Otto

The Priority of the Numinous:
An Analysis of the precepts of Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy


Tarjei Park




Introduction

This essay is not intended as a study of Rudolf Otto’s developed system of the numinous, but of its assumptions and precepts. I shall not be attempting a phenomenological analysis of the elements of Mysterium, Tremendum et Fascinans. There is ample scope for detailing prominent and representative religious experiences in differing World Faiths, showing how they deviate from or contradict Otto’s category, and subsequently developing a critique.

I have instead decided to concentrate on an area less touched upon by the few writers who have written on this subject. Of these few, most allow only sporadic paragraphs on Otto; at most a chapter. I shall deal with four aspects: The Rational and the Non-rational, The Numinous, Autonomy, and ‘The Holy’ as an a priori category. In each case I shall outline Otto’s argument and then respond.

The Rational and the Non-rational

Rudolf Otto draws a clear distinction between the rational and the non-rational. The indefinable starting point in all religions is subsequently rationalised through the process of conceptualisation. This process is the means by which a particular religion gains ‘high rank and superior value’. That Christianity contains conceptions about God in unique clarity and abundance is a very real sign of its superiority.

What should be made clear at the outset is that what Otto means by ‘non-rational’ is not ‘anti-rational’. It is not so much that the ‘rational’ is wrong, but that it is inadequate and secondary. The ‘rational’ functions as belief. It is through conceptualised thought in the form of belief that (by faith) religious knowledge is made possible; and hence an explicit theology. Yet what must be guarded against is the notion that ‘the essence of deity’ can be fully understood and transmitted by ‘rational’ conceptualisation. Conceptualisation stems more from traditional Western aims in the use of language than from a desire to understand God. As Otto states:

‘All language, in so far as it consists of words, purports to convey ideas or concepts;- that is what language means;- and the more clearly and unequivocally it does so, the better the language. And hence expositions of religious truth in language inevitably tend to stress the ‘rational’ attributes of God.’1

Otto regards this emphasis as seriously misleading. ‘Rational’ attributes of God are so far from exhausting the idea of deity that they ‘in fact imply a non-rational or supra-rational Subject of which they are predicates.’2 Although they are ‘essential’ and not mere ‘accidental’ attributes they are ultimately synthetic essential attributes.

An understanding of God is not possible by the exclusive use of conceptual thought. This does not necessitate an apophatic response. The ineffable can be elaborated upon as, Otto claims, is witnessed by the copious eloquence of mystics. What is being argued for is that the idea of God is not to be contextualised by rationalist conceptions.

What must be remembered is that rationalism is no recent approach. Orthodox Christianity itself is responsible for the intellectualisation of the supra-rational. By an emphasis upon doctrine the supra-rational became limited and diminished in importance. A system of language or a vocabulary must therefore be formulated that adequately represents the supra-rational; that being a vocabulary that does not depend upon a rationalist conceptualising frame of reference. What is explicitly argued is that language relating to religious experience must have complete autonomy:

‘For if there be any single domain of human experience that presents us with something unmistakably specific and unique, peculiar to itself, assuredly it is that of the religious life.’3


Reply

What must be addressed is how far two trends exist in representing God. How fair is Otto in arguing that a supra-rational response has been systematically supplanted by a rationalist response? In terms of Christian origins, Jesus seems, albeit figuratively, to have represented a God of parental concern that deals rationally over the actions of human beings. The human response to God was presented as a cause and effect dialectic grounded in the rationally conceived. Even the tone and content of Jesus’ notions of prayer very much tend to accessible images that dictate tangible actions on the part of humans. To expand this further, we must ask whether Christianity is essentially experiential or doctrinal. Which, if either, has priority? Is Christian experience of God dependent upon a moral mode of living, or does this mode proceed from an experience of God? Having said this, this does not mean that a linear relation between the two has to be entertained. A revelatory Damascus road experience would not seem to depend upon a prior moral mode of living. Yet the general Christian experience of living in the presence of God would seem to demand a morally characterised Christian intention however subliminal.

Otto argues that rational language systems have overwhelmed the more essential supra-rational character of and response to God. This presupposes to some length that doctrinal language is itself essentially ‘rational’. It is rather telling to note the level of negation present in credal formulations. It must be remembered that Chalcedonian Christianity was essentially defensive, as is exemplified by the negations dealing with Christ, asunchutos, atreptos, adiairetos, achoristos.

