Henotheism (Greek  henas theos "one god") is the belief in and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities that may also be served. The term was originally coined by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) to depict early stages of monotheism. Max Müller (1823–1900), a German philologist and orientalist, brought the term into wider usage. Müller made the term central to his criticism of Western theological and religious exceptionalism (relative to Eastern religions), focusing on a cultural dogma which held "monotheism" to be both fundamentally well defined and inherently superior to differing conceptions of God.