. It is therefore his work that the esoteric epistemology of Anthroposophy can be found. In fact, he interchangeably called this science Occult Science, Divine Science, and Spiritual Science. But how does one begin to perform this "science"?
“There are children who look up with reverent awe [heilige Scheu] to certain venerated persons. Their reverence for these people forbids them, even in the deepest depths of their hearts, to admit any thought of criticism or opposition… Many occult pupils [Geheimschüler] come from the ranks of such children.”1
A person must be born with a natural interest in occult topics. If someone is not born with this tendency, it is thus necessary for that he/she “undertakes by rigorous self-education to engender within himself this attitude of devotion”. The reason for this is that “every criticism, every adverse judgment passed, dispels the powers of the soul for the attainment of higher knowledge, just as reverent veneration develops these powers”2 When a person gains this ability to see into the supernatural world, they are called clairvoyant. For the clairvoyant to develop this ability, the person must continually restrain any inner tendency to analyze or criticize (not being mean, but applying critical thinking). “By such intellectualising [Verstandesarbeit], he merely diverts himself from the right path. He should look out on the world with fresh, healthy senses and a keen power of observation, and give himself up to his feelings.” Where the best avenue to truth is through spiritual meditation via the mind of the human person alone. Steiner wanted to apply the scientific method to metaphysical reality, which just doesn't work. He completely ignores the possibility that human reasoning may be fallible or that there may be opposing forces that may try to deceive us.
The way for the disciple of Anthroposophy to confirm their meditations is to compare their visions to those reported by their teacher or by other inspired clairvoyants. Steiner once said that “the safe guidance by the experienced occult teacher [Geheimlehrer] cannot be completely replaced”. This does seem to be a good way to confirm what you experience as valid. A disciple of Anthroposophy can judge the validity of their experiences according to how they conform to their teachers' or prior occult teachers' records. Let us then suppose that they all use the same original teachers' experiences; then there is true intersubjectivity, and an objective observation can be made. But this epistemology raises two issues. First, since there are many different occult teachers with different teachings, how do we know which are the correct ones for guidance? And (2) if the guidance of a prior teacher is necessary, where did the first occult teacher gain their knowledge from, as there would need to be another prior teacher who received knowledge from another teacher, and so on. And Steiner does not seem to attempt to solve these two issues; this method of confirmation is reliant on an authority whose access to Gnosis is simply assumed and never supported or explained. It is therefore self-contradictory and circular.
How so? Steiner assumes that spiritual science is reliable to claim spiritual science is reliable. The main logical foundation of Anthroposophy violates the law of non-contradiction and is thus not a logical framework for discovering truth. As is very obvious, the human mind can be mistaken about ideas, and must be externally verified through inductive reasoning, not inductive meditation (my nickname for spiritual science), where there is no real verification by observing reality, only diving into what you think should be real. In claiming human reasoning is the measure of truth, spiritual science presumes the infallibility of the same reasoning. This creates a self-reinforcing loop: the system justifies its authority by relying on the very authoirity its trying to prove. It just doesn't take a step outside of itself. As well as the idea of applying the scientific method to metaphysical reality not being possible due to the nature of induction.
“Actually, anthroposophy is considered a pseudoscience in academia for its intent to meet and study with a scientific method entities that - according to almost all contemporary metaphysical systems - do not belong to the order of accessible realities by scientific knowledge.”3
The Christos
Steiner believed that each great religious leader, like Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, and Jesus, was actually a manifestation of a divine entity named Christos coming through the spiritual realm to Earth in different ways to share wisdom based on the time period. But how could these people all be the same entity when they make radically contradictory claims about the nature of reality, man, sin, and God? Buddha taught that the universe was a self-existent entity and that humans evolve through many lives to be unified with the universe (Nirvana). He taught to let go of all personal relations and desires to reach a state of consciousness that corresponds with the mindless nature of matter, a state of nothing. Muhammed taught that there was only a unipersonal God who is wholly separated from mankind and creation. He also taught that believers must worship Allah and Muhammad, kill or persecute unbelievers, invade other countries by force, and many other contradictory moral claims to Buddhism. While Jesus taught that the universe was created by a transcendent tri-personal God and that He would judge each person according to their adherence to His moral law or acceptance of the work of His Son. He taught that matter is good, desires are good, but they have been tainted by our sin, and the only way to free ourselves from it is to reunite ourselves with this God through belief in the life, death, and resurrection work of Jesus on the cross. Jesus contradicts Muhammad and Buddha, and I could go on for every other religion.
While there is an overarching general morality that runs through them, the simplest answer is that it's grounded in a transcendent personal being, with Steiner's explanation being a speculative possibility. But the issue here is that, according to Anthroposophy, Jesus did not rise from the dead, prove His claims to divinity, all of which contradict what Steiner claims.
Anthroposophy's Failed Predictions
One of the stark features of a good theory or model is that it will predict things that have not been discovered yet, and Steiner has his fair share of predictions. I think we have a good general understanding of what Anthroposophy teaches, so let's look at some failed predictions that further support the claim that it is a false philosophy before we discuss the founder of the movement himself.
“The materialists [Stoffler] – we will simply call them that – imagine that the world consists of atoms. What does spiritual science show us? Most certainly, natural phenomena bring us back to such atoms, but what are they, these atoms?… According to the materialists, space is empty, and the atoms totter around in it. Thus, they are the most solid that there is [das allerfesteste]. But this is not so, it all depends on misapprehension [Tåuschung]. The atoms are bubbles of the imaginative cognition [Blasen vor der imaginativen Erkenntnis], and reality is where the empty space is; and the atoms consist exactly in that these bubbles are inflated. Within the bubbles there is exactly nothing, contrary to their surroundings. Do you know the pearls of a bottle of mineral water, there is nothing in the water where the pearls are, but there you see the pearls. In this way, the atoms are bubbles. The space is empty there, there is nothing inside them.”4
According to Steiner's prediction, there should be discoveries made in the future that reveal Anthroposophy is a true science. One of these predictions is that atoms will be confirmed to be small bubbles of absolutely nothing. But particle physics would move in the other direction, down the path that leads to atoms certainly not being bubbles of nothing.
