1 Schellings Geschichte und Historie

The distinction between the speculative and historical nuances the relationship between Christianity and history because it maps onto the distinction between two kinds of history: Geschichte and Historie. A close reading of the Methodologie reveals that Schelling does not use these terms and their cognates synonymously. Clarity about this distinction is necessary background for comprehending Schelling’s empirical history of Christianity. I admit here that the following analysis of Geschichte and Historie is not thorough, but sufficient for presenting their distinction. He curiously notes in the tenth lecture that “the religious construction of history [Geschichte] is necessarily different from history [Historie] as such.”^[17] Schelling gestures at a qualitative distinction by referring to Historie as “history as such” in contrast to “the religious construction of Geschichte.” The former, he seems to imply, is history in the usual sense, namely, a sequential account of sense-perceptible events. The presence of these two terms should lead one to ask, at the very least, whether Schelling understands the history of Christianity as either the Geschichte of Christianity or Historie of Christianity, or whether he takes the two synonymously. The latter cannot be the case because Geschichte and Historie, as used in this context, “necessarily differ.” Yet, “[t[he historical [historische] construction of Christianity cannot be considered ... without the religious construction of all history [Geschichte].”^[18]Historie emerges here adjectivally as “historical” [historische]. In this manner, it must be coupled with Geschichte as the religious construction of history. The necessary qualitative difference between Historie and Geschichte, therefore, permits both their separation and conjunction.

Together with the definition of theology above, these passages make apparent that the distinction between the historical [historische] construction of Christianity and the religious construction of history [Geschichte] implies that the latter is the speculative construction of Christianity. Put simply, the religious construction of history [Geschichte] is equivalent to the speculative construction of Christianity. Hence, history as Geschichte is a speculative matter, which attests to Christianity’s close relationship to history as Geschichte.

Geschichte as speculative history is non-empirical and concerns eternal necessity and revelation. When discussing Geschichte as an object of religious construction in the above passage, Schelling emphasizes that it “raises itself over the empirical concatenation of things.”^[19] In the eighth lecture he elucidates that “history [Geschichte] is grounded in an eternal necessity,” and repeats in the ninth that “history [Geschichte] itself is as an outflow of eternal necessity.”^[20]Geschichte or history as speculative, put simply, transcends the empirical realm, and is rooted in eternal necessity; it even is such necessity itself insofar as it is an “outflow” thereof. This understanding of speculative history dovetails with its more familiar understanding: “history [Geschichte] as a revelation of God.”^[21] In their discussions of Schelling’s speculative understanding of history, Danz and Zachhuber insightfully draw on the 1800 System des transzendentalen Idealismus where Schelling states “history [Geschichte] as whole is a progressive, gradual self-revelation of the Absolute.”^[22] This understanding of history as Geschichte, to be lucid, is not equivalent to a sequential account of sense-perceptible events, which is the ambit of Historie. In that vein, it is important to see here that Schelling does not employ the adjective geschichtlich – nor anywhere else in the Methodologie – but uses speculative. This demonstrates that he understands not only Geschichte as speculative, but Geschichte and Historie as distinct. Given the limits of this essay, this explanation of Geschichte as a matter of revelation will suffice.

Most scholars have attended to speculative history or Geschichte and its relationship to Christianity without observing its difference from Historie. Rohls insists that Schelling borrows this speculative understanding of history as an intuition of the universe from Schleiermacher.^[23] Although he does not mention explicitly that the two senses of history operative in Schelling’s notion of theology are linguistically marked by Geschichte and Historie, Zachhuber comes closest to seeing this distinction. Upon introducing the Methodologie, he assert that Schelling is “explicitly committed to the dual imperative of a purely historical understanding of Christianity and a philosophical view of history [...].”^[24] By the former, he has in mind “empirical history” or history as Historie, which, to be clear, is associated with the “purely historical understanding of Christianity.”^[25]Geschichte, in contrast, is the “philosophical view of history.” Therefore, Schelling in fact linguistically anchors this dual imperative. The remaining analysis will make this distinction clearer with respect to Christianity in order to clarify and secure Schelling’s understanding of Historie.

