Rudolf Otto

Rudolf Otto
Born (1869-09-25)25 September 1869
Peine, North German Confederation
Died 6 March 1937(1937-03-06) (aged 67)
Marburg, Germany
Language German
Subject theology and comparative religion

Rudolf Otto (25 September 1869 – 6 March 1937) was an eminent German Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion.

Life

Born in Peine near Hanover, Otto attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and studied at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, where he wrote his dissertation on Martin Luther's understanding of the Holy Spirit (Die Anschauung von heiligen Geiste bei Luther: Eine historisch-dogmatische Untersuchung), and his habilitation on Kant (). By 1906, he held a position as extraordinary professor, and in 1910 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Giessen. In 1915, he became ordinary professor at the University of Breslau, and in 1917, at the University of Marburg's Divinity School, then one of the most famous Protestant seminaries in the world. Although he received several other calls, he remained in Marburg for the rest of his life. He retired in 1929 and died of pneumonia eight years later, after he had suffered serious injuries falling some 20 m from a tower. Persistent but unconfirmed rumors identified this as a suicide attempt.[1] He is buried in Marburg cemetery.

The Idea of the Holy

Otto's most famous work is The Idea of the Holy, published first in 1917 as Das Heilige - Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (The Holy - On the Irrational in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational). It is one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, has never gone out of print, and is now available in about 20 languages. The book defines the concept of the holy as that which is numinous. Otto explained the numinous as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self". He coined this new term based on the Latin numen (divine power). (This expression is etymologically unrelated to Immanuel Kant's noumenon, a Greek term referring to an unknowable reality underlying all things.)

The numinous is a mystery (Latin: mysterium) that is both terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans) at the same time. This mental state "presents itself as ganz Andere, wholly other, a condition absolutely sui generis and incomparable whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed."[2] Karl Barth did approve such a description of God as totaliter aliter,[3] aliud, aliud valde (Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 7.10.16).[4] Otto also sets a paradigm for the study of religion that focuses on the need to realize the religious as a non-reducible, original category in its own right. This paradigm was under much attack between approximately 1950 and 1990 but has made a strong comeback since then, after its phenomenological aspects have become more apparent, and written about by Karl Rahner's presentation of man as a being of transcendence.

Influence

Otto left a broad influence on theology and philosophy of religion in the first half of the 20th century. German-American theologian Paul Tillich acknowledged Otto's influence on him, as did Romanian-American philosopher Mircea Eliade and Otto's most famous German pupil Gustav Mensching (1901–1978) from Bonn University. Eliade used the concepts from The Idea of the Holy as the starting point for his own 1957 book, The Sacred and the Profane. Otto was one of the very few modern theologians to whom C. S. Lewis indicates a debt, particularly the idea of the numinous in The Problem of Pain. Others to acknowledge Otto were, for instance, Carl Jung (borrowing the concept of the numinous), Karl Barth, Martin Heidegger, Leo Strauss, John A. Sanford, Richard Rohr, Hans-Georg Gadamer (critical in his youth, respectful in his old age), Max Scheler, Ernst Jünger, Joseph Needham, W. T. Stace, Joachim Wach and Hans Jonas. Ideas of Otto have been discussed also by Jewish thinkers, like Joseph Soloveitchik and Eliezer Berkovits.[5]

Works

In German

English translations

Notes

  1. ↑ Lindsay Jones (ed. in chief). Encyclopedia Of Religion: Second Edition. Thomson Gale, 2005, p. 6926. ISBN 0-02-865743-8.
  2. ↑ Eckardt, Alice L.; Eckardt, A. Roy (July 1980). "The Holocaust and the Enigma of Uniqueness: A Philosophical Effort at Practical Clarification". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Sage Publications) 450 (1): 165–178. doi:10.1177/000271628045000114. JSTOR 1042566. P. 169 cited in: Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, ed. (1991). A Traditional Quest. Essays in Honour of Louis Jacobs. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 54. ISBN 0-567-52728-X; ISBN 978-0-56752-728-8. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
  3. ↑ Webb, Stephen H. (1991). Re-figuring Theology. The Rhetoric of Karl Barth. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. p. 87. ISBN 1-438-42347-0; ISBN 978-1-43842-347-0. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
  4. ↑ Vessey, Mark, ed. (2012). A Companion to Augustine. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 107. ISBN 1-405-15946-4; ISBN 978-1-40515-946-3. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
  5. ↑ Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man and History, 2004, pp. 166, 170.

References

External links

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