The Idea of the Holy

1. The Divine Nature Transcends Pure Reason

But, when this is granted, we have to be on our guard against an error which would lead to a wrong and one-sided interpretation of religion.

Beyond rational attributes. While theistic conceptions of God rightly describe Him with rational attributes like Spirit, Reason, Purpose, and Good Will, these concepts alone do not fully capture the divine nature. Language, by its very nature, tends to emphasize these rational aspects, leading to a common misconception that deity can be exhaustively understood through intellect.

The non-rational depth. Beneath this sphere of clear, definable concepts lies a hidden depth, inaccessible to purely conceptual thought, which we term "non-rational" or "supra-rational." This profound aspect is not a morbid irrationalism but an essential, deeper essence of the divine that eludes conceptual understanding. Even mysticism, while calling it "ineffable," still speaks copiously about it.

Rationalism's limitation. Rationalism errs by either excluding the non-rational entirely or allowing it to be overborne by rational elements. This intellectual bias prevails not only in theology but also in comparative religion, where scholars often reduce unique religious experiences to "natural" or "general" human ideational life, missing the unmistakably specific and unique character of the religious domain.

2. The Numinous is Religion's Irreducible Core

This mental state is perfectly sui generis and irreducible to any other; and therefore, like every absolutely primary and elementary datum, while it admits of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.

A unique category. "Holiness" is a distinct category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to religion, containing a specific, inexpressible element that sets it apart from ethics or pure reason. This element, which is the "overplus" of meaning beyond "moral goodness," is what we call the "numinous," derived from the Latin numen (supernatural divine power).

Evoking, not defining. The numinous cannot be strictly defined or taught conceptually because it is a primary, elementary datum of our psychical life. Instead, it must be evoked or awakened within the individual's mind through consideration and discussion, drawing analogies or contrasts with familiar experiences until the numinous stirs into consciousness.

Ethically neutral origin. Historically, words like holy (qaddosh, hagios, sacer) first denoted this numinous "overplus" before acquiring their ethical connotations. The ethical element was not original and never constituted the whole meaning. Modern criticism rightly explains the translation of qaddosh as "good" as an unwarranted rationalization or moralization of the term.

3. Creature-Feeling: Humanity's Awed Response to the Numinous

It is the emotion of a creature, abased and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures.

Beyond dependence. Schleiermacher identified "the feeling of dependence" as a key element, but this is merely an analogy. The true religious emotion is qualitatively distinct from ordinary dependence, which can arise from personal insufficiency or environmental circumstances. It is a deeper, more specific response.

Self-abasement before the supreme. This unique feeling is better termed "creature-consciousness" or "creature-feeling." It is the profound emotion of self-abasement into nothingness before an overpowering, absolute might. This is exemplified by Abraham's plea to God: "Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes."

Subjective reflection of the objective. Creature-feeling is a subjective concomitant and effect of experiencing the numinous as an objective presence (numen praesens). It is not a primary self-consciousness leading to an inference of God, but rather a response to the immediate apprehension of a numinous object outside the self.

4. Mysterium Tremendum: The Daunting and Overpowering Aspect of the Holy

Here we have a terror fraught with an inward shuddering such as not even the most menacing and overpowering created thing can instil.

Awefulness (Tremendum). The deepest and most fundamental element in strong religious emotion is the mysterium tremendum. Its "tremor" aspect is a specific kind of emotional response, distinct from ordinary fear, characterized by an inward shuddering and spectral quality. This "religious dread" or "awe" is the starting point for religious development, with antecedents in "daemonic dread."

Overpoweringness (Majestas). This element signifies absolute might and power, leading to the creature-consciousness of one's own abasement and nothingness. It forms the raw material for religious humility. Unlike Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" (consciousness of createdness), majestas evokes a consciousness of creaturehood—impotence against overwhelming power.

Energy (Urgency). The third element is the urgency or energy of the numinous object, vividly seen in the orge (Wrath) of Yahweh. This is not "natural" wrath but a non- or super-natural quality, expressed symbolically as vitality, passion, force, and movement. It represents the "living" God, resisting reduction to mere rational concepts and often appearing as incalculable or arbitrary to rational thought.

