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The Idea of the Holy

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C.S. Lewis once wrote, "I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand." This pronouncement applies to Rudolf Otto's classic The Idea of the Holy (which Lewis had read.) This book explores the esoteric and ineffable, and is best approached with a pen or pencil in hand to underline passages and write in the margins. It is not a lengthy book (less than 200 pages in the edition I own) but chewing the sinewy theology takes some work to digest.

Traditional theology has usually concerned itself with doctrine, with focus on the rational aspects of God. Otto, following the tradition of mystics, gave careful consideration to an oft-neglected aspect of theology: the non-rational aspects of God. In doing so, he coined the word "numinous" to depict that which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational terms. It suggests that which is holy, awesome, and 'wholly other.' He also applies the expression "mysterium tremendum" to the numinous, describing that which is hidden, esoteric, beyond conception or understanding, awe-inspiring, fear-instilling or uncanny, an absolute overpoweringness of an ineffable transcendent Reality.

Otto illustrates his concepts with scripture passages such as Isaiah 6, where the vision of the Lord and his robe filled the temple. God's holiness overwhelmed Isaiah, who cried, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips." Other illustrations include the feeling of the numinous evoked by Bach's Mass in B minor, the 'Popule meus' of Thomas Luiz, or the contrast of light and darkness found in cathedrals or forest glades. Most helpful to me was his analysis of the book of Job, showing how God's answer to Job about the mystery of suffering demonstrates the numinous in the character of God. Otto seems, for the first time in my reading experience, to give helpful insight for why Job never received a direct answer to his questions about suffering.

Otto's terse classic has unfortunately been largely forgotten. I hope that it sees a revival in its readership, for it deserves to be studied and discussed with each new generation of readers.

Few theological books have made the impact on the fields of theology and philosophy that this one has. Its impact and importance are for good reason.

"The Idea of the Holy" is not a terribly long book, but it is certainly not a casual or quick read. It is not aimed at a popular audience, and for many people it will require a dictionary close at hand.

In this book Otto embarks on the paradoxical task of describing the incomprehensible qualities of God. It is not written as a Systematic Theology categorizing doctrines that can be deduced from Scripture. Rather, it describes philosophically what it means for God to be "wholly other", or transcendent. Often the technical language is difficult to process and the ideas are not simple ones to grasp, but still it is worth wrestling with.

As Otto describes the Mysterium Tremendum, he examines the emotional response of humans as we encounter God in his Holiness. The reader is reminded of the Awe-Inspiring God who we claim to believe in and serve. This is perhaps the most memorable and humbling aspect of the book.

Take a copy of this book on a long trip and spend some time with it. Expect it to be difficult and when you're tempted to quit... keep reading!

This book, first published in 1917, is rightly regarded as a classic of religious philosophy.

Otto's great contribution to Christianity was to assert the importance of a non-rational approach to the divine. Christianity, which is the most dogmatic and moralistic of the major world religions, needed the corrective. Otto created the word "numinous" to stand for the sense of a divine presence that operates beyond rational understanding. He also coined the term "mysterium tremendum" to connote the inchoate sense of awe and dread that humans feel in the presence of the divine. To him, both of these ideas were essential to a full expression of the religious spirit.

One reaction to this book over the years goes something like this: either you've been knocked off your horse like St Paul, in which case you already have a direct experience of the numinous, or you haven't. Why bother to analyze something that by its very nature can't be put into words? Here Otto makes a subtle but crucial distinction. He's not talking about a numinous feeling, but about a feeling of the numinous. In other words, the numinous exists out there, not inside us, so we can approach it as an object to be observed and, at least by analogy to the sensations it excites with us, described.

Otto didn't reject the rational, though. Without rationality, he says, we can't have belief, only feelings. In his view of religion, the rational and non-rational interpenetrate each other like the warp and woof of a fabric, which can't be separated without destroying the very garment it makes. He points out several times that fully understanding the non-rational conception of god deepens our rational religious ideas.

