Threefoldness & Real Christian Social Life

The Christian socialism of the Sixth Race/Cultural Period is not to be compared with the past experiments in socialism.  Those past experiments in socialism were designated as Ahrimanic by Rudolf Steiner, in that it was a future condition implanted before its time. But that is the point: it is a future condition.

The importance of Brotherhood for the 21st century:

"The abstract ideal of brotherhood or companionship must become something real. How can companionship become real? By associating, by truly uniting with the other person, by no longer fighting people with different interests but instead COMBINING those different interests.

"Associations are the living embodiment of companionship. The life-spirit [Budhi] must be alive in the sphere of rights, and with the Christ Spirit brought into economic life, spirit-man will come to life in its first beginnings through associations. The earth, however, yields none of this. Human beings will only come to this if they let the Christ, who is now approaching the ether, enter their hearts and minds and souls."

-Rudolf Steiner, Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind

Some will remember that Dr. Steiner said that Robinson Crusoe was an Ahrimanically inspired- man sufficient unto himself, like what is described in the works of Ayn Rand.

The threefold social concept reflects the processes of metabolism, brain/sense and rhythmic, also the relationship of these three processes to the higher man - Manas, Budhi and Atman.


The Budhi quality is one of loving compassion and self sacrifice. It maybe possible to have a rights sphere without this quality, but this is something that was never taught by Dr. Steiner.

Rudolf Steiner on Christian Social Life:

"A social community in the name of Christ will however be possible, providing we do not insist on a political state, but rather establish an independent life of the spirit. This can be Christian through and through. And this independent life of the spirit will be able to illumine the sphere of life where we have government and states, a sphere that simply cannot be Christian.

"The result will be that an economic life based on associations can develop, though this, too, cannot be Christian in itself. The people who are involved in it will be Christian, however. They will be filled with the Christ-impulse. What we must do is to let people enter into an independent life of the spirit. Then it will be possible to make the whole of social life Christian."

-Rudolf Steiner, Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind, November 1920

  The disease in society today is lack of spiritual life:

"People's thoughts in this respect will undergo a complete change, when once they come really to feel the full weight of this fact: that, in a human community where spiritual life plays a merely ideological role, common social life lacks one of the forces that can make and keep it a living organism. What ails the body social today is impotence of spiritual life. And the disease is aggravated by the reluctance to acknowledge its existence. Once the fact is acknowledged there will then be a basis on which to develop the kind of thinking needed for the social movement."

-Rudolf Steiner, Towards Social Renewal