Numinous Experience and Religious Language
Religious Studies December 1, 1992 Leon Schlamm
Rudolf Otto's account of numinous experience and religious language, presented in The Idea of the Holy, rests on the claim that numinous experience is qualitatively unlike any other experience, providing a unique form of religious knowledge inaccessible to ordinary rational understanding. Because it resists literal description, it must be approached indirectly through analogy. At the core of Otto's argument is an epistemological assumption that the parameters of numinous experience extend beyond those of religious language, allowing a straightforward comparison between the two. Much of his work depicts religious experience struggling to free itself from imprisonment by inadequate religious language.