8 lectures in Dornach, Oxford, and London, July and August 1922 (CW 214) Revised and Updated 2nd Edition.

“What must be rescued within humanity is knowledge itself; knowledge must be led back to the suprasensory”. —Rudolf Steiner

In these exciting lectures, Rudolf Steiner explores the practical consequences of Christian theological spiritual facts as they unfold in human consciousness. Starting with the early Gnostic understanding of the Christ event from within, Steiner shows how medieval theology reached an exoteric view of the spiritual world. It was this view, coupled with the rise of abstract intellectuality, that led to the separation of faith and knowledge, which denied humanity access to suprasensory worlds within accepted Christian theology. Using examples from Dionsyius the Areopagite, John Scotus Eriugena, Paracelsus, and Goethe, Steiner then lays the foundations for a path to the suprasensory that would unite faith and knowledge, through the spirit, in a full trinitarian understanding of the human being and the cosmos.

Part two consists of lectures given in England that deepen our understanding of the Trinity as this may be known through the spirit. The first lecture deals in a remarkable way with the practice and stages of meditation. On the basis of such meditation, Steiner shows how we can begin to understand the cosmic origin of the human being and the meaning of The Mystery of Golgotha for humanity and the cosmos. Above all, he stresses, meditation will allow us to realize the foundations of true knowledge: Ex deo nascimur (We are born of God); In Christo morimur (In Christ we die); Per spiritum sanctum reviscimus (Through the Holy Spirit we are reborn).

This work is a translation of lectures 1 to 4 and 8 to 11 of Das Geheimnis der Trinität: Der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zur Geisteswelt im Wandel der Zeiten (vol. 214 of the Collected Works [CW] of Rudolf Steiner) published in German by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland.

September 2016; Translated by James H. Hindes. Revised and Updated by SteinerBooks; SB; 160pp; 14 x 22 cms; pb;