Otto, Rudolf

Otto, Rudolf

Rudolf Otto, 1925.

(credit: Foto-Jannasch, Marburg)

(born Sept. 25, 1869, Peine, Prussia—died March 6, 1937, Marburg, Ger.) German theologian, philosopher, and historian of religion. He taught at the Universities of Göttingen and Breslau, then settled in Marburg in 1917. His theories on religion were influenced by his journeys to Africa and Asia to study non-Christian faiths and by the writings of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher. In The Idea of the Holy (1917), Otto coined the term numinous to designate the nonrational element of religious experience—the awe, fascination, and blissful exultation inspired by the perception of the divine. He believed that religion provided an understanding of the world that was distinct from and beyond that of science. His other books include Mysticism East and West (1926), India's Religion of Grace and Christianity (1930), and The Kingdom of God and Son of Man (1938).