Steiner's reading of inherited sin as a heritable disposition passed through the astral bodies of parents at conception, not a stain of personal guilt.
Original sin, in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, is the heritable element in human nature that began when the sexes separated in Lemuria. As humanity grew independent of the divine-spiritual world, the desires gathered through the senses lodged in the astral body. A descending soul takes in something of its parents' astral bodies at conception, so each person inherits the disposition of the forefathers rather than a verdict of guilt.
In Steiner's Own Words
Original sin is brought about by man coming to the point of transferring to his offspring his own individual experiences in the physical world. Every time the sexes glow with passion the ingredients of the two sexes combine in the human being who is descending from the astral world. When a human being incarnates he comes down from the Devachanic world and forms his astral sphere in accordance with his particular individuality. Something of what belongs to the astral bodies of his parents, their impulses, passions and desires, combines with this astral sphere so that he thereby shares in the experiences of his forefathers.
What it Means Today
Western theology owes much of its picture of original sin to Augustine of Hippo. The biblical scholar Elaine Pagels traced this in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (Vintage Books, 1989), showing how Augustine, against earlier and more hopeful readings of Genesis, fixed the teaching that every human being inherits Adam's sin and mortality, transmitted through the act of procreation itself. Earlier Christian writers had read the Eden story as a parable of freedom; Augustine read it as a sentence of inherited bondage carried in the flesh from one generation to the next. Steiner, lecturing in Berlin in 1908, kept the procreative mechanism Augustine intuited but stripped away the verdict of guilt. For Steiner the heritable thing is not condemnation but disposition: the impulses and desires lodged in the parents' astral bodies, gathered up by the soul as it descends from the Devachanic world and forms its astral sphere. Inheritance carries temperament, vulnerability, the long shadow of the forefathers, but not a charge to be answered.
Thalira synthesis: read side by side, Augustine and Steiner name the same observed fact, that something of the parents passes into the child at conception, yet Steiner relocates it from the courtroom of guilt into the workshop of inheritance, where each incarnating I-being meets an astral inheritance it did not choose and is given a lifetime to transform.
Where to Read More
- The Being of Man and His Future Evolution, GA 107
- Find at SteinerBooks [THALIRA_BLOG_LINKS_PLACEHOLDER]