Fire, Page One

Two Concepts, blood and fire, perhaps more than any others, pervade the Bible from start to finish. They are not unrelated. We examine blood in the penultimate essay. The fire concept is expressed in such terms as flaming, fiery, burning, lightning, or the like, or even by heat, smoke or smoldering. We saw in the Creation essay how fire is found in the second verse of Genesis in the concept of warmth (as in the brooding of a mother hen on the nest).¹ And just as we found there a deeper meaning extending beyond common understanding into the etheric world, so must we explore the meaning of the concept as it surfaces again and again in the biblical account.

Fire's deeper meaning is pointed to by the fact, which cannot be overemphasized, that it is so frequently the medium of communication between Earth and heaven. The ancient Greeks still understood this, for their word empyrios (i.e., "in fire"; en = in, pyr = fire) is the source of our own empyreal.² The "flaming sword" divides the two (Gen 3,24). Fire was present at Noah's altar (Gen 8,20), at the first covenant with Abraham (Gen 15,17-18), at the tendered sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22), in the call of Moses through the evolutionary appearance of the "I AM" in The Burning Bush (Ex 3), in the pillar that led Moses and the people in the wilderness (Ex 13,21-22), in the revelation to Moses on Mt. Sinai (Ex 19,18 et al.), in the recurring theme of altar sacrifice, in the lifting of Elijah and Elisha to heaven (2 K 2,11 and 6,17), in the destruction of earthly matter (Job 1,16; 2 Pet 3; Rev 20), in the communication of the Lord's voice (Ps 29,7; Jer 23,29; Rev 4), in the purification and testing of his servants (Is 6,6; Dan 3; Mal 3,2-3), in the higher baptism (Mt 3,11), in the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2,3), in the appearance of the Lord (2 Th 1,7), in visions of future times, what we call "apocalypse" (Ezek 1; Rev 1,14 and 19,12), and countless others. It reverberates through the highly influential book of Enoch.

But most inescapably it is thrown down before us by Christ when he says, "I came to cast fire upon the earth" (Lk 12,49). Or, as the Greek more emphatically states (9 NIB 266), "Fire I came to cast on the earth!" And then he says, "and would it were already kindled." The Gospel of Thomas phrases it (Saying 10), "I have thrown fire on the world and, behold, I am guarding it until it is ablaze"; then later (Saying 80), "Whoever is close to me is close to the fire."

He was no arsonist. What does he mean?

The resolution of this question is the key to bringing religion and science back into the union that existed in ancient times: times that preceded "religion" or "science" as we understand them, for their common meaning today veils higher reality than they reveal. Religion literally means to reconnect what is severed, thus ceasing to exist when accomplished; see The Festivals and Their Meaning (FM), pp. 207-208, 213-214 (April 13, 1908, Berlin). Science means knowledge, but can we call something science which is not calculated to reveal higher truth?

Neither religion nor science as they are practiced today comprehend Christ's meaning here, save only superficially. Religion sees it simply as some form of ardor, however characterized, as in "on fire for God," while science sees it merely as molecular action. To a great extent this situation has prevailed from the time of Christ till now, though more especially since the beginning of our Cultural Era with the Renaissance, and even more during the last two centuries of evangelistic fervor and "scientific progress." I do not say for one minute that nothing good has come from these superficial concepts in times past, nor that nothing good will come from their application in the future. The point is rather that the time is here when science and religion will work, and in some ways already are working, against that very thing they strive for unless redirected by a higher, divine intelligence. New insight is becoming increasingly imperative for salvation of the human and the lower kingdoms.

The rest of this volume takes up what Steiner, a trained scientist as well as a consummate, disciplined "intuitant," has to say "scientifically" about fire (heat), light and the human being as a cosmic creation. When these are understood according to their true nature, the spiritual will be revealed within them, what religion has thus far failed to reconnect, to re-ligate, with. More and more it will be seen that there is no difference between real science and the divine intelligence sought by true religion. The truth is that the failure of each of them, science and religion, to perceive truly, is the complement of the other, for if either were righted the other would fall in place also. The same revelation that solves one would solve the other. The scales would fall from both eyes at essentially the same time.

Understanding what Christ meant by the fire he came to cast upon the Earth seems a proper first step.