Lord of Karma, Page 17

Rom 2,16:

. . . on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Romans has long been stressed by many traditional Christians in the increasingly nauseating debate of faith versus works as the worker of salvation. So long as faith is taken as something more or less synonymous and coextensive with a public confession of belief, it has provoked the more sensitive to a feeling of something being amiss. Heretofore, the reconciliation of doctrine has tended to stress that “works,” as Paul used the term, meant the “works of law” encoded in the Old Testament as propounded by the Jewish authorities, while at the same time stressing that “faith” required something more than mere intellectual assent and public confession. While these observations are not without some merit, the entire debate can be resolved in the light of anthroposophical insight. The “law” is the higher law (Heb 10,1), the same one Jesus came to fulfill (Mt 5,17), namely, the karmic law. And its fulfillment became possible, in view of humanity’s inherent sin, only because Christ, as a matter of “Grace,” took away the consequence of objective karma by shouldering it himself (Rom 3,23-25) on behalf of all those who accept him (into their lives, Gal 2,20) as the one who will work their salvation. It is this acceptance that amounts to the “faith” of which Paul speaks. It in no way eliminates the karmic consequence of subjective sin, but that consequence does not stand in the way of one’s salvation providing only that one make the required restitution (Mt 5,26; Lk 12,59). To the extent that one’s “works” (Jam 2,18-26) not only reflect one’s faith but also go about making such subjective karmic restitution, they are an essential, but they alone without such “faith” would not work salvation because the human being is unable to cure its objective karma without Christ.

Not only does this anthroposophic view accord with and help explain the “faith” salvation passages of Romans (and Galatians), as well as other Pauline passages herein, but it totally reconciles Jam 2,18-26. Consider Jam 2,24, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” The faith element, it is true, accomplishes what the human beings cannot do for themselves, but human beings must do what they can do to take advantage of what Christ has offered. Those who would deny this will find themselves having a difficult time explaining why Paul stressed the necessity of the moral virtues so highly and lived them so fully. His commands, “If any one will not work, let him not eat” (2 Th 3,10) and “owe no one anything except to love” (Rom 13,8), can be applied at the worldly or the spiritual level.

1 Th 5,1-10:

(1) But as to the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need to have anything written to you. (2) For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. (3) When people say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape. (4) But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief. (5) For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. (6) So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

(7) For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. (8) But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. (9) For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, (10) who died for us so that whether we wake or sleep we might live with him.

In particular, note vss 2 and 10. The unique thing about a thief is that he is Biblically pictured as coming in the night when no one is aware. (See “Thief in the Night.”) Christ came that way the first time. He is coming that way the second (see “Second Coming”) when he will assume the role of judge, Lord of Karma. Consider that the night is the period when one is incarnated, and the day when one is between incarnations. But those who are able to recognize him “belong to the day” (vs 8), and are with him whether in the discarnate or incarnate, i.e., waking or sleeping (vs 10), state.

2 Tim 4,1:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom.

Again we see Christ’s “judging” and “appearing” to be contemporaneous events still then in the future, consistent with all Steiner has told us about the Second Coming and Lord of Karma. That his judgment applies to “the living and the dead” has misled many to think of an apocalyptic event wherein that judgment will be simultaneous for all souls and will be consummated from beginning to end within the scope of one brief occurrence. That interpretation is not required, for the words say that all souls will be judged but not when such judgment will occur. When one understands that the Second Coming is to occur over a broad expanse of time, then interpreting it as a single event does not fit the reality. If one is to distinguish the judgment of the Father from that of the Son, which is necessary if the matter of judgment is to make any sort of sense, then a cataclysmic, brief period of judgment does not fit the description of Christ as “counsellor,” or “advocate,” or the like. One cannot serve as defense counsel and judge at the same time. Beyond the long time period when Christ is to advocate and judge lies the ultimate and fearsome judgment of the Father. By directing the law of karma, in his capacity as Lord of Karma, Christ is attempting to “save” every human being, over many incarnations, from the karmic consequence of the Father’s eventual judgment (Jn 12,47). The beauty with which Lazarus/John’s Apocalypse unfolds the long and evolutionary advocacy of “the Lamb” makes all this very clear.