“All the brilliant nonsense that is today served for instance as realist philosophy [Realphilosophie], and through which Einstein was made a great man, must be rejected if you want to have clear conceptions about these things, that correspond to reality. Do you know how obvious the theory of relativity is? You just have to imagine that when a gun is fired at a distance you will hear it only after a certain time. Now, however, let us suppose that we move towards the gun. Then we will hear it earlier, the closer to it that we come, won’t we? Now the theorist of relativity concludes: if you move as fast as sound, then you will go with the sound and not hear it. And if you go faster than the sound, then you will here something that was fired later, earlier than something that was fired earlier. This is today a common assumption, but it has no relation whatsoever to reality. The fact is that when you move as fast as the sound, then you can yourself be a sound, but you cannot hear a sound. These quite unsound ideas are alive today as the theory of relativity, and they have the best of reputations.”5
Steiner says that the theory of relativity (Einstein's General and Special theories) would be confirmed to be inaccurate and have a weaker position in the scientific community. Instead, relativity stands as the most accurate description of the universe yet. "Incidentally, Steiner’s pronouncement about relativity has a surprising similarity to what might have been said by someone whose acquaintance with relativity was restricted to reading (and misunderstanding) a popular science text in which the Doppler effect of light was explained by a comparison with sound waves."6 Steiners claim that someone who moves at the speed of sound cannot hear a sound has some very observable context. When he said this, scientists considered it false, but the general public did not know much about it yet. Fast-forward to today, it is rather common knowledge that you would indeed hear something at the speed of sound, nothing very pleasant, but surely something. For a clairvoyant who could see into the past and future, this was massive L on Steiner's part.
“Steiner’s claim that someone who moves with the speed of sound ‘cannot hear a sound’ must be seen in its historical context, When he said this, it was considered by scientists to be wrong, whereas the general public did not know very much about it. Today, in the age of supersonic aircraft, virtually everyone will consider it to be wrong. It is surprising that such a statement should have been made by someone who was able to foresee the future development of natural science.”6
Steiner also predicted that the medical industry would make a return to using lead and mercury for treating Syphilis. Yet mercury and lead have not been touched since that era. “The list of failed predictions could be prolonged ad nauseam. It is clear from a reading of Steiner’s writings that he was wrong in his prediction that natural science was developing in the direction of confirming more and more of his own teachings.”6
Where Did It Come From?
The founder of the Anthroposophical movement is Rudolf Steiner, born on February 27, 1861, in Donji Kraljavec, which was at the time part of the Austrian Empire. His father (Johann Steiner) was a telegraph operator and stationmaster for the empire, and would bring his family along with his travels across it. His mother (Dranziska Blie Steiner) came from a humble rural farming upbringing and was described as rather quiet and not particularly religious. During Steiner's childhood, he describes in his later writings that he would experience multiple spiritual visions that convinced him from a young age that there was a spiritual world that could be studied like a discipline of science.7 He would go on to attend Vienna University of Technology, where he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, and philosophy. It was during his time at Vienna that he would become very attracted to the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who saw all of nature as a holistic evolving process. Steiner found this view of nature very attractive and would eventually become the editor of Goethe's scientific writings at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Germany. During this time, he would formulate his beliefs that there was a physical and spiritual world that humans could access by achieving higher levels of knowledge about the spiritual realm.
Steiner, studying philosophy, became influenced by Immanuel Kant (1722-1804 and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). Thinkers like these two led Steiner to write his philosophical work The Philosophy of Freedom, in which he argued that true freedom comes from conscious and rational thinking (oh, how he would drift from these days later on). The first of two major turning points in his life took place when he decided to join the Theosophical Society, founded by Helena Blavatsky. The Theosophical Society was a group of occult members dedicated to studying and synthesizing different religious belief systems into the philosophy of Theosophy, which is where the modern concept of the Law of Attraction finds its footing.
“The LOA finds its birth in 19th-century American History (much like Mormonism), a time when the scientific and the spiritual were being decided by men of the day. This time period would see multiple attempts at blending scientific concepts with religious ones into a systematic belief system, and the LOA being one of these attempts. LOA proponents see the mind as connected to an unseen creative force that gives rise to the outside reality around us. At the extreme end of LOA, a more idealistic view of nature arises, where reality is wholly born from the human mind. While more mundane positions still hold that a lot of our experiences are mind-dependent, and not entirely reality-warping.”8
It was actually during this time-frame in history that many new-thought movements were born, all attempting to merge the scientific with the religious, and Anthroposophy being one of these movements. Steiner would eventually become the head of the German section of the Theosophical Society (he was at the head of an occult movement, yet some claim that what he taught is true Christianity). The second turning point in his career took place between 1912 and 1913. Steiner would break away from the Theosophical Society due to them promoting Jiddu Krishnamurti as their new Messiah. Steiner rejected this because he believed the Christos event could not be repeated in another person, so he split with a new motivation to flesh out his belief, thus birthing the Anthroposophical movement. Steiner would also buy into many anti-historical theories, as his writings are infested with references to Atlantis, lost civilizations, Egyptian secrets, etc. All of which he learned from his clairvoyant ability to see into the past.
One of the stark features of being a clairvoyant is that you obtain the ability to look into the past and future. This is exactly why Steiner offered up so many predictions about scientific discoveries, as in his own framework, he is seeing the objective future. Because of this acclaimed ability, large portions of his writings consist of long accounts of supposed historical events. It's why Steiner had an obsession with "correcting the Gospels," Atlantis, and other lost civilizations. All of this he learned by reading the Akasha Chronicle, a term Steiner used to refer to the entire experience of seeing the past unfold. One of the biggest features of his childhood and claims about it among historians is the fact that his earlier writings are very non-mystical. Before making Anthroposophy, he primarily wrote about philosophy and epistemology. For example, in his early philosophical work, The Philosophy of Freedom, he makes no mystical claims. In this book, he argues that true knowledge comes from conscious thinking, and human freedom specifically comes from rational self-awareness, yet it almost entirely lacks clairvoyant or mystical claims. He writes like a German idealist philosopher, not an occult mystic. Historians often point out that his public mystical claims do not appear until much later in his career.
It was not until Steiner joined the Theosophical Society that he began giving lectures on clairvoyant knowledge, and this is when his most extraordinary historical claims start. The point is this: his early works show no clairvoyant claims, the mystical stories appear after he joined the Theosophical Society, and his entire system itself heavily borrows from ideas brewed within the Society. It seems to me that Steiner did not actually have an innate interest and experience of the exact topics of Anthroposophy from a young age, but rather claimed as much in order to gain credit with his followers after leaving the Theosophical Society.
Is Anthroposophy Biblical?
