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Title: The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto, John W. Harvey ISBN: 0-19-500210-5 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 1958 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.7 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Finding Words to Describe the "Wholly Other"
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: Rescues the Idea from the darkness of misunderstanding
Comment: In many ways, the book is dealing with an area of paradox about which little may be honestly said, much less thought. The Idea of the Holy, however, may be easier to grasp, with big gloves and iron tongs, than the actual experience of an encounter with the Holy.
In some ways you could say that for some people, myself included, the idea of the Holy is like a flame for moths. It is an irresistable idea. The encounter with the Holy is, on the other hand, solemn and terrifying. That is the reason why so many religious rituals are about purification. Or why the scriptures give us the parable of the wedding ceremony. If you show up, make sure you are wearing wedding clothes that you have woven yourself. This is if you wish to avoid being bound and cast into the outer darkness.
Otto goes a long way towards rescuing the idea and restoring it to its appropriate realm within the context of human experience. This is an existential reality. Either you have experience with it, or you do not. If you do not, there is not much that can be said.
Frankly, this is a book for those who have never been thrown from their horse and blinded for three days. For those who have not been told: "Go forth to the next town where you will be instructed." It's for people who think that the Divine Reality can be pontificated upon, that their opinions on the subject are important, in other words, its for people ensnared within the vanity of this world, who are frankly clueless about the idea of the Holy--and when it might thrust itself upon them, like a thief in the night, leaving them filled with a sense of utter inadequacy to the challenge. Those who know do not seek. They attend to their thoughts and their deeds with care. An encounter with the Holy is not "a consumation devoutly to be wished". The beginning of wisdom, after all, is the fear of the Lord.
If you feel you must attempt to approach, at all, remember the admonishment, from the scriptures, "to suffer the little children to come unto me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven." If you cannot, as T.H Huxley wrote, "Lay down before the Truth like a little child", then, do yourself a favor: do not go there.
Unless you are, like Job, crying out from your dunghill, and you have no other choice. At least, when you have been reduced to nothing, you have nothing left to lose.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not a textbook for would-be adepts...
Comment: I rate this classic in Christian Mysticism not for what it is or says but what it is not and certainly does not say. First of all it is not a Jungian mythology text nor does it have anything in common with works by(the likes of)Joseph Campbell who was an avowed and proud atheist. Studying works...often profound as they are...of Mircea Eliade will construct and fortify the very obstacles that obscure/prevent radical Grace Experience Otto terms "The Mysterium Tremendum". Would-be adepts are often quick to criticize theological genius of(a)saint-like Thomas Aquinas. Yet conveniently they forget he himself dismissed The SUMMA as little more than preparatory Guide for sincere faith desperately in need of REASON's crutch(from Crux). Medieval theologians often taxed the would-be Pure of Heart with a nominalist/semantic riddle: God was NO-THING...therefore totally beyond knowledge categories and expressible human experience. So what? Ants have no categories for "religious" illumination regarding humanity nor individuals. Yet the realities are; sometimes they CROSS paths. The point: Otto's book is not a place to begin. (Maybe a term in prison; a tour of combat; or a long isolation among uncorrupted children might do). St. John of the Cross' DARK NIGHT
OF THE SOUL might do because it may just discourage foolish meddling about where "angels fear to tread." Is this a warning? Of course.
Padre Pio was stigmatist who spent most of his life hearing Confession(ie: ministering to the reality of Sin).And celebrating ultimate Christian Mystery:HOLY MASS-- where Christ --LOGOS and Second Hypostasis of the Divinely Revealed Trinune God--humbly "empties" Himself into simplest signs of Bread & Wine to COMMUNicate not merely the Idea of the Holy, but Holiness (Himself).Protestants deny this.Many would-be gnostics defy it in absurd paradox of desiring...like Eve...fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; rather than of Life. Mother Theresa was undoubtedly a mystic. She said...to my knowledge...little about "numenous"experiences, because she was too busy (ad)ministering moments of Grace to destitute poor. However: she is said to have said she could see the Face of Christ in these otherwise abandoned. Is this MYSTERIUM TREMENDOM at its most ironic, absurd and True? Again: Otto's book is what it is. Don't forget what it isn't, or shouldn't be......
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Title: The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade, Willard Trask ISBN: 015679201X Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1968 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James ISBN: 0684842971 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: Reconciliation: A Study of Biblical Families in Conflict by Michael S. Moore, Thomas H. Olbricht ISBN: 0899006841 Publisher: College Press Publishing Company, Inc. Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.99 |
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Title: Introduction to the Pentateuch by R. Norman Whybray ISBN: 0802808379 Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Book of the Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch by Thomas W. Mann ISBN: 0804200858 Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: May, 1988 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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