Contemprary Philosophical Theologians | Classics in the Philosophy of Religion

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIANS:

BUBER, OTTO, TILLICH, BULTMANN

From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser

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CONTENTS

• Martin Buber: Religion as an I–Thou Relationship (from I and Thou)

• Rudolf Otto: God as Wholly Other (from Idea of the Holy)

• Paul Tillich: Religion as Confrontation with Non‑Being (

• Rudolf Bultmann: Demythologizing Christianity

By the mid‑twentieth century, a distinctive group of theologians emerged whose work reshaped the philosophy of religion in ways unmatched before or since. Earlier chapters traced a continual movement away from traditional religious doctrine. Enlightenment critics challenged its rational foundations, Kant denied theoretical knowledge of God, nineteenth‑century idealists and metaphysicians attempted sweeping reinterpretations, scientific naturalists questioned its credibility, and modern critics exposed its social and psychological functions. Buber, Otto, Tillich, and Bultmann accepted many of these lessons, yet they refused to reduce religion to morality, myth, or cultural psychology. For the first time, leading theologians working within major universities had the intellectual freedom to depart openly from orthodox belief while still speaking as theologians. What distinguishes them is their turn to philosophy as the foundation of what religion fundamentally is, rather than seeking it from scripture or church dogma. Buber interprets religion as the I–Thou encounter, Otto as the experience of the numinous, Tillich as ultimate concern, and Bultmann as existential self‑understanding. Philosophers took them seriously because they offered rigorous, non‑supernatural accounts of religious life grounded in phenomenology and existentialism. They represent the last major effort of theologians to shape the conversation in the philosophy of religion, prior to the forthcoming dominance of analytic philosophy of religion.

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MARTIN BUBER:

RELIGION AS AN "I–THOU" RELATIONSHIP

Martin Buber (1878–1965) was born in Vienna into a Jewish family with strong cultural and intellectual ties, and after his parents separated he was raised for several years by his grandparents in Lemberg, where he was exposed to both traditional Jewish learning and European literature. He studied philosophy, art history, and German literature at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich, and Berlin, eventually completing his doctoral work in 1904. In his early adulthood he became active in Zionist cultural circles and worked as an editor, translator, and lecturer, gaining recognition for his studies of Hasidic tales and Jewish mysticism. During World War I he helped organize Jewish relief efforts in Eastern Europe, and in the interwar years he taught at the University of Frankfurt until 1933, when the Nazi regime dismissed him from his post. He emigrated to Palestine in 1938 and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he continued to write, lecture, and participate in public debates about Jewish cultural life and the future of the region. Although he published many works over his long career, he became internationally known for I and Thou (1923), the book that established his reputation as a leading figure in twentieth‑century religious thought. He died in Jerusalem in 1965 at the age of 87. The selections below are I and Thou.

Central to Buber's position is his conception of the "I-Thou" and "I-It" relationships. The I-Thou relation occurs when a person enters into a wholehearted, and reciprocal bond with another being, treating them as a unique presence rather than an object to be analyzed. In contrast, the I-It relation takes place when a person detaches themselves to observe, categorize, and use something as a mere tool or object within the boundaries of time and space. The I-Thou relation is fundamentally a religious one because every finite, authentic encounter with a fellow human being or a part of nature opens a direct window to the Eternal Thou. This, in turn, is the ultimate divine presence that can never be reduced to an object of human utility or theological dogma.

In the opening section on terminology, Buber explains the "I–Thou" and "I–It" concepts. In section on the tree, he argues that a tree can be analyzed as an object through perception, classification, and measurement, yet it becomes a Thou when one meets it in a unified, reciprocal relation that cannot be reduced to properties. Similarly, in the section on art, he argues that artistic creation originates when a form confronts the artist as a Thou, for the work demands a total response that involves sacrifice, risk, and mutuality rather than subjective projection. In the section on love, he maintains that love is not a feeling but a relation in which the I stands before a Thou, since feelings are internal states whereas love is the event that makes the other fully present. In the section on melancholy fate, he observes that every Thou inevitably becomes an It once the moment of relation passes. For, the living presence collapses into describable qualities, and this transition marks the tragic rhythm of human life. In the section on childhood, he explains that the I–Thou relation arises from the child's original connectedness with the world, whereas the I–It stance develops gradually as the child learns to separate, grasp, and classify.

In the section on the cat's glance, Buber he suggests that we can find the I-Thou relationship in the momentary mutual recognition between human and animal, where the cat's questioning gaze briefly enters relation before slipping back into objecthood. In the section on rift between institutions (It) and feelings (I), he argues that modern life fractures into impersonal institutions and private emotions, since neither domain yields genuine community or authentic personal life. In the section on community, he contends that real community arises only when individuals stand in mutual relation to a shared living Centre. For, neither institutions nor feelings alone can generate the connectedness that the Thou makes possible. Finally, in the section on God, he argues that every finite Thou points toward the eternal Thou, for God is the one Thou who never becomes an It. Accordingly, even the so‑called godless person addresses God whenever he speaks with his whole being to the unconditioned Thou of his life.

THE TWOFOLD WORLD AND THE MELANCHOLY OF "IT" (I and Thou, Part 1)

Terminology of the Twofold Word of I-Thou and I-It

To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude.

The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he can speak.

The primary words are not isolated words, but word pairs.

The one primary word is the word pair I-Thou.

The other primary word is the word pair I-It; wherein, without a change in the primary word, one of the words He and She can replace It.

Hence the I of man is also twofold.

For the I of the primary word I-Thou is different from that of the primary word I-It.

Primary words do not signify something that exists independently of them, but being spoken they establish a reality; primary words are spoken from the being.

When Thou is spoken, the I of the word pair I-Thou is spoken along with it.

When It is spoken, the I of the word pair I-It is spoken along with it.

The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being; the primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being.

There is no I in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word I-It.

When man says I, he means one of the two; the I that he means is present when he says I; even when he says Thou or It, the I of the one or the other primary word is present.

To be I and to say I are one; to say I and to say one of the primary words are one; whoever speaks a primary word enters into the word and takes his stand within it.

The life of the human being does not consist in the domain of transitive verbs alone; it does not exist by virtue of activities alone which have a something for their object; I perceive something; I feel something; I imagine something; I will something; I sense something; I think something; the life of the human being does not consist of all this and its like alone.

All this and its like together establish the realm of It; but the realm of Thou has a different basis.

Whoever says Thou has no something for an object; for where there is something, there is another something; every It is bounded by other Its; It exists only by virtue of the fact that it is bounded by others; but where Thou is spoken, there is no something; Thou has no bounds.

Whoever says Thou has no something, has indeed nothing; but he takes his stand in relation. . . .

Encountering a Tree as an "It" vs. a "Thou"

But with what right do we include that which lies outside language into the world of the primary word?

In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we look out toward the fringe of the eternal Thou; from each we perceive a breath of it, in each Thou we address the eternal Thou, in every sphere in its own way.

I consider a tree.

I can accept it as a picture: a rigid column in the assault of light, or the splashing green shot through by the gentleness of the blue silver background.

I can perceive it as movement: the flowing veins on the clinging and striving core, the suction of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air; and the dark growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and observe it as a specimen, with regard to structure and mode of life; I can overcome its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognize it only as an expression of law; of the laws according to which a constant opposition of forces is continuously adjusted, or of the laws according to which substances mingle and separate.

I can dissipate it and perpetuate it into number, into pure numerical relation.

In all this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time, its species and its constitution.

It can, however, also come about, out of will and grace combined, that in considering the tree I become encompassed in relation to it, and now it is no longer an It; the power of exclusiveness has seized me. To effect this it is not necessary for me to renounce any of the ways of my consideration; there is nothing from which I would have to look away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and specimen, law and number, indivisibly united within it.

Everything belonging to the tree is included within it, its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars, and all in a single wholeness.

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it; only in a different way. Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutuality. Would the tree then have a consciousness similar to our own? Of that I have no experience. But do you wish, because it seems to succeed with yourselves, once again to dissect that which cannot be dissected? I encounter no soul of the tree and no dryad, but the tree itself.

If I face a human being as my Thou, and say the primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among things and does not consist of things.

He is not a He or a She, bounded by other Hes and Shes, a specific point registered within the world-net of space and time; nor is he a nature able to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. But without neighbors and whole in himself, he is Thou and fills the heavens; this does not mean that nothing else exists besides him, but all else lives in his light. Just as the melody is not made up of notes, nor the verse of words, nor the statue of lines, but they must be tugged and dragged until their unity has been prepared into a multiplicity, so it is with the man to whom I say Thou; I can extract from him the color of his hair or the color of his speech or the color of his goodness, and I must do this continually; but each time I do it he is already no longer Thou.

And just as prayer is not in time but time in prayer, sacrifice not in space but space in sacrifice, and whoever reverses the relationship abolishes the reality, so I do not find the human being to whom I say Thou present in some sometime and somewhere.

I can place him there, I must do it continually, but I set only a He or a She, an It, no longer my Thou. . . .

Creating Art as a "Thou" Relation

The human being to whom I say Thou, I do not experience; but I stand in relation to him, in the sacred primary word; only when I step out of it do I experience him again; experience is Thou-distance.

Relation can exist even if the human being to whom I say Thou does not perceive it in his experience; for Thou is more than It knows; Thou does more, and more happens to it, than It knows; no deception reaches here; here is the cradle of real life.

This is the eternal origin of art, that a form confronts a man and desires to become a work through him; it is no offspring of his soul, but an appearance that steps up to it and demands from it the effective power; it depends on an essential act of the man; if he fulfills it, if he speaks with his being the primary word to the appearing form, then the effective power streams, and the work arises.

The act includes a sacrifice and a risk; the sacrifice: the infinite possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form; everything that just a moment ago playfully traversed the perspective must be obliterated, none of it may penetrate the work; so demands the exclusiveness of what confronts it; the risk: the primary word can only be spoken with the whole being; whoever gives himself over may withhold nothing of himself; and the work does not tolerate, as do tree and man, that I turn aside to relax in the world of It, but it rules; if I do not serve it aright, it breaks, or it breaks me.

The form that confronts me I cannot experience and cannot describe; I can only body it forth; and yet I behold it, splendid in the radiance of what confronts me, clearer than all the clarity of the experienced world; not as a thing among the inner things, not as a product of imagination, but as that which is present; if tested for objectivity, the form is not there at all; yet what would be more present than it is? And it is a real relation in which I stand to it: it acts on me as I act on it. . . .

The relation to the Thou is direct; between I and Thou stands no system of concepts, no foreknowledge, and no imagination; and memory itself is transformed as it plunges out of isolation into wholeness; between I and Thou stands no purpose, no greed, and no anticipation; and longing itself is transformed as it plunges out of its dream into the appearance; every means is an obstacle; only where every means has collapsed does the meeting come about. . . .