We now have a rather good idea of what Anthroposophy teaches and where it came from; we can move on to answering the question, "Is it Biblical?" Is it okay for a Christian to accept Anthroposophical doctrines and still be, well... a Christian? The short answer is no, as almost all of Anthroposophy's teachings fly right against the trajectory of the ones from the Bible, and more specifically, Jesus.
Christ Impulse
Is the idea of a "Christ impulse" supported by scripture? The Christ impulse refers to a transformative spiritual force that entered human evolution when Jesus Christ came, according to the two-Jesus theory (where two twins had their souls merged to allow the cosmic spirit to enter Jesus, more on this in the latter section), which enables humanity to access moral intuitions and selfless love. I know this sounds weird, but a New-Thought teaching is that Jesus actually gained access to this "Christ consciousness" that enabled him to be such a good and sinless person. The New-Thought teaching says that every human can achieve this same level of spiritual knowledge, while Christianity believes all people can be good or bad, and that is because we are under God's moral law flowing from His good nature. Because we are created in the image of God, we reflect this good nature finitely by being moral agents, responsible for our own actions under a standard in accordance with God's nature. Anthroposophy teaches the same New-Thought idea that humans are naturally good, and it is people, society, and government that corrupts the person, and we must dig deep inside to break free from this struggle through the Christ impulse.
But there is a broader issue with what exactly the Christ impulse is, as it is purely subjective, with each person having their own definition and feeling of what it is.
“Over many years of study, experience, teaching, and scientific inquiry, I have come to deeply understand and feel what the Christ Impulse means to me. I have also come to appreciate that it does not negate my own religious upbringing and experiences but rather enhances them. I have come to feel very grounded in the essence of the Christ Impulse and how it has been shining through humanity in different ways over our evolution.”9
There just isn't any real consistency with what the Christ impulse is, but is it Biblical? The Bible displays Jesus as a real spacetime person with genuine consciousness and will, not some universal moral principle or energy field humans can tap into. Jesus experiences real emotional and spiritual struggles, just like any one of us does (Hebrews 5:7-8). In Gethsemane, Jesus expressed deep emotional distress and prayed for deliverance, though ultimately submitting to the Father's will, even experiencing hematidrosis when blood mixed with His sweat (Luke 22:44, Matthew 26:38-39). And when confronted with grief, Jesus responds appropriately, even weeping (John 11:33-35). The Biblical portrayal of Jesus strongly resists any reduction of Him to an impersonal and unconscious force or universal consciousness deep within humans. Jesus was a real spacetime person who claimed exclusive divine mediatorial status (John 14:6). So the idea of Jesus tapping into some universal consciousness doesn't work either, as the New testament clearly states that Jesus Christ, as a person (the Son) is still living to this day, not described as a universal force, and is said to come back one day on the clouds with the appearence of a son of man (Revelation 1:7, 18, Collossians 3:1, Hebrews 7:25, Matthew 24:30, Daniel 7:13).
Reincarnation
The concept of karma and reincarnation is essential to Anthroposophy. Being built on the idea of spiritual evolution, the system of belief almost necessarily entails that souls would just be entered into a random next life after death, with their past lives affecting how their next one unfolds. Karma is not the idea that bad actions in this life will affect you later on in this same life; it is the idea that someone's bad and good actions will affect how bad or good their next life is. Not only does this idea encourage an elitist attitude towards those in tough life circumstances (because they must have done something bad in a past life affecting them in this one, and helping them will interrupt their karma, and affect you negatively aswell), it is simply stated without confirmation. Rudolf simply deduces this doctrine without investigating to see if it could be true or if it is a good explanation. Yet Christians can offer historical facts that can be inductively confirmed to validate the claims that an actual event (the resurrection) happened, which leads us to then deduce the conclusion that Jesus (and what he says) is reliable and true. So, what does the Bible say about reincarnation?
The Old and New Testaments are clear that each person lives a single mortal life, after which they face divine judgment based on their moral conduct under God's law (Hebrews 9:27). The human spirit returns to God who made them (Exxlesiastes 12:7), and will appear before Christ's judgement seat to recieve what is due for their actions, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). They will also be required to give an account of every careless word spoken and action taken (Matthew 12:36-37, Romans 14:10-12). This will all happen after a final resurrection of all people and an assessment; they will be separated according to their moral response to human need, God's moral law, and His offer of forgiveness through Jesus Christ (Matthew 25:31-46, 1 John 2:2). So, in short, the Bible does not even come close to teaching that human souls will be reborn into a new life affected by the moral desicions of their past lives, on an eternal prograssion towards unification with the universal consciousness, or Nirvana, or clairvoyancy, or whatever the terminology used is.
Gnosis (Spiritual Knowledge)
The term in Anthroposophy is not Gnosis specifically, though it is used, but rather more commonly, living or spiritual knowledge. Gnosis, Greek for knowledge, is an idea that is not new or original to Anthroposophy, and it is almost as old as Christianity itself. The term was used by a pagan group called the Gnostics, who, like the school of Theosophy, searched different religions to merge concepts into their own. When Christianity was born, these ancient gnostics would go on to take Christian concepts and terminology but radically redefine them. Ideas like Jesus was a lesser spiritual being created by God, or that humans gain higher levels of gnosis through rituals, were born in this cult, and it is rather obvious that Anthroposophy, and more generally, Theosophy simply borrowed a lot of their theology from the gnostics. In fact, the very first Church Fathers wrote against gnosticism, with it being the heresy that motivated the first apologists to form. So, from the very earliest documentation we have from the early Church, they are countering the gnostic heresy. But what does the Bible say about such a concept?
If you would like to read more about gnosis and the gnostics, visit this link here to read my article about them: https://www.ptequestionstoeden.com/post/the-gnostic-bible-should-we-trust-it. First, scripture warns against emptying your mind when searching for revelation from God, as any truth not self-evident or not able to be acquired through induction would only be able to come from God Himself. Instead, it tells us to actively fill our minds with the precepts and wisdom of God's word. This involved actively engaging the mind to comprehend God's truth through reading the Bible, prayer, Church community, etc. So while Gnosis requires the suspension of conscious thought, Biblical meditation requires the intentional use of the mind for deliberate thinking about truth revealed from God (Deuteronomy 18:9-14, Leviticus 19:31, 20:6, 1 Chronicles 10:13-14, Isaiah 8:19-20, 47:12-15, Galatians 5:19-20, Revelation 21:8).
