Jesus and Christ

‘To see Christ in Jesus and Jesus in Christ is an incomparable joy. Each single saying and each single word finds its place in the heights on the way from Jesus to Christ, on the way from Christ to Jesus.’ – Friedrich Rittelmeyer

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.