Furthermore, the contention that the primary aim of language is that of clarity, precision and hence diminishment is not entirely correct. The languages of conversation, poetry, emotional situations, and, indeed, creeds themselves are characterised by as much metaphor and abstraction as definition and confinement.

Although acknowledging the historical existence of supra-rational sounds and words used of deity, Otto does not display how widespread such an approach has been and is. Archaic language such as Latin and Seventeenth century English has acted as a linguistic method of experiential displacement; a stripping away of the mundane by use of an ‘other’ language. Liturgical formulations can scarcely be reduced to a rationalist response, its sacramental vocabulary itself defies such interpretation.

Interestingly Western converts to Buddhism have retained Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese terminology in their practice. What is here so ironic is that the essentially utilitarian methods of orthodox Buddhism have gained a mysterious quality that is clearly in contradiction with their intentions.

I should like to finish this chapter with what is most probably the essential problem encountered thus far in Otto’s argument. That is, is there meaning in such a thing as non-conceptual thought? Clearly it is hard to know of what a non-conceptualising response consists. This is most explicitly illustrated by reference to Ch’an Buddhism. The Platform Sutra asserts that a True Reality exists independently of the phenomenal world. Here ‘things in themselves’. let alone the conception of them, are deemed completely irrelevant, the sutra maintaining the singular importance of a non-referential True Reality. Non-conceptual thought itself seems a contradiction in terms. If we accept the justifiable assumption that language precedes logic, that is, that cognition is dependent upon culturally bound linguistic structures, then a radical negation of conceptual logic would necessitate a cognitive neutrality that was impossible to represent.

If True Reality is mentally perceived when conceptual thinking and the phenomenal world has been discarded, how far does it exist noumenously, that is, independent of mind or ‘in itself’? In the case of the Platform Sutra it would appear, as a result of the sutra’s theory of internalisation, that it is a reality that is restricted to mind and therefore a psychological construct only. If it is as such non-propositional and therefore non-referential phenomenologically, the charge that it is pseudological might seem warranted.

Such a problem is, of course, not restricted to the Platform Sutra. Of a theistic correlate to Ch’an Buddhist ‘True Reality’ Anthony O’Hear has stated:

‘The notion of pure being is one we have found wanting in intelligibility on a number of occasions, as being indistinguishable from a pure nothing.’4


‘Numen’ and the ‘Numinous’

Otto maintains that an uncorrupted word for this supra-rational experiential starting-point no longer exists. Specifically, the term ‘holy’ has acquired ethical overtones that do not represent its essence and that are secondary. Of ‘the Holy’ he states: ‘...if the ethical element was present at all, at any rate it was not original and never constituted the whole meaning of the word.’5 ‘The Holy’ has come to mean the perfectly moral, as is exemplified by Kant’s terming the will which remains obedient to the moral law a ‘holy’ will.

It is the meaning that exists independently of perfectly moral that Otto believes must be isolated. Yet to retain the term ‘holy’ would allow ethical content to remain. We must therefore ‘invent a special term to stand for “the Holy” minus its moral factor or “moment”, and, as we can now add, minus its “rational” aspect altogether.’6

This ‘unnamed Something’ is the ‘real innermost core’ of religion and has been previously rendered by the Hebrew qadôsh, the Greek agios and the Latin sanctus and sacer. Yet all these terms have subsequently been associated with absolute goodness, an association resulting from ‘rationalisation’ and ‘moralisation’ that constitutes a deviation from their original meanings. Originally, ‘the Holy’ was in itself ethically neutral and constituted a ‘unique original feeling-response’, that is, a non-rationally ‘conceived’, intuitive response to the ‘Wholly Other’.

The Latin word Numen (the most general word in early Roman religion for divinity or religious powers) is to represent the ‘...“extra” in the meaning of “holy” above and beyond the meaning of goodness.’7 The ‘numinous’ then being used of a unique category of value and the correlating perfectly sui generis mental state that is irreducible to any other. Although it can be discussed, this primary and elementary datum cannot be strictly defined. It can be understood only by means of intuition and direct experience.


Reply

Otto clearly believes that there exists a dual and separable content to the term ‘holy’ in which the ethical content can be stripped away from a primary meaning and discarded. This belief is dependent upon a particular history of religion; it is a syncretistic vision that does not fully acknowledge the radical evolution of religious perception.

