NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
2 January 1844, evening
[Ste.01_007,01] Here again you are free to choose a central sun from the book of life. Choose a passage, then!
[Ste.01_007,02] ‘This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.’
[Ste.01_007,03] You have chosen the passage. I cannot help it if the very passages you choose fit our subject exactly.
[Ste.01_007,04] Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for the Lord's body, and Pilate gave it to him.
[Ste.01_007,05] This Joseph of Arimathea was a friend of Nicodemus and did this more on his friend's good behalf than on his own. For Nicodemus was a great admirer of Christ in secret, but from a certain fear of the chief priests and Pharisees he did not dare undertake this quite openly. He therefore entrusted it to his friend, who was also a great friend of Christ, but entirely in secret. This brief explanation is necessary so that what follows may be understood more clearly.
[Ste.01_007,06] How, then, do this passage and this little incident fit our subject?
[Ste.01_007,07] Think of ‘Nicodemus’ as hidden love for the Lord, and of ‘Joseph of Arimathea’ as faith in the Lord.
[Ste.01_007,08] What is faith in relation to love? It is love's helper. So here Joseph of Arimathea was the helper of Nicodemus, who loved the Lord in secret.
[Ste.01_007,09] But what did faith ask of Pilate? It asked for the Lord's body. Having taken it down from the cross, it anointed the body with precious spices and wrapped it in white linen. Then it laid the body in a fresh tomb hewn from rock in its own garden, in which no one had ever lain.
[Ste.01_007,10] What does all this signify? It signifies faith's thirst for knowledge being satisfied. This desire to know, noble in itself, seeks out everything conceivable in which it may find a living satisfaction.
[Ste.01_007,11] It goes to Pilate and asks permission. That is to say, such a desire for knowledge goes to the world and seeks in it everything that might serve to confirm the truth.
[Ste.01_007,12] Once it has received from the world all it sought, it turns to the Crucified One. But how? It seeks to bring all the words and all the explanations into clear light, and so free them from the mysterious apparent contradictions found in Holy Scripture.
[Ste.01_007,13] It succeeds in doing this. It has indeed freed the body from the cross, whose very shape represents a contradiction. But what does this noble desire for knowledge now have before it? Look, a dead body in which there is no life!
[Ste.01_007,14] This noble desire for knowledge recognises that too, yet rejoices within itself at having so happily freed the body from the cross. It anoints the body with precious spices, wraps it in white linen and lays it in a new tomb in which no one has ever lain.
[Ste.01_007,15] What is this meant to say? When the Word in Holy Scripture is so thoroughly illuminated, its divinity unfailingly becomes visible and is duly esteemed and highly honoured. That is the anointing. For a person will often speak in the loftiest terms of the dignity and divine majesty of Holy Scripture, but all this is the anointing of the dead body.
[Ste.01_007,16] A person with this noble desire for knowledge wraps the truth he has recognised in the highest and purest reverence. He even trembles at the greatness of the wisdom in this book. This is nothing other than wrapping the body in white linen. As innocent and pure as such linen is in itself, so is such humble understanding. But neither the body, the ointment nor the linen is alive, and none gives life.
[Ste.01_007,17] Now the body is laid in a new tomb. What does that mean? The insights the person has made his own through his noble desire to know give him no life and no living conviction. So he gathers them all together and lays them in the tomb of his deeper understanding. He puts a stone over it, which is to say that he puts a heavy doubt over all these clearly recognised truths. For he says, ‘All these solutions to the hidden mysteries of Holy Scripture are very well to hear, but they still give no conviction that one can see for oneself.’
[Ste.01_007,18] See, this is the very state of everyone who reads a great deal. He may understand everything he has read exceedingly well, from the natural to the innermost spiritual meaning. But if he wants actual proof of all he has understood, he finds that not even a mote in a sunbeam yields to his will. And if he wishes to behold the life of the spirit, he always meets instead the night of the tomb in which he laid the body. In other words, he gains no certainty about the world beyond that he can see for himself within. For him everything is a form of words and nothing more, a dead body in the tomb.
[Ste.01_007,19] How does this help him? However much he has read, if all his reading brings him no living conviction, he remains like a Joseph of Arimathea who takes one dead body after another down from the cross, anoints it and wraps it in white linen. But each remains a dead body and is always carried to the tomb.
[Ste.01_007,20] Now consider our Magdalene as well. She too was present at this event. Yet she did not wrap the body, or the Word, in linen and lay it in the tomb. She laid it in her heart aglow with love. When she came to the tomb, the stone of doubt had been rolled away by the power of love. The linen lay folded in good order in the tomb, meaning that her love had put the divine Word into living order within her. She found no dead body any more. She found the Living One, risen from the tomb.
[Ste.01_007,21] Which is better, then, to lay the dead body in the tomb or to find the Living One above the tomb? I think the second is plainly better than the first.
[Ste.01_007,22] Why did Magdalene find what Joseph of Arimathea did not find? Because she read little but loved much. Joseph of Arimathea, like Nicodemus, read much but loved less. So he had to do with the dead body, while Mary had to do with the Living One!
[Ste.01_007,23] I think this too will be clear. Even so, another central sun will follow!