Moreover, later in his lectures on revelation, Schelling remarks that over the course of humanity’s coming to awareness of God's real nature, “some forms or figures which are all more or less copies derived from the supreme unity and that therefore, because of the fact they present in them all potencies, they will also be in themselves accomplished, autonomous”. Crucially, autonomy is what marks the symbols of revealed religion. Hence, there can be for Schelling multiple autonomous and accomplished representations of the divine. Therefore we can claim that his thought makes way, at least in principle, to there being multiple revealed religions. However, this seems to be in contraddiction with the earlier claim by Schelling that Christianity is the most perfect fruit of …show more content…
In this respect, I hold that on the ground of these two passages we can reconcile these two claims by Schelling if we pledge to understand what falls into the field of revealed religion as a matter of perspective, in a sense.
In this respect, we have to remember that to come to build an accomplished image of God plays foremostly what we could call a soteriological role. Not only to do so allows humans to be in communion with God again, but as we have seen in the first chapter this has consequences for creation as a whole. Hence, if I am in communion with God as a Christian then the symbol of the Trinity will play this soteriological role for me. However, if there is a possibility for many complete forms of God to be, then other symbols beside the Trinity might display the same soteriological value for communities other than the Christian one. Nonetheless, this consequence of Schelling's argument is not necessarily in contrast with him considering Christianity as the most accomplished religion. Even if we acknowledge that there are many ways to God, this does not imply