He already anticipated a conflation of these two notions of history, when emphasizing that the religious construction of all history as Geschichte “is even less to be compared with what one until now has called ‘the history of religion’ [Religionsgeschichte] as with ‘the partial history [der partielleren Geschichte] of the Christian religion and church.’”^[26] The terms “history of religion” and “partial history of Christian religion and church” do not capture the speculative meaning of Geschichte. This still does not stop Schelling from at times using the term Geschichte in a semantically flexible way that overlaps with the meaning of Historie. But, certainly, one is unable to find him use the latter to indicate speculation.

Schelling associates Christianity more with Historie despite both notions of history being necessary for a proper grasp of this religion. At the beginning of the eighth lecture he confirms that “Christianity according to its innermost spirit and in the highest sense is historical [historisch],” on the one hand.^[27] Certainly, Schelling conceives of Christianity primarily as Historie. At the end of the lecture, on the other, he proposes that “[i]f Christianity in its most distinguished forms is necessarily historical [historisch], we hereby connect the higher view of history [Geschichte] itself.”^[28] Here, Schelling employs both Historie and Geschichte in the context of Christianity: the former adjectivally and the latter as a noun. Unless one is aware of the qualitative difference between these two terms for history, it makes little sense to connect Christianity’s historical forms, which he does not specify, with history, if the former already are historical. Schelling appears to imply that it is possible to take Christianity’s historical forms without connecting it to Geschichte as the speculative understanding of history; and that the only way, however, to grasp Christianity’s historical forms correctly is through this connection.

This section of the paper has weaved through Schelling’s distinction between the speculative and historical in his conception of theology, and shown, in turn, that they indicate two senses of history, linguistically distinguished by Geschichte and Historie. This analytical clarity paves the way for presenting an empirical history of Christianity in the sense of the latter. The underlying motivation of this paper is that the first necessary step to grasping fully Schelling’s speculative understanding of history as Geschichte, and, more generally, his conception of theology as a historical Wissenschaft, is the simpler and more familiar task of clarifying and piecing together his empirical history or “history as such” of Christianity.^[29] Admittedly, due to the limited scope of this paper, the remainder will limit itself only to this purely historical understanding of Christianity.

2 Orientalische und griechische Religionsströmungen

To be certain, nowhere in his early works does Schelling carry out a Historie – hereon indicated as “history” – of Christianity. In his Methodologie, he leaves it to the reader to extract, a task that more than likely dovetails with the work’s pedagogical intent; the same can be said for his Philosophie der Kunst. Particular historical contours and events emerge, which one then can stitch together as his history of Christianity. To begin, in the ninth lecture of the Methodologie, he touches on “two definite different streams of religion and poesy.”^[30] These two are the Oriental and Ancient Greek streams of religion. The metaphor of stream implies a flow of historical continuity, and less a chain of historical causality. Schelling seems to suggest that the first stream begins in the “Orient” for he conceives of Christianity as “an ideal principle coming from the Orient.”^[31]

This stream, more particularly, consists of Indian and Persian religion. Schelling observes that the Oriental stream “was already the ruling [one] in Indian religion.”^[32] Indian religion, in other words, is a part of the oriental stream of religion and not vice versa; the latter is distinct and prevails in the former. In the 42^nd section of Philosophie der Kunst, Schelling says briefly what he has in mind by Indian religion: “the dramatic poems [of] Shakuntala and the poem of Gita Govinda.”^[33] He offers a rather curious remark in the Methodologie regarding the reception of the idea of incarnation among the indigenous Indian population.

Christian missionaries, who came to India, believed to announce something unheard of to the inhabitants, when they taught that the God of the Christians became a man. Those [inhabitants] were not surprised at that; they did not contest in any way the incarnation of God in Christ, and found it merely odd that for Christians [it] occurred only once, what occurs for them many times and in continuous repetition. One cannot deny that they had more understanding of their religion than the Christian missionaries had of theirs.^[34]

Schelling reads incarnation as common to both Indian religion and Christianity, even suggesting that the former is better acquainted with it than the latter. He, therefore, indicates a historical continuity from Indian religion to Christianity. To be clear, Schelling is not saying that the idea of incarnation first arose in Indian religion and then passed on to Christianity nor that Indian religion per se is the historical precedent of Christianity, but rather that the former historically attests to the Oriental religious stream that flows into Christianity. The same he says about Persian religion, which also is a part of the Oriental stream. Its “teaching [arises] from the Zend-books and other sources,” Schelling notes in the Philosophie der Kunst.^[35] He appears to take Persian religion as subsequent to Indian religion in the Oriental stream.

