IT has been established that divination in Biblical times was evident within the person of Jesus Christ, but in the first quarter of the twentieth century – when Otto produced The Idea of the Holy – the average Christian was clearly unable to rely on a personal or direct acquaintance with the Messiah and therefore the only way to ensure the survival of divination, as is still the case one century later, is by possessing the mental capacity to recognise and respond to the numinous.

Otto concedes that what we know of Christianity at the time of Jesus is both fragmentary and semi-mythological, so it is the spirit rather than scripture which is of prime importance. Although missionaries have often noted that religious literature is difficult to convey to those from a different racial and cultural background, they have also observed how the spirit of Christianity has its own peculiar way of seeping into the consciousness of the potential convert.

Despite this, Otto is determined to establish whether the direct spiritual impact that Christ had on His disciples can be replicated in the modern world and whether it can be compared to the Christian experience as it now appears in a radically different context:

Is Christianity at all and in a strict sense Jesus’s religion? That is, is the religion we know today as Christianity, with its peculiar and unique content of belief and feeling, standing in all its historical greatness and supremacy when measured against other religions, with all its power to-day over the hearts and consciences of men to elevate or to excite, to launch accusation or confer benediction, to attract or to repel—is this religion still in its essence and inner meaning the same thing as the simple, unpretentious religion and form of piety which Jesus Himself had, which He Himself aroused and ‘founded’ in the circle of those little, heart-stirred bands of men in that out-of-the-way corner of the world, Galilee? (pp.163-4)

Christianity has certainly changed in terms of its outward appearance, not to mention the deep schisms and subtle reinterpretations that have each wreaked havoc in Jesus’ name, but Otto is adamant that the main distinguishing feature of the religion is redemption:

Its characteristic ideas today are Salvation—overabounding salvation, deliverance from and conquest of the ‘world’ and from existence in bondage to the world, and even from creaturehood as such, the overcoming of the remoteness of and enmity to God, redemption from servitude to sin and the guilt of sin, reconciliation and atonement, and, in con-sequence, grace and all the doctrine of grace, the Spirit and the bestowal of the Spirit, the new birth and the new creature. (p.164)

In order to address the question of whether modern Christianity contains a similar divinatory aspect, Otto repeats the famous parable of the black mustard seed that grew into a tree. Appearing in Matthew 13:31–32, Mark 4:30–32 and Luke 13:18–19, the story relates to the idea that the Kingdom of Heaven arose from small beginnings and for Otto this denotes an “alteration” in which there is no transformation but merely a process of “evolution”. The basic potential, in other words, becomes an actuality.

Similarly, although Christianity may be considered to have been “a religion of redemption” at its very outset, the fulfilment of salvation – becoming evermore stronger – develops over the course of time:

If we try to determine as simply and concisely as possible what really characterized the message of Jesus, ignoring what was historically inessential, we are left with two central elements: (i) First, there is the proclamation of the kingdom of God, as no mere accessory, but the foundation of the whole Gospel. This is characteristic of His ministry from the beginning and throughout its course. (2) Second, there is the reaction against Pharisaism, and, in connexion with this, Jesus’s ideal of godliness as the attitude and mind of a child when its fault has been forgiven. But both points comprise in principle everything which later became separately formulated in the specifically ‘redemptive’ doctrines of Christianity: Grace, Election, the Holy Ghost, and Renewal by the Spirit. (p.165)

Modern Christianity, for Otto, may thus be compared to that of Jesus’ time on the basis that the Kingdom of God is a continuity that one finds in the present. The political and cultural context in which Christianity appears is, like those of the ancient world, of considerably less importance than the fact that the religion is being directed by something more transcendent. As Otto explains, the methods by which the numinous operates are

very frequently at first of an unspiritual, earthly nature. It is just the unresting activity and continual urgency of this impulsion, enabling it to attain to freedom and press onward and upward to ever higher levels of development—it is just this that manifests it most characteristically, and reveals best its inner essential being. And this is nothing else than the pure impulsion to redemption, and the pre-intimation and anticipation of a boded ‘good’, transcendent and ‘wholly other’, a ‘salvation’ comparable to those ‘salvations’ striven after in other religions, but supreme above them in the measure in which the Lord of the Kingdom found and possessed in the Christian experience is supreme above Brahma, Vishnu, Ormuzd, Allah, as also above the Absolute in the form of Nirvana, Kaivalyam, Tao, or whatever other name it may be given. (p.167)