5. Mysterium Fascinans: The Alluring and Beatific Aspect of the Holy

These two qualities, the daunting and the fascinating, now combine in a strange harmony of contrasts, and the resultant dual character of the numinous consciousness, to which the entire religious development bears witness, at any rate from the level of the 'daemonic dread' onwards, is at once the strangest and most noteworthy phenomenon in the whole history of religion.

Harmony of contrasts. The numinous object, while daunting and awe-inspiring (tremendum), is simultaneously uniquely attractive and fascinating (fascinans). This dual character is a hallmark of religious experience, where the creature, though cowed, feels an impulse to turn to and even possess the mystery.

Beyond rational bliss. The fascinans element manifests as a strange ravishment, rising to dizzy intoxication, the "Dionysiac-element" in the numen. Its rational parallels are love, mercy, pity, and comfort, but it far exceeds these natural feelings, bestowing a beatitude beyond compare that cannot be fully proclaimed in speech or conceived in thought.

Longing for possession. This alluring quality explains why the numinous is sought for its own sake, not just for aid. It drives "sacramental" observances and mystical practices where humans seek to possess or identify with the numen, leading to the "vita religiosa" and the purest states of spiritual experience. This "overabounding" aspect is especially characteristic of mysticism and experiences of grace.

6. The "Wholly Other": God's Incomprehensible Transcendence

Taken in the religious sense, that which is 'mysterious' is—to give it perhaps the most striking expression—the 'wholly other' (Qdrepov, anyad, alie-num), that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the 'canny', and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.

Beyond conceptual grasp. The "mysterium" aspect of the numinous signifies that which is hidden, esoteric, and beyond conception or understanding. It evokes "stupor"—blank wonder and amazement. This is not merely a secret or a problem that can eventually be solved, but something inherently "wholly other," incommensurable with our own kind and character.

Primitive origins. This feeling of the "wholly other" is evident even in primitive religion, where it attaches to puzzling or astounding natural phenomena. Early "spirit" representations are attempts to rationalize this precedent experience, often weakening the mystery itself. The "fear of ghosts," a degraded offshoot, also stems from this "wholly other" quality, alluring the fancy precisely because it "doesn't really exist at all" in our scheme of reality.

Mystical "nothingness." In mysticism, the "wholly other" is stressed to an extreme, contrasting the numinous object not only with nature but with Being itself, sometimes calling it "that which is nothing." This "nothing" or "void" (e.g., Buddhist sunyam) is a numinous ideogram for something absolutely and intrinsically different from everything that is and can be thought, yet experienced as intensely positive.

7. The Holy: A Synthesis of Numinous and Moral Elements

And 'the holy' will be, in Dr. Otto's language, a complex category of the 'numinous' and the 'moral', or, in one of his favourite metaphors, a fabric in which we have the non-rational numinous experience as the woof and the rational and ethical as the warp.

Beyond profaneness. The numinous consciousness evokes a unique self-disvaluation, a feeling of absolute "profaneness" in contrast to the numen's "holiness." This is not merely moral transgression but a judgment upon one's very existence as a creature before the supreme. It leads to a longing for "atonement" or "covering," a desire to transcend this sundering unworthiness.

Moralization of the numinous. In highly developed religions, the numinous becomes permeated and saturated with rational and ethical meanings. The "tremendum" is schematized by ideas of justice and moral will, becoming the "holy Wrath of God." The "fascinans" is schematized by goodness, mercy, and love, becoming "Grace."

Indissoluble synthesis. This process of "moralization" does not suppress the numinous but completes and charges it with new content, forming the complex category of "the holy." The greatest distinction of ancient Israel's religion, from Amos onward, is this intimate coalescence, where God is the "absolutely Holy One" (perfectly good) and His law is "holy" (sacrosanct).

8. The Numinous is an A Priori Category of the Human Spirit

The numinous is of the latter kind. It issues from the deepest foundation of cognitive apprehension that the soul possesses, and, though it of course comes into being in and amid the sensory data and empirical material of the natural world and cannot anticipate or dispense with those, yet it does not arise out of them, but only by their means.

