Tuesday, November 22, 2016

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's Rudolf Steiner for?


“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
         
 Robert Browning



Rudolf Steiner:  "Introductory lectures have already been given on the Gospels of St. John and of St. Luke. The impression they endeavored to convey can best be described by saying that, throughout, they took the view that the Being of Christ-Jesus — as far as human understanding in our present time is capable of conceiving Him — is so great, so all-embracing, so mighty, that there can be no one-sided presentation of who Christ-Jesus was and of His significance for the spirit and soul of every single human being. To attempt anything of the kind would seem presumptuous in the presence of the greatest of all world-problems. Reverence, veneration — these are the appropriate words to express the mood pervading our studies. This reverence expresses itself in the feeling that, when confronting the greatest problem of life, one should try not to place too high a value upon human powers of comprehension, nor even upon the knowledge imparted by a spiritual science able to penetrate into the very highest realms; one should not imagine that human words can ever be capable of describing more than a single aspect of this great, overwhelming problem."




Source: The opening words of lecture 1 of Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew. November 2, 1909.

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