Second, an empty mind created vulnerability to demonic influence, as evil spirits and forces can present themselves as pleasant on the surface (2 Corinthians 11:14) to deceive a passive mind.10 When you stop thinking you become vulnerable to bad ideas (who would have thought. In other words, when you stop critically thinking about things, you then become, quite literally, gullible, with no method to discern what is false. You let your mental guard of discernment down and become open to bad influences that seem pleasant and innocent. It is essentially forcing yourself to become so open-minded that your mind falls out the back of your head, and this can easily be seen in modern culture.
Third, the Bible forbids spiritism, necromancy, and mediumship (Deuteronomy 18:10-14). Jesus forbids the attempt to manipulate supernatural forces through the individual's will. These activities include divination, sorcery, omens, witchcraft, spellcasting, tarot reading, fortune-telling, astrology, horoscope-reading, palm-reading, and aura-reading, all of which are finite beings attempting to manipulate forces beyond their nature that can easily deceive them, and by mass, often do. Here's the bottom line: human beings, by their nature, do not have these abilities. It is rather supernatural entities that give the illusion that we are the ones exhibiting these things, and these beings do not have our best interests in mind. Just go read out-of-body experiences and alien abduction stories, as the majority are negative experiences, mostly affecting members of the occult or those dabbling in it. Heroin feels good, but there is nothing good about it. Likewise, occult practices seem good and attractive, but just like heroin, therein lies a trap waiting for a victim, and the one behind it does not want you to know the truth, God, or eternity.
Fourth, because evil spirits are not easily seen or felt by us, spiritism does not produce objectively good spiritual guidance. Objective good comes from God, since the standard of good flows from His very nature; real spiritual guidance must come from God alone. Because human will is so tainted by sin and manipulated by evil forces in this world, any other "path" is simply not objectively good, because none recognize the work Jesus has done genuinely; if they did, they would seek God on His grounds rather than on ours. The Bible and Christianity forbid any occult practices that claim to offer higher levels of spiritual knowledge, as most of that gnosis is schizo-babble!
Mixing Occult Practices & Teachings
According to Rudolf Steiner, the only way a person can achieve gnosis is through studying many religions and cults and adopting their practices, teachings, and rituals. Not only is this idolatry, as you are putting a concept of religious pluralism above the reality that if God exists, and he does, there is only one, as an infinite being cannot be split, but also rejecting the law of excluded middle, in that if something is true, its opposite is false and cannot be true. There is no middle ground about truth, and each religion or cult makes certain claims about humans, sin, reality, and God that contradict each other. So the idea that all religions are revealing divinity is simply logically fallacious, as if one religion is true, all others are false, or none of them are true; there will never be a middle ground where something is true and false at the same time (which violates the law of non-contradiction). The same reasoning for Gnosis can be provided here, with the addition that to believe all religious teaching is true is self-refuting and ignores the contradictory truth claims those religions make about nature, man, sin, and God. Either one is true, or all are wrong, and the Bible is very clear on this (Exodus 20:3-5, 34:14, Matthew 4:10).
Cosmic Consciousness
Steiner presents Jesus as an archetype for the Christ impulse/consciousness that resides within us all. And this inner divine has entered people throughout history to teach humans the truths of the spiritual world. This consciousness seems to be equated with the universe, or some type of panentheistic god not revealed in Jesus. The bible clearly teaches that the universe is not a conscious entity. While it does personify creation, it does not explicitly state it as one, and it is obviously using metaphoric and non-literal language. The universe was created by God a finite time ago, and is thus not eternal or self-existent as esoterics would like it to be. This is confirmed by observational phenomena, philosophical analysis, and astrophysics.11 It teaches that God is a transcendent personal being that loves each person so much as to send His Son to inhabit flesh and pay the debt that separates us from Him for all who accept His mighty hand. And all that accept this deed will be reunited with God's love relationship to spend eternity with Him. No Biblical teaching of the universe aligns with what Anthroposophy teaches about it.
Spiritual Science And God's Request For Logical Thinking
One key fact about spiritual science is that Steiner's teachings and claims are never questioned in the movement, with very little being added to the methodology since his death. He would emphasize that he was performing science, but would then equivocate the term with occult science, or divine science. It involves developing within someone the ability to see into spiritual reality (clairvoyance), and the process of acquiring this ability is called "initiation." As previously mentioned, some are born with an innate intrigue in things such as Anthroposophy, but then lose the ability after childhood, making children the best subjects to preserve or awaken clairvoyancy.
“If a disciple has not been born with this attitude, it is necessary that he ‘undertakes by rigorous self-education to engender within himself this attitude of devotion’. The reason for this is that ‘every criticism, every adverse judgment passed, dispels the powers of the soul for the attainment of higher knowledge, just as reverent veneration develops these powers’”6
The disciple of Steiner is to first rid himself of any innate sense of critical attitude towards anything (in other words, stop critically thinking, logic is absurd). The next step is to perform daily rigorous meditations, with this being the step that makes or breaks the disciple, if they can render their critical thinking void.
“By such intellectualising [Verstandesarbeit] he merely diverts himself from the right path. He should look out on the world with fresh, healthy senses and a keen power of observation, and give himself up to his feelings.”12
After the individual has given in to their feelings, they will become a clairvoyant. One of the stark abilities of the clairvoyant is the ability to transcend the limits of historical science and sense "past events in their eternal character." More specifically, they will be able to read the Akasha chronicle or see the past. This is not a chronicle in the textual sense, but rather is the experience of sensory perceptions of past events. In the simplest way I can put it, whatever you feel should be the past, is the past (as long as you agree with Steiner). Which is exactly why Steiner couldn’t see the historical evidence for Jesus. He simply didn’t believe it was there; he believed his belief was correct because his belief is correct about history, therefore making it history! And the logical wheel continues to spin. Yet the Bible informs us that God is a logical god who also made man in His image, bestowed with intellectual capacities that surpass any creature, enabling us to represent Him to creation by reflecting His nature. Moreover, God invites us to reason with Him, using our minds and self-evident laws of logic to discern the truth from the lies, and the good from the evil (Isaiah 1:18, 41:21, Matthew 22:37, Deuteronomy 6:5, 1 Corinthians 14:33, Psalm 31:5, Romans 1:20, John 1:1, 1 John 5:6).
