WHILST the New Testament may be viewed as the semi-anthropomorphic embodiment of Old Testament prophecy, and therefore as a more rational interpretation of the overall Christian message, Otto does not believe that it lessens the power of the numinous and that it simply brings it to a state of fulfilment. Furthermore, to assume that the numinous in its more overt and dramatic form was later superseeded by a comparatively more comprehensible story in which the central figure is a man is to misinterpret the message:
The error is only possible if we disregard in the message of Christ that which it really purports to be, first, last, and all the time, viz. ‘the gospel of the kingdom‘. As against all rationalizing attempts to tone it down into something less startling, the most recent research shows quite decisively that the ‘kingdom’ is just greatness and marvel absolute, the ‘wholly other’ ‘heavenly’ thing, set in contrast to the world of here and now, ‘the mysterious’ itself in its dual character as awe-compelling yet all-attracting, glimmering in an atmosphere of genuine ‘religious awe’. (p.82)
By viewing the life of Christ as a mystery the life, death and resurrection of which the New Testament speaks is transformed into something numinous. We see this encapsulated by the Greek term, άγιοi (holy), by the which twelve disciples are known, imbuing them with a status that is both sacred and saintly. It is not, as Otto explains, that these figures were perfect, but that they had been transfigured by their crucial participation in the narrative of the Gospel.
Christ’s message was original in that whilst the Old Testament had taught the Jews that they were the chosen people with a particular set of divinely-instituted rights, the “new” religion was presented as more of a universal phenomenon that extended to races of all nations. Even more important was the fact that Christ convinced his followers that God is a “Father” who rules over his kingdom in heaven, rather than simply being equated with a particular kingdom upon earth:
This point of view necessarily occupied the whole of His ‘teaching’, and all the more so because it was the point of view thrust sharply into the foreground by the two opposed influences of His time, against both of which the Gospel came historically as a reaction. On the one hand was Pharisaism, with its servitude to Law; on the other, John the Baptist, with his harsh, ascetic interpretation of God; and, in contrast to both, the gospel of the sonhood of man and the fatherhood of God came as the easy yoke, the light burden. (p.83)
It is in the New Testament that we find what is possibly the most striking appearance of the mysterium tremendum. This takes place during Christ’s Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the Saviour struggles to grasp the ultimate nature of his messianic destiny. As Otto suggests, this startling experience did not cause Jesus to fear in the way that it is ordinarily understood – indeed, he had already participated in the Last Supper with his disciples and was therefore aware that his death was imminent – but to tremble in the face of the numinous as a consequence of the great eschatological mystery to which he had become privy.
This is exactly the same process that we discussed previously with regard to one’s devaluation in the presence of the deity. Even for Jesus, the flesh of humanity paled into insignificance before the might of the Father. Once again, we detect the accompanying element of “fascination” which, in this case, is connected to the overwhelming sense of “awe” that a child feels in the presence of the parent. The numinous that Jesus is seen to experience in the New Testament, therefore, is that of the Old and yet the theme is familiar:
To feel the full weight and force of this intuition it is necessary to escape as far as possible from the mental atmosphere of our dogmatic interpretations and judiciously toned down catechisms, and to try to recapture the awe that could be felt by the Jew toward the fury of Yahweh, by the Hellenistic Greek toward the horror of heimarmene or Destiny, and by primitive man in general toward the ira deorum or anger of the gods. (p.86)
Meanwhile, Otto proffers the view that predestination is harder for the Christian rationalist to accept than anything else the religion has to offer. Indeed, for a Lutheran of this persuasion it seems more non-rational than the most weird and wonderful things of the Bible. On the other hand, Otto does not accept the theories put forward by Leibniz, Spinoza and Schleiermacher in relation to man being at the mercy of unseen forces – and, thus, in lieu of freedom – because they reduce predestination to the level of “natural law” and inevitably usurp the authority of the numinous in human affairs.
The German divides his own interpretation of determinism, or foreordination, into two categories; those of “election” and predestination “proper”. In the first example, God is said to have chosen his subjects for salvation and this is the result of divine grace. Given that it is the Creator and not the recipient who is responsible for this gift, it may seem at first glance that the predestined subject is denied his freedom. However, despite an individual experiencing God’s grace as opposed to acting on his or her own initiative, freedom is nonetheless retained to the extent that one’s actions are synonymous with God’s will. In addition, “election” does not mean that a person will automatically be saved and is merely an indication that one has been ordained and set on the right spiritual path.
In the case of predestination “proper,” the origin or which Otto attributes to Paul the Apostle’s “Why have you made me thus?” in Romans 9:20, one could be forgiven for assuming that there is a more rationalist factor at work and yet this is an example of the subject reacting to the mysterium tremendum. Once again, we see an example of self-abasement in the presence of the numinous and here it pertains to predestination as a result of one wishing to conform with God’s will. Put simply, it arises from the abrogation of choice in the midst of incomprehensible greatness. Free will exists, but is nonetheless powerless in the face of the supreme deity. The same phenomenon can be found in Islamic scripture, where
men are able to devise and decide and reject; but, however they choose or act, Allah’s eternal will is accomplished to the very day and hour that was ordained. The purport of this is precisely, not that God and God alone is an active cause, but rather that the activity of the creature, be it never so vigorous and free, is overborne and determined absolutely by the eternal operative purpose. (p.89)
Another interesting repercussion from this mystical procedure, is that the human subject relinquishes both his sense of causality and ontological reality. In other words, God is seen to bear responsibility for one’s existence and actions. After all, there is nothing outside of the Absolute and we – its humble creatures – are simply performing our role in the divine plan. Even predestination itself, Otto insists, is nothing but a conceptual expression of the numinous consciousness at work.
The events that describe the life of Jesus Christ are therefore brimming with references to the same numinosity that one encounters in a more pronounced form in the Old Testament. By far the most potent account of the numinous in the New Testament, Otto tells us, is that of John 3:8 and its vivid illustration of how the “wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth”.