Otto was a Christian, and believed deeply in the superiority of Christianity as the highest synthesis of the rational and moral with a primal sense of awe. (Buddhists might differ.) Fortunately for his reputation as a religious philosopher he was much more than a Christian apologist: he was a close observer of human behavior and of religious practices around the world. If Otto had been born seventy five years later, he might have been Joseph Campbell. He traveled widely, and had a deep knowledge and appreciation of Asian, Arabic and Greek religious thought. He anticipated Campbell by demonstrating that a sense of spiritual awe and mystery is universal to all religions.

In his observations of how mankind divines the presence of the holy, Otto realized the importance of predispositions - a person must be both receptive to divine presence and capable of recognizing when it appears. In this he anticipates neural Darwinism, which also talks about our predisposition toward certain aspects of reality. For instance, we have evolved an ability to recognize sound patterns. This isn't music, but it allows us to hear a song and store it as such in our brain. Similarly, we are capable of conceiving of an overarching force that exists beyond our selves, and are capable of recognizing manifestations of it. This isn't religion, but it's the precursor to any truly religious feeling.

This book strikes sparks in almost every chapter, even the ones settling obscure doctrinal scores. It deserves the high regard in which it's held because Rudolf Otto is a remarkably good guide to the ineffable.

Living as we do in an age where religion in general (and Christianity specifically) has been largely co-opted by those who consider it to be "morality touched with emotion", "The Idea of the Holy" offers a alternative view towards religion and spirituality. Otto introduces a way of approaching the subject that avoids the twin traps of emotion and intellect, allowing us to understand "religious feeling" as a phenomenon all it's own, as a "sense' with its own attributes.

For those who can (through scholarship or patience) penetrate the sometimes dense and dated prose, this book has the potential to remove the debris of thousands of years of so-called theology and philosophy and to find the experience of God without intermediaries. It is indeed, a revelation.

I just revisited this book and forgot how absolutely marvelous it is at wrestling with the rational/non-rational element of religion. Rudolf Otto is unabashedly forthright in his admittance that Christianity - not so much the outer dogmatics but the internal mystery, i.e. the 'numinous', it yields to - is the only place where 'light' and 'life' find a balanced home and, with it, a proper experience with the numinous.

While the book is heavy reading and, perhaps paradoxically, weighs heavily on the rational, he ultimately brings a brilliant dissertation on the genius of Christianity as the most viable path for balancing this numinous with the temperance that the rational elements of experience brings.

One of the other elements often overlooked in this book is that he approaches the elevation of Christianity against other faiths from another angle. First, and foremost, he holds high reverence for all faiths. Never tearing down another faith, by comparison with the Christian experience he actually reveals the strengths of other faiths. Allah is pure 'numen'; this actually gives a solid explanation as to the potential for fanaticism (which, by comparison, gives insight into the fanaticism of any faith). Taoism spends almost all of its time in the 'mysterium tremendum'; it is completely impersonal (yet, by comparison, it tempers the tendency towards a total anthropomorphing of God).

These are often leveled as critiques against these faiths yet in this work the strenghts of such religions are revealed. It is not a judgment; the choice is the reader's. And this is the greatest strength of any comparative religious study. While not the overt intent of this book, it is present. If one wishes to experience God as total 'numen', Islam may be deemed that path. If we wish to experience the depth of life in the world, Taoism may be deemed that path. Yet Otto continues to lay out the discussion towards his goal: Christianity is the one religion where all these experiences and feelings find a home.

Perhaps the other factor that stands out - and it could also be rendered a flaw by more biblical literalists - is that he accepts the fact that such accounts as the Empty Tomb are riding the fringe of legendary accounts. He does not say they are false; he does not say they are irrational; he does not write them off as fiction. He accepts their role and admits that, in the framework of Western thinking, we do a disservice to the purpose of these accounts when we view them with our overly empirical mindset.

As a thinker, this is one of the books that helps keep the Christian faith in proper perspective. Having spent a number of years in various denominations and churches of the more fundamentalist kind, I have remained grounded through books such as this one. I have never been able to make the leap of accepting the tenets of such fundamentalism: Biblical literalism; railing against all other faiths as demonic; the sectarian and isolationist mentality that so often arises; the arrogance and superiority that too often stems from such thinking.

Yet, like Otto, I have felt the power of the 'numen' in the Christian path. Otto's work captures this struggle - experiencing such non-rational power within a rational mind - in great detail and with a humble and compassionate power. A must for any thinker's library.