It may do well to at least note that much of what Otto argues for relates to a hidden agenda. Without, at this stage, making judgements, it should be pointed out that an underlying universalism substantially colours Otto’s thinking.

Following Otto, John Oman has argued of the numinous: ‘in all religion it is perhaps the basis, as the world of touch is to the other senses.’8 He goes on to distinguish between ‘the undifferentiated holy’ and ‘the particularising holy...The one is a general sense of the supernatural as one absolute reality, and the other the feeling of this in almost any conceivable manifestation.’9 I think this argument might be best assessed by way of an analogy. What Oman seems to be arguing for is a common langue (‘the undifferentiated holy’) that obviously has different parôles (‘the particularising holy’), but that these all fully represent the langue. Yet that they contain a common mode of expression, which in religion might be ‘human response’, does not necessitate substantial similarly. That ‘Water contains Hydrogen and Oxygen’ and ‘John loves Susan’ share a langue does not necessitate their being even remotely substantially connected.

Otto clearly presupposes a religious ‘constant’ that has existed from time immemorial and has been retained in the great World Faiths of today. It is this constant that is the substance of the numinous, it is a constant that has remained through Primitive, Archaic, Historical and to Modern Religion. What this constant does not allow for is the disparate sense of what ‘the holy’ constitutes. There is almost a genetic fallacy at work in Otto’s thinking. That ethical content was not part of the etymological root of a term, excludes it from the genuine interpretation of that term. Otto subsequently develops the system of schematisation in which the ethical and rational becomes juxtaposed with the numinous to constitute ‘the Holy’.

All this can be more clearly illustrated by reference to Christianity. Christianity does not belong to the weltanschauung of Primitive and Archaic Religion, indeed, it is characterised by ethical monotheism and as an Historical Religion, both of which are not central to earlier religious forms. To isolate a non-ethical ‘feeling-response’ from Christianity involves, to an extent, a significant category mistake. What is so telling here is that Otto borrows the term ‘Numen’. This old Latin term was used with reference to an Archaic Religion that bears little specific resemblance to Christianity.

Furthermore, Christianity is largely founded upon the Christ-event. In Pauline theology the new found or restored relationship with God is dependent on and conditioned by the historical event of the Resurrection; an act by God is responsible for the subsequent Christocentric experience. Depersonalised experiences of ‘the Holy’ are rare in the New Testament and certainly not generally representative.

We must again note the influence of a certain syncretistic bias in Otto’s system, a bias (prominent in the early part of this century) that stems from an emphasis upon the group term ‘religion’, an emphasis that Barth was so aggressively to contest. This fashionable concentration on holiness in the context of ‘religion’ is forcefully exemplified by a statement made by Soderblom in 1913:

‘Holiness is the great word in religion; it is even more essential than the notion of God. Real religion may exist without a definite conception of divinity. The idea of God without the conception of the holy is not religion...Not the mere existence of the divinity, but its mana, its power, its holiness is what religion involves.’10

Such a statement might be adequate as a very general argument, however, it lacks a specificity clearly demanded when dealing with individual traditions; it certainly does not adequately cater for the essential Christocentric experience in Christianity.

In the light of this we must seriously question how far the numinous is the ‘real innermost core’ of Christianity. I would not want to deny that the numinous is experiencable by Christians, however, clearly the numinous is not the self-evident normative Christian experience of God.

It must be remembered that the vast majority of Christian experiences do not conform to Otto’s system. It is often easy to forget when talking of religious experience that the normative Christian experiences of a presence are not represented by those of Meister Eckhart or St John of the Cross. An awareness of the presence of God as Father, Son or the Spirit is most usually to be found in sacramental worship or private prayer. John Wijngaards, although not writing as an analytical philosopher, writes:

‘The core of our Christian belief is that God became visible to us in Jesus Christ ...It is as if God, who remains such a mystery as the ground of our being and the ultimate reality of the universe, has shown us his “face”.’11

For Wijngaards, meeting Christ ‘face to face’ constitutes the ‘inner circle of prayer’. Surely this constitutes, to use Otto’s phrase, the ‘real innermost core’ of Christian experience.