As this stream continued on, “having flown through the entire Orient, [it] has found its abiding plot in Christianity.”^[36] The horticultural metaphor of “abiding plot” indicates that Christianity forms not only a part of this stream, but also its final destination, a place of rest where it bears fruit. Hence, Indian religion, Persian religion, and Christianity connect along the Oriental stream for Schelling. As it is becoming apparent, he has no intention to give a historically detailed account of Indian and Persian religion, but merely mentions them as related precursors to Christianity.

The second stream is Ancient Greek religion, which consists of Greek Mystery religions. According to Schelling, “the other stream in Greek mythology has given birth to the highest beauty through expansion with the opposing unity, the ideal of art.”^[37] Schelling, put simply, reads both mythology and religion as closely related. Besides “the highest beauty” as a product of this stream, certainly an allusion to Johann J. Winckelmann, he reads in it an opposition one pole of which is “the ideal of art.”^[38] Although to a certain degree Rohls is correct in observing that “[t]he triumph of Christianity, according to Schelling, set the demise of the beautiful world of the Greeks,” he overlooks the fact that historical continuity for Schelling resides more in the opposing pole.^[39]

While Schelling does not name this pole, it becomes evident that he has Greek Mystery religions in mind. To draw this out, one must see that he associates this pole with three matters: “mystical elements, the condemnation of mythology, and banning of the poets through the philosophers, especially Plato.”^[40] The first matter, “mystical elements,” is a positive characterization in contrast to the other two. In the Philosophie der Kunst, Schelling observes that in Homeric times “there were already in Greece customs relating themselves to the infinite and religious actions, [and] they sealed themselves off in a similar fashion originally as Mysteries from the generally valid and mythology.”^[41] In other words, Schelling takes the Mysteries to be special customs and actions the practice of which allows one to relate to the infinite.^[42] Greek Mystery religions mostly refer to the Greek Mysteries of the Eleusinian, Orphic, and Pythagorean varieties. They fall under Greek religion more broadly, which, according to Robert Parker, is “an ancient polytheism” with a pantheon of twelve gods: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hephaestus, Ares, Demeter, and Dionysius.^[43] He specifies that “[t]he most important mysteries were those of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis near Athens, which promised a better lot in the afterlife ... while for non-initiates ‘everything there would be bad.’”^[44] Specific texts related to the Greek Mysteries, according to Schelling, are “mystical poems [such as] the Orphic songs, the poems of Musaeus, the numerous poems of the seer and philosopher Epimenides.”^[45] Orpheus of Thrace, Musaeus of Athens, and Epimenides of Crete are legendary poets and polymaths in whose mystical poems Schelling appears to locate Greek Mysteries. He clarifies that although these Mysteries and the mystical elements from which they derived became more prevalent, they were not indigenous to Greece.^[46] Schelling, however, does not discuss the precise historical origin of these mystical elements.

The latter two matters show that this pole entails a negation, specifically, a push against art. This is clear in the “condemnation of mythology” and the “banning of the poets,” which gesture at the tenth book of Plato’s Republic. After mentioning these two, he asks rhetorically that Plato “is an augur of Christianity in a entirely foreign and distant world?”^[47] Plato, in other words, is part of the tradition of philosophy intimate with the Greek Mysteries, specifically, as one trafficking in the Eleusinian Mysteries. This is especially clear in Schelling’s 1804 Philosophie und Religion, a text that begins and ends with references to the Greek Mysteries.^[48] His reading of Plato with respect to Christianity heralds the classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quip that “Christianity is Platonism for the people.”^[49] To clarify, Schelling does not read Christianity as arising from Platonic philosophy, but both as part of the Ancient Greek stream of religion.