This book attempts to describe profound religious experience that occurs at the visceral, non-rational level. In doing so, the author coins some latin phrases that have since become embedded in the literature on religion: (1) the NUMINOUS, which is the extra meaning of "the Holy" beyond simple "goodness"; and also (2) the MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM, the nature of the numinous, which connotes "awefulness" (the terror of God or the Other World, which Otto argues is the starting point for the historical development of religion), "overpoweringness" (in which we feel dwarfed into insignificance), "energy" (religious fervor), the "wholly other" (that which is outside the realm of our senses or common experience), and "fascination" (wonderfulness or grace).

This brief summary doesn't really do justice to Otto's description. Reading the first 70 or so pages of the text, you begin to get his emotional-level understanding of the horrifying, alien, shocks-you-out-of-this-world, yet somehow compelling nature of direct confrontation with the transcendent.

He stretches to describe some of the concepts. On the element of "awefulness", for example, he runs through this series of similar concepts: tremor -> fear -> hallow -> fear of god -> august -> grue -> grisly -> dread -> awe - > daemonic dread -> something uncanny -> eerie -> weird.

Otto relies on a concept he derives from Kant called "schematization". He uses it to associate rational ideas with non-rational ideas. For example, physical sex schematizes "love"; written or recorded songs schematize "musical feeling"; the sublime feeling we get from written text or works of art schematizes "the Holy". It's important not to confuse the schematization with the thing itself: so the "morally good" schematizes "the Holy", but the "morally good" is not the Holy.

I thought the text bogged down quite a bit after the first 100 pages or so. He spends three whole chapters arguing with Schleiermacher's concept of "Divination", for example (it's a type of recognition or gnosis of the Holy). But the first half is definitely worth reading, though a bit difficult.

This magnificent book is a neglected classic. The concept of "numinous" would be so satisfying to any intelligent person at the end/beginning of the millenium. The chapters "The Holy as a Category of Value", "The Numinous in the Old Testament", "The Numinous in the New Testament" and the "The Numinous in Luther"--with its great analysis of Plato, are deeply insightful, even life-changing. And the appendices are great--so learned, so relevant.

Rudolf Otto(1869-1937) presents the idea of the Holy as that profound, overwhelming feeling of awe that can sometimes strike you regardless of your particular culture and/or religious affiliation, a feeling that's been a part of us since pre-historic times. He calls this feeling the "mysterium tremendum" or the "numinous" and proceeds to describe it in great detail, with examples. I liked the way the idea is first developed in a more general sense before emphasis is made of its Christian aspect, making it accessible to all people interested in the idea of the Holy and God.

For those of us in professional ministry and studying in seminary, we spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on the rational element in religion- we can't seem to avoid it in the West. But no amount of Aquinas will ever serve to explain the true meaning of religious experience. Reading Aquinas is like studying a technical manual of spirituality- it destroys the very meaning of it. Otto writes a brief work here outlining the main points of his theory- that religion can't be understood and never can be as an empirical study- it is beyond our sense horizon. Religion is to be savored, felt- not thought about or deconstructed, like, taking an engine apart. What Otto, in other words, tries to do is to, rather than studying how a flower produces a pleasing scent and how we perceive it, says STOP and just smell the rose- and you'll understand in an instant. As a Lutheran, he understands Catholic sacramental theology very well-that a sacrament is an outward sign of an inner grace or reality, and that signs and symbols work hand in hand- a sign points to a reality ahead, like a clap of thunder signifies a storm. A symbol conveys within itself the very reality it is expressing- for example, perhaps the greatest being a kiss between husband and wife- the reality is perfectly conveyed in the symbolic action itself, without further clarification. THAT is experience, true spirituality, what he means by the numinous, as applied. It is thus existential. Too much wasted time and energy could be spared by reading this classic. Five years of theology could be distilled to the contents of this book, perhaps the most influential book one can read in seminary. Do yourself a favor and get it!!

Oh my gosh is this book awesome. It answered so many questions I had about the non-rational aspects of life, religion, and God.