Encountering Love as a "Thou" Relation vs. a Mere Feeling

The significance of the effect is not so obvious in the relation to the human Thou; the essential act which establishes directness in this case is usually understood as being one of feeling and is thereby misconstrued. Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, but they do not constitute it; and the feelings which accompany it can be of greatly differing kinds; the feeling of Jesus for the possessed man is different from his feeling for the beloved disciple, but the love is one. Feelings are "entertained"; love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. This is no metaphor, but reality: love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou merely for its "content", its object; it is between I and Thou. Whoever does not know this, know this with his very being, does not know love, though he may ascribe to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love is a world-wide effect; in the eyes of him who takes his stand in it, who gazes out of it, men are released from their entanglement in the bustling machinery; good people and evil, wise and foolish, beautiful and ugly, one after another become real to him and become a Thou, that is, set free, stepped forth, single and confronting him as a being; exclusiveness arises wonderfully time after time, and so he can be effective, helping, healing, educating, raising up, saving. Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou: in this consists the equality of all who love, which cannot consist in any feeling whatsoever, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blessedly protected man, whose life is enclosed within that of a loved being, to him who all his life is nailed to the cross of the world, and who is capable of and ventures the monstrous thing: to love mankind. . . .

Melancholy Fate of Shifting from the "Thou" back to the "It"

But this is the exalted melancholy of our lot, that every Thou in our world must become an It. However exclusively present it was in the direct relation; as soon as the relation has worked itself out or has been permeated by a means, it becomes an object among objects, perhaps the chief one, yet still one of them, set within measure and boundary. In the work of art, realization in one sense means loss of reality in another sense. Genuine contemplation is briefly measured; the being of nature, which just now unlocked itself to me in the mystery of mutual action, has now again become describable, dissectible, classifiable, the intersection point of manifold systems of laws. And love itself cannot persist in the direct relation; it endures, but in the interchange of actuality and latency. The human being, who just a moment ago was single and unconditioned, not something lying to hand, only present, not able to be experienced, only able to be touched, has now become again a He or a She, a sum of qualities, a figurative quantum. Now I can extract from him again the color of his hair, the color of his speech, the color of his goodness; but so long as I can do this, he is my Thou no longer and not yet again. Every Thou in the world is fated by its nature to become a thing or at all events to re-enter continually into thinghood. In objective language it would be said: every thing in the world can, either before or after its becoming a thing, appear to an I as its Thou. But objective language catches only a fringe of real life.

The It is the chrysalis, the Thou the butterfly; except that these are not always states that cleanly succeed one another, but often a happening tangled confusedly in deep twofold nature. . . .

Natural Childhood Origin of the "I-Thou" and "I-It" Relations

The primitive, whose life, even if we were able to fully reconstruct it, can represent that of the real early man to us only as in a parable, opens up to us only brief glimpses into the temporal connection of the two primary words. More complete knowledge we receive from the child.

That the spiritual reality of the primary words arises out of a natural one, that of the primary word I-Thou out of natural connectedness, and that of the primary word I-It out of natural separation, becomes undisguisedly clear to us here.

The prenatal life of the child is a pure natural connectedness, a flowing into one another, a bodily mutual action; wherein the life-horizon of the becoming being appears in a unique way to be sketched within that of the bearing one, and yet again not sketched within it; for it does not rest in the womb of the human mother alone. This connectedness is so world-wide that it reads like the imperfect deciphering of a primeval inscription when it says in the language of Jewish myth that in the mother's body man knows the universe, and in birth he forgets it. And it remains within him indeed as a secret image of desire. Not as though his longing meant a yearning to return, as those suppose who see in the spirit—confusing it with their intellect—a parasite of nature: which is rather its blossom, though to be sure exposed to all manner of diseases. Rather, the longing goes toward the world-wide connectedness of the being that has burst forth into spirit with its true Thou.

Every becoming human child rests, like all becoming life, in the womb of the great mother: the undivided, pre-formal primeval world. From her, too, it separates into personal life, and only in the dark hours when we slip away from this personal life (this indeed happens to the healthy person night after night) are we close to her again. But that separation does not happen, like that from the bodily mother, suddenly and catastrophically; time is granted to the human child to exchange a spiritual connectedness, that is relation, for the natural connectedness with the world that he gradually loses. He has stepped out of the glowing darkness of chaos into the cool, bright creation, but he does not possess it yet, he must first draw it out truly and make it into a reality for himself, he must find his world by seeing, hearing, touching, and shaping it. Creation reveals its form in the meeting; it does not pour itself into expectant senses, it rises up to meet the grasping senses. That which will eventually play around the fully developed man as an accustomed object must be acquired and wooed by the developing man in strenuous action; no thing is a component part of an experience, none discloses itself otherwise than in the mutually acting power of what is over against him. Like the primitive, the child lives between sleep and sleep (a great part of his waking hours is also still sleep), in the flash and counter-flash of the meeting. . . .

THE GROWTH OF "IT" AND THE MODERN SICKNESS (Part 2)

The Cat's Glance as a Fleeting "I-Thou" Meeting

I look at times into the eyes of a domestic cat. The domesticated animal has not received from us, as we sometimes imagine, the gift of the truly "speaking" glance, but only, at the price of its elemental detachment, the capacity to turn it toward us non-animals. Whereby now, however, into it, into its dawn and even into its rising, a something composed of amazement and inquiry has entered, which is surely completely lacking in the original glance with all its anxiety. This cat indisputably began its glance by asking me, with a look that kindled under the breath of my own look: "Is it possible that you mean me? Do you really not just want me to perform tricks for you? Do I concern you? Am I present to you? Am I present? What is that coming from you? What is that around me? What is that affecting me? What is that?!" ("I" is here a transcription for a word of egoless self-designation which we do not have; by "that" one should imagine the streaming human glance in the total reality of its power to enter into relation.) There the glance of the animal, the speech of anxiety, had risen to its full greatness; and there it already set. My own glance was certainly more enduring; but it was no longer the streaming human glance. . . .

Problem: The Modern Split Between Institutions (It) and Feelings (I)

This same man, who has prepared the spirit for himself as a means of enjoyment, what does he do with the beings that live around him?

Standing under the primary word of separation, which holds I and It apart from each other, he has divided his life with his fellow men into two cleanly encircled territories: institutions and feelings; the It-territory and the I-territory.

Institutions are the "outside", in which one stays for all kinds of purposes, in which one works, negotiates, influences, undertakes, competes, organizes, manages, officiates, preaches; the halfway ordered and somewhat harmonious structure in which, with the manifold participation of human heads and human limbs, the course of affairs is fulfilled.

Feelings are the "inside", in which one lives and recovers from the institutions; here the spectrum of emotions swings before one's interested gaze; here one enjoys one's inclination and one's hatred, one's pleasure and, if it does not take things too far, one's pain.

Here one is at home and stretches out in the rocking chair.

Institutions are a complicated forum, feelings a bower that is at least rich in variety.

The boundary is to be sure constantly endangered, since willful feelings sometimes break into the most objective institutions, but it can be restored with a little good will.

The reliable drawing of the boundary is most difficult in the areas of so-called personal life; in marriage, for instance, it is sometimes not to be managed without further ado; but that works itself out. It carries itself out excellently in the areas of so-called public life; let it be observed, for instance, how faultlessly, in the year of the parties, but also of the groups and their "movements" which are meant to be above parties, the heaven-storming conventions and the business that crawls along the ground, whether mechanized and uniform or organic and sloppy, succeed one another.

But the separated It of institutions is a soulless monster (Golem), and the separated I of feelings is a fluttering soul-bird; neither of them knows man; the former knows only the specimen, the latter only the object; neither knows the person, neither knows community. Neither of them knows the present: the former, even the most modern, knows only the rigid past, the state of being finished, the latter, even the most enduring, knows time and again only the fleeting moment, the state of not yet being. Both have no access to real life; institutions yield no public life, and feelings yield no personal life.

That institutions yield no public life is felt by people in increasing numbers, felt with increasing sorrow; this is the place from which the searching distress of the age begins. That feelings yield no personal life has been understood by only a few; for here the most personal life of all seems to reside; and if, like the modern man, one has learned to occupy oneself extensively with one's own feelings, even despair at their unreality will not easily instruct one in a better way, since despair is also a feeling and is interesting. . . .

Solution: The Living Centre and the True Basis of Community

People who suffer from the fact that institutions yield no public life have hit upon a remedy: they believe that institutions must be loosened, melted down, or burst asunder by feelings; they must be renewed out of feelings by introducing the "freedom of feeling" into them. If, for instance, the automated State couples together citizens who are alien in their nature, without establishing or promoting a being-together, it should be replaced by the community of love; and a community of love arises, they say, when people come together out of free, exuberant feeling and want to live with one another. But it is not so; true community does not arise through people having feelings for one another, though to be sure not without it, but through these two things: that they all stand in a living, mutual relation to a living Centre, and that they stand in a living, mutual relation to one another. The second springs from the first, but is not given with it alone. A living, mutual relation includes feelings, but it does not originate from them. Community builds itself up out of living, mutual relation, but the builder is the living, effective Centre.

Nor can institutions of the so-called personal life be renewed out of free feeling, though to be sure not without it. Marriage, for instance, will never renew itself from anything else than that from which true marriage always arises: that two human beings reveal the Thou to one another. Out of this, the Thou, which is the I of neither of them, builds up the marriage. This is the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, which is merely accompanied by feelings of love. Whoever wants to renew marriage from another source is not essentially different from him who wants to abolish it: both declare that they no longer know the fact. And indeed, if from all the much-discussed eroticism of the age one were to subtract everything that is self-centeredness, that is, every relationship in which the one is not present to the other at all, is not made present by it at all, but the one merely enjoys itself in the other, what would remain? True public and true personal life are two forms of connectedness. In order that they may become and endure, feelings are necessary, the changing content, and institutions are necessary, the constant form; but even both put together do not yet create human life; rather, the third creates it, the central presence of the Thou, or rather, to say it more truly, the central Thou received in the present.

The primary word I-It is not of evil, just as matter is not of evil. It is of evil, like matter, when it presumes to be that which has being. If man lets it rule, the continuously growing world of It overruns him, his own I loses its reality, until the nightmare over him and the ghost within him whisper to each other the confession of their unredeemed state. . . .

GOD AS THE ETERNAL THOU (Part 3)

Addressing God Beyond the Language of Object

The extended lines of relations intersect in the eternal Thou.

Every individualized Thou is a glimpse through to it; through every individualized Thou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou. From this mediation of the Thou of all beings comes the fulfillment of relations to them, and the unfulfillment; the inborn Thou realizes itself in each relation and completes itself in none. It completes itself uniquely in the direct relation to the Thou that by its nature cannot become It.

Men have addressed their eternal Thou with many names; when they sang of the one so named, they still meant Thou; the first myths were hymns of praise. Then the names entered into the language of It; men were driven ever more strongly to think about and discuss their eternal Thou as an It. But all names of God remain hallowed, because in them He has not merely been spoken about, but also spoken to.

Some wish to banish the word God from legitimate usage because it has been so abused; and certainly it is the most heavily burdened of all human words; for that very reason it is the most imperishable and most indispensable. And what does all mistaken talk about God's being and works matter, though there has been and can be no other talk, against the one truth that all men who have addressed God meant Himself? For whoever speaks the word God and really has Thou in mind addresses, in whatever illusion he may be caught, the true Thou of his life, which cannot be limited by any other and to which he stands in a relation that includes all others.

But also whoever abhors the name and believes himself to be godless, if he addresses the Thou of his life with his whole devoted being, as that which cannot be limited by any other, he addresses God.

Source: Martin Buber, Ich und Du (1923), independently machine translated from the German, not based on previous translations.

