Rudolph Otto’s The Idea of the Holy: Worthless
Rudolph Otto was a German Protestant theologian and historian of religion. In 1923 the first English translation of his German work The Idea of the Holy appeared. It has become, as Victor P. Hamilton’s says, “one of the books most frequently referred to in this area [holiness].” I was reading Hamilton's Handbook on the Pentateuch today, and he referenced Otto. In fact, Otto was the only author he referenced in his discussion of holiness in Genesis 1-2 (short paragraph).
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of references to this book. Scholars regularly pay lip service to it as though it constitutes a signal contribution to a knowledge of holiness. Admittedly, Hamilton notes that “Otto does not address … the fact that God’s holiness gives the basis to his moral demands.” But the fact that his is the only work referenced by Hamilton suggests he is significant and worth reading. Today I looked up on the book on Google books and read around in it, particularly his chapter, “The Numenous in the Old Testament.”
The first thing I noticed is that the focus on the book is not on what holiness is in Scripture, but rather on the experience men have when encountering what they regard as holy. The subtitle of the book is significant: “An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational.”
John C. Durham accurately capture’s Otto’s understanding of holiness: “Otto characterizes 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. [Note that the German heilig can be rendered as either holy or sacred. The translator had to make a choice and chose holy. So in the context of Otto, for holy it is possible to read sacred: the religious experience he discusses is the experience of the sacred.]” (www.bytrent.demon.co.uk/otto1.html).
Second, Otto’s work assumes an evolutionary, Hegelian view of religious development from the primitive to the advanced. This perspective is completely unbiblical and at odds with the current movements in Western religion. We’re heading polytheistic again.
Otto's treatment of the OT is shot through with rationalistic, history of religions assumptions: Again, Durham captures it well: “In the chapter on the numinous in the Old Testament, Otto discusses the transition of the Old Testament God from an early Yahweh, still bearing traces of the 'daemonic dread' of the pre-god stage of the numinous , to an Elohim in whom 'the rational aspect outweighs the numinous' [p 75], though the latter continues to be very much present.”
Third, as Durham's site points out, Otto never uses the Latin phrase most commonly attributed to him (Hamilton cites it): mysterium tremendum et fascinosum [sic]. According to Durham, the et fascinans was added to Otto's mysterium tremendum by Ninian Smart. This observation suggests what I have long suspected: that few of those who cite Otto have read Otto, and that he is cited because he "must be."
My conclusion: The Idea of the Holy book offers the bible-believing scholar nothing of value for understanding the nature of biblical holiness. Biblical scholars should stop citing it, unless they intend to expose its worthlessness.
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of references to this book. Scholars regularly pay lip service to it as though it constitutes a signal contribution to a knowledge of holiness. Admittedly, Hamilton notes that “Otto does not address … the fact that God’s holiness gives the basis to his moral demands.” But the fact that his is the only work referenced by Hamilton suggests he is significant and worth reading. Today I looked up on the book on Google books and read around in it, particularly his chapter, “The Numenous in the Old Testament.”
The first thing I noticed is that the focus on the book is not on what holiness is in Scripture, but rather on the experience men have when encountering what they regard as holy. The subtitle of the book is significant: “An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational.”
John C. Durham accurately capture’s Otto’s understanding of holiness: “Otto characterizes 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. [Note that the German heilig can be rendered as either holy or sacred. The translator had to make a choice and chose holy. So in the context of Otto, for holy it is possible to read sacred: the religious experience he discusses is the experience of the sacred.]” (www.bytrent.demon.co.uk/otto1.html).
Second, Otto’s work assumes an evolutionary, Hegelian view of religious development from the primitive to the advanced. This perspective is completely unbiblical and at odds with the current movements in Western religion. We’re heading polytheistic again.
Otto's treatment of the OT is shot through with rationalistic, history of religions assumptions: Again, Durham captures it well: “In the chapter on the numinous in the Old Testament, Otto discusses the transition of the Old Testament God from an early Yahweh, still bearing traces of the 'daemonic dread' of the pre-god stage of the numinous , to an Elohim in whom 'the rational aspect outweighs the numinous' [p 75], though the latter continues to be very much present.”
Third, as Durham's site points out, Otto never uses the Latin phrase most commonly attributed to him (Hamilton cites it): mysterium tremendum et fascinosum [sic]. According to Durham, the et fascinans was added to Otto's mysterium tremendum by Ninian Smart. This observation suggests what I have long suspected: that few of those who cite Otto have read Otto, and that he is cited because he "must be."
My conclusion: The Idea of the Holy book offers the bible-believing scholar nothing of value for understanding the nature of biblical holiness. Biblical scholars should stop citing it, unless they intend to expose its worthlessness.
Labels: holiness, Rudolph Otto
posted by Philip Brown | 10:28 PM
4 Comments:
Ummm, how exactly do you feel about the book? :)
I've not read it. Don't think I ever cited it. Do own it somewhere.
Wanna buy it?
:o) Did I sound peeved? Probably the result of a slow 20-year irritation that finally burst its way into prose in combination with a later than usual hour for writing.
I should give credit to Coppedge for taking Otto to task as unbiblical (p. 49) and to Oswalt Called to be Holy who also rejected his work as significant for understanding Biblical holiness.
Thanks for taking the time to respond at length, Jason. I am certainly in agreement with your statement that “scholarship should be able to see through the man and his faults to his contribution.” I try to practice this, though I’m sure I fail at times.
Let me concede a couple points: Regarding mysterium tremendum et fascinans, I concede that since Otto develops the idea of attraction and fascination as a corollary of horror and dread, it is legitimate to add et fascinans to mysterium tremendum as a comprehensive statement of Otto’s definition. Good point. I stand corrected. FWIW, Otto cites the Latin term fascinans on p. 52.
Also, I did not intend to imply that Otto discounts the moral and ethical aspects of holiness. He doesn't. He delimits them from his investigation.
On the other hand, I do not believe Otto's book is at all helpful when seeking to understand the nature of biblical holiness. I regard it is a egregious error to confuse or conflate the meaning of holiness with the human response to encountering a holy being.
I flatly deny that the term holiness either denotes or connotes (in Scripture) anything like Otto's mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
If I am right, then Otto deserves no mention or only passing corrective mention when discussing the meaning/definition/nature of biblical holiness. The "narrow" place where his work does legitimately fit would be in a discussion of human responses to encounters with God.
To reiterate my primary gripe: In my reading experience, Otto is often one of the first works cited in discussions on the meaning of holiness and is sometimes highly lauded as making a significant contribution to our understanding of the meaning of holiness. I do not believe this is so, hence I regard Otto as worthless for helping anyone understand the meaning of holiness.
Someone might offer as a counter-argument, "But, doesn't one need to account for whatever it is in the nature of a thing that elicits a predictable response from those who encounter it?" This is a good question. My response is that when a person has carefully considered all of what Scripture has to say about holiness, he/she will conclude that it is not God's holiness that generates mysterium tremendum et fascinans but rather God's being as a whole. Holy describes God because of who He is. God is not who He is because He is holy.
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