Otto’s claim that the numinous is sui generis, irreducible, indefinable and a ‘feeling-response’ is surely epistemologically weak. In allowing it such autonomy it is put beyond the reach of critical appraisal (I shall follow this up more in the next section). Yet, the numinous is given meaning that goes further than pure ‘feeling’. Otto in presenting the constituent parts of the numinous, Mysterium, Tremendum et Fascinans, details Creature-Feeling, Awe-fulness, Overpoweringness, Energy (or Dynamism) and Wholly-Otherness as prevalent aspects. These aspects go far beyond the rather ‘neutral’ response initially argued for. Furthermore, if these aspects are to be credible surely some framework for their substantiation is needed. Richard Swinburne’s Principals of Credulity and Testimony would seem to be apt examples of how this might be attempted. Yet, Otto explicitly denies the need for such a framework. What must be asked is how far such a denial is coherent.


Exclusivism and the Autonomy of the Numinous

According to Otto a personal acquaintance with the data is a crucial requirement in understanding the religious form of consciousness in question. Indeed, in this he is most abrupt:

‘The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no farther;...’12

What is important is the unique quality of religious states of consciousness rather than what is common to other similar states. It is for this reason that Otto is critical of Schleiermacher’s isolation of the ‘feeling of dependence’ as the central feature of ‘the quite unique and incomparable experience of solemn worship’13 The ‘feeling of dependence’ is undeniably analogous to mundane states of mind. Religious dependence differs only from other feelings of dependence by degree and not ‘of intrinsic quality’ and for this reason, Otto maintains, Schleiermacher is wrong. The numinous ‘cannot be expressed by means of anything else, just because it is so primary and elementary a datum in our psychical life, and therefore only definable through itself.’14 Yet Otto believes this experience can be given a name:

‘I propose to call it “creature consciousness” or creature-feeling. It is the emotion of a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures.’15

Yet this, it is emphasised, is not a conceptual explanation. Creature-feeling purely denotes a ‘submergence into nothingness’ before an ‘absolute might’. Indeed, only by experience is this to be understood:

‘...the character of this overpowering might, a character that cannot be expressed verbally,...can only be suggested indirectly through the tone and content of a man’s feeling-response to it. And this response must be directly experienced in oneself to be understood.’16

Schleiermacher’s formulation is deficient as it is primarily a ‘category of self-valuation.’ This, according to Otto, is entirely opposed to the ‘psychological facts. “Creature-feeling” is itself a first subjective concomitant and effect of another feeling-element, which casts it like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate and primary reference to an object outside its self.’17


Reply

Otto presents a dualism of pure religious feeling and the non-religious that he believes is separable. Yet the way in which pure religious feeling is defined is highly problematic. ‘Creature-feeling’ as defined is clearly derived from and dependent upon a Judeo-Christian ontology. The autonomy of the numinous, although intended to span religious boundaries, is firmly located within a Judeo-Christian frame of reference. Indeed, in no way could ‘creature-feeling’ accommodate an orthodox Buddhist ontology. Similarly, its pronounced dualism is clearly incompatible with major Hindu traditions.

Even if we apply ‘creature-feeling’ to Christianity alone significant problems remain unresolved.

Theologically, there is little scriptural material that substantiates Otto’s position. New Testament theologies strongly favour a conceptual and personal relationship between the God-head and the individual. The Johannine Prologue describes those who ‘received Him’ and were given the ‘power to become sons of God’. A similar Christocentric emphasis is repeated (at length) in Paul’s writings again and again (Rom.6 & 8, 2 Cor. 5, Gal.2 & 3, Eph.1, Phil.2 & 3, Col.1 & 3, etc.). Even the ‘Third Heaven’ experience described in 2 Cor.12, although in seemingly supra-rational language, still emphasises a personal encounter and exchange between Paul and God. There are, indeed, passages that emphasise the overwhelming power of God, these tend to be Hebraic or Apocalyptic (Heb.10:31,12:29, Rev.1 & 4) and although often employing heavy symbolism, they still tend to the conceptual and personal.

Otto very definitely criticises Schleiermacher for opposing the ‘psychological facts’. Schleiermacher is criticised for inferring God from a psychological ‘feeling’. Instead Otto argues for the primacy of the ‘object outside the self’. Otto seems rather pseudological here. How far can his notions of ‘creature-feeling’ and the other ‘feeling-element’ be representative of psychological fact? It would seem no more so than those of Schleiermacher. Furthermore, is Otto arguing we can experience that a non-conceptual object outside the self is ontologically prior? How is our experience experienced as being secondary? If the experience is non-conceptual how is it then sequential and detailed as it is?