He confirms the historical continuity of Greek Mystery religions and Christianity along the lines of the distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric. Put simply, the historical continuity is a procession from the former into the latter. In the above mentioned Philosophie und Religion, “[P]aganism and Christianity,” Schelling claims, “were together from the beginning; the latter arose from the former only in that it made public the Mysteries [die Mysterien].”^[50] He indicates continuity in Christianity rendering “public” the Greek Mysteries as esoteric pagan religion: the initial unity of the Greek Mysteries and Christianity resulted in the latter becoming a publicly accessible form of the former. Schelling elucidates that the continuity from the pagan Greek Mysteries to Christianity is historical in the sense of Historie.

This idea can be realized historically [historisch] through most of the customs of Christianity, its symbolic actions, stages, initiations, which were a public imitation of those prevailing in the Mysteries.^[51]

Christianity’s “customs, [spiritual] stages, and initiations,” which Schelling does not elaborate on further, show its “historical” continuity with the Greek Mysteries insofar as the former are a “public imitation” of the customs, stages, and initiations “prevailing in the Mysteries.” This understanding of historical continuity from paganism to Christianity also emerges in Schelling’s 1802 essay, Über das Verhältniß der Naturphilosophie zur Philosophie überhaupt, published in the Kritischen Journal der Philosophie, which Hegel helped edit.^[52] According to Schelling, “Mysticism in Christianity constitutes the highest point of contrast with paganism; in this [Christianity] esoteric religion itself is made public.”^[53] In Christian mysticism, put simply, esoteric religion became public religion.

This pivotal idea is extant in the Methodologie, although references to historical continuity are more veiled. “Christianity,” according to Schelling, “is the revealed mystery and even thus according to its nature exoteric; paganism [is] esoteric according to its nature.”^[54] Szondi confirms that Schelling “saw in the Mysteries, as it were, a forerunner of Christianity.”^[55] When referring to Greek religion in Philosophie und Religion, Tilliette equally observes that “the essence of the Christian religion resides in the mystical current.”^[56] “The role of the mysteries in Greek religion is minimized, insufficiently inserted,” he argues further.^[57] This additional point, nevertheless, overlooks Schelling’s emphasis on the Greek Mysteries at the beginning of the text.^[58]

In fact, the comparison between Greek religion and Christianity is the most decisive for Schelling.^[59] “This contrast,” he asserts, “is the only possible [one] in religion; therefore, there is only paganism and Christianity; besides these two there is nothing [other] than the absoluteness common to these two.”^[60] Schelling speaks here in a non-historical and more philosophical-religious register about Christianity and paganism in his reference to the “absoluteness” common to both. It suffices, however, to emphasize the historical importance of their relationship as even perhaps a good site from where to draw Christianity’s historical forms. This relationship also receives attention from other authors during this period. Prior to Schelling there is Friedrich Schiller’s poem, “Die Götter Griechenlandes,” and Goethe’s ballad, “Die Braut von Korinth.”^[61] More contemporary is the philologist and archaeologist Friedrich Creuzer, whose Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker: besonders der Griechen, published first from 1810– 1812, takes an approach to the Greek Mysteries and Christianity similar to Schelling.^[62]

The three elements, then, of the condemnation of mythology, banning of the poets, and mystical elements, form the pole opposing art and the beauty of Greek mythology. These two poles constitute the Ancient Greek stream of religion that flows into Christianity. This section has presented two historical streams of religion, Oriental and Ancient Greek, in Schelling’s understanding of the history of Christianity. The former consists of Indian and Persian religion, while the latter of the beauty of Greek mythology and Greek Mystery religions. At this point, it is important to realize that Schelling speaks only of these two streams together; this implies that he deems them the most important in his understanding of the history of Christianity, and religion, more broadly.

3 Christentum vom Judentum zum Protestantismus

Jewish religion, in Schelling’s view, appears to be more proximate to Christianity’s history than the Oriental and Ancient Greek streams of religion. In the Philosophie der Kunst, Schelling mentions that the Jewish mythology “first purified itself in some degree for it owes all higher types of representation, even philosophical monotheism to merely foreign people.”^[63] He seems to gesture at Babylonian captivity and Persian influence, which gave rise in the Jewish religion to “philosophical monotheism” among other “higher types of representation.” Rohls observes similarly that “only through the influence of foreign cultures since the exile did higher representations including monotheism form themselves in it [Jewish mythology].”^[64]

