“The Idea of the Holy” by Rudolf Otto – Chapter 20
Chapter 20 of “The Idea of the Holy” by Rudolf Otto is named ‘Divination in Christianity Today’. Here is our summary.
CHAPTER 20
Divination in Christianity Today
Pages 166 to 178
There is no doubt the primitive Church had the ability to experience holiness in the person of Jesus Christ. In us too, that inner divining power of apprehension and interpretation has a place. We too can recognize the holy and respond to it. [Page 166]
A foreign missionary told Otto he witnessed a responsive apprehension in the hearts of his hearers. That inner ability was at work in the heart of Paul, weaving together the fragmentary hints he heard, to which he succumbed on the way to Damascus. [Page 167]
Is the Christian faith of today the same as it was during the days of the first disciples? As time goes by, does the faith develop and evolve? Or is it eternally static? The themes of Redemption and Salvation have continued. [Page 168]
In our day, the inner principle and essence of Christian faith revolves around Redemption and Salvation. But was that what Jesus Christ intended? [Page 169]
Otto uses the parable of the mustard seed to demonstrate change and alteration, for the grown tree is something different from the seed. [Page 169]
What characterized the message of Jesus? Otto posits two central elements:
1. The proclamation of the kingdom of God as the foundation of the whole Gospel.
2. The reaction against Pharisee-ism, and, in connection with this, the ideal of godliness as the attitude and mind of a child when its fault has been forgiven.
Those two elements become the foundation of everything that was formulated later: Grace, Election, the Holy Spirit, and Renewal by the Spirit. [Page 169]
The more highly developed forms of religion have their own unique ideals of beatitude, which may be designated by the general term of “salvation”. Otto says that notion of salvation is most supremely evident in the Kingdom of Heaven of Christianity. [Page 170]
The Kingdom of Heaven is a salvation comparable to the salvations offered by other religions, but supreme above them. The gospel is a redemption that is both experienced in the here-and-now, as well as filfilled in the realm of eternity. [Page 171]
Paul wrote: “For you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (see Romans 8:15). [Page 172]
In that verse, Paul breaks with the older religion and seizes the new. With that, we have altogether new attitudes toward sin and guilt, Law and freedom, justification, second birth, renewal, the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, new creation, and the blissful freedom of God’s children. [Page 172]
For our part, how does Divination work? It is not through concepts or proofs or demonstrations, but by pure Contemplation. [Page 172]
We submit ourselves to our impression of the life and work of Jesus, to the growth of the early Christian movement, as well as to the non-rational, mystical elements. We find ourselves recognizing in Jesus the eternal in the temporal. [Page 173]
Otto says we conclude that if there is a God, and if he chose to reveal himself, he could do it no other way than this. That conclusion is not the result of logical argumentation; rather, it springs from a feeling of truth. And that, in turn, is the manner in which genuine divination takes place. [Page 174]
From that insight, others flow:
- Jesus Christ as Messiah
- Jesus Christ as God
- Jesus Christ as only begotten Son
- Jesus Christ as Mediator [Page 175]
Christian history is littered with free-floating utterances and trial flights at expressing the numinous feeling. Unfortunately, they are often given an emphasis which puts them at the center of our religious focus. [Page 176]
The miracles in the portrait of Christ are Gifts of the Spirit raised to a supreme power. They are natural powers of the spirit. They serve to confirm people’s divination. [Page 176]
Our strongest religious intuitions center on the passion and death of Christ. The cross is a mirror of the eternal Father. [Page 176]
What is it in Christ that makes him the summary and climax of all religions? It is the problem of the guiltless suffering the righteous. The problem that first emerged with Job is fulfilled at the Cross. [Page 177]
At the cross, rational elements are combined with non-rational elements. The love of the numen is combined with the wrath of the numen. [Page 177]
Otto says the value of a religion can only be found in its idea of holiness, and in the degree of perfection with which any given religion realizes this. [Page 177]
Argumentation or moral demonstrations are useless in comparison with personal divination based upon Jesus Christ. [Page 178]
THE IDEA OF THE HOLY
CHAPTERS: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
RESOURCES: Outline, Terminology, Professor Rudolf Otto
Read online at Internet Archive
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