It is debatable whether Christianity is really superior to its Eastern counterparts and a more consistent investigator of comparative religion might adopt a more open-minded approach to the matter. Naturally, Otto is aware that the redemptive power of the numinous exists in the spiritual paths to which he alludes and yet still prefers to pin his theological colours to the Christian mast.

Turning now to divination, the German is committed to determining how the modern Christian can experience “the holiness” of Jesus in a similar way to that of His first disciples. Although a period of more than two thousand years lies between the earliest devotees of the Christian message and its more contemporary followers, it is possible if we set aside all conceptual notions and apply the intuition of the non-rational:

The experience must come, not by demonstration, but by pure contemplation, through the mind submitting itself unreservedly to a pure ‘impression’ of the object. For this purpose all that was given and contained in the message and work of Jesus must be combined with the picture of His Person and life and viewed as a whole and in its context with the long and wonderful advance in the religious history of Israel and Judah that was the preparation for it, and with the interplay of diverse tributary lines of development which, even where apparently divergent, ultimately converged upon this as their single culmination. (p.168)

Otto calls this process the “intuition of the eternal in the temporal,” which involves weighing-up the non-rational elements of Christian eschatology with the figure of Christ. It is here, Otto contends, that Jesus comes to symbolise the rational counter-balance that fulfils the path of spiritual redemption. The non-rational events pertaining to the life of Jesus are perfectly modulated by the rational person of Christ Himself, and vice versa.

We are even more fortunate than the disciples, Otto suggests, in that we have the advantage of not merely being able to look back upon the convergence of holy prophecy and the coming of Christ as a culmination within the context of religious history, but appreciate the continuing impact that this is having on the world:

Whoever sinks in contemplation of that great connected development of the Judaic religion which we speak of as the ‘Old Covenant up to Christ’ must feel the stirrings of an intimation that something Eternal is there, directing and sustaining it and urging it to its consummation. The impression is simply irresistible. (p.170)

This realisation of mystical truth is a perfect example of how spiritual divination is constantly manifesting in the modern age, requiring neither rational elucidation nor the authority of the Early Church. It is the endless fulfilment of a great historical task that links past, present and future achieved through disclosure and recognition of the holy. As far as Otto is concerned, the central theme in this entire process is the Passion of Christ:

The Cross becomes in an absolute sense the ‘mirror of the eternal Father’ (speculum aeterni Pattis); and not of the ‘Father’ alone—the highest rational interpretation of the holy—but of Holiness as such. For what makes Christ in a special sense the summary and climax of the course of antecedent religious evolution is pre-eminently this—that in His life, suffering, and death is repeated in classic and absolute form that most mystical of all the problems of the Old Covenant, the problem of the guiltless suffering of the righteous, which re-echoes again and again so mysteriously from Jeremiah and deutero-Isaiah on through Job and the Psalms. (pp.172-3)

That which is often considered non-rational on account of what appears cruel and unnecessary in the Biblical narrative, such as the harsh treatment of Job or the graphic execution of Jesus on the Cross, serves a far nobler purpose by communicating the transcendent mystery of the divine:

Here rational are enfolded with non-rational elements, the revealed commingled with the unrevealed, the most exalted love with the most awe-inspiring ‘wrath’ of the numen, and therefore, in applying to the Cross of Christ the category ‘holy’, Christian religious feeling has given birth to a religious intuition profounder and more vital than any to be found in the whole history of religion. (p.173)

It is this which leads Otto, as a Lutheran, to declare the unrivalled supremacy of Christianity. Not for its perceived impact on culture or civilisation in contrast to its lesser competitors, but for its “idea of holiness”.