Where is Rudolph Otto now?

     When I was in seminary one of the major works was by Rudolph Otto entitled, The Idea of the Holy. In that work Otto said that there were two major aspects of the experience of the Holy. One,  the first was the aspect of mystery.  What Bob Dylan said, "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones."  There was something strange, something unexplained, something that does not fit in the normal rational explanation. Mystery. The second aspect was fear. Otto called them Mysterium and Tremendum. Mystery and Fear. Isaiah in the Temple, Woe, is me.  That dimension that has all the angels saying every time, "Fear not." Do not be afraid.  But that frightened response to the presence of the Holy.  Reinhold Niebuhr once suggested that in the presence of the Holy there is no laughter or silliness.

     From what I have seen in worship over the last five years is that neither of those aspects is a part of the current religious celebrations.  Worship is now causal, now familiar, there is a sense of competence  in the ministry that we can handle this. There is no mystery. There is no trembling when handling holy things. There is joking and laughing.  Annie Dillard once said we were children playing with a chemistry set and had no idea of the dangers that existed in playing so lightly with the chemicals.  There is a lot of touchy feeling, loving and hugging, and talk about God's as the God of grace and glory, but that there might be righteousness that would consume us and burn up all of our nicely constructed liturgies doesn't seem to have entered the consciousness of any of the churches I have visited or seen.

     If Rudolph Otto was doing his research now, he would never have been able to develop that definition of the Holy because neither aspect: mystery or fear seems anywhere near our current religious landscape.