Philosophically, Otto claims for the category of the numinous an autonomy from analytical discourse claimed by (so-called) Wittgensteinian Fideists for religious modes of discourse. A close affinity between Otto’s argument and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus has been argued for. This is followed up by H.D. Lewis who, when speaking of doctrines that appear openly to ‘flout the ordinary criteria of good sense and consistency’, states:

‘If...God is “wholly other”, if He is altogether outside the sphere within which formal explanations are possible, we appear to be confronted with an overwhelming and irreducible mystery and there seems to be no reason why beliefs, if they are possible at all, should conform to ordinary standards.’18

Clearly many of the problems encountered by fideist defences effect Otto’s argument. For example, although the claim might be made that religious discourse has a distinctive logic that is quite distinct from the logic of science or ‘the rational’, this might be questioned by religious propositional claims made that refer to nature, human beings, the cosmos and so on. Similarly Otto does not refrain from making conceptualisations that refer to ‘the rational’. Yet, non-conceptual discourse would seem an impossibility, and silence (the logical response to the God detailed by Lewis?) must somehow be contextualised.


The Holy as an a priori category

Otto argues that ‘the Holy’, comprising both rational and non-rational components, is a ‘purely a priori category’:

‘The rational ideas of absoluteness, completion, necessity, and substantiality, and no less so those of the good as an objective value, objectively binding and valid, are not to be “evolved” from any sort of sense-perception.’19

These ‘rational’ ideas are not ‘accounted for’ by sense-perception but by ‘an original and underivable capacity of the mind implanted in the “pure reason” independently of all perception.’20 For the non-rational elements of ‘the Holy’ we are referred to that ‘still deeper than “pure reason”’ - namely the fundus animae or ‘ground of the soul’ (Seelengrund).

According to Otto, therefore, ‘the Holy’ is not reducible to empirical explanations. Rather, experience is merely a stimulus to intuition of the numinous. The proof of Otto’s argument is to be ‘reached by introspection and a critical examination of reason’21 Otto follows Kant to the extent that he argues that the ‘thing in itself’ exists prior to our experience of it and hence is not reducible to our experience. The numinous is merely apprehended by a ‘hidden “predisposition” of the human spirit.’22 This predisposition ‘begins in undirected, groping emotion, a seeking and shaping of representations, and goes on, by a continual onward striving, to generate ideas, till its nature is self-illumined and made clear by an explication of the obscure a priori foundation of thought itself, out of which it originated.’23


Reply

It might be very useful to compare the sequence and content of this last quotation with those of other influential thinkers. My straying away from the field of philosophy might be pardoned by Otto’s insistence upon the psychological factuality of his system. My comparison might be best carried out by the use of admittedly crude, though hopefully representative diagrams.

Otto


The Holy - Undirected, - Generation - Explication
groping emotions of ideas of the Holy

This then might be represented as:

HOLY - EXPERIENCE - INTERPRETATION


This would clearly be questioned by certain theorists. The Feuerbachian transference theory would counter both the content and sequence of Otto’s system by maintaining that socially agreed high qualities are personified and projected as a religious ideal. A Feuerbachian alternative to the above diagram would be:

Socially conceived - Experience - Perception of correlating
high qualities figures

A similar sequence would be that of Freud:

Parent/Child - Relationship experienced - Perception of correlating
relationship cosmically figures

Both Feuerbach’s and Freud’s sequences might be summarised thus:

HUMAN CONCEPTIONS (A) - EXPERIENCE - REINFORCEMENT OF A

What is essential here is that the starting point is human and historically relative.

As we saw earlier, certain aspects of the numinous corroborate a Judeo-Christian conception of divinity. This might be seen as arguing for the Feuerbachian/Freudian sequence. It must be borne in mind that even in Otto’s sequence ‘the Holy’ is latterly interpreted in a way congenial to prior non-intuitive doctrine. It is certainly supportive of conceptual systems. However, it must be emphasised that the mere fact that there does not exist utter discrepancy between the numinous and a conceptual system does not logically negate Otto’s a priori claim. His claim of a priori can, I believe, be supported by a Jungian sequence. It should be made clear that Jung fully applied this sequence to religious perception although it obviously covered ‘wider’ ground.

