Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 1 The Rational and the Non-Rational

Summary: Theists, by analogy, project and perfect their human rationality and personality on to their idea of God. The attributes that they apply to God can be understood and analyzed by the mind, and are thus what Otto calls "rational." Religions, such as Christianity, applying such attributes to God are rational religions and summon a belief and faith-based knowledge in their doctrines in contrast to vague, propositionless feelings. Yet it is wrong to suppose that God's essence can fully be understood through rational attributions, even though the rational occupies the foreground of discourse. Otto urges that the rational attributions imply a non-rational subject of which they are predicates. The rational elements are essential, but also "synthetic." Otto's explanation is dense: we have to attribute these rational elements to the God-subject, but this subject "in its deeper sense" is not comprehended by these elements. Comprehending it requires a different mode of understanding. Otto believes this mode must be utilized by mankind or we would not be able to assert anything of the God-subject, and we do this. Mysticism, in its assertions of experiential ineffability, does not mean nothing can be asserted of the object of religious consciousness, but their copious writings suggest there is something beyond the effable. Otto takes this as the first distinction between religious "rationalism" and "profounder religion." It is not the rejection of the miraculous that distinguishes them, but a difference regarding the "quality in the mental attitude and emotional content of the religious life itself." Orthodoxy constructed dogma/doctrine, and in the meantime failed to value the non-rational element in religion and so gave God an unbalanced intellectualistic spin. Eyes have been shut to the uniqueness of religious experience, but Otto believes it is one of the most unique of phenomena. In what follows, Otto will try to unpack the category of the holy or sacred.