The fourth kingdom beside mineral, plant and animal: Steiner's name for the kingdom of heaven, arising wherever a being becomes able to name itself I.
The Kingdom of Man in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's name for the fourth kingdom of nature, standing beside the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and it is his reading of the gospel phrase, the kingdom of heaven. In the lecture cycle Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 117, Berlin, 9 November 1909), Steiner argues that every mineral, plant and animal receives its name from outside, while the human Ego is the one being on earth that names itself. A fourth kingdom therefore comes into existence wherever the spiritual world enters an Egohood, and the announcement that the kingdom of heaven is at hand marks the historical moment, in the era of Christ Jesus, when full manhood first became possible. New Testament scholarship on realized eschatology reads the same announcement as a present event.
Every stone, plant and animal on earth is named from outside. Steiner heard in the gospel announcement of the kingdom of heaven the arrival of the Kingdom of Man: a fourth kingdom that exists only where a being gives itself its own name, saying I. Beside the three visible kingdoms of nature, this one is invisible, and it entered history at a datable hour.
In Steiner's Own Words
“The kingdom of heaven” is simply an alternative expression for “the kingdom of man.” When we speak of mineral, plant and animal kingdoms we can add in the words of the Bible a fourth, “the kingdom of man.” Men who at that time, with the insight acquired in the Mysteries, could look back into the whole course of human evolution, could speak as follows: “Look back to ancient times: humanity was then only in process of being led to the level of manhood, for the kingdom of heaven is to come to the earth.”
What it Means Today
In 1935 the Cambridge New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd published The Parables of the Kingdom and gave theology the term realized eschatology. Working from the Greek of Mark 1:15 and Matthew 12:28, Dodd argued that the gospel announcement of the kingdom was not a forecast of a distant apocalypse. The verb, he insisted, declares something that has already arrived and is breaking in upon its hearers. Dodd later served as general director of the New English Bible (New Testament, 1961). Steiner made a structurally parallel move in Berlin in 1909, twenty-six years earlier, and pressed it one step further. For Dodd, what arrives in the announcement is the reign of God at work in the deeds of Jesus. For Steiner, what arrives is a new kingdom of nature, the fourth, which begins when the Ego becomes able to unfold love out of freedom instead of out of the blood-tie. Thalira synthesis: Dodd demonstrated that the announcement is present tense, and Steiner named what is present, so the kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of Man are one event read from two sides, a divine descent and a human standing upright.
Steiner's distinction can be tested in one observation. Every mineral, plant and animal answers to a name given from outside. Each human being uses one word, I, that no other person can ever apply to the speaker. Wherever that word is spoken in full consciousness, on Steiner's reading, the fourth kingdom is present.
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