Schelling then observes that “in the first epoch of Christianity shortly [there are] two entirely different moments” in one of which Christianity “held itself entirely within the mother religion – the Jewish religion – as faith of a particular sect.”^[65] For Schelling, Christianity was nursed by Jewish religion as the “mother-religion” and as the “raw material [into which] Christ sank the seed of a higher morality.”^[66] While he does not explain the content of this morality, he hypothesizes that “he [Christ] created this [seed] entirely independently out of himself or not,” the later possibility gesturing at the “Hypothesis of a relationship of Christ to the Essenes.”^[67] The former would not render the Jewish religion as the origin of the higher morality, while the latter would insofar as the Essenes were a mystic Jewish sect.^[68] This is a particular sect in Jewish religion in which Christianity “held itself as faith.” In the Methodologie, Schelling only hints at the Essences.

[T]he seed of Christianity is demonstrated not only in Judaism, but even in a particular religious association, which existed before that [Christianity]; one, indeed, does not even need this, although, in order to present this context, the report of Josephus and the traces of other Christian history books themselves are [needed].^[69]

“The particular religious association,” in other words, which existed before Christianity is the Essenes. Schelling confirms this by mentioning the works of Flavius Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian. By “other Christian history books” perhaps he has in mind Pliny the Elder and Philo of Alexandria. These authors discuss the Essenes. Rohls similarly agrees that “Schelling reckons with the possibility of an influence of the sect of Essenes on the proclamation of Jesus.”^[70] The Essenes, therefore, are a possible source of historical explanation of the “higher morality” – an elucidation of which is beyond the scope of this essay – that Christ introduces.

Concerning specific aspects of Christ’s life, Schelling discusses some more philosophically than others. As much as possible, I will draw out their historical content. Schelling in the Methodologie mentions the incarnation or “[t]he becoming-human of God in Christ,” and seems to take issue with theologians for grasping it only “empirically, namely, that God took on human nature in a definite moment of time.”^[71] Schelling, in other words, does not contest this, but seems to indicate that his Christology is speculative, extending beyond the historical fact of the incarnation. Then, in the Philosophie der Kunst, he discusses Christ’s “baptism and death.”^[72] These actions he takes as historical and underscores their “symbolic” character.^[73] This symbolism bears historical implications since Christ’s baptism and death “were continued in Christianity through the Lord’s supper and baptism.”^[74] Schelling indeed reads as historically significant that Christians symbolically partake of Christ’s baptism and crucifixion through the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. Earlier in the section, he elaborates that Christ “overcame the death of the cross and arose living again,” a fact that he takes seriously.^[75] For “to explain it away as an allegory and therefore to deny it as a fact is historically [historisch] ridiculous.”^[76] Indeed, unlike Rudolf Bultmann’s project of demythologizing the New Testament, Schelling holds to Christ’s resurrection as an actual, empirical, historical fact as indicated by historisch.^[77] Rohls correctly reads that for Schelling resurrection is “a historical event and not ... an allegory.”^[78]

The history of Christianity then proceeds to its first books. “The first books of the account [Geschichte] and teaching of Christianity are nothing than a particular, still for this purpose incomplete appearance of it [Christianity],” according to Schelling in the Methodologie’s ninth lecture.^[79] This observation seems to push against Protestantism and the tendency to take the New Testament itself as sufficient for grasping Christianity wholly – more on Protestantism below. For these books and the teaching contained therein form an “incomplete appearance” of Christianity. This passage also testifies to a non-speculative use of Geschichte, which in this context means less speculative history and more “account,” as in “gospel accounts.” Among these, Schelling distinguishes between the Johannine and the synoptic gospels. Regarding the former, he delineates that “[t]he author of the Johannine gospel is inspired by the ideas of a higher knowledge and takes this [knowledge] for the introduction into his simple and still [einfache und stille] account of the life of Christ.”^[80] Schelling, in other words, identifies in the first chapter of John’s gospel “ideas of a higher knowledge,” which produce a “simple and calm” narrative of Christ. The synoptic gospels, in comparison, “narrate in the Jewish spirit and include fables in their accounts [Geschichte], which were contrived according to the guidance of prophesies in the Old Testament.”^[81] The accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are rife with “fables” according to Old Testament prophecies. All three, according to Schelling, . . .