Collective unconscious - Realisation - Individuation
Archetypes
God imago
Numinous

Here the Collective Unconscious (that is not reducible to individual sense-experience or to a geographical or historical setting) is the original point of reference. The archetypes of the Collective Unconscious are gradually perceived by the individual in the process of individuation. One such archetype is named by Jung ‘God Imago’; the awe-inspiring God. Jung borrowed Otto’s term ‘numinous’ here and widely used it elsewhere.24 Clearly here the Collective Unconscious repudiates the a posteriori categories in the sequences of Feuerbach and Freud.

Now it is unlikely that Otto would have accepted Jung’s system. He might well have discounted it on the grounds that it did not adequately represent the ‘Wholly-Otherness’ of the numinous. Yet what must be emphasised is that the Collective Unconscious exists prior to and independent of its perception by the individual.

That the a priori category of ‘the Holy’ is universal and universally the same, is questioned by the diversity of religious phenomena and experiences. Furthermore, that which constitutes ‘the Holy’ is by no means universal. This can be most clearly illustrated by reference to orthodox Buddhism in which Otto’s category would have no relevance whatsoever. Indeed, experiences encountered in meditation similar to those of the numinous would be firmly dismissed as useless psychological manifestations that interfere with meditative progress.

Philip Almond argues that the Kantian framework used to substantiate the notion of the a priori category of ‘the Holy’ militates against Otto ‘taking note of the phenomenological disparities...and persuades him to place both theistic and mystical experience within the broad category of the numinous experience.’25 Yet although the Kantian foundation might substantiate the claim for ‘the Holy’ as an a priori category, it does not necessitate the syncretism of Otto’s system. As Bastow has stated of Otto, ‘he assumes a phenomenological unity based on religious experience, and considers that he merely has to find out its nature’26 (his italics).


Conclusion

In making the distinction between the Rational and the Non-rational Otto unfairly presents the former as dominating religious discourse. Furthermore, his promotion of non-conceptual thought or response is problematic in that by therefore being non-referential it attains a radical neutrality that renders it rather meaningless. His belief that a non-ethical experiential core can be isolated from the term ‘holy’ is only possible through the generalisation of historical religions. It is certainly difficult to isolate such a ‘pure’ experience from New Testament accounts. By claiming that this ‘pure’ experience is sui generis, irreducible and indefinable, Otto makes the category epistemologically weak in that lack of substantiation renders conceptual claims made for it open to justifiable attack.

The category of the numinous has a Judeo-Christian bias. Yet this is only insofar as the numinous represents a very general representation of Judeo-Christian notions of a ‘wholly other’ God. Specific New Testament theologies do not corroborate the experiential content of Otto’s category.

In maintaining that ‘the Holy’ is an a priori category I think Otto is on firmer ground. Certainly the weight of the correlating Jungian sequence undermines the disputation of such a position by the now classical, although rather naïve, reductionist sequences of Feuerbach and Freud.

It seems as if had Otto restricted himself to a more specific field of study his system would have been more feasible. His complete system of the constituent parts of the numinous might well be representative of certain Judeo-Christian traditions, yet in representing ‘religion’ it must be said that it is ultimately inadequate.


References

1. Otto 1958, p.2
2. ibid.
3. ibid. p.4
4. O’Hear 1984, p.240
5. op. cit. p.5
6. ibid. p.6
7. ibid.
8. Oman 1931, p.61
9. ibid. p.62
10. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VI, p.731
11. Wijngaards 1987, p.17
12. op. cit. p.8
13. ibid.
14. ibid. p.9
15. ibid. p.10
16. ibid.
17. ibid.
18. Lewis 1959, p.36
19. op. cit. p.112
20. ibid.
21. ibid. p.113
22. ibid. p.115
23. ibid. p.116
24. e.g. Answer to Job, p.93f.
25. Almond 1982, p.117
26. Bastow 1976, p.169




Bibliography

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Bastow, D. Otto and Numinous Experience, Religious Studies 12 1976.
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Religious Essays, OUP 1931.
Turner, H.W. Rudolf Otto’s ‘The Holy’, Aberdeen Peoples Press 1974.
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