The sixth Revelation letter, which Steiner reads as the future epoch of brotherly love, the church of the open door that none can shut.
The Letter to Philadelphia in Anthroposophy is the sixth of the seven letters in the Book of Revelation, which Rudolf Steiner reads as the coming sixth post-Atlantean epoch, the age of brotherly love. In Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse (GA 104a, 1909) he ties the city's Greek name, philadelphia, to the open door that none can shut (Revelation 3:8). It is the territory where budhi, the spirit transformed feeling-life, becomes humanity's second nature, where wisdom flowers as love, and where the I begins to permeate the spirit-self. The Philadelphia church marks the future society of free fraternity that the present consciousness-soul age is meant to prepare.
In Steiner's Own Words
And when humankind finally reaches the point where it has made enthusiasm for the good into a reality, then what is called the Christian ideal of brotherhood will have appeared. This sixth territory can receive its name only from the ideal of brotherhood, and “Philadelphia” is the city of brotherly love. If you read the relevant passage you will see the city described this way: “I know your works. Behold, I set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut; I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” (Rev. 3:8) They did not deny the name that comes from fraternal duty.
What it Means Today
Read this letter forward, not backward. Steiner places Philadelphia not in first-century Asia Minor but in our own future: the sixth post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the age of brotherly love that the present consciousness-soul age is charged with seeding. The detail he fixes on is the door. The risen Christ tells this one community, almost uniquely among the seven, that an open door has been set before it which no power can close. For Steiner that door is the threshold into a social order built on freely given fraternity rather than blood, contract, or coercion. Nobody is admitted by birth or shut out by law; the door simply stands open to whoever has made, in his phrase, "enthusiasm for the good into a reality."
What ripens in this epoch is budhi, the Life-Spirit, the stage at which wisdom already won in the head sinks down and becomes warm feeling, a second nature of love. That is why Philadelphia is a heart letter and not a brain one. The practical consequence is concrete and near. The Anthroposophical Society Steiner refounded at the 1923 Christmas Conference in Dornach, and the threefold social impulse he had set out in 1919, were both meant as small advance settlements of the Philadelphia community, places where people associate out of recognized inner duty rather than outer pressure. To work today for a fraternity that owes nothing to nation or property, and everything to the perceived spirit in the other person, is on Steiner's reading to begin turning the key in the open door before the lukewarm seventh epoch of Laodicea arrives.
Where to Read More