are convinced a priori that the accounts must have resulted in such a way because they have prophesied of a Messiah in the Old Testament for which reason they add: ‘that which is written might be fulfilled.’^[82]

Matthew’s gospel mostly employs this phrase and variations of it. Nonetheless, all the synoptic accounts share the emphasis on the Old Testament prophesies concerning Christ. Schelling expresses that “with respect to these [gospels] one can say: Christ is a historical [historische] person whose biography was recorded already before his birth.”^[83] Here Schelling underscores the person of Christ as historical or historische in conjunction with “biography” and prophesy. This is in contrast to the Johannine account, which Rohls reads as an “an example of idealism.”^[84] From this brief commentary on the gospels, it seems that Schelling’s penchant for the metaphysical explains why he takes less to the synoptic gospels than the Johannine account.

A significant figure in Schelling’s history of Christianity is the apostle Paul. In the Philosophie der Kunst, he notes that “Christ had not further guided it [Christianity], although he was full of a very high intuition of the further spread of his teaching and must be so in some way.”^[85] While the further development of Christianity was not under Christ’s direct physical direction, Schelling entertains the possibility that it developed in a way that Christ Himself foresaw. This is in the apostle Paul. “Already in the spirit of the converter of the heathen, Paul, Christianity became something other than it was in the [spirit] of the first founder,” according to Schelling in the Methodologie.^[86] It emerges in the Philosophie der Kunst that “the zeal of the apostle Paul was the first step toward the future formation [Bildung] of Christianity [for] he bore that teaching initially among the heathens.”^[87] Paul’s zealous evangelizing amongst non-Jews marked the further development of Christianity, a development that differed from Christianity’s initial form under the influence of the historical person of Christ. Paul is decisive for “[o]nly in foreign soil could it [Christianity] form itself. It was necessary that the oriental ideas would be transplanted into occidental soil.”^[88] Christianity, as originally oriental, brought forth a fruitful encounter between the Orient and Occident; the apostle Paul was instrumental in precipitating this productive cross pollination. Despite not specifying how he understands the Occident, one can reasonably infer that Schelling means west of Persia, the Roman empire at that time – more below on Rome’s significance.

Continuing from Paul’s letters and the gospel writings is the appearance of Gnosticism.^[89] Schelling explains that “[a]lready at the time when the first reports of the life of Jesus were written, even a narrower circle of intellectual [geistiger] knowledge, called gnosis, formed itself in Christianity.”^[90] While Schelling neither mentions Marcion of Sinope (c. 85–c. 160), the early Christian theologian denounced as a heretic, nor specifically his cannon of New Testament writings as a possible impetus to the orthodox formation of the New Testament, it is important to note that his doctoral dissertation at Tübingen was titled De Marcione Paullinarum epistolarum emendatore.^[91] Schelling seems to locate the origin of Gnosticism, a smaller circle within Christianity, in the period of composition of the first gospel accounts. Gnostic literature, however, was not received positively because it “could not be universal-historical [universalhistorisch], the matter of every man.”^[92] According to Schelling, “Christianity had the democratic tendency in its origin, so it sought perpetually to maintain this popularity.”^[93] The condemnation of Gnosticism and its banishment from early Christianity stems from Christianity’s initial “democratic tendency” and “popularity.”

The working out of Christian orthodoxy largely takes place in the Imperium Romanum. And Rome plays an important role for Schelling in the history of early Christianity. In the Methodologie, he notes that “The Roman Empire was ripe for Christianity centuries before Constantine choose the cross for the slogan of the new world sovereignty.”^[94] Constantine the Great (c.272–337), the first Roman emperor to become Christian, and his rendering the cross as the standard of Roman emperors does not mark the initial point that the Roman Empire was “ripe” for or receptive to Christianity. Schelling explains this “ripeness” as follows:

the fullest satisfaction through everything external induced the desire for the inward and invisible; a collapsing empire whose power was merely temporal, the lost courage for the Objective, [and] the misfortune of time must have created the general receptivity for a religion, which sent man back to the ideal, taught abnegation, and made [it] into happiness.^[95]

He adds in the Philosophie der Kunst that “when Christianity arose, Rome had heaped upon itself all the glory of the world.”^[96] Rome’s wealth and impending collapse created the historical conditions that allowed for “the fullest satisfaction” through external means. These means refer perhaps to the flourishing of trade and overall economic prosperity given the Roman Empire’s vast expanse during this period.^[97] This, in turn, “induced” the “inward desire” that Christianity upon entering and growing more influential was able to fulfil, the desire for the ideal. While Schelling does not make any pronouncement on whether Christianity was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, he takes its rise and fall as crucial background for Christianity’s development. This is lucid in his overall evaluation of Rome for the history of Christianity.

