” From the former comes the sense of the uncanny, of divine wrath and judgment; from the latter, the reassuring and heightening experiences of grace and divine love. This dual impact of awesome mystery and fascination was Otto’s characteristic way of expressing man’s encounter with the holy.
A specific type of historical event that Otto draws into his argument is the emergence of particular people far more sensitive to the numinous than their fellows and who sensitised those around them.
German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) was an influential theorist within the historical development of religious studies. He is well-known for his idea of religious experience as being the apprehension of the “Holy” or the “numinous,” concepts he presented in his book The Idea of the Holy (1917). Professional Career
In The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries (1909), Otto follows closely Jakob Friedrich Fries. It also shows Kantian influences in how Otto argued that human beings have immediate knowledge of the noumenal world, which shows itself in “feelings of truth.” Otto promoted what other believers considered to be liberal views.
What resulted was a strong attempt on Otto’s part to trace the essence of religion not to rational, sub-rational, or super-rational elements but directly to irrational elements , which produced what he called divination, or irrational religious intuition. Without this core component religion would not exist.
German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) was an influential theo rist within the historical development of religious studies. He is well-known for his idea of religious experience as being the apprehension of the “Holy” or the “numinous,” concepts he presented in his book The Idea of the Holy (1917).
Kant identified religion’s essence as consisting of three fundamental human capacities: the rational, ethical, and the beautiful. Kant appeared most interested in the ethical category, attempted to marry religion with ethical and moral sensitivities, and ultimately viewed religion to be a “matter of feeling.”.
It is critical of naturalistic views which, through reducing and explaining everything through mathematical-me chanical laws, excludes the categories of purpose and mystery both essential to religion.
Rudolf Otto – Religious Experience as Apprehension of the Holy – Bishop's Encyclopedia of Religion, Society and Philosophy. June 11, 2019. August 29, 2020.
An essence of religion is an essential core, fundamental component to religion that without which something would not be religion. Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) ideas were most influential in the way later scholars approached the topic of religion’s essence.
Otto starts The Idea of the Holy by arguing that the non-rational in religion must be given its due importance, then goes on to introduce and develop his notion of the numinous. As a kind of first approximation for the wholly new concept he is giving us, Otto characterises the numinous as the holy (i.e. God) minus its moral and rational aspects. A little more positively, it is the ineffable core of religion: the experience of it cannot to be described in terms of other experiences.
The writer emphasises that this predisposition is a characteristic not just of some individuals , but of the whole human species . Otto goes on to identify and discuss a series of phenomena he associates with the earliest expressions of the human predisposition for religion.
In the New Testament likewise, Otto looks at the balance between non-rational and rational. Here the rational aspect of God reaches its consummation, but the numinous aspect has not been lost. Thus Otto sees the numinous in New Testament references to a God of vengeance, who will destroy wicked men [p 84].
The Awefulness of God. Also worthy of attention is Otto's effort in his chapters on the numinous in the Old Testament, in the New Testament and in Luther to emphasise that the rise of the rational in the Judeo-Christian tradition did not eliminate the non-rational numinous.
He argues that the experience of the numinous leads in people to much more than the sense of personal unworthiness he had spoken of in his discussion of creature-feeling.
In this first part of this brief study of The Idea of the Holy we summarise what we take to be Otto's two most important themes: the numinous and religious progress. In the second part, we comment on them in turn.
Thirdly, note that although Otto initially mentions participation in ceremonies and visits to holy buildings as occasions for profound religious experience, he proves in the discussion of the five elements to be concerned above all with mysticism. This is surely a matter of personal piety.