Rob Dufour - The Idea of the Holy

In the very beginning of Rudolph Otto’s book, The Idea of the Holy, he starts off by discussing that it is essential to the theistic conception of God, and most of all to Christians, that it precisely characterizes deity by certain attributes. We think of God through analogies throughout our own human world by our idea of reason. Otto goes on to explain how the attributes that we use to help us understand God constitute clear and definite concepts that can be grasped by our intellect and lead to a definition through analysis. So Otto claims that an object that can be thought of conceptually may be termed as rational. Therefore the nature of deity described with the attributes can be seen to have a rational nature, and a religion that recognizes a view of God is in so far a rational religion. While I was reading this I thought about a quote of Leo Tolstoy when he says that “if we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed." To me, this goes against what Otto is saying because both are arguing that we as humans can successfully rationalize and reason about God’s purpose and our existence. I believe that utilizing things such as analogies and understanding certain divine attributes, we as humans are able to grasp a concept of God, but just because we can conceptualize God doesn’t mean it is correct. Also I think that attempting to reason about human life is much different than claiming human life can be ruled by reason. I think that while on this world we will always have to conceptualize God, and attempt to reason about why we are here, which is why we will never be able to believe that we as humans can be ruled through a human concept.