FINALLY, in spite of Otto’s intensely Lutheran proclivities – not that I wish to criticise his religious inclinations, of course, each to his own – it is clear that the manifestation of the numinous as it is found in The Idea of the Holy is something that may be witnessed and experienced throughout the spiritual world. It is for this reason, rather than any professed affinity with Christianity, that so many philosophers and theologians have found such great value in his work.

My intention has been to present Otto within the context of his own religious milieu, although this is not to suggest that his writings are not worth exploring in association with many of the non-Christian traditions that he himself became so acquainted with in his own lifetime. In fact this should be wholeheartedly encouraged.

As a student of the philosophia perennis, or what is more commonly known as the perennial philosophy, I believe that Otto’s complex observations on the Absolute as it appears to mystics and prophets alike offer a significantly wider potential in the sense that they can shed light on the numinous as it appears and re-appears among Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and a multitude of other belief-systems which, in my opinion, offer different ways of encountering the same universal truth.

FURTHER READING

Works by Rudolf Otto in German

1904

Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht (Mohr)

1909

Die Kant-Friesische Religions-Philosophie (Mohr)

1917

Das Heilige – Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Trewendt und Granier)

1926

West-östliche Mystik (L. Klotz)

1930

Die Gnadenreligion Indiens und das Christentum (L. Klotz)

1934

Reich Gottes und Menschensohn (C.H. Beck)

Works by Rudolf Otto in English

1907

Naturalism and Religion (Williams and Norgate)

1908

The Life and Ministry of Jesus (Open Court)

1912

“Parallels in the Development of Religion East and West” in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 40

1923

The Idea of the Holy (Oxford University Press)

1928

Christianity and the Indian Religion of Grace (Christian Literature Society for India)

1930

India’s Religion of Grace and Christianity’s Compared and Contrasted (S.C.M. Press)

1931

The Philosophy of Religion (Williams and Norgate

1931

Religious Essays: A Supplement to ‘The Idea of the Holy’ (Oxford University Press)

1931

The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries (Williams and Norgate)

1931-1932

“Der Sensus Numinis as the Historical Basis of Religion” in The Hibbert Journal 30

1932

Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism (Macmillan)

1932-1933

“In the Sphere of the Holy” in The Hibbert Journal 31

1938

The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man (Zondervan Press)

1939

The Original Gita: The Song of the Supreme Exalted One (Allen & Unwin)

1958

“Introduction” to F.D.E. Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Harper & Row)

1996

Autobiographical and Social Essays (Walter de Gruyter)

Secondary sources in English

Alles, Gregory D.; “Toward a Genealogy of the Holy: Rudolf Otto and the Apologetics of Religion” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 69, No. 2 (2001).

Alles, Gregory D.; “The Science of Religions in a Fascist State: Rudolf Otto and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer During the Third Reich” in Religion, Volume 32, Issue 3 (2002).

Alles, Gregory D.; Rudolf Otto on Religion (Routledge, 2013).

Alles, Gregory D. & Rosenhagen, Ulrich; The Holy in a Pluralistic World: Rudolf Otto’s Legacy in the 21st Century (Equinox Publishing, 2022).

Almond, Philip C.; Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine (Mouton Press, 1982).

Almond, Philip C.; Rudolf Otto: An Introduction to His Philosophical Theology (The University of North Carolina Press, 1984).

Anderson, R. Lanier; “Neo-Kantianism and the Roots of Anti- Psychologism” in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 13/2 (2005).

Bainton, Roland H.; Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Abingdon Press, 2013).

Ballard, Steven; Rudolf Otto and the Synthesis of the Rational and the Non-Rational in the Idea of the Holy: Some Encounters in Theory and Practice (Peter Lang, 2001).

Barnes, L. Philip; “Rudolf Otto and the Limits of Religious Description” in Religious Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1994).

Beiser, Frederick C.; The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Beiser, Frederick C.; The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796- 1880 (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Beiser, Frederick C.; After Hegel: German Philosophy 1840– 1900 (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Bennett, Clinton; In Search of the Sacred: Anthropology and the Study of Religions (Cassell, 1996).

Capps, Donald; Men, Religion, and Melancholia: James, Otto, Jung, and Erikson (Yale University Press, 1997).

Carpenter, Stanley; Rudolf Otto’s Theory of Religious Knowledge (Boston University, 1962).

