"Christianity as Mystical Fact" within the Theosophical Context: Steiner’s Innovative Approach to Esoteric Christian History

This paper examines Rudolf Steiner’s early work, Christianity as Mystical Fact (1902) within the context of Theosophical interpretations of early Christian history. Contemporary Theosophists such as Annie Besant and G. R. S. Mead constructed narratives of Christian history which emphasized the decline from an original mystery tradition, either through the rise of an exclusivist Catholic Church or the decline of suitable initiates. Steiner, by contrast, presents early Christian history as one not of decline, but of evolutionary development. Drawing on similar sources as Besant and Mead, Steiner develops a dual-trajectory model of Christian initiation that embraces both esoteric and gnostic currents which continue from the pre-Christian Mysteries and a uniquely Christian universalizing faith-based path inaugurated by Christ.
Steiner’s dual-trajectory model of the Christian Mysteries is an innovative intervention within the Theosophical discourse surrounding early Christianity at the turn of the century. In the esoteric current of his model, he embraces the diversity of early Christian belief identified by Mead in Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900) and allows for its continued development by the Christian mystics whom Besant had identified in Esoteric Christianity (1901). Steiner’s attention toward the universalizing aspects of early Christian history moves beyond Theosophical approaches, allowing him to embrace controversial figures such as St. Augustine within his lineage. 
This study builds upon Helmut Zander’s work on Rudolf Steiner’s Christology to offer new perspective on Steiner’s relationship to Theosophy as it pertains to discourse surrounding Christianity. Through a comparative study of Mead, Besant, and Steiner’s constructions of early Christian history, Steiner’s continuities with and radical departures from the Theosophical Society’s views are highlighted. Even at this early date, Steiner had already innovated upon the existing Theosophical models and provided the basis for his later, more extensive, Anthroposophical perspectives on Christianity.