On the Necessity and Freedom of God in Schelling’s Ages of the World

In this essay, based on the text of the Ages of the World, Schelling’s solution to the pantheism controversy is analyzed and commented on concerning the unification of God’s necessity and freedom in creation. Schelling has distinguished two wills of God, the first is called ‘self-will’, the second is called ‘love’. A God in ‘equilibrium of choice’ is described by the process of the emergence of self-will and the interaction between the two wills. In this equilibrium the two wills are equal in power: self-will does not want to create, whereas love wants to create. With the incomprehensible freedom of God creation is decided, this decision is of ‘necessity of fact’ in that it has to be accepted without any explanation of ‘necessity of reason’. According to Schelling, the unification of God’s necessity and freedom in creation can be summarized as follows: Firstly the creation itself is factual necessary because it is the result of the incomprehensible freedom of God. Secondly the creation is realized on the basis of the ‘character’ self-will provides, which is also factual necessary because it is the result of the incomprehensible freedom of ‘Godhead’. The freedom in creation is realized by overcoming this factual necessity. Thirdly the incomprehensible freedom of creation is in accordance with the ‘necessity of nature’ of God, which is love. Thus creation is the only option for God. It is clear that Schelling’s solution is highly religiously transcendent. However, a rationalistic description underlies his religiously transcendent description of God’s creation. These two kinds of descriptions are irreconcilable, in that the first seeks to give rationally necessary explanation to creation, while the second excludes any explanation and emphasizes on the incomprehensibility of freedom in creation. On the basis of textual analysis it is proved that both necessity of fact and necessity of nature are in fact deduced from dialectics. This use of dialectics is called the ‘principle of equilibrium’, which indeed stands for necessity of reason, conflicting with the incomprehensibility of freedom. Thus Schelling’s solution is paradoxical, and his response to Spinoza’s pantheism controversy is not successful.