“I and the Father are one”

"Let us glance back into pre-Christian times. We find religions existing there as preparation for Christianity. We see religions, it is true, among the Indians and the Persians but religions suited to the particular people out of which they have been born. They are national, tribal, racial religions, appearing with the coloring out of which they have arisen, limited inwardly, because in a certain way they still proceed from the group-souls and are bound up with them. With the Christian religion an element entered humanity's evolution which is the true element of earthly evolution. Christianity from the beginning at once broke through the principles of all earlier religions. It sharply set itself against the sentence “I and the Father Abraham are one.” It opposed in the first place the idea that one can feel oneself a unity with something that is only a human group. On the other hand the soul that dwells in every personality must be able to feel one with the eternal Ground of the World Whom we call the “Father” and Who dwells in every soul, and this is expressed in the sentence: “I and the Father are one.” And in contrast to the Old Testament which begins with the words: “In the beginning was the Light,” Christianity sets the New Testament words: “In the primal beginning was the Word.” With this was given one of the greatest advances in humanity's evolution. For in referring to the light that arose, one speaks, in so far as one can speak of light, of something externally visible. The old records contain a Genesis that establishes the physical as a manifestation of the light. The “Word,” however, is what issues from the inner nature of the being, and before any manifestation of light had appeared there existed in man “what was, what is, and what is to come,” namely, man's inmost being. In the Primal Beginning was not the Light, but the Word. The Gospel of St. John is not a document that may be placed side by side with the others; it expands the others from the temporal to the eternal.
So Christianity stands there, not as a religion which might be a national religion but, if it is rightly understood, as a religion of mankind. In that the Christian feels himself one with the “Father,” soul confronts soul, no matter to what people or nation it belongs. All divisions must fall away under the influences of Christianity, and the Jupiter condition must be prepared under the influence of this principle. Christianity therefore has begun as a religion, for humanity was founded on religion. Yet religion must be replaced by wisdom, by knowledge. In so far as religion rests upon faith and is not inflamed with the fire of full knowledge it is something that must be replaced in the course of humanity's progress. And whereas formerly man had to believe before he could come to knowledge, in the future full knowledge will shine with light and man will know and thence ascend to the recognition of the highest spiritual worlds. From religion mankind evolves to wisdom, glowed through by love. First wisdom, then love, then wisdom glowed through by love.
Now we can ask: If religion is to merge into knowledge, if man is no longer given religion according to the old form, namely, that according to his faith he is directed to the wisdom that guides evolution — will then Christianity too no longer exist? There will be no religion that is founded on mere faith. Christianity will remain; in its origins it was religion — but Christianity is greater than all religion! That is Rosicrucian wisdom. The religious principle of Christianity as it originated was more all-embracing than the religious principle of any other religion. But Christianity is still greater than the religious principle itself. When the outer coverings of faith fall away it will be in wisdom-form. It can entirely strip off the sheaths of faith and become wisdom-religion, and spiritual science will help to prepare men for this. Men will be able to live without the old forms of religion and faith, but they will not be able to live without Christianity, for Christianity is greater than all religion. Christianity exists for the purpose of breaking through all forms of religion, and that which fills men as Christianity will still exist when human souls have grown beyond all mere religious life."

Rudolf Steiner, 1908
GA 102