Here we analyse the 《hierophany》 and symbols. They are Mircea Eliade’s main concepts. And then, we will try to elucidate, in his theory, his unique soteriology. He doesn’t define a religion a priori, but treats a religious phenomenon as it is. The nature of religion is intuited as the sacred, and every religious phenomenon is generalized as a hierophany. The sacred is a concept irreducible to the profane. This dichotomy of the sacred and the profane is regarded as a framework of his theory, and this framework has a presupposition that the human being is homo religiosus in its nature. The sacred reveals itself through natural objects in the profane. He explains this revelation as the 《dialectic of the sacred》. It means that a profane object is sacralized through becoming a hierophany. And symbols can substitute for, or prolong this hierophanic function of the dialectic. They maintain their religious structure or function, even in the context seeming as non-religious, and it is called as 《the coherence of symbols》. And methodologically he changes from a structural analysis mentioned above to a hermeneuitic one. He takes homo religiosus as homo symbolicum, and explains how homo religiosus exists in the profane, while having an intention for the sacred. In his terminology, Eliade differentiates the 《existence》 from the 《being》. And the existence has two modalities; one is within the reach of the being, of the sacred, of homo religiosus, and the other seems out of such a reach, of non-religious man. Nevertheless, we think that these strict differentiations have a relativity, while there is an absolute gap in quality between the sacred and the profane, between a religious man and a non-religious man. What brings such a relativity is a concept of symbols. Therefore, by elucidating what this relativity is, how it would be possible that his dichotomy and his concept of symbols could coexist, and how symbols could make even a non-religious man possible to experience the sacred and to be saved, we also make clear how Eliade thinks about the salvation.