Nowhere are we commanded or even encouraged to let go of reason (1 Peter 3:15, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Jude 1:3, Titus 1:9, Acts 19:8). It is very clear that Anthroposophy is not a Biblical or Christian belief system, as every tenet of it contradicts Christian doctrine. Instead, it is obviously a product of new-though movements and represents another Christian cult, like Christian Science, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Spirituality, Scientology, the Hebrew Israelites, etc. The Church Fathers explicitly wrote against the Gnostic heresy, which is what Anthroposophy for all means and purposes is.
The Main Argument: Jesus' Resurrection
Rudolf's claims heavily rely on his specific view of Jesus being true. He did not claim to be God of the Jews, and represented a moral teacher through whom Christos manifested once again. He did not rise from the dead, and thus did not prove any of His claims. Because his entire worldview seems to be based on this crucial belief, we will therefore be answering this. Did Jesus Exist, And Were The Gospel Writers Telling The Truth? But first, I will briefly introduce Steiner's Two-Jesus Theory, wherein he offers his best explanation for the events surrounding Jesus, and he gathered his information from the Akasha chronicle.
Steiner's Two-Jesus Theory
Because Steiner was a clairvoyant, he could look into the past and see historical events for what they really were, and in doing so, he saw Jesus in a radically different way, not supported by any historical or theological investigation. He has a two-Jesus theory for why the cosmic spirit entered Jesus, and his theory needs to be validated by the evidence in order to pass as valid, but if the Gospels we have today can be traced back to the historical Jesus, then Steiner's Anthroposophy completely falls.
Steiner posits two different twin Jesuses. Matthew's Gospel describes one Jesus, the Solomon-descended Jesus who descends from the Solomon bloodline. This Jesus is connected with the priestly bloodline prepared through humanity. He possessed a highly developed physical and hereditary line, but not the same spiritual depth as the other. Luke's Gospel describes a different Jesus, descended from Nathan, who possessed an exceptionally pure and spiritually advanced soul. In Luke 2, when the child Jesus is in the temple debating with the priests, Steiner claims the Nathanic Jesus died, and his soul was transferred into the Solomonic body, which was the human prepared body. This combined soul became the vessel for the cosmic spirit to enter.
Steiner proposed this weird and anti-historic hypothesis because of the supposed contradictory genealogies, nativity stories, and childhood stories. But are these stories contradictory? Is there another, simple explanation than to posit what Steiner does? Absolutely!
Differing Genealogies
In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, we are given the genealogies of Joseph, the adopted father of Jesus, yet the Gospels disagree on who the father of Joseph was. Matthew says that Jacob was the father of Joseph, going all the way back to Abraham, but Luke says Heli was his father, going back to Adam... they differ entirely. Despite the surface-level difficulty, there is a perfectly logical and historical explanation for this, and the Early Church once again elucidates this for us.
The Church historian Eusebius, in an epistle from Africanus, argued that both genealogies were indeed of Joseph; one legal, and the other biological. “Eli and Jacob were thus uterine brothers. Eli having died childless, Jacob raised up seed to him, begetting Joseph, his own son by nature, but by law the son of Eli. Thus Joseph was the son of Both.”13 According to Deuteronomy 25:5-6, if one of two brothers that live with each other dies childless, his brother is to take his widow, and the first child they have is the legal heir of the deceased one. This explanation would account for why Matthew uses the wording Jacob begot Joseph (Matthew 1:16) while Luke's Greek says Joseph was the son of Heli (Luke 3:23). Eusebius himself points out the fact that the Greek wording is different, where Matthew uses begot, implying biological relation, whereas Luke implies legal relation.
Eusebius also informs us that Jacob and Heli were half-brothers of the same mother. So the situation may have looked a bit like this: Matthan married a woman and begot Jacob, but died. Having a son already born, his wife was then free to remarry, so she went and got with Matthat and had Heli, thus making him the half-brother of Jacob. When they grew up, Heli would marry someone but die childless, meaning Jacob would have taken his wife and bore Joseph, thus making him the son of Heli through being his heir, but biologically Jacob's son. Therefore, neither accounts contradict eachother; they actually elucidate the confusion upon further historical investigation.14
Different Nativity Stories
Steiner's second reason for positing the two-Jesus theory was that the nativity narratives of Jesus supposedly contradict one another. This is the claim that the different accounts of where Jesus traveled after His birth contradict each other, but is this true?
Matthew records (2:14-15) that Jesus was taken to Egypt to escape Herod the Great's command to kill all newborns two and under, but Luke records (2:22-29) that Jesus went to Jerusalem for purification and dedication. But do they contradict? This argument is based on the assumption that both Matthew and Luke are claiming to include exhaustive accounts of Jesus' whereabouts and the events surrounding his childhood. But this is not mentioned in the text, and thus the critic is making an argument from silence. In reality, both writers are talking about two different events. Luke is talking about a particular event of a Jewish ritual where firstborn males were taken into the temple to be dedicated to God. This trip would have thus been short and customary, as it was very common for these pilgrimages to be made, and the Jew's reading Matthew's account would not need to hear about it (as they would have assumed as much). Luke, writing to a Gentile audience, has to offer some context to an unfamiliar religious tradition.
There is also an assumption that the stories of Jesus in the temple are directly followed by his return to Nazareth in Luke, but he never claims to be writing an exhaustive account, nor are complete records of a person's childhood characteristic of ancient biographies. This is further supported by other instances in the Gospels where a lapse of time occurs, such as in Luke 24 with the skip of time between the disciples' traveling to Galilee and Jesus' appearances there. Or another gap between Acts 10:19-20, with Paul spending time in Arabia, and the four-year gap between Acts 12 and 13. So the argument is based on a false premise and assumption and is therefore not a contradiction.15
Differing Childhood Narratives
The last reason Steiner made his theory was that the Gospels apparently record contradicting childhood narratives. But differing childhood narratives do not need to be seen as contradictions. For these to contradict one another, they would both need to claim to be describing the same event at the same time in Jesus' life, or claiming to write an exhaustive account of Jesus' childhood. Neither is true, and it is not a contradiction. Instead, we have multiple different events that could have happened at different times, so deducing a contradiction does not even follow logically. If you were to read a biography on somebody, and they mention different events in the person's childhood. What do you think is happening? Are they contradicting each other, or are they complementing each other by giving you a fuller multi-aspect look at the person's life?
We will now turn our focus to the historicity of the Gospels. For if the Gospels we have are not reliable eye-witness testimony, then Steiner's claims may suffice. Let us now begin to examine who is most likely correct, Rudolf Steiner or Jesus Christ.
