JASON M. Wirth, a Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University, presents a compelling case against the proliferation of religious allegory. Arguing that the symbolic realm of Christianity has been reduced to symbolic acts, Wirth contends that although the Eucharist is an allegory of God it ultimately “devalues the sacredness of bread in its own right.” What he means by this is that the idea of transubstantiation completely alters that which, from the perspective of those who respect the inherent divinity of nature, subjects the item in question to a process of desacralisation that ultimately results in its disappearance from view.
The same is true of communal wine, which “is no longer the liberating presence of Dionysus, but rather the presence of something remote to itself.” This accords with Schellingian philosophy to the extent that the Christian notion of a universe that is nothing more than the kingdom of God
“makes it an expression of an absolutely removed absolute, and hence a devaluation, abdication, and even annihilation of this world for the sake of the otherworldliness of the ideal.”
The religious departure from mythology, therefore, means that the idea of good becomes fundamentally detached from the things of this earth. As Schelling explains, Christianity’s eradication of worldly artefacts through allegory fails to take into consideration the true nature of parable:
“The prerequisite of a mythology is precisely not that its symbols mean or refer to mere ideas, but rather that they are independent beings that refer to themselves.”
One might assume, if we retain the suggestion that we are created in the image of God within the context of Schelling’s naturphilosophie, that unlike the evaporating bread and wine of transubstantiation we are to be regarded as gods before we are considered to be anything else. After all, that which is already a manifestation of the Absolute cannot become ‘sacred’ all over again.
Although Schelling advocates the forging of a new mythology he is not suggesting that the gods of old be wedded to Christianity in order to overcome the latter’s dependence on allegory, for like Nietzsche he considers them dead, but that the ideality of such divinities can be sown into nature. This can be achieved by reintroducing new gods into history, great figures that rise through nature to become the embodiment of a sacred, cherished earth.