Let me review this book from a personal angle. In my pre-rational, pre-reflective stage of existence, before I ever thought about philosophical issues, I loved that feeling you get in your gut, those butterflies, that sick feeling, when you're affected by the thunder of music, or a moving scene in a movie, or the awe you feel when you see dark, ominous clouds forming above you. I absolutely loved that feeling, even if it was accompanied by - at times - a strange sort of fear.

But I never gave it a name. I did experience a weird sort of longing for it, to unite with it somehow, a fascination by it, even if certain forms of it aroused what Otto calls 'dread'.

And I never bridged this feeling with my own experience of Religion or Christianity. I never would have guessed that this 'Idea of the Holy' is what makes Religion captivating in the first place. Everyone thinks of it as this boring set of ethical guidelines (which is an issue in itself) when there's this Numinous Reality which lies at the back of all of that, which might explain why people made ethical codes, but doesn't necessarily cause it, since the one can exist without the other for long periods of time.

So, Otto is basically trying to isolate the non-rational part of God or Religion, the part that concepts can't capture. The tricky part - and Otto realizes this - is that he needs a concept to denote this 'part'; but the concept doesn't directly denote it, like the concept 'apple' directly denotes an actual apple. Otto's plan is to present before our minds certain concepts that arouse certain feelings in our consciousness, and then to point out an analogy between that feeling and the feeling one would feel if you ever experienced directly the Numinous. And that is why metaphor is used on purpose by Otto to arouse these particular feelings. Otto says at one point (of his purposes): "This X of ours is not precisely 'this' experience, but akin to this one and the opposite of the other. Cannot you now realize for yourself what it is?"

Otto points out parts of the Old Testament which have characters confronting the Numinous in God. Abraham feels like dust and ashes when he goes to plead with God about not destroying something, Job feels like Nothing before an over-powering Might (the whirlwind), Isaiah says he's unclean when he sees God and His train filling the temple, there's that mysterious Numinousness on the mountain with Moses, etc . . .

Otto calls all this the Mysterium Tremendum. It mysterious, because it's other-worldly, it bursts categories of thought, we can't describe it, and yet we're drawn to it, fascinated by it - at the same time, there's a dreadfullness about it, because of its otherness, it is completely Other, alien, terrible, aweful, even spooky, creepy, fearful - it may explain odd cases where God has wrath, even though the Bible uses the concept 'Good' to describe God. That 'wrath part' - Otto would say - is that non-rational part, a non-rational explosion from the depths of God's essence, depths that are alien to us, and come across as - from an ethical point of view - evil: but it might be - as Nietzsche would put it - 'beyond' Good and Evil. Even C.S. Lewis said that the road to God runs past Sinai.

Then Otto points out the Numinous stuff in the New Testament and Luther and the issue of predestination.

It's cool that C.S. Lewis used the idea of the Numinous/Holy in his history of religion in the preface for his 'The Problem of Pain'. That brought to my mind that in the person of Christ, you had a combination of that Law that must be obeyed and that Numinousness which is responsible for the origin of Religion. Those two elements coalesce in Christ, since He is the God whom the Jews worshiped, the Law which they obeyed, and that Holy One before whom they felt dread, awe, fascination, and mystery.

Overall, an awesome book, though I would love analytical philosophers to further analyze some of the concepts Otto uses. Otto seems content with arousing feelings analogous to feelings of the Numinous, or just giving us the etymology of a word, or its origin in the Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. That's cool; don't get me wrong. But it would be better - just to advance the ideas in the book better - if major philosophers came forward and gave good arguments or conceptual analysis of the major concepts employed in the book. But the book itself is first-rate.

The book also helped explain why I love moving music so much. The music arouses feelings - feelings of a certain kind: sublime feelings. Little did I know, these feelings have an analogy to the same feelings Moses felt on the mountain in the presence of God, or that Job felt under the whirlwind, or that the disciples felt when Christ was transfigured, or that St. John felt when he received his Revelation, or what St. Paul felt when God met him on the road to Damascus. And then you have a longing to be in union with Something, some 'Naked Other', as Lewis called it. And that is the 'Joy' that Lewis talked about.

It's just so cool to see all these different concepts you read about tied together in an elegant way.

Anyway, I highly recommend it!