Innate, not empirical. Both the rational and non-rational elements of "holiness" are a priori categories, meaning they are not derived from sense-perception or experience. They stem from an original, underivable capacity of the mind, implanted in the "pure reason" or, for the non-rational, in the "fundus animae" (ground of the soul).

Stimulus, not cause. Sensory data and empirical material serve as incitements or stimuli for the numinous experience to awaken, but they are not its causes or constituent elements. The numinous emerges from within, initially interfused with sensuous experience, then gradually disengaging itself to stand in absolute contrast.

Beyond evolutionism. Theories of "epigenesis" or "transmutation" fail to explain the qualitative uniqueness of the numinous. It is "unevolvable" in the sense that it cannot be derived from other feelings; rather, it is an innate predisposition that is aroused and developed, much like the capacity for aesthetic judgment.

9. Divination: The Innate Faculty for Recognizing the Holy

Let us call the faculty, of whatever sort it may be, of genuinely cognizing and recognizing the holy in its appearances, the faculty of divination.

Beyond natural signs. Religion fundamentally believes that the holy can be directly encountered in specific occurrences, persons, and actions—an "outward revelation." However, primitive "signs" (terrible, sublime, mysterious events) are not true revelations but merely opportunities that prompt the a priori religious feeling to awaken.

Inner witness of the Spirit. True "divination" is the faculty of genuinely cognizing and recognizing the holy in its authentic nature, distinct from rational proof or supernaturalistic theories of miracles. Dogma refers to this as the "testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum"—the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

Intuitive apprehension. This faculty is not a universal actual possession but a special endowment of gifted individuals, like prophets or "divinatory natures." It involves deeply absorbed contemplation, experiencing "intuitions and feelings" of an "overplus" beyond empirical reality, glimpses of an Eternal, momentous Reality that defies intellectual dissection but is truly known.

10. The Numinous Manifests in Art, Silence, and Sacred History

In the arts nearly everywhere the most effective means of representing the numinous is 'the sublime'.

Indirect artistic expression. The numinous expresses itself outwardly through indirect means, often by evoking kindred "natural" feelings. In art, "the sublime" is a primary means, as seen in megalithic structures, Egyptian monuments, and Gothic cathedrals, which instill awe and a sense of the numinous.

Direct artistic expression. Western art employs darkness and silence as direct, negative means to convey the numinous. Semi-darkness in vaulted halls or forests, and profound silence in worship (e.g., Habakkuk ii. 20, Bach's Mass in B minor), create an atmosphere of mystery and awe. Oriental art adds "emptiness and empty distances" (e.g., Chinese landscape painting) to evoke the "wholly other."

Sacred history as manifestation. The numinous is also manifested in sacred history, particularly in the Old Testament, where Yahweh's "fury," "jealousy," and "livingness" reveal His awe-inspiring, mysterious, and august non-rational nature. Figures like Job, confronted by God's stupendous, incomprehensible creative power, experience a profound reconciliation through the sheer wondrousness of the mysterium.

11. Christianity's Supremacy Lies in its Harmonious Numinous-Rational Synthesis

The Cross of Christ, that monogram of the eternal mystery, is its completion.

Consummation of the numinous. The Gospel of Jesus represents the culmination of the process of rationalizing, moralizing, and humanizing the idea of God, leading to the "fatherhood of God." However, this does not supersede the numinous; rather, it brings it to a richer fulfillment, with the "Kingdom of God" embodying absolute greatness and marvel, awe-compelling yet all-attracting.

Christ as manifest holiness. For Christians, Christ is "holiness made manifest," a person in whom the self-revealing power and presence of the Godhead are directly experienced through divination. This is evident in the spontaneous responses of Peter and the centurion, and the disciples' conviction of his Messiahship, which was a direct, intuitive apprehension, not merely taught.

The Cross: ultimate synthesis. The Passion and death of Christ are the objects of the strongest religious intuition, where rational and non-rational elements are enfolded. The Cross becomes the "mirror of the eternal Father" and of Holiness itself, repeating and surpassing the problem of guiltless suffering, revealing God's transcendent mysteriousness and love in a profound, vital intuition unique in religious history.

Last updated: December 13, 2025