Otto, Rudolf
OTTO, RUDOLF. Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) was a German systematic theologian who contributed especially to the philosophy and history of religion. As a liberal theologian or, more accurately, a Vermittlungstheologe (theologian of mediation), Otto conceived of systematic theology as a science of religion, whose components were the philosophy, psychology, and history of religions. In his view, philosophy identified the source