mysterium tremendum et fascinans

mysterium tremendum et fascinans, Latin phrase coined by German scholar of religion and theologian Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) to describe the essence of religious experience in his book Das Heilige (1917; The Idea of the Holy, 1923). The phrase can be translated as “an awe-inspiring and fascinating mystery.” It can be further glossed as a mystery (mysterium) before which humanity experiences awe-induced trembling (tremendum) and yet also finds enchanting and fascinating (fascinans); an enigmatic essence to which humans are both repelled and attracted. The phrase has been influential in the study of religion, particularly the subfield of phenomenology of religion, and often appears in studies of mysticism and psychology of religion.

Formulation in Otto’s Das Heilige

Otto’s most important work Das Heilige is an attempt to define the essence of religious experience, the irreducible and fundamental human sense of what Otto calls heilige (“the holy”), and which other scholars of religion would later refer to as the sacred. Otto’s work is influenced heavily by Friedrich Schleiermacher and William James’s ideas of religious feeling and experience, and he also builds on Immanuel Kant’s notion of fundamental categories of thought. A key concept Otto introduces in Das Heilige is what he calls das Numinöse, translated into English as numinous, from the Latin numen (“god,” “spirit,” or “divine”). The numinous, according to Otto, is a particular category of human thought connected to an objective but ineffable reality of the holy. The experience is sui generis (self-created), and not reducible to some other category of thought (such as aesthetics or ethics). It is the awe-inspiring element of religious experience, yet it is beyond rationality and language. Since the numinous is ganz Andere (“wholly other”) but also a mental state, it can be described only in the way it is experienced in the human mind, which Otto describes as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. As Otto introduces this idea of experiencing the numinous:

Something for which there is only one appropriate expression, mysterium tremendum…. 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 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.

Although the mysterium, which Otto represents as the form of the numinous experience, is beyond conception, what is meant by the term is something intensely positive. Mysterium can be experienced in feelings that convey the qualitative content of the numinous experience. This content presents itself under two aspects: (1) that of “daunting awfulness and majesty,” and (2) “as something uniquely attractive and fascinating.” From the former comes the sense of the uncanny, of divine wrath and judgment; from the latter, the reassuring and heightening experiences of grace and divine love. This dual impact of awesome mystery and fascination was Otto’s characteristic way of expressing humanity’s encounter with the holy.

Later in Das Heilige Otto outlines how these two aspects of mysterium are schematized, or interpreted through rational thought. He describes the tremendum experience in this way:

The tremendum, the daunting and repelling moment of the numinous, is schematized by means of the rational ideas of justice, moral will, and the exclusion of what is opposed to morality; and schematized thus, it becomes the holy ‘Wrath of God’, which Scripture and Christian preaching alike proclaim.

As for the fascinans, he describes it in positive terms at first, but adds that the attracting nature of fascinans and the repelling nature of tremendum are two sides of the same coin, indivisible features of the ineffable experience of the holy:

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The fascinans, the attracting and alluring moment of the numinous, is schematized by means of the ideas of goodness, mercy, love, and, so schematized, becomes all that we mean by Grace, that term so rich in import, which unites with the holy Wrath in a single ‘harmony of contrasts’, and like it is, from the numinous strain in it, tinged with Mysticism.

Reception

Otto’s formulation of the holy as the numinous, and the experience of that as mysterium tremendum et fascinans, were influential concepts in the development of phenomenology of religion. Phenomenology of religion is a methodology in the study of religion that takes seriously the perspectives of believers, seeks to find the essence of religious experience, and considers religion and religious experience to be sui generis (“self-originating”), an essential category of human life and thought that cannot be explained by any other field of study. Phenomenology of religion was prominent in the development of the academic study of religion as a discipline in the early to mid 20th century. The influential scholars Joachim Wach and Mircea Eliade, who helped develop the field of history of religions (the “Chicago school”) at the University of Chicago, built upon Otto’s notions of the numinous and the mysterium tremendum. The first few pages of Eliade’s seminal book The Sacred and the Profane (1959) use Otto’s concepts of the numinous and the mysterium tremendum as a springboard for further investigation.

Since the late 20th century, however, many scholars of religion have abandoned phenomenological approaches to religion, and with it Otto’s Latin phrase, seeing them as relics of a bygone era of grand, sweeping theories. Critics reject the phenomenological approach’s search for a singular religious essence, and they find Otto’s formulation to be overly Christian and thus inapplicable to religion globally. They also contend that the phenomenological focus on religion as a matter of human cognition fails to take into account how religious belief is embedded in society and culture.

Despite these critiques, Otto and his mysterium phrase continue to have proponents. Many scholars find the phrase’s encapsulation of religious experience to be a meaningful and apt description in certain contexts. It is often quoted favorably by theologians, philosophers, scholars of mysticism and religion, and psychologists and neuroscientists who study religious experience.