Cowles, James R.; “Hopkins and the Numinous: A Consideration of the Poetry in the Light of Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy” in The Hopkins Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3/4 (1994).

Crosbie, Michael J.; “Calling Forth the Numinous in Architecture” in Transcending Architecture (Catholic University of America Press, 2015).

Davidson, Robert F.; Rudolf Otto’s Interpretation Of Religion (Kessinger Publishing, 2010).

Dole, Andrew; “Schleiermacher and Otto on Religion” in Religious Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2004).

Dubey, S.P.; Rudolf Otto And Hinduism (Generic, 1969).

Eliade, Mircea; History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries (University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Eliade, Mircea; History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama to the Triumph of Christianity (University of Chicago Press, 1982).

Eliade, Mircea; History of Religious Ideas, Volume 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms (University of Chicago Press, 1985).

Elliott, William M.; The Holiness of God in John Calvin and Rudolf Otto (University of Edinburgh, 1938).

Empereur, James L.; A Critical Evaluation of Rudolf Otto’s Liturgical Theology and Practice (University Microfilms, 1981).

Fries, Jakob Friedrich; Dialogues on Morality and Religion (Basil Blackwell, 1982).

Gerrish, B.A.; A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology (Fortress Press, 1984).

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; Goethe’s Autobiography: Poetry and Truth from My Life (Alston Rivers, 1932).

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von & Eckermann, Johann Peter; (Hachette Books, 1998).

Goff, Philip K.; A Religious Biography of Rudolf Otto: A Methodology of Religious Experience (University of Kansas, 1988).

Gooch, Todd A.; The Numinous and Modernity: An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto`s Philosophy of Religion (De Gruyter, 2012).

Griffin, James Phillip; The Epistemology of Rudolf Otto (Boston University, 1954).

Heilner, Mary VanCampen; Our Knowledge of God According to Friedrich Von Hugel and Rudolf Otto (1945).

Kant, Immanuel; Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Lattke, Michael; “Rudolf Bultmann on Rudolf Otto” in The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 78, No. 3/4 (1985).

Lopez Jr., Donald S.; “Approaching the Numinous: Rudolf Otto and Tibetan Tantra” in Philosophy East and West, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1979).

Luther, Martin; The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings (Penguin Classics, 2017).

Metaxas, Eric; Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (Penguin Books, 2017).

Mitchell, Donald William; “Rudolf Otto and a Philosophy of Religious Crisis,” Theses for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Hawaii (1971).

Moore, John Morrison; “The a Priori in Rudolf Otto’s Theory of Religious Experience” in Review of Religion II (1938).

Palmer, Richard E.; Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer (Northwestern University Press, 1969).

Pederson, Esther Oluffa; “The Holy as an Epistemic Category and a Political Tool: Ernst Cassirer’s and Rudolf Otto’s Philosophies of Myth and Religion” in New German Critique, No. 104 (2008).

Rafael, Melissa; Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness (Clarendon Press, 1997).

Roy, Louis; “Rudolf Otto and the Numinous” in Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique (University of Toronto Press, 2001).

Ryba, Thomas; “The Philosophical Loadings of Rudolf Otto’s Idea of the Sacred” in Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1991).

Sarma, Sibnath; Religious Philosophy Of Rudolf Otto (Ajanta Publications, 1996)

Sawai, Yoshitsugu; Rudolf Otto and the Foundation of the History of Religions (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

Schlamm, Leon; “Rudolf Otto and Mystical Experience” in Religious Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1991).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich; The Christian Faith (T. and T. Clark, 1928).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich; Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts (Scholars Press, 1977).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich.; “The Hermeneutics: Outline of the 1819 Lectures” in New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1978).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich; On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich; Hermeneutics and Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich; Schleiermacher on Workings of the Knowing Mind (Edwin Mellen, 1998).

Schnädelbach, Herbert; Philosophy in Germany: 1831-1933 (Cambridge University Press, 1984).

Schüz, Peter; Mysterium Tremendum. The Relationship Between Fear and Religion According to Rudolf Otto (Mohr Siebeck, 2016).

Smith, A.D.; “Otto’s Criticisms of Schleiermacher” in Religious Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2009).

Sundkler, Beng; Nathan Söderblom: His Life and Work (Lutterworth Press, 1968).

Turner, Harold Walter; Rudolf Otto – The Idea of the Holy: A Guide for Students (H.W. Turner, 1977).

Underhill, Evelyn; Mysticism (Methuen, 1911).