Steiner's reading of the Gospel word Kyrios as the I, the ego that rises to rule over thinking, feeling and willing in the soul.
Kyrios, the Lord of the Soul is Rudolf Steiner's interpretation of the Greek Gospel word Kyrios, usually flattened to "the Lord," as a precise name for the human I. In the language of the Mysteries, the Kyrios is the ego that wakes in the depths of the soul and takes command of the three serving forces, thinking, feeling and willing, which once governed man and now learn to obey him.
Kyrios, the Lord of the Soul in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's reading of the Greek Gospel word Kyrios as the human I, the ego rising from the depths of the soul to become lord over the serving forces of thinking, feeling and willing. Steiner gave this teaching on 12 December 1910 in Munich, in the cycle published as GA 124, Background to the Gospel of St Mark. He argued that translating Kyrios merely as "the Lord" is empty, because in the Mystery language the word marked a stage in the soul's evolution: the passage from being ruled by one's own astral forces to ruling them. Where the older clairvoyant soul let the divine-spiritual think, feel and will within it, the awakened soul says "I think, I feel, I will." Isaiah's summons to "prepare the way of the Kyrios" thus announces the inward birth of Egohood, which the Christ Impulse makes possible.
In Steiner's Own Words
In the astral body, as we know, are the forces of thinking, feeling and willing; the soul thinks, feels and wills. These are the three forces working in the soul but they are actually its servants. In earlier times man was under their domination and he obeyed them, but as his evolution progressed these forces were to become the servants of the Kyrios, the Ruler, the Lord, in short, of the "I". Used in relation to the soul, the word Kyrios actually meant the "I". At this stage it would no longer be true to say: "The Divine-Spiritual thinks, feels and wills in me", but rather: "I think, I feel, I will."
What it Means Today
Steiner's claim, that Kyrios in the Gospels is a soul-word before it is a title, finds a sober echo in New Testament lexicography. Werner Foerster's long article on κύριος in Gerhard Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (volume III, German 1938, English translation by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1965) traces how the Greek word ranges from "owner" and "one who has power" to the divine name itself, and how the Septuagint pressed it into service for the Hebrew tetragrammaton. Foerster shows that kyrios always carries the sense of legitimate authority over something, a master who rules what is his own. Steiner reads exactly this possessive force inward: the soul's three powers belong to the I, and the I is meant to govern them rather than be dragged by them. The scholarship and the spiritual reading meet at the grammar.
Thalira synthesis: where the lexicon stops at the word's public meanings, Steiner turns the same possessive grammar on the inner life, so that "prepare the way of the Kyrios" becomes a discipline of taking ownership of one's own thinking, feeling and willing rather than a creed about an external Lord. A reader can test this plainly. Notice a moment when an emotion or a stray thought is steering you, then quietly assert the I that watches it. That small inward turn, repeated, is the work the word names. John the Baptist heralds the Kyrios in the solitude of the soul, and the same heralding still happens in every act of self-command.
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