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RUDOLF OTTO:

GOD AS THE WHOLLY OTHER

Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) was born in Peine, near Hanover, Germany, the son of a prosperous merchant, and received a classical education before studying theology and philosophy at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen. Ordained in the Lutheran Church, he soon turned toward academic life, developing interests in the history of religions, Kantian epistemology, and the phenomenology of religious experience. His first book, Religion and Naturalism (1904) argued that naturalistic science was insufficient to explain spiritual experience. He traveled widely, studying religious traditions in Asia, then achieved international prominence with his book The Idea of the Holy (1917). He held professorships at Göttingen and Marburg, where he influenced a generation of scholars in theology and comparative religion. His later writings expanded his analysis of religious experience and further explored the relationship between rational theology and the non‑rational elements of faith. He died in Marburg in 1937 at the age of 68 following a tragic accident, which his translator John Harvey described as a "merciful release" from the looming catastrophe of the Third Reich. The selections below are from The Idea of the Holy.

The main theme of that work is the concept of the "numinous", that is, a non‑rational, awe‑inspiring encounter with the "wholly other," which is the core of all genuine religion. He characterizes this as a mystery that is both terrifying and fascinating (mysterium tremendum et fascinans). His early travels to Africa and the far east inspired him to look beyond Western culture, and identify more universally what was unique to religious experience. He also felt that Christian theology of his time had become overly rationalized, and hoped to recover the non-rational element that was core of religious experience.

In the first main section, Otto examines the modern crisis produced by the rationalization of religion. He begins by acknowledging that rational concepts (such as God's unity, goodness, and personality) are essential to higher religion and especially to Christianity, since they allow believers to think about God in clear, intelligible terms. But he argues that rational theology becomes misleading when it is taken as exhaustive, for these concepts presuppose a deeper, non‑rational reality that they cannot fully capture. Accordingly, the real divide between rationalism and profounder religion is not about miracles or doctrine but about whether the non‑rational element is suppressed or allowed to predominate. Otto maintains that both orthodoxy and modern scholarship have contributed to over‑rationalization: theologians have emphasized dogma at the expense of religious feeling, and scholars of "primitive religion" have reduced early religious life to conceptual categories that ignore its unique, irreducible quality. For Otto, this rationalistic bias blinds us to the distinctive "moment" of religious consciousness that cannot be explained in terms of ideas alone.

In the second main section, Otto identifies this missing element as the numinous, the non‑rational core of all genuine religious experience. He distinguishes the numinous from ethical goodness and from ordinary emotions such as gratitude or trust, insisting that it is a sui generis state of mind that must be awakened rather than taught. To clarify it, he analyzes the "mysterium tremendum," the breakthrough experience in which the numinous becomes most vivid. This includes several interwoven elements: an awefulness that resembles fear but is not reducible to it; an overpowering majesty that evokes creature‑consciousness and humility; and an energetic or urgent quality that appears in symbols of divine vitality, wrath, or power. These elements together point to the mysterium itself—the "wholly other," a reality utterly beyond the familiar world yet felt as intensely present. Even when mysticism exaggerates this contrast into paradox, it preserves the positive emotional content that conceptual language cannot express. Thus, the numinous is both non‑rational and profoundly real, a felt encounter with something beyond all natural categories.

In the third main section, Otto explains how the numinous is expressed and communicated. Direct transmission does not occur through teaching or conceptual instruction but instead through the expressive "living voice" of reverent attitude, gesture, tone, and communal worship. These embodied forms awaken the numinous in others more effectively than doctrinal language, which can only gesture negatively toward what it cannot define. Otto then turns to indirect means, showing how religion has long used natural analogues—especially fear, terror, and the horrific—to evoke the numinous in symbolic form. Although such primitive expressions are eventually refined or discarded, they reveal how religious art and ritual attempt to communicate the unique feeling‑tone of the holy. Through both direct and indirect means, the numinous becomes perceptible as the distinctive, irreducible core of religious life.

THE CRISIS: THE LOSS OF THE NUMINOUS THROUGH RATIONALIZATION

Problems with the Rational Interpretation of Religion (Chap. 1)

It is essential to every theistic conception of God, and most of all to the Christian, that it designates and precisely characterizes deity by the attributes spirit, reason, purpose, good will, supreme power, unity, selfhood. The nature of God is thus thought of by analogy with our human nature of reason and personality; only, whereas in ourselves we are aware of this as qualified by restriction and limitation, as applied to God the attributes we use are 'completed', i,e., thought as absolute and unqualified. Now all these attributes constitute clear and definite concepts: they can be grasped by the intellect; they can be analyzed by thought; they even admit of definition. An object that can thus be thought conceptually may be termed rational. The nature of deity described in the attributes above mentioned is, then, a rational nature; and a religion which recognizes and maintains such a view of God is in so far a 'rational' religion. Only on such terms is belief possible in contrast to mere feeling. And of Christianity at least it is false that 'feeling is all, the name but sound and smoke' —where 'name' stands for conception or thought. Rather we count this the very mark and criterion of a religion's high rank and superior value—that it should have no lack of conceptions about God; that it should admit knowledge—the knowledge that comes by faith—of the transcendent in terms of conceptual thought, whether those already mentioned or others which continue and develop them. Christianity not only possesses such conceptions but possesses them in unique clarity and abundance, and this is, though not the sole or even the chief, yet a very real sign of its superiority over religions of other forms and at other levels. This must be asserted at the outset and with the most positive emphasis.

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. This is the view that the essence of deity can be given completely and exhaustively in such "rational" attributions as have been referred to above and in others like them. It is not an unnatural misconception. We are prompted to it by the traditional language of edification, with its characteristic phraseology and ideas; by the learned treatment of religious themes in sermon and theological instruction; and further even by our Holy Scriptures themselves. In all these cases the "rational" element occupies the foreground, and often nothing else seems to be present at all. But this is after all to be expected. All language, in so far as it consists of words, purports to convey ideas or concepts; — that is what language means;—and the more clearly and unequivocally it does so, the better the language. And hence expositions of religious truth in language inevitably tend to stress the "rational" attributes of God.

But though the above mistake is thus a natural one enough, it is none the less seriously misleading. For so far are these "rational" attributes from exhausting the idea of deity, that they in fact imply a non-rational or supra-rational Subject of which they are predicates. They are "essential" (and not merely "accidental") attributes of that subject, but they are also, it is important to notice, synthetic essential attributes. That is to say, we have to predicate them of a subject which they qualify, but which in its deeper essence is not, nor indeed can be, comprehended in them; which rather requires comprehension of a quite different kind. Yet, though it eludes the conceptual way of understanding, it must be in some way or other within our grasp, else absolutely nothing could be asserted of it. And even mysticism, in speaking of it as "to arreton", the ineffable, does not really mean to imply that absolutely nothing can be asserted of the object of the religious consciousness; otherwise, mysticism could exist only in un- broken silence, whereas what has generally been a characteristic of the mystics is their copious eloquence.

Rationalism vs. Profound Religion

Here for the first time we come up against the contrast between rationalism and profounder religion, and with this contrast and its signs we shall be repeatedly concerned in what follows. We have here in fact the first and most distinctive mark of rationalism, with which all the rest are bound up. It is not that which is commonly asserted, that rationalism is the denial, and its opposite the affirmation, of the miraculous. That is manifestly a wrong or at least a very superficial distinction. For the traditional theory of the miraculous as the occasional breach in the causal nexus in nature by a Being who himself instituted and must therefore be master of it—this theory is itself as massively "rational" as it is possible to be. Rationalists have often enough acquiesced in the possibility of the miraculous in this sense; they have even themselves contributed to frame a theory of it;—whereas anti-rationalists have been often indifferent to the whole controversy about miracles. The difference between rationalism and its opposite is to be found elsewhere. It resolves itself rather into a peculiar difference of quality in the mental attitude and emotional content of the religious life itself. All depends upon this: in our idea of God is the non-rational overborne, even perhaps wholly excluded, by the rational? Or conversely, does the non-rational itself preponderate over the rational? Looking at the matter thus, we see that the common dictum, that orthodoxy itself has been the mother of rationalism, is in some measure well founded. It is not simply that orthodoxy was preoccupied with doctrine and the framing of dogma, for these have been no less a concern of the wildest mystics. It is rather that orthodoxy found in the construction of dogma and doctrine no way to do justice to the nonrational aspect of its subject. So far from keeping the nonrational element in religion alive in the heart of the religious experience, orthodox Christianity manifestly failed to recognize its value, and by this failure gave to the idea of God a one-sidedly intellectualistic and rationalistic interpretation.

This bias to rationalization still prevails, not only in theology but in the science of comparative religion in general, and from top to bottom of it. The modern students of mythology, and those who pursue research into the religion of "primitive man" and attempt to reconstruct the "bases" or ''sources" of religion, are all victims to it. Men do not, of course, in these cases employ those lofty "rational" concepts which we took as our point of departure; but they tend to take these concepts and their gradual "evolution as setting the main problem of their inquiry, and fashion ideas and notions of lower value, which they regard as paving the way for them. It is always in terms of concepts and ideas that the subject is pursued, Natural' ones, moreover, such as have a place in the general sphere of man's ideational life, and are not specifically "religious". And then with a resolution and cunning which one can hardly help admiring, men shut their eyes to that which is quite unique in the religious experience, even in its most primitive manifestations. But it is rather a matter for astonishment than for admiration! For if there be any single domain of human experience that presents us with something unmistakably specific and unique, peculiar to itself, assuredly it is that of the religious life. In truth the enemy has often a keener vision in this matter than either the champion of religion or the neutral and professedly impartial theorist. For the adversaries on their side know very well that the entire "pother about mysticism" has nothing to do with "reason" and "rationality".

And so it is best that we should be incited to notice that religion is not exclusively contained and exhaustively comprised in any series of "rational" assertions; and it is well worth while to attempt to bring the relation of the different "moments" of religion to one another clearly before the mind, so that its nature may become more manifest.

This attempt we are now to make with respect to the quite distinctive category of the holy or sacred.

Holiness as the Numinous (Chap. 2)

"Holiness"—"the holy"— is a category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion. It is, indeed, applied by transference to another sphere—that of ethics — but it is not itself derived from this. While it is complex, it contains a quite specific element or "moment", which sets it apart from 'the rational' in the meaning we gave to that word above, and which remains inexpressible—an arreton or ineffable—in the sense that it completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts. The same thing is true (to take a quite different region of experience) of the category of the beautiful. . . .

Accordingly, it is worthwhile, as we have said, to find a word to stand for this element in isolation, this "extra" in the meaning of "holy" above and beyond the meaning of goodness. By means of a special term we shall the better be able, first, to keep the meaning clearly apart and distinct, and second, to apprehend and classify connectedly whatever subordinate forms or stages of development it may show. For this purpose I adopt a word coined from the Latin numen. Omen has given us "ominous" and there is no reason why from numen we should not similarly form a word 'numinous'. I shall speak, then, of a unique "numinous" category of value and of a definitely "numinous" state of mind, which is always found wherever the category is applied. 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. There is only one way to help another to an understanding of it. He must be guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which 'the numinous' in him perforce begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness. We can co-operate in this process by bringing before his notice all that can be found in other regions of the mind, already known and familiar, to resemble, or again to afford some special contrast to, the particular experience we wish to elucidate. Then we must add: "This X of ours is not precisely this experience, but akin to this one and the opposite of that other. Cannot you now realize for yourself what it is? " In other words our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind; as everything that comes "of the spirit" must be awakened.