Are The Gospels Historically Reliable?
What do I mean by reliable? I simply mean that the Gospels contain honest eyewitness details, were written down early, translated faithfully, and bear elements that lead to credibility corresponding to the historical context in which they were written. If we can be confident that what we have today has not been changed, was written down shortly after the events, and bears factors that support its historicity and authenticity, then we can surely conclude that Jesus did rise from the dead, prove His claims to divinity, and Anthroposophy is heresy and morally wrong.
Do We Have Early Testimony?
This section will discuss how the Gospels exhibit details that point to the fact that they were written down early after the events of the resurrection. This will include the amount and variance, their dates of writing, their accuracy to the originals, and whether we have enough manuscripts to know what the originals said. Many people frame the transmission of the New Testament like a game of telephone, where one person whispers something into the next person's ear, on and on until you get to the end, where that person says something totally different than what the first said. This does not even come close to representing what actually happened, as the New Testament had many different copies located in different areas. So if someone were to change one manuscript here, they would have to go and change every other copy across the Roman Empire at the time, which is impossible. Numerous people also independently witnessed events of the New Testament, most of them committing it to memory, while nine of them eventually wrote down their testimonies. And they didn't just write a single book, but 27 different documents written by 9 different authors over a 20-50 year period. So it's not one source, but a collection of sources.
So, again, for someone to change a manuscript, they would have to travel thousands of miles in order to change every other copy across the empire, which is impossible. Therefore, the telephone game argument does not suffice. One may also say that since we do not have the originals, we cannot know what they said. Although we do lack the original manuscripts, it certainly does not prevent us from knowing what they said. All ancient literature from the ancient world lacks its original manuscripts, and it is by comparing the surviving copies that allows us to reconstruct the original form. So it generally helps to have a large amount of manuscripts available, as in this case, the more the merrier, and the more trustworthy the testimony is of the original documents when compared. For the New Testament, there are over 5,800 hand-written Greek manuscripts, with 20,000 others in different languages. There is no other writing form from the ancient world that even comes close in terms of manuscript support, and the closest document to these is Homer's Iliad, with 1,800 manuscripts
The New Testament also has manuscripts written soon after the original documents, with the earliest being a fragment of papyrus consisting of John 18:31-33, and 37-38 known as the John Rylands Fragment. It is dated to around AD 117-138, and was found in Egypt. This informs us that John's Gospel was written, copied, and spread a great distance by the early second century. Homer's Iliad's earliest manuscript comes from 400 years after he wrote. Yet historians never question his existence. Complete manuscripts of the New Testament begin to appear as early as the third century, with canons including almost all 27 books appearing as early as AD 250. There is also a collection of New Testament writings known as Codex Vaticanus, dated to AD 325, and an almost complete copy from AD 340 called Codex Sinaiticus. All of these manuscripts exhibit language, spelling, and punctuation that are characteristic of a group of manuscripts going back to about AD 100-150.
We can also reconstruct the entire New Testament from the quotations from the Church Fathers alone. Just between the second and third centuries, there are about one million citations from the New Testament. Textual Scholars Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort estimate that the total accuracy of the manuscript variance is about 98.33% pure. Yes, there is variation, and lots of it. But these variations are often overlooked by skeptics, as they are simply spelling mistakes, abbreviations, or punctuation differences with none of them affecting the message of the passage or any Christian doctrine.16
Since the New Testament documents are referenced by other writers by AD 100, they must have been written before then. We also have attestation of the events of Jesus from non-Christian writers such as Josephus or Tacitus, and they all agree on the events of the Gospel. All the Gospels speak of the temple as still standing and active, with no mention of a war in the city or destruction of it. So the Gospels must have been written before AD 70. The earliest testimony to the resurrection is found in 1 Corinthians 15, which is an early creedal statement scholars believe can be dated as far back as the early AD 30s.17 And harkening back to the enemy attestation, why would Christian enemies be in on the cover-up of the Gospels? It just doesn't make sense. We can thus conclude that the Gospels are early documents, early enough not to be embellished legends, as they were all composed within one generation of Jesus' resurrection. 18
Do We Have Eyewitness Testimony?
The New Testament documents may be early, but do they contain reliable eyewitness testimony? Do they contain any details that may suggest they were written by an eyewitness or someone who had access to them? If they do, that further supports the Christian claim that Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is reliable, thereby undermining the Anthroposophic position on objective grounds. So, do they contain eyewitness details?
For starters, multiple times throughout the New Testament do the writers claim to be eyewitnesses or have access to them (Luke 1:1-2, Acts 1:23, 2:32, 3:15, 4:18-20, 5:30-32, 10:39-40, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, 1 Peter 5:1, 2 Peter 1:16, John 19:33-35, 20:24-30, 1 John 1:1-2, Hebrews 2:3-4). Peter, Paul, and John all claimed to be witnesses, and Luke claimed his source was from eyewitnesses. Paul mentions the disciples, and James, as well as 500 other witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. In Acts 1, we are told that Joseph, called Barsabbas, was also a witness to the risen Jesus. In Acts 26, Paul tells King Agrippa that he witnessed the resurrected Jesus and reminds the king that the events of the resurrection were not unknown, saying, "it was not done in a corner." So Paul is making it clear to us that the events themselves were not private but known to the public, including King Agrippa.
Luke also records Peter along with the other apostles, exhibiting bravery and confidence in their testimonies to Jewish authorities in Acts 5:27-23. The writers also include embarrassing details only an eyewitness would be aware of, and someone telling the truth would have included. It's obvious that since the Gospels were (1) written down within one generation after the events, and (2) are filled with claims and details characteristic of eyewitness testimony, that the Gospels do contain eyewitness details, but were the writers telling the truth?
Do We Have Honest Testimony?
How can we be sure that the writers of the Gospels aren't just making up miraculous events, or being mistaken in their recollection of the events? After all, they very well could have mixed myth with history. So what evidence do we have that the New Testament writers really were eyewitnesses or actually had access to such information?
Luke seems to present an incredible array of knowledge of local places, names, environmental conditions, traditions, customs, geography, and circumstances. Normal L. Geisler and Frank Turek in I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist say that historian Colin Hermer examined Luke's accuracy in only the book of Acts, verse by verse, and was able to discern about 84 facts that have been validated by historical and archaeological research.19 Within the book of Acts, Luke records 35 miracles in the same sober historical narrative as the 84 confirmed facts.
