The Idea of the Holy

Rating:
Summary: Finding Words to Describe the "Wholly Other"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Finding Words to Describe the "Wholly Other"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Explains why religion is more cool than being spiritual
Review: 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.