It will remain eternally noteworthy that even with the fall of the Roman Empire, which had united the largest part of the known world into a totality, Christianity proceeded towards universal dominion at a rapid pace.^[98]

That an obscure Jewish sect grew influential in one of the world’s greatest empires while this empire simultaneously declined is a marvellous historical fact.

Rome’s superstitious culture also placed it well to receive Christianity.

Before Christianity had extended its power to Rome, already among the first kaisers, this immoral city was full of oriental superstition, astrologers and magicians themselves [were] advisers of the heads of state, the oracles of the gods had lost their reputation before they were completely silent.^[99]

Schelling seems to suggest that the superstitious culture of the Roman Empire was conducive for Christianity to enter into and displace. That the Roman heads of state were advised by astrologers dovetails with the beginning of gospel accounts of the three wise men who were led by a star to the manger where Christ was born.

The last discernible episode in Schelling’s history of Christianity is Protestantism. Its overreliance on scripture receives attention. He observes that “[o]n to the place of living authority came the other [authority] of dead books written in a dead language.”^[100] Schelling already expressed above how the books of the New Testament alone are insufficient for furnishing a whole view of Christianity. In that vein, he views negatively the bestowal of ultimate authority on scripture in contrast to a living ecclesiastical authority. Protestantism’s organizational impulse, moreover, or lack thereof he also notes.

For it even at the time of its origin was a merely negative striving that negated the steadiness in the development of Christianity, never being able to create a positive association and an external symbolic appearance of this [association] as a church.^[101]

This “negative striving” of Protestantism Schelling elucidates as “the unbelief attached to particular forms and empirical appearance.”^[102] These forms and appearance concern the “external symbolic appearance as a church,” and point to, among other things, iconoclastic Protestantism’s reaction against hierarchy.^[103] In that vein, “[i]t was necessary that Protestantism, fragmented again into sects.”^[104] Schelling, in other words, reads Protestantism as inevitably splintering into sects. Towards the end of the lecture, he speculates about the future of Christianity, a topic, however, not a matter of Historie; and, hence, beyond the scope of this essay. In this section, I have attempted to piece together Schelling’s account of the history of Christianity as it stretches from its Jewish background to Protestantism.

4 Schluss

The historical facts presented in the above two sections by no means demonstrate Schelling’s capability as a historian but are broad historical contours that illustrate his empirical understanding of the history of Christianity. A downside to piecing together this history is glossing over the philosophical manner in which he treats some of these episodes. This was necessary, however, in order to present within the limited space of this essay Schelling’s purely historical account of Christianity. In summary, this account consists of the Oriental stream of religion consisting of Indian and Persian religion, the Ancient Greek stream of religion consisting of the Greek Mysteries, the early Jewish background, the life of Christ, the gospels, the apostle Paul, Gnosticism, the Roman empire, and Protestantism. By detailing and weaving together these historical facts, one sees how Schelling conceives of the historical reach of Christianity, namely, that he does not limit it to its Jewish background. Rather, he emphasizes Christianity’s contrast and connection to Greek religion, specifically, the Greek Mysteries. To those more familiar with Schelling’s later lectures on revelation and mythology, this contrast, indeed, forms a crucial line of continuity from his earlier works; and this historical account will appear as an outline of what he presents in those later lectures. Moreover, this purely historical account of Christianity has fielded the opportunity for clarifying how Schelling employs Geschichte and Historie, and shown that Historie more precisely is the history of Christianity. With all this, one now can better grasp his historical construction of Christianity, its connection to the speculative construction of Christianity, and finally how these two constructions connect to Christianity’s most prominent teachings. Only then will Schelling’s understanding of theology as a Wissenschaft come into clear light.