“In light of the fact that Luke has proven accurate with so many trivial details, it is nothing but pure anti-supernatural bias to say he’s not telling the truth about the miracles he records.”20
Indeed, since Luke records the miracles in the same bland tone as the historical facts that have been confirmed, it seems almost common sense to believe his records unless you have a priorly held belief that miracles are impossible, and God doesn't exist (a topic for another article). And because Acts and Luke are so historically confirmed via the facts they contain, it is reasonable to place Matthew and Mark on the same boat of reliability since they outline the same events from different perspectives, a key characteristic of eyewitness testimony.
But what about John? Craig Blomberg has written a verse-for-verse study on the book of John and found that it contains at least 59 details that have been confirmed by historical and archaeological research.21 There are also at least 30 historically confirmed characters from the New Testament that have been confirmed by archaeology and historical investigation.22 Which, when added to our list of evidence, lends a lot of support to the reliability of the Gospels. It does seem to me that the Gospels are, in fact, historically reliable, contain eyewitness details, and are honest about those claims. If the Gospel authors were making up historical figures and events, why do we see so many of the details and figures confirmed to have actually existed?
10 Reasons We Know The Gospel Authors Were Telling The Truth About Jesus
So we know they are early and contain acclaimed eyewitness details and confirmed historical facts. But how can we be sure that the writers were not misled or mistaken in their recording or embellished their accounts with myth? Norman Geisler and Frank Turek have offered us ten reasons why we know the Gospel writers were telling the truth about the resurrected Jesus in I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.23 These ten reasons, in cummulation with our other lines of evidence supporting the Gospels' reliability, will make it blatantly obvious that it takes more faith not to believe that Jesus rose from the dead rather than to believe He did.
The New Testament Writers Included Embarrassing Details About Themselves
The Gospels depict the disciples as dimwitted, ignorant, arrogant, and prideful, as Jesus has to constantly rebuke them, and they never understand the majority of His teachings. Like when Jesus told Peter that satan was the influence that made him say that Jesus would not die (Matthew 16:23, Mark 8:33). Or when Jesus rebukes the disciples for falling asleep when He told them to pray (Matthew 26:40-45, Mark 14:37-41). If the disciples were making up a story in order to gain power and control over people, they surely would have depicted themselves in the best light possible. If you were writing a story about how you were an eyewitness to God in the flesh, risen from the dead, in order to become popular, would you make yourself seem as stupid as the disciples? It is very unlikely that the Gospel authors made up embarrassing details about themselves and Jesus.
The New Testament Writers Included Embarrassing Details And Difficult Sayings Of Jesus
The authors included some difficult sayings of Jesus that, on the surface, seem to place Him in a bad or harsh light. People writing legends do not do this. A lot of the sayings go against what the Jewish expectation of the Messiah was like, as some saw him as just an earthly ruler, others a military leader, an angel, or that there would be two Messiahs, one ruling on earth and the other ruling in heaven. But nobody expected a lowly servant who claimed the Pharisees completely misinterpreted the Torah (Matthew 5:17). People making up legends do not place the divine character in such a bad and confusing light;0 they would make them seem as awesome and glorious as possible.
The New Testament Writers Included Demanding Sayings of Jesus
The New Testament writers surely did not include commands from Jesus that made their lives easier. Jesus commands them, and us, to deny ourselves each day and follow Him. The Sermon on the Mount, for example, doesn't appear to be a human invention; it is blatant ethical genius. All of these sayings go against the natural interests of the people who wrote them down, and they faced brutal execution for the claim that they saw Jesus risen. If they were inventing a legend to gain a following, they certainly wouldn't have made it nearly impossible to set even a good example for them, even after all the embarrassing details they list about themselves.
The New Testament Writers Carefully Distinguished Jesus’ Words From Their Own
The authors sometimes go to great lengths to make it obvious who is speaking, Jesus or them. This implies they were attempting to stay true to what Jesus really said. Paul even goes out of the way to explicitly mention that what was just written was not his own words, and what follows is (1 Corinthians 7:10-12).
The New Testament Writers Include Events Related To The Resurrection That They Would Not Have Invented
The writers include details in their accounts of the resurrection that they would not have invented. For example, claiming Jesus was buried in a Jewish tomb. Early Christians had a strong dislike for Jews because of what they had done to Jesus. In light of that, why would they put the tomb of our risen Lord in the possession of a member of the Sanhedrin? It was also an opportunity for their readers and enemies to go and verify those claims, for if they lived in Jerusalem, they could go to Joseph of Arimathaea's tomb and see if it was empty or not. They also claim women were the first witnesses to the empty tomb. In the 1st century, a woman's testimony was not regarded as reliable, they are even put on the same level as children in that regard. Moreover, the overall value of women in the Roman Empire was nothing like it is today (you can thank Christianity), as women did not have a lot of the rights that men had, including bearing witness in court. So it was very unlikely that the writers would have made up the most unreliable people witnessing the risen Jesus first, they certainly would have changed it to themselves finding the tomb.
Acts also records the conversion of priests and Pharisees, and with the already mentioned dislike of Jews, and the opportunity to verify those claims, it is extremely unlikely they would have invented this to gain credibility with the culture. Lastly, why would Matthew include such an easy way for his readers to debunk his claims about the Jewish explanation that they stole the body? Whoever was reading that could have simply gone to the tomb to see it for themselves. And the Jews never claimed the tomb wasn't not empty anyhow.
The New Testament Writers Include More Than 30 Historically Confirmed People
The fact that the Gospels list more than 30 historically confirmed people does lend support to their reliability. While this alone does not prove (with certainty) that they are reliable, in accumulation with all of the prior lines of evidence, it offers a very strong argument. But they don't just record 30 confirmed people. They also list geographical locations and language, names of people and places, roads, weather patterns, depth of water, etc (Acts 13:4-5, 13:13, 14:6, 11, 12, 25, 16:8, 11, 12, 13, 22, 18:12, and many more). Most legends do not contain so many people that can be known to us today through historical investigation and archaeological research, as well as over 120 confirmed historical details.