The Elements of the Numinous (Chapter 3)

The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no farther; for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who can recollect the emotions of his adolescence, the discomforts of indigestion, or, say, social feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings. We do not blame such a one, when he tries for himself to advance as far as he can with the help of such principles of explanation as he knows, interpreting 'aesthetics' in terms of sensuous pleasure, and 'religion' as a function of the gregarious instinct and social standards, or as something more primitive still. But the artist, who for his part has an intimate personal knowledge of the distinctive element in the aesthetic experience, will decline his theories with thanks, and the religious man will reject them even more uncompromisingly.

Next, in the probing and analysis of such states of the soul as that of solemn worship, it will be well if regard be paid to what is unique in them rather than to what they have in common with other similar states. To be rapt in worship is one thing; to be morally uplifted by the contemplation of a good deed is another; and it is not to their common features, but to those elements of emotional content peculiar to the first that we would have attention directed as precisely as possible. As Christians we undoubtedly here first meet with feelings familiar enough in a weaker form in other departments of experience, such as feelings of gratitude, trust, love, reliance, humble submission, and dedication. But this does not by any means exhaust the content of religious worship. Not in any of these have we got the special features of the quite unique and incomparable experience of solemn worship. In what does this consist? . . .

Now this object is just what we have already spoken of as 'the numinous'. For the 'creature-feeling' and the sense of dependence to arise in the mind the 'numen' must be experienced as present, a numen praesens as is in the case of Abraham. There must be felt a something 'numinous', something bearing the character of a 'numen', to which the mind turns spontaneously; or (which is the same thing in other words) these feelings can only arise in the mind as accompanying emotions when the category of 'the numinous' is called into play. The numinous is thus felt as objective and outside the self. We have now to inquire more closely into its nature and the modes of its manifestation.

THE BREAKTHROUGH: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM (Chap. 4-5)

The Fundamental Religious Feeling

We said above that the nature of the numinous can only be suggested by means of the special way in which it is reflected in the mind in terms of feeling. "Its nature is such that it grips or stirs the human mind with this and that determinate affective state." We have now to attempt to give a further indication of these determinate states. We must once again endeavour, by adducing feelings akin to them for the purpose of analogy or contrast, and by the use of metaphor and symbolic expressions, to make the states of mind we are investigating ring out, as it were, of themselves.

Let us consider the deepest and most fundamental element in all strong and sincerely felt religious emotion. Faith unto salvation, trust, love—all these are there. But over and above these is an element which may also on occasion, quite apart from them, profoundly affect us and occupy the mind with a wellnigh bewildering strength. Let us follow it up with every effort of sympathy and imaginative intuition wherever it is to be found, in the lives of those around us, in sudden, strong ebullitions of personal piety and the frames of mind such ebullitions evince, in the fixed and ordered solemnities of rites and liturgies, and again in the atmosphere that clings to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to churches. If we do so we shall find we are dealing with something for which there is only one appropriate expression, mysterium tremendum [terrifying mystery]. The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its 'profane', non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering. It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures.

It is again evident at once that here too our attempted formulation by means of a concept is once more a merely negative one. Conceptually mysterium denotes merely that which is hidden and esoteric, that which is beyond conception or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar. The term does not define the object more positively in its qualitative character. But though what is enunciated in the word is negative, what is meant is something absolutely and intensely positive. This pure positive we can experience in feelings, feelings which our discussion can help to make clear to us, in so far as it arouses them actually in our hearts.

The Element of Awefulness

To get light upon the positive "quale" of the object of these feelings, we must analyze more closely our phrase mysterium tremendum, and we will begin first with the adjective. Tremor is in itself merely the perfectly familiar and "natural" emotion of fear. But here the term is taken, aptly enough but still only by analogy, to denote a quite specific kind of emotional response, wholly distinct from that of being afraid, though it so far resembles it that the analogy of fear may be used to throw light upon its nature. There are in some languages special expressions which denote, either exclusively or in the first instance, this Tear' that is more than fear proper. The Hebrew hiqdish (hallow) is an example. . . .

The Element of Overpoweringness

We have been attempting to unfold the implications of that aspect of the masterium tremendum indicated by the adjective, and the result so far may be summarized in two words, constituting, as before, what may be called an 'ideogram', rather than a concept proper, viz. "absolute unapproachability".

It will be felt at once that there is yet a further element which must be added, that, namely, of 'might', 'power', 'absolute overpoweringness'. We will take to represent this the term majestas, majesty—the more readily because anyone with a feeling for language must detect a last faint trace of the numinous still clinging to the word. The tremendum may then be rendered more adequately tremenda majestas or "aweful majesty". This second element of majesty may continue to be vividly preserved, where the first, that of unapproachability, recedes and dies away, as may be seen, for example, in mysticism. It is especially in relation to this element of majesty or absolute overpoweringness that the creature-consciousness, of which we have already spoken, comes upon the scene, as a sort of shadow or subjective reflection of it. Thus, in contrast to 'the overpowering' of which we are conscious as an object over against the self, there is the feeling of one's own submergence, of being but 'dust and ashes' and nothingness. And this forms the numinous raw material for the feeling of religious humility.

The Element of Energy or Urgency

There is, finally, a third element comprised in those of tremendum and majestas, awefulness and majesty, and this I venture to call the "urgency" or "energy" of the numinous object. It is particularly vividly perceptible in the [Greek] opge or wrath'; and it everywhere clothes itself in symbolical ex- pressions—vitality, passion, emotional temper, will, force, movement, excitement, activity, impetus. These features are typical and recur again and again from the daemonic level up to the idea of the living' God. We have here the factor that has everywhere more than any other prompted the fiercest opposition to the "philosophic" God of mere rational speculation, who can be put into a definition. And for their part the philosophers have condemned these expressions of the energy of the numen, whenever they are brought on to the scene, as sheer anthropomorphism. In so far as their opponents have for the most part themselves failed to recognize that the terms they have borrowed from the sphere of human conative and affective life have merely value as analogies, the philosophers are right to condemn them. But they are wrong, in so far as, this error notwithstanding, these terms stood for a genuine aspect of the divine nature—its non-rational aspect—a due consciousness of which served to protect religion itself from being "rationalized" away. . . .

We gave to the object to which the numinous consciousness is directed the name mysterium tremendum and we then set ourselves first to determine the meaning of the adjective tremendum—which we found to be itself only justified by analogy—because it is more easily analysed than the substantive idea mysterium. We have now to turn to this, and try, as best we may, by hint and suggestion, to get to a clearer apprehension of what it implies.

The "Wholly Other"

Taken, indeed, in its purely natural sense, mysterium would first mean merely a secret or a mystery in the sense of that which is alien to us, uncomprehended and unexplained; and so far mysterium is itself merely an ideogram, an analogical notion taken from the natural sphere, illustrating, but incapable of exhaustively rendering, our real meaning. Taken in the religious sense, that which is 'mysterious' is—to give it perhaps the most striking expression—the 'wholly other' (thateon, anyad, alienim) , 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.

This is already to be observed on the lowest and earliest level of the religion of primitive man, where the numinous consciousness is but an inchoate stirring of the feelings. . . . Even on the lowest level of religious development the essential characteristic is therefore to be sought elsewhere than in the appearance of 'spirit' representations. It lies rather, we repeat, in a peculiar 'moment' of consciousness, to wit, the stupor before something 'wholly other', whether such an other be named 'spirit' or 'daemon' or 'deva', or be left without any name. . . .

In mysticism we have in the 'beyond' again the strongest stressing and over-stressing of those non-rational elements which are already inherent in all religion. Mysticism continues to its extreme point this contrasting of the numinous object (the numen), as the 'wholly other', with ordinary experience. Not content with contrasting it with all that is of nature or this world, mysticism concludes by contrasting it with Being itself and all that 'is', and finally actually calls it 'that which is nothing'. By this 'nothing' is meant not only that of which nothing can be predicated, but that which is absolutely and intrinsically other than and opposite of everything that is and can be thought. But while exaggerating to the point of paradox this negation and contrast—the only means open to conceptual thought to apprehend the mysterium—mysticism at the same time retains the positive quality of the 'wholly other' as a very living factor in its over- brimming religious emotion. . . .

These terms 'supernatural' and 'transcendent' give the appearance of positive attributes, and, as applied to the mysterious, they appear to divest the mysterium of its originally negative meaning and to turn it into an affirmation. On the side of conceptual thought this is nothing more than appearance, for it is obvious that the two terms in question are merely negative and exclusive attributes with reference to 'nature' and the world or cosmos respectively. But on the side of the feeling-content it is otherwise; that is in very truth positive in the highest degree, though here too, as before, it cannot be rendered explicit in conceptual terms. It is through this positive feeling-content that the concepts of the 'transcendent' and 'supernatural' become forthwith designations for a unique 'wholly other' reality and quality, something of whose special character we can feel without being able to give it clear conceptual expression.

MEANS OF EXPRESSING THE NUMINOUS (Chap. 9)

Direct Means: Immediate Contagion of Feeling

It may serve to make the essential nature of the numinous consciousness clearer if we call to mind the manner in which it expresses itself outwardly, and how it spreads and is transmitted from mind to mind. There is, of course, no 'transmission' of it in the proper sense of the word; it cannot be 'taught', it must be 'awakened' from the spirit. And this could not justly be asserted, as it often is, of religion as a whole and in general, for in religion there is very much that can be taught—that is, handed down in concepts and passed on in school instruction. What is incapable of being so handed down is this numinous basis and background to religion, which can only be induced, incited, and aroused. This is least of all possible by mere verbal phrase or external symbol; rather we must have recourse to the way all other moods and feelings are transmitted, to a penetrative imaginative sympathy with what passes in the other person's mind. More of the experience lives in reverent attitude and gesture, in tone and voice and demeanour, expressing its momentousness, and in the solemn devotional assembly of a congregation at prayer, than in all the phrases and negative nomenclature which we have found to designate it. Indeed, these never give a positive suggestion of the object to which the religious consciousness refers; they are only of assistance in so far as they profess to indicate an object, which they at the same time contrast with another, at once distinct from and inferior to it, e.g. 'the invisible', 'the eternal' (non-temporal), 'the supernatural', 'the transcendent'. Or they are simply ideograms for the unique content of feeling, ideograms to understand which a man must already have had the experience himself. Far the best means are actual 'holy' situations or their representation in description. If a man does not feel what the numinous is, when he reads the sixth chapter of Isaiah, then no 'preaching, singing, telling', in Luther's phrase, can avail him. Little of it can usually be noticed in theory and dogma, or even in exhortation, unless it is actually heard. Indeed no element in religion needs so much as this the viva vox [living voice], transmission by living fellowship and the inspiration of personal contact.

Numinous expressed Indirectly through Terror in Art

For the rest, the methods by which the numinous feeling is presented and evoked are indirect; i.e. they consist in those means by which we express kindred and similar feelings belonging to the 'natural' sphere. We have already become acquainted with these feelings, and we shall recognize them at once if we consider what are the means of expression which religion has employed in all ages and in every land.

One of the most primitive of these—which is later more and more felt to be inadequate, until it is finally altogether discarded as 'unworthy'—is quite naturally the "fearful" and horrible, and even at times the revolting and the loathsome. Inasmuch as the corresponding feelings are closely analogous to that of the tremendum, their outlets and means of expression may become indirect modes of expressing the specific 'numinous awe' that cannot be expressed directly. And so it comes about that the horrible and dreadful character of primitive images and pictures of gods, which seems to us to-day frequently so repellent, has even yet among naive and primitive natures—nay, occasionally even among ourselves — the effect of arousing genuine feelings of authentic religious awe. And, vice versa, this awe operates as a supremely potent stimulus to express the element of terror in different forms of imaginative representation. The hard, stern, and somewhat grim pictures of the Madonna in ancient Byzantine art attract the worship of many Catholics more than the tender charm of the Madonnas of Raphael. . . .

Numinous expressed through Sublimity, Semi-Darkness and Emptiness in Art

In the arts nearly everywhere the most effective means of representing the numinous is 'the sublime'. This is especially true of architecture, in which it would appear to have first been realized. One can hardly escape the idea that this feeling for expression must have begun to awaken far back in the remote Megalithic Age. The motive underlying the erection of those gigantic blocks of rock, hewn or unworked, single monoliths or titanic rings of stone, as at Stonehenge, may have well been originally to localize and preserve and, as it were, to store up the numen in solid presence by magic; but the change to the motive of expression must have been from the outset far too vividly stimulated not to occur at a very early date. In fact the bare feeling for solemn and imposing magnitude and for the pomp of sublime pose and gesture is a fairly elementary one, and we cannot doubt that this stage had been reached when the mastabas^ obelisks and pyramids were built in Egypt. It is indeed beyond question that the builders of these temples, and of the Sphinx of Gizeh, which set the feeling of the sublime, and together with and through it that of the numinous, throbbing in the soul almost like a mechanical reflex, must themselves have been conscious of this effect and have intended it.

But in neither the sublime nor the magical, effective as they are, has art more than an indirect means of representing the numinous. Of director methods our Western art has only two, and they are in a noteworthy way negative, viz. darkness and silence. The darkness must be such as is enhanced and made all the more perceptible by contrast with some last vestige of brightness, which it is, as it were, on the point of extinguishing; hence the 'mystical' effect begins with semidarkness. Its impression is rendered complete if die factor of the 'sublime' comes to unite with and supplement it. The semi-darkness that glimmers in vaulted halls, or beneath the branches of a lofty forest glade, strangely quickened and stirred by the mysterious play of half-lights, has always spoken eloquently to the soul, and the builders of temples, mosques, and churches have made full use of it.

Silence is what corresponds to this in the language of musical sounds. 'Yahweh is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him.' (Hab. ii. 20.). . . . Besides silence and darkness oriental art knows a third direct means for producing a strongly numinous impression, to wit, emptiness and empty distances. Empty distance, remote vacancy, is, as it were, the sublime in the horizontal. The wide-stretching desert, the boundless uniformity of the steppe, have real sublimity, and even in us Westerners they set vibrating chords of the numinous along with the note of the sublime, according to the principle of the association of feelings. Chinese architecture, which is essentially an art in the laying out and grouping of buildings, makes a wise and very striking use of this fact. It does not achieve the impression of solemnity by lofty vaulted halls or imposing altitudes, but nothing could well be more solemn than the silent amplitude of the enclosed spaces, courtyards, and vestibules which it employs.

Source: selections from Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (1917), translated by John Harvey, 1923.

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PAUL TILLICH

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) was born in the small village of Starzeddel in eastern Germany, where his father served as a Lutheran pastor. He studied theology and philosophy at several German universities, including Berlin, Tübingen, and Halle, and was ordained in the Lutheran Church in 1912. During World War I he served as a military chaplain, an experience that left a lasting mark on his outlook and contributed to his later interest in the crises of modern culture. After the war he taught at a series of German universities and became an influential public intellectual, but in 1933 he was dismissed from his post for criticizing the Nazi regime. He emigrated to the United States that same year, accepting a position at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he quickly gained prominence for his lectures and writings. Over the next three decades he taught at Union, Harvard University, and finally the University of Chicago, publishing a steady stream of books, the most important of which is his three‑volume Systematic Theology (1951–1963). He died in Chicago in 1965 at the age of 79. The selections below are from his work Religious Realization (1930), written during his German period.

In the first section below, Tillich describes a crisis of identity that lurks within us all. Imagine that you have achieved everything you ever wanted. You are successful, ethical, and respected. But in an instant, you are struck by a realization: none of this actually matters, you are a finite speck in an infinite universe, and all your achievements are just a temporary mask over a dark abyss. You would like to just brush it off, but your inner sense of freedom will not allow you to dodge it. In Tillich's terms, you are in a boundary situation between your world of comfort vs. your sense of meaninglessness. In this no-man's land, you face the threat of non-being, that is, the possibility of being nothing at all. For Tillich, animals do not have a boundary situation. They cannot ask "does my life matter?" because they do not have the freedom to stand outside their own existence and examine their daily activites. We humans, however, have that vantage and understand our "freedom to say yes or no" to our own being. This is what makes us "inherently threatened." You might turn to traditional religion to help solve the problem. However, Tillich says, Catholicism fails since it gives false security through its mystical rituals. Traditional Protestantism is even more dangerous because it refuses to give you any protection at all. Traditional Protestantism is more honest by making you realize that you are small and mortal, but that is only the starting point, and it fails to offer a viable solution. While conversion through Christ is the advertised solution, this rests on a mythology that is no longer believable. For the modern Protestant, the task is no longer to explain the nature of Christ, salvation through Christ, or the second coming. Instead, the modern Protestant must "speak of the new Christ-determined being, which is a being that is in history, and yet not of history". That is, it must see how Christ represents a changed way of viewing our existence when faced with the threat of non-being, and how Christ represents a new being. It shows us a way of existing that is fully ackowledges our vulnerable, "creaturely" history as we face the threat of non-being. But it also giving us a new meaning that transcends history.

In the second section, Tillich explains the solution to the crisis of non-being begins with a breakthrough that is like a lightning flash, were we embrace the present. The flash is both a blinding light and total darkness at the same time. This does not occur within either our tangible realty, nor in a realm beyond us. It is some hybrid state that "belongs to my presentness without the breaking-in of transcendence". Once we have this breakthrough, we finally resolve the crisis of the boundary situation through religious symbols. He discusses this in the third section. Symbols in general, he says, are defined by four traits: (1) they are non-literal, pointing beyond themselves to a deeper meaning; (2) they are representable, giving a concrete form to abstract or ideal concepts; (3) they possess innate power, insofar as they emerge from collective experience rather than arbitrary invention; (4) and they require community validation to be socially recognized and sustained. Religious symbols share all these features, but what makes religious symbols unique is that they represent the Unconditionally Transcendent, which by its very nature transcends all objective forms and does not require the symbol to exist. While other symbols represent things that have their own objective reality (like a flag for a state) or provide the only form for an idea (like a work of art), religious symbols are not directed at the objective world and exist solely as objects of faith to point toward the representable-transcendent.

This is Tillich's philosophy of religion in his early German period. When relocating to the United States, he retained the core views that we've seen here, but he introduces new terminology, which we now associate with him. In these later works, Tillich rebrands the "boundary situation" as a state of finitude, where the inevitable fact that we will die creates a sense of meaninglessness regarding our daily tasks. This tension produces a fundamental anxiety, which we often attempt to resolve by elevating finite objects (such as money or our country) to a level of ultimate concern that they do not deserve. Eventually, he argues, we find the courage to be by rooting our existence in the ground of being, rather than relying on our own self-mastery. The ultimate power of the ground of being sustains us even when our human security fail. We approach the ground of being through religious symbols, but idolatry can creep in when we identify the symbol itself with the ultimate.

THE CRISIS: BOUNDARY SITUATION AND THREAT OF MEANINGLESSNESS (AM I NOTHING?) (A1.3)

It is the experience of the human boundary situation, or the unconditional threat to human existence, that compels one not to withdraw from the distress of autonomy [i.e., to freely embrace this threat]; and now I maintain, first, that the Protestant element within Protestantism is and must remain the proclamation of the human boundary situation and the unconditional threat to human existence. Second, I maintain that modern man is capable, within the brokenness of his autonomy, of hearing the message of the boundary situation and affirming it against every temptation to abandon this position, as well as against every offering of religious or non-religious securities. . . .

The human boundary situation is reached where [our limited] human possibility as such comes to an end, placing human existence under an unconditional threat. This is not the case in death; although death can certainly point toward the boundary situation, it need not do so, and it is not the situation itself. This is the reason why death cannot liberate one from despair, as the discord experienced in despair is not simultaneously abolished by the dissolution of physical existence. The boundary situation, which makes itself felt in despair, threatens man on a different level than that of physical existence; whoever knows the threat at the root of their being knows that the thought of death brings no relief. One knows that one would, as it were, take the unresolved nature of the boundary situation and the despairing quality of the discord with them into death, regardless of how one conceives or does not conceive of this "in death."

The human boundary situation is possible precisely because man is not at one with his immediate existence; it is possible because man, as man, stands above his mere being, being broken in his immediate existence. To be human is this elevation above mere being; it is this standing in freedom from oneself, specifically in the freedom to say yes or no to [one's own] being. With this freedom, which is his essence and from which he cannot withdraw, his state of being threatened is also given. Man is the inherently threatened being because he is free from mere being [i.e., biological instinct like an animal], because he can say yes and no to being, to his own being. This is expressed in the fact that man can ask after true being and that he can demand the right being; whoever asks after being is somehow detached from being, and whoever demands being presupposes that it is not given. Man, however, must ask and must demand; he cannot escape this fate of his—that is, the fate of being human. If he did not wish to ask, his non-asking would itself be an answer to a question; if he did not wish to demand, his non-demanding would itself be obedience to a demand. Man always acts, even when non-action is the content of his action; and man always makes decisions out of freedom, even when the attempt to escape freedom is the object of the decision. This inescapability of freedom, of the necessity of deciding, is the deepest unrest of our existence, for through it our being is threatened.

The inescapability of freedom would not threaten us if it were ultimately indifferent to our being whether we decided one way or another; however, standing in freedom means that it is not indifferent, but rather that the unconditional claim stands over us to grasp true being and to realize the right being. If this claim is not fulfilled—and indeed, it is not fulfilled—then our being is driven into discord, into the hidden torment of every life, from which even death cannot liberate us. Where this situation is experienced in its unconditionality and inescapability, there the human boundary situation is grasped; the place where non-being in the unconditional sense threatens, the place where our entire existence stands before non-being, is the human boundary situation.

Apparently, the seriousness of the human condition can be veiled or weakened by pointing to truth already attained or to demands already fulfilled, thereby escaping the unconditional threat. This possibility exists; and in some way, it is the way out for us all [to live in comfortable denial]. Unconditional seriousness could only be attributed to a person who disdains this possibility, who views their entire existence from the perspective of the boundary situation, and who therefore knows that their existence can provide no security for itself at any moment or by any means: neither through immersion in the vital life process, nor through intellectual creation, nor through sacraments, nor through mysticism and asceticism, nor through orthodoxy or intensified piety, nor through anything belonging to religious substance or immediate religious life.

It is the seriousness and weight of the old Protestant attitude that it does not allow itself to be carried past the threatened state of the entire human condition—past the unconditionality of the boundary situation—even by priests, church, or sacrament. In contrast, [Catholic] mystic-sacramental religion easily appears lacking in seriousness, serving as a human security against the ultimate threat to the human. The lesser importance that the Protestant accords to the church, to divine service, and to the religious sphere in general is deeply rooted in this standing within the boundary situation, which also signifies the limit of religious possibility [where human rituals fail]. Because religion and the church in themselves are not and must not be a security for him, he faces them with the same sovereignty as he does every human possibility—not with the sovereignty of the superior man who places himself with his individual conviction above all else, but with the sovereignty of one who is led into a situation in which he himself, along with all that is human, including all that is religiously human, is joined together and placed under the threat of non-being. . . .

Thus, it is not the task of Protestant shaping of religious knowledge to speak, for the sake of tradition, of an act of creation and the problems it presents for formation of mythic-dogmatic concepts. Rather its task is to see and describe the state of being in its creatureliness. The mythical noun "creation" must be transformed into the adjective "creaturely." And it is not the task of Protestant shaping of religious knowledge to perpetuate the traditional Christological or soteriological problems [i.e., the nature of Christ and salvation]. Rather, in constant relation to evangelical secularism, it is to see and describe the new being that becomes visible in Jesus Christ. The task currently facing a Protestant shaping of religious knowledge is not to perpetuate the traditional doctrine of the person and work of Christ. Rather, it is to speak of the new, Christ-determined being, which is a being that is in history, and yet not of history. This problem is posed to us by the subject matter at every moment. It concerns us, our presence and reality, and it can then, only secondarily, become a means for us to take up and bring to mind the older problems. And, finally, it is not the task of Protestant shaping of religious knowledge to defend or dissolve the Judeo-Christian eschatological myth [i.e., the end times]. Rather, its task is to ask: What is the unconditional, transcendent meaning inherent in all historical action?

THE BREAKTHROUGH: THE BLINDING LIGHT OF THE PRESENT (A3.4)

The will to grasp the [limited] power of being within things is only achieved when it has grasped their unconditional [divine] power of being; yet, it belongs to the very power of the unconditionally powerful that it cannot be grasped [i.e., God cannot be grasped]. If the attempt is made, that which is grasped is no longer the unconditionally powerful, even if it bears its name. . . .

Faith-filled realism [i.e., Tillich's liberal theology] is anchored to the consciousness of the present. Into the present—into the power of being that reveals itself in the here and now—the unconditionally powerful breaks in and reveals itself. It grants the present its unconditional meaning, its unconditional depth, and its eternal significance. Yet, since presentness stands entirely within existence, being wholly real and not at all unconditional or eternal, it has become utterly questionable through this very bestowal of meaning, interpretation, and deepening. With the breaking forth of unconditional power, the power of the present is simultaneously confirmed [as the place of meeting] and abolished [as an end in itself]. Its reality is not surpassed, and yet it is only now truly present and, for that very reason, no longer present. For that through which it exists is that which abolishes it: the unconditionally powerful.

It is as if things were pierced by a sudden alternation between a blinding light and utter darkness, except that no interval lies between the two. For despite their unconditional opposition, they are unconditionally simultaneous. This piercing flash leaves behind its traces. A state of presentness bearing such traces we term *theonomous*—cast forth from its self-contained repose, pointing beyond itself toward transcendence. This imagery originates from nature and might give rise to the misconception that the unconditionally powerful is to be conceived after the manner of natural power. But if that were the case, it would not be truly conceived at all. For the heroically defiant personality may at any moment rise up in resistance against the power of nature, even a power that appears absolute. Only when the personality is gripped specifically as personality—that is, in its center, in its freedom and responsibility—only then and only to that extent does the unconditionally powerful possess its true unconditional nature.

To be gripped in this way is to be shaken by the Unconditionally Perfect, It sustains me and breaks into me, and [I am] a being shaken by the Inaccessibly Holy, which judges and rejects me. This, again, occurs without interval, without temporal distribution, in absolute presentness. We have no right to speak of the crisis as if it were something tangible within the context of our reality, nor of grace as if it were in a [realm] beyond [us], and unable to grip us. The crisis, too, the judgment itself, is intangible. Such a crisis in the theological sense is not a concept that belongs to my presentness without the breaking-in of transcendence. Within my presentness, there is the powerlessness of being in a thousand forms [e.g., our trivial failures and weaknesses]. I could defy this. But judgment comes to about only simultaneously with grace. Only in contrast to the unconditional light of divine power can unconditional darkness be articulated. . . .

THE MEDIATOR: THE POWER OF THE RELIGIOUS SYMBOL (B4.1)

The religious symbol unites the characteristics of the symbol in general with the particular characteristics that pertain to it as a religious symbol. The first and fundamental characteristic of the symbol is its non-literalness [i.e., it is not a factual statement]. This signifies that the inner act directed toward the symbol directed towards the symbol itself, but rather that which is symbolized within it. In this process, the symbolized itself can once again be a symbol for a symbolized of a higher order. Thus, the written character can be called a symbol for the word, and the word a symbol for the meaning. [For example] the devotion shown toward the wooden cross is actually directed towards the crucifixion on Golgotha, and the devotion testified to that event is actually directed towards the redeeming action of God, which is itself a symbolic expression for an experience of the Unconditionally Transcendent.

The second characteristic of the symbol is its representability, which signifies that something essentially unrepresentable, ideal, or transcendent is brought into view and thus into objectivity within the symbol. This representability need not be sensory, it can just as well be imagined, as in the previous example of the crucifixion or as in poetic figures. Even abstract concepts can become symbols, provided that their realization remains connected to a representable moment. Such is the case, for instance, with the concept of "surplus value" as a symbol of economic exploitation in the consciousness of the proletariat, or the concept of the "highest being" as a symbol of the Unconditionally Transcendent in the consciousness of the congregation.

The third characteristic of the symbol is its innate power. This signifies that the symbol possesses an inherent power dwelling within itself, which distinguishes it from the mere sign that is powerless in itself. This characteristic is decisive for the separation of sign and symbol. The sign is arbitrarily exchangeable, possessing no necessity because it has no inner power. The symbol, however, possesses necessity; it cannot be exchanged. It can only disappear through the loss of its inner power, through symbolic decay; and it cannot be invented [by human calculation], but only created [from collective experience]. Words and written characters originally possessed a symbolic character, for they bore the meaning they intended in non-exchangeable innate power. In the course of development, through the transition from a mythical to an objective-technical world-conception, they lost this symbolic character, though not entirely; with the loss of innate power, they became signs. The pictorial symbols of religious art were originally charged with a magical potency, with the loss of which they became a conventional sign language and almost entirely forfeited their genuine symbolic character.

The fourth characteristic of the symbol is its community validation. This signifies that the symbol is socially embedded and sustained. It is not the case, therefore, that a thing is first a symbol and subsequently finds recognition. Rather, the process of becoming a symbol and its recognition belong together. The symbol-creating act is a social act, even if it first breaks through in an individual. An individual can create signs for his private needs, but he cannot create symbols; if something becomes a symbol for him, it is always with regard to the community that can recognize itself therein [as a shared reality]. This fact is expressed with particular clarity in the denominational "symbols," which are initially nothing other than the distinguishing marks of the confessions [i.e., confessional credes of different religious denominations]. "Symbolics" is the science of the distinguishing marks of the confessions, it is the study of denominations. Yet all other symbols could also be treated from this perspective; a universal "symbolics" would be conceivable as a study of the "confessions" of all groups, orientations, and communities.

These general characteristics of the symbol apply also to religious symbols, as the individual examples have shown. However, religious symbols are distinguished from all others by the fact that they are representations of that which unconditionally transcends the sphere of representation: the ultimate aim of the religious act, the Unconditionally Transcendent. All other symbols stand either for something that, besides its ideal meaning, also possesses a non-symbolic, objective existence, such as the flag for the armed forces and the latter for the state. Or, they are the form of existence of something unrepresentable that—apart from them—has no existence, such as intellectual creations like works of art, scientific concepts, or legal forms. In these cases, the symbol is the necessary form of existence of the matter itself.

Things are essentially different in the case of religious symbols; these have the task of expressing an object that, by its very nature, transcends every form of objectivity, yet which can just as little receive objectivity through a mental act. Religious symbols are founded neither upon the objective nor upon the mental-meaningful; they are unfounded or, spoken religiously, they are the object of faith. They possess no right other than that of representing the Unrepresentable-Transcendent, which does not require them in order to come into existence. Upon this fact rests the peculiar two-layered nature of religious symbols: in their fundamental layer, they are objective representations of the Unconditionally Transcendent and of the relations to it; and in the remaining layers, they are visualizations of the symbols belonging to that first layer. With this, we break off at this point, only to return to it later, enriched by further investigations.

Source: Paul Tillich, Religiöse Verwirklichung, Berlin: Furche-Verlag (1930), independently machine translated from the German, not based on previous translations.

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RUDOLF BULTMANN:

DEMYTHOLOGIZING CHRISTIANITY

Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) was born in Wiefelstede, a small town in northern Germany, the son of a Lutheran pastor and the grandson of a missionary. He studied theology at the universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and Marburg, where he was influenced by leading New Testament scholars of the day. After completing his doctorate, he held academic posts at Breslau and Giessen before returning to Marburg in 1921, a university with which he remained associated for the rest of his career. During these years he became known for his rigorous historical scholarship, his participation in the History of Religions school, and his close friendships with figures such as Martin Heidegger, whose philosophical work shaped aspects of Bultmann's later thought. Although he lived through both world wars and the rise and fall of the Nazi regime, he continued teaching and writing, retiring from his professorship in 1951 but remaining active as a lecturer and author. His most famous writings include Jesus and the Word (1926), History and Eschatology (1957), and especially his 1941 essay "New Testament and Mythology," which introduced his influential program of demythologizing. He died in Marburg in 1976 at the age of 91. The selections below are from "New Testament and Mythology".

In this work, Bultmann argues that the New Testament's message is expressed in an ancient mythical worldview that modern people can no longer accept as literally true. Yet beneath this mythology lies an existential truth about human existence and divine encounter, which must be recovered by "demythologizing" the mythic language. He begins articulating the problem. The worldview of the New Testament assumes a three‑tiered universe populated by supernatural beings who intervene directly in human affairs. It presents salvation in terms of cosmic events, particularly Christ's descent from heaven, his atoning death, his resurrection as the beginning of the world's end, and his imminent return for judgment. But this entire structure depends on an ancient cosmology shaped by pre‑scientific assumptions, he argues, and contemporary people cannot simply believe it without intellectual dishonesty. The question, then, is whether the New Testament message has a truth that can survive the collapse of its mythic form. He next explains why selective removal of myth is impossible. One cannot discard miracles, demons, or apocalyptic expectations while retaining ritual beliefs that depend on the same supernatural logic. The mythic worldview is a unified whole, and if we keep only the parts we find acceptable, we distort the New Testament itself. If Christian teaching is to remain meaningful, it must be demythologized, not trimmed.

Bultmann next explains the scientific problems that make literal myth untenable. Modern people understand nature as governed by impersonal laws, not by spirits or demons. They no longer imagine heaven above or hell below, nor do they see themselves as vulnerable to external supernatural forces. Human beings now experience themselves as unified selves, either as natural organisms or as responsible spiritual agents, Accordingly, we cannot make sense of New Testament claims about the Spirit entering a person, sacraments imparting supernatural power, or demonic beings influencing thought and action. Likewise, doctrines such as original sin, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection appear morally or conceptually incoherent when judged from modern self‑understanding. Finally, Bultmann argues that myth points to something deeper than the literal story itself. Myth does not aim to offer a scientific picture of the world. Instead, it express how human beings understand their existence, which involves our dependence, our limits, our confrontation with powers beyond our control. Myth speaks about the transcendent subjects in the language of the world: it myth turns what is beyond the world into something that looks like part of the world. Accordingly, Bultmann argues, demythologization does not reject the New Testament. Instead, it seeks to uncover the personal and existential truths that are expressed within mythic symbols. The task of theology is to interpret these symbols so that their meaning. These are truths about human existence, guilt, freedom, and the possibility of authentic life before God, all of which can be grasped without requiring belief in an obsolete cosmology. Bultmann believes that existential philosophers like Heidegger can help uncover the human truths that New Testament myths are trying to express. An example he gives is the resurrection story. Rather than describing a miraculous event, demythologized it symbolizes the human possibility of leaving behind a life ruled by fear and guilt and entering a new, authentic way of existing.

THE PROBLEM: THE INCREDULOUS MYTHICAL WORLDVIEW

Why the Mythical Worldview Is No Longer Credible

The worldview of the New Testament is mythical. The world is considered to be divided into three levels. In the middle is the earth, above it heaven, and below it the underworld. Heaven is the dwelling place of God and the heavenly beings, the angels; the underworld is hell, the place of torment. But the earth is not only the site of natural, everyday events, of provision and work that reckons with order and rule; it is also the stage for the activity of supernatural powers: God and his angels, Satan and his demons. Supernatural powers intervene in natural events and in human thought, will, and action; miracles are not uncommon. Human beings are not masters of themselves; demons can possess them; Satan can put evil thoughts in their heads; but God, too, can guide their thoughts and will, can grant them heavenly visions, let them hear his commanding or comforting word, and can bestow upon them the supernatural power of his spirit. History does not proceed in a steady, lawful course, but receives its movement and direction from supernatural powers. This aeon is under the power of Satan, sin, and death (which are considered "powers"); it is hastening toward its end, indeed its imminent end, which will take place in a cosmic catastrophe; the "birth pangs" of the end times are near, the coming of the heavenly judge, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment for salvation or damnation.

The mythical worldview corresponds to the depiction of the salvation event, which forms the actual content of the New Testament proclamation. The text speaks in mythological language.

Proclamation: Now the end times have come; "when the fullness of time had come," God sent his Son. This Son, a pre-existent divine being, appears on earth as a man; his death on the cross, which he suffers like a sinner, brings atonement for the sins of humanity. His resurrection is the beginning of the cosmic catastrophe through which death, brought into the world by Adam, is destroyed, the demonic world powers have lost their power. The risen one has been exalted to heaven, to the right hand of God; he has been made "Lord" and "King ." He will come again on the clouds of heaven to complete the work of salvation; then the resurrection of the dead and the judgment will take place; then sin, death, and all suffering will be destroyed. And this will happen very soon; Paul himself believes he will witness this event.

Those who belong to the church of Christ are united with the Lord through baptism and the Lord's Supper and, if they do not behave unworthily, are assured of their resurrection to salvation. Believers already have the "down payment," namely the Spirit, who works in them and testifies to their sonship with God and guarantees their resurrection.

All of this is mythological discourse, and the individual motifs can easily be traced back to the contemporary mythology of Jewish apocalypticism and the Gnostic redemption myth. Insofar as it is mythological discourse, it is unbelievable to people today because the mythical worldview is a thing of the past for them. Contemporary Christian preaching is therefore faced with the question of whether, in demanding faith from people, it expects them to acknowledge the past mythical worldview. If this is impossible, then the question arises whether the proclamation of the New Testament possesses a truth independent of the mythical worldview; and it would then be the task of theology to demythologize Christian preaching.

The Need to Demythologize the New Testament

Can Christian proclamation expect people today to accept the mythical worldview as true? That is pointless and impossible. Pointless, because the mythical worldview is not at all specifically Christian; it is simply the worldview of a bygone era, not yet shaped by scientific thought. Impossible, because a worldview cannot be acquired through a decision, but is already given to each person by virtue of their historical situation. Of course, it is not immutable, and individuals can work on reshaping it. But they can only do so by becoming aware, based on some facts that present themselves as real, of the impossibility of the traditional worldview and, based on those facts, modifying it or creating a new one. The worldview can change, for example, as a result of the Copernican discovery or the atomic theory; or even when Romanticism discovers that the human subject is more complex and richer than can be understood through the worldviews of the Enlightenment and Idealism. or by bringing the importance of history and national identity back into focus.

It is certainly possible that truths lost in the Enlightenment might be rediscovered in a past mythical worldview, and theology has every reason to ask this question in relation to the worldview of the New Testament as well. But it is impossible to revive a past worldview by simple decree, and above all, it is impossible to revive the mythical worldview after all our thinking has been irrevocably shaped by science. Blindly accepting New Testament mythology would be arbitrary; and raising such a demand as a requirement of faith would mean reducing faith to a work, as Wilhelm Herrmann—one would think, once and for all—made clear. Fulfilling this demand would be a forced sacrifice of the intellect (sacrificium intellectus), and whoever made it would be peculiarly divided and dishonest. For they would be affirming, for their faith, their religion, a worldview that they otherwise deny in their life. Modern thinking, as it has been handed down to us through our history, gives rise to criticism of the New Testament worldview.

World experience and world mastery have developed so far in science and technology that no one can or does seriously adhere to the New Testament worldview.

What is the point of professing today: "descended into hell" or "ascended into heaven," if the person professing this does not share the underlying mythical worldview of the three levels? Such statements can only be truly acknowledged if it is possible to strip their truth of the mythological conception in which they are embedded—if such a truth exists. For that is precisely the theological question to be asked. No adult imagines God as a being existing in heaven above; indeed, "heaven" in the old sense no longer exists for us. And just as little does hell, the mythical underworld beneath the ground on which our feet stand, exist. Thus, the stories of Christ's ascension to heaven and hell are rendered obsolete; obsolete is the expectation of the "Son of Man" coming with the clouds of heaven and of the believers being snatched up into the air to meet him (1 Thessalonians 4:15ff.).

The belief in spirits and demons is rendered obsolete by our understanding of the forces and laws of nature. We regard the celestial bodies as celestial bodies whose movement is governed by cosmic law; they are not demonic beings that enslave humankind. If they do influence human life, this influence occurs according to an understandable order and is not the result of their malevolence. Illnesses and their cures have their natural causes and are not based on the action of demons or their banishment. The miracles of the New Testament are thus refuted as miracles, and anyone who tries to salvage their historicity by resorting to nervous disorders, hypnotic influences, suggestion, and the like only confirms this. And insofar as we reckon with enigmatic, as yet unknown forces in physical and mental processes, we strive to make them scientifically comprehensible. Even occultism presents itself as a science.

One cannot use electric light and a radio, avail oneself of modern medical and clinical means in cases of illness, and simultaneously believe in the spirit world and miracles of the New Testament. And anyone who thinks they can do so must realize that if they declare this to be the stance of Christian faith, they thereby render Christian proclamation incomprehensible and impossible in the present day.

Mythical eschatology is essentially refuted by the simple fact that Christ's Parousia [i.e., second coming] did not occur immediately, as the New Testament anticipates, but rather that world history continued and—as any rational person is convinced—will continue. Anyone who is convinced that the world as we know it will eventually come to an end imagines its end as the result of natural development, as an end in natural catastrophes, and not as the mythical event described in the New Testament. And if, for example, they interpret this according to scientific theories, as the candidate in the parsonage at Nöddebo did, they are thereby, unknowingly, criticizing the New Testament.

Scientific Critique of Mythic Thinking

However, it is not only the criticism that stems from the scientific worldview, but just as much, indeed even more so, the criticism that arises from the self-understanding of modern man.

Modern man, curiously enough, has the dual possibility of understanding himself entirely as nature or as spirit, distinguishing himself from nature in his true self. In either case, he understands himself as a unified being who attributes his feelings, thoughts, and will to himself. He does not understand himself as peculiarly divided, as the New Testament portrays humanity, in such a way that external powers could interfere in his inner life. He ascribes to himself the inner unity of his states and actions and calls a person who believes this unity to be split by the intervention of demonic or divine powers schizophrenic.

Even if he sees himself as a highly dependent natural being, as biology or psychoanalysis claim, he does not view this dependence as a state of being at the mercy of external powers from which he is distinct, but rather as his very essence, which he understands and, through understanding, also takes back under his control, so that he can rationally organize his life. If he understands himself as spirit, he is indeed aware of his constant conditioned state by his physical being, but in his self he distinguishes himself from it and knows himself to be independently responsible for his dominion over nature.

In both cases, what the New Testament says about the "Spirit" (πνεῦμα) and the sacraments is utterly alien and incomprehensible to him. The purely biological person cannot grasp that a supernatural entity, πνεῦμα, could penetrate and be effective within the closed system of natural forces. The idealist does not understand how a πνεῦμα acting as a natural force could touch and influence his spiritual disposition. He considers himself responsible for himself and does not understand how a mysterious entity could be communicated to him in water baptism, which would then become the subject of his wills and actions. He does not understand that a meal is supposed to impart spiritual strength to him, and that unworthy participation in the Lord's Supper is supposed to result in physical sickness and death (1 Corinthians 11:30); unless he resorts to suggestion as an explanation. He does not understand how anyone can be baptized for the dead (1 Cor. 15:29).

There is little need to discuss the specific manifestations of modern worldviews in the forms of idealism and naturalism. For only the critique of the New Testament that necessarily arises from the situation of modern humanity can be theologically relevant. However, in the current situation, a biological worldview, for example, is not necessary; its choice within this situation is a matter of decision. And what is relevant for theology is only the question of what can justify the decision for a consistently biological worldview, what the common ground is from which the question of decision can arise. This ground is, firstly, the worldview shaped by natural science, and secondly, humanity's self-understanding, according to which it understands itself as a closed inner unity, inaccessible to supernatural powers.

The Collapse of Mythic Doctrines: Sin, Atonement, and Resurrection

For both the naturalist and the idealist, it is also true that they cannot understand death as punishment for sin; for them, it is a simple and necessary natural process. While it poses no problem at all for the former, for the latter, the problem of death arises precisely from the fact that it is a natural process. For as such, it does not grow from my true spiritual self, but rather destroys it. And this is the problem: that man, who is a spiritual self in contrast to plant and animal, is nevertheless also bound to nature; that he is conceived, grows, and dies like an animal. But he cannot understand this fact as the punishment for his sin; for he is already doomed to death before he became guilty. And he cannot understand that, as a consequence of his ancestor's guilt, he is condemned to be bound to the deathly fate of a natural being, since he only knows guilt as a responsible act and therefore original sin, as a disease continuing with natural force, is for him an immoral and impossible concept.

That is precisely why he cannot understand the doctrine of vicarious atonement through the death of Christ. How can my guilt be expiated by the death of an innocent person (if one can even speak of such a person)? What primitive concepts of guilt and justice underlie such a notion? What a primitive concept of God! Is the view of Christ's sin-erasing death to be understood from the perspective of sacrifice: what primitive mythology, that a human being, a divine being, atones for the sins of humanity through his blood! Or from the legal perspective, so that in the legal transaction between God and humanity, satisfaction would be rendered to God's demands through the death of Christ: then sin could only be understood legally as an external transgression of commandments, and ethical standards would be eliminated! And furthermore: if Christ, who suffered death, was the Son of God, the pre-existent divine being, what then did the assumption of death mean for him? For someone who knows that he will rise again after three days, death apparently means little!

Likewise, modern man cannot understand Jesus' resurrection as an event by virtue of which a life-giving power is unleashed, which man can then appropriate through the sacraments. For the biologically minded person, such talk is entirely meaningless, because for him the problem of death does not exist. For the idealist, it is certainly meaningful to speak of a life that is not subject to death; but that the possibility of such a life is provided by the fact that a dead person has been brought back to physical life is inconceivable to him. God's action, when he provides life for humanity through such a means, appears incomprehensibly intertwined with a natural phenomenon. He could only see God's action in an event that intervenes in the reality of his own actual life, transforming him. But such a miraculous natural event as the reanimation of a dead person—quite apart from its inherent implausibility—cannot be understood by him as an action of God that concerns him personally.

And if the Gnostic line of thought presents itself—that the dead and resurrected Christ was not simply a human being, but a God-man, and that his death and resurrection were not at all a fact isolated to him as an individual person, but a cosmic event into which we are all drawn— ^then modern man can only with difficulty return to this way of thinking, and certainly cannot comprehend it for himself, because in it the human self is conceived as nature, the event of salvation as a natural process. This also means that the idea of a Christ pre-existing as a heavenly being, and likewise the correlative idea of his own translocation into a heavenly world of light, in which the self is to receive heavenly garments, a pneumatic body, is meaningless to him—not only rationally inconceivable. For he does not understand that his salvation is to consist in such a state, in which he would come to the fulfillment of his life, of his true nature.

THE TASK: DEMYTHOLOGIZE THE NEW TESTAMENT

Why Selective Myth‑Removal Fails

Does it follow from such a critical deconstruction of New Testament mythology that the proclamation of the New Testament is entirely eliminated? In any case, it cannot be salvaged by reducing the mythological elements through selection or omission. For example, one cannot dispense with the idea of the harmful effects of the Lord's Supper when eaten unworthily, or with baptism for the dead, while simultaneously maintaining the notion that physical food has a pneumatic effect. For one particular mode of thinking encompasses all the New Testament statements about baptism and the Lord's Supper, and it is precisely this mode of thinking that we cannot comprehend.

It is worth noting that not all mythological statements within the New Testament are given equal emphasis or represented with the same regularity in all its writings. The legends of the Virgin Birth and the Ascension of Jesus appear only sporadically; Paul and John are unaware of them. But even if one considers them later additions, this does not alter the fact that the story of salvation retains its mythical character. And where would the line be drawn with such a process of elimination? One can only accept or reject the mythical worldview as a whole.

Here, the theologian and preacher owes absolute clarity and precision to himself, to the congregation, and to those he wishes to win over to the congregation. The sermon must not leave the listeners in doubt as to what they are to consider true and what they are not. Above all, it must not leave the listeners in doubt as to what the preacher himself is secretly eliminating, and he himself must not be in doubt about this either. In Karl Barth's "Resurrection of the Dead," cosmic eschatology is eliminated as the "final story" in favor of a non-mythological "end story." Barth can only be mistaken about the fact that this is a critique of Paul and of the New Testament in general because he is forcibly removing everything mythological from 1 Corinthians through interpretation; but this is an impossible process.

If the proclamation of the New Testament is to retain its validity, there is no other way than to demythologize it. This path, however, cannot be taken on the basis of a postulate that the New Testament proclamation must be made relevant to the present day under all circumstances. Rather, the simple question is whether it is truly nothing but mythology, or whether the very attempt to understand it in its true purpose leads to the elimination of myth. This question is made urgent from two sides: both by the understanding of the nature of myth in general, and by the New Testament itself.

Myth as Existential Interpretation, Not Cosmology

The true purpose of myth is not to provide an objective worldview; rather, it expresses how humanity understands itself within its world. Myth seeks to be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically—or better yet, existentially. Myth speaks of the power or powers that humanity perceives as the foundation and limit of its world and of its own actions and suffering. It speaks of these powers, however, in such a way as to conceptually integrate them into the realm of the known world, its things and forces, and into the realm of human life, its affects, motives, and possibilities. For example, when it speaks of a world egg or a world tree to illustrate the ground and origin of the world; or when it speaks of battles between the gods from which the conditions and orders of familiar woe have emerged. It speaks of the otherworldly in worldly terms, and of the gods in human terms.

Myth expresses the belief that the known and accessible world in which humankind lives does not have its own foundation and purpose, but rather that its foundation and its limits lie beyond the known and accessible, and that this known and accessible world is constantly governed and threatened by the uncanny powers that constitute its foundation and limits. And in conjunction with this, myth gives expression to the knowledge that humankind is not master of itself, that it is not only dependent within the known world, but that it is primarily dependent on those powers that govern beyond the known, and that it is precisely in this dependence that it can become free from the known powers.

The myth itself therefore contains the motive for self-criticism, i.e., of its objectifying ideas, insofar as its actual intention, to speak of a transcendent power to which woe and man are subject, is inhibited and concealed by the objectifying character of its statements.

Therefore, the mythology of the New Testament should not be examined in terms of its objectifying conceptual content, but rather in terms of the understanding of existence expressed within these concepts. The question at hand is the truth of this understanding, and faith affirms its truth, a faith that must not be bound to the conceptual world of the New Testament.

Source: Rudolf Bultmann, "Neues Testament und Mythologie" in Kerygma und Mythos. Ein theologisches Gespräch, Vol. 1 (Hamburg: Herbert Reich, 1948) independently machine translated from the German, not based on previous translations. If you are a copyright owner objecting to material found in this repository, please contact us.

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions.

1. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, what is the difference between the primary word I-Thou and the primary word I-It?

2. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, how does a tree transform from an object of scientific classification into a Thou?

3. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, why does artistic creation require a risk and sacrifice on the part of the artist?

4. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, why is love a world-wide relation rather than a mere subjective feeling?

5. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, what is the "melancholy of our lot" regarding every Thou in human experience?

6. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, why do feelings alone fail to generate a true community?

7. According to Buber in *I and Thou*, why is God the one Thou who never becomes an It?

8. According to Otto in *The Idea of the Holy*, why is a purely rational interpretation of deity incomplete?

9. According to Otto in *The Idea of the Holy*, what does the Latin-derived term "numinous" designate?

10. According to Otto in *The Idea of the Holy*, what are the three primary elements contained within the experience of the *mysterium tremendum*?

11. According to Otto in *The Idea of the Holy*, what is meant by calling the numinous object the "wholly other"?

12. According to Otto in *The Idea of the Holy*, what are the negative direct means used in Western art to evoke a numinous feeling?

13. According to Tillich in *Religious Realization*, what constitutes the "human boundary situation"?

14. According to Tillich in *Religious Realization*, why does modern Protestantism fail when it attempts to offer religious securities against the threat of non-being?

15. According to Tillich in *Religious Realization*, what are the four general characteristics that define any symbol?

16. According to Tillich in *Religious Realization*, how are religious symbols distinguished from non-religious symbols?

17. According to Bultmann in "New Testament and Mythology," why is the New Testament's mythical worldview untenable to modern people?

18. According to Bultmann in "New Testament and Mythology," why is it impossible to salvage the New Testament message through a selective removal of myths?

19. According to Bultmann in "New Testament and Mythology," how does modern human self-understanding contradict New Testament doctrines like demonic possession or baptismal spirit-impartation?

20. According to Bultmann in "New Testament and Mythology," what is the true existential purpose of myth?

21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.

(a) Analytic philosophers in the tradition of logical positivism criticized that Tillich's language was linguistically empty, such as "the Ground of Being" and "the Unconditioned". If God is not a being and cannot be described literally, then saying "God is the Ground of Being" doesn't actually communicate any information. Paul Edwards accused Tillich of "bombastic obscurity," arguing that Tillich's use of "symbols" was a way to avoid making any testable or falsifiable claims about reality. In this view, Tillich's liberal theology was just "atheism in a religious mask." How might Tillich respond to this criticism?

(b) During the 1960s "Death of God" movement, theologians (like Thomas J.J. Altizer and William Hamilton) felt Tillich had laid the groundwork for their movement but Tillich was too timid to finish it. They argued that Tillich still relied on a ghost of the transcendent. They wanted to move entirely into "Evangelical Profanity" without the "lightning flash" from beyond. They felt Tillich was still trying to save a church that was already dead. How might Tillich respond?

(c) Feminist theologian Mary Daly, who was initially a follower of Tillich, critiqued his "Ground of Being" as being a subtly patriarchal concept. She argued that even his abstract terms were still rooted in a male-centered view of power and "mastery" over the abyss. Does Daly have a case, and, if so, how might Tillich respond?

(d) Critics argue that Buber's distinction between I-Thou and I-It creates an impossible moral double standard; since modern survival requires treating nature, economics, and institutions as "It-objects," viewing the I-It relation as a lower or soulless state imposes an unlivable guilt on human society. How might Buber respond?

(e) Critics argue that Otto's concept of the "numinous" as an irreducible, non-rational feeling reduces theology to subjective emotionalism; without objective rational criteria to evaluate religious experiences, there is no way to distinguish a genuine encounter with the "Wholly Other" from pathological terror or psychological delusion. How might Otto respond?

(f) Critics argue that Bultmann's program of demythologizing strips Christianity of its essential historical foundation; by reducing events like the resurrection to internal existential self-understanding, he transforms the Christian gospel into a mere philosophy of human attitude. How might Bultmann respond?

(g) Critics argue that Buber, Otto, Tillich, and Bultmann surrender traditional supernaturalism to secular philosophy, thereby creating an intellectualized theology that fails to offer ordinary believers the concrete hope, comfort, and miraculous providence they seek from religion. How might any one of these thinkers respond?

(h) Critics like Emmanuel Levinas argue that Buber's concept of the I-Thou relation overemphasizes symmetry and mutual reciprocity; by treating the encounter as a balanced two-way relation, Buber fails to recognize that true ethical responsibility is inherently asymmetrical, placing an unconditioned moral demand on the self prior to any mutual response. How might Buber respond?

(i) Critics argue that Otto's characterization of God as the "Wholly Other" creates an unbridgeable metaphysical gulf between divine reality and human understanding; by defining the numinous as fundamentally alien to rational ethical concepts, he risks rendering divine justice and love completely unintelligible or arbitrary. How might Otto respond?

(j) Critics like Karl Barth argue that Bultmann's program of demythologizing capitulates to modern secular anthropocentrism; by making modern scientific self-understanding the final judge of biblical revelation, Bultmann reduces the sovereign Word of God to a mere instrument for human existential self-interpretation. How might Bultmann respond?