Jesus and Christ

How can we meet the real Jesus today? Friedrich Rittelmeyer (1872-1938) – a well-known Protestant preacher of his day who helped found The Christian Community – presents us with the modern seeker’s path. A thoroughly revised translation of his Jesus (1912) traces the story of mankind’s longing. On the way, Nietzsche’s trenchant critique of Christianity is answered as intellectual honesty demands – with a concrete account of spiritual experience.

During challenging times, Rittelmeyer took up Rudolf Steiner’s advice to complete his inner journey by working with John’s Gospel. Twenty-four years later, his testament appeared, Christ (1936) – now featured here in English for the first time. The author follows Johannine tradition, with Paul claiming: ‘I shall know even as I am known’ (1 Cor. 13:12) – and which Rudolf Steiner calls the spiritual faculty of ‘moral Imagination’.

Rittelmeyer’s intellectual achievement ends in action; his path of exact perception leads to experience of the living Christ. ‘The path of Christ is always the path through death to resurrection.’ Here is spiritual reading as penetrating as any that can be found elsewhere. Jesus and Christ – at last complete in one volume – concludes by contrasting Nietzsche and Novalis along with an insight of Wagner’s regarding the only far-reaching solution for the 21st century.

FRIEDRICH RITTELMEYER (1872–1938) was a Lutheran minister and theologian who led the founding The Christian Community. Rittelmeyer came to prominence as a leading liberal theologian and preacher early in the twentieth century, advocating a socially engaged ‘Christianity of deeds’ (Tatchristentum). During the First World War he became one of the most high-profile clergymen in Germany to oppose the war publicly. From the 1910s his thinking was gradually influenced by the philosopher, spiritual researcher and teacher Rudolf Steiner. In 1922 a group of mainly Lutheran pastors and theology students founded The Christian Community, a Movement for Religious Renewal. Rittelmeyer remained at the helm of the movement until his death.