The New Testament Writers Provide Divergent Details
Many skeptics see divergent details in the Gospels as contradictory accounts. But they are ignorant of the nature of eyewitness testimony, because diverging details actually support the case that they contain eyewitness details. For example, the accounts of the angels at the tomb. Matthew mentions one angel, but never says there is only one. The skeptic has to once again add a word that isn't there in order to claim Matthew contradicts John. Two independent eyewitnesses will rarely see the same details and will never recount the events in the same way, as they will interpret their view through their personal bias, history, experiences, emotional sensitivity, memories, etc., that affect what aspects of the event they commit to memory over others. So many lines of testimony actually offer one a fuller multi-aspect scope of what was said to have happened. In fact, when a judge in court observes two witnesses offering the exact same testimony, they assume the two colluded, making their testimony tainted. So if these really were eyewitness records, we should expect the same general story, with diverging minor details.
But more fatally, the skeptics are contradicting themselves. As on one hand, they claim the Gospels are too similar to be eyewitness testimony, and on the other, they claim the divergence is too much for them to be eyewitness testimony. It more or less seems like it depends on the day, the argument, what the skeptic had for breakfast, or whether they have indigestion that determines which side of the coin they'll choose (as there is no consensus among skeptics on which is true). They cannot be too similar and divergent at the same time. Finally, diverging minor details with eyewitnesses actually serve a complementary role, not a contradicting one, as each witness highlights certain aspects in accordance with their personal angle. Agreement on the major details and divergence on the minor is the nature of eyewitness testimony, and that is what we find when we open up the New Testament. And by taking into account all of the witness accounts, we can get a fuller multi-aspect view of the events claimed to have happened.
The New Testament Writers Challenge Their Readers To Check Their Claims, Even Claims About Miracles
Multiple instances within the New Testament, the authors are challenging their readers to go and verify their claims and even claim to be eyewitnesses themselves! (Luke 1:1-4, 2 Peter 1:16, Acts 26, 1 Corinthians 15). In 2 Corinthians 12:12, Paul writes to the Church in Corinth about how he performed miracles in front of them to confirm his apostleship. Why would he mention that unless he was actually there to do the things he said? And if Paul did not do those things, this serves as an opportunity to destroy his own credit, yet it never happens. There are many other areas of the New Testament where the authors offer opportunities where their credit would have been easily destroyed, yet the Church still survived Roman persecution, through the ages, and to today.
The New Testament Writers Describe Miracles In A Sober Historical Manner As Simple, Unembellished Accounts
Many do claim that the miracle accounts in the Gospels are embellished legends, but we actually have the embellished legendary versions of the resurrection accounts in later pseudonymous works of the Gnostic Gospels. 24 The Synoptic Gospels and John were not written long after the events to be embellished legends. The Gospels and Acts describe the resurrection and miracle events in the same sober tone as the other 120 confirmed facts within them, while the later Gnostic documents read like mythological epics (as the resurrection has giant men holding Jesus exit the tomb, a talking cross, and lots of nobles, priests, and even the emperor present). But none of these later documents include the names of people from the 1st-century region, geography, places, and other details that riddle the Gospels. It's very clear that the Gospels are not later embellished myths, as we have those documents.
The New Testament Writers Abandoned Their Long-Held Sacred Beliefs And Practices, Adopted New Ones, And Did Not Deny Their Testimony Under Persecution Or The Threat Of Death
The disciples were Jews. They saw the Old Testament and Torah as God's direct word to them, and themselves as God's holy chosen people for the prior 2,000 years before they met Jesus. Despite their strong commitment to Judaism, they abandoned their entire livelihoods and futures to follow Jesus, who gave them commands and teachings that eventually got them persecuted, thrown in prison, beaten, stoned, and even brutally executed for the claim that they saw Jesus risen from the dead and that He was Lord. Why would they take such a heavy risk if they did not believe what was happening, as people do not die for a lie they know to be false? Moreover, the 500 witnesses Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15 being offered up as a source of validation (and the other instances of such) further support the fact that they were being honest.
It's very obvious that, with all of these lines of reasoning, along with the evidence for the Gospels' historicity and reliability, we can confidently conclude that, based on the evidence, Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead, God exists, and Jesus is God. Since Anthroposophy depends on evidence for a corrupted Gospel, or an inaccurate one, and we have just provided a cumulative evidential argument for the reliability of the Gospels, Anthroposophy is blatantly false.
Conclusion
With what we have discussed in this article, Anthroposophy does not represent a faithful Christian denomination or sect, and can be classified as a cult. With its deep ties to occult movements and its birth happening within one of the largest occult movements, we can confidently state that it does not accurately interpret Christian scriptures, doctrine, belief, or history in any form. It rejects the traditional view of Jesus, the resurrection, and salvation that He provides through His work on the cross. It promotes a pantheistic worldview and encourages people to freely and actively search for the spiritual in anything that has to do with the occult. This opens people up to demonic influences they themselves can't be aware of.
Concluding with a brief overview of a cumulative case for the resurrection of Christ, we can be confident that the Gospel writers were telling the truth based on multiple lines of reasoning and evidence. Such as the early writing for the documents, the widespread copying performed, the confirmed historical facts within them, they include embarrassing details about themselves and Jesus, demanding sayings of Jesus that make life harder, they carefully distriguished between Jesus' words and their own, include elements they themselves would not have invented, list more than 30 confirmed historical characters, write divergent minor details that agree on major ones, challenge their readers to go and confirm their claims in public, describe the resurrection in the same sober and bland tone as the historical facts, and abandoned their dearly held religious beliefs, financial futures, and livlihoods to follow Jesus, claim His resurrection, face persecution for it, and ultimately be killed for the claim. They were scared and scattered, but united under their own eyewitness testimony. Anthroposophy, therefore, is not Christian, not scientific, not logical, and not healthy for you mentally, spiritually, or physically. That is all. God Bless.
(1) (Steiner, Knowledge, pgs 22-23)
(2) (Steiner, Knowledge, pg 24)
(4) (Rudolf Steiner, Das Karma des Materialismus, Berliner Vorträge, gehalten im August und September 1917, Berlin 1922, pg 2:14-15)
(5) (Ibid., pg 2:16)
(7) (Steiner, The Course of My Life)
(10) Matthew J. Romano, The Call: An Invitation to Revival and Transformation (Greenville, SC: Ambassador International, 2018)
(12) (Steiner, Knowledge, pg 49)
(13) (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 1.7.16)
(16) (Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Pg 523)
(17) (Gary Habermas, On the Resurrection, Volume 1: Evidences)
(18) (Normal L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pgs 221-249)
(19) (Colin J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History)
(20) (Normal L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pg 260)
(21) (Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel)
(22) (Normal L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pgs 251-274)
(23) (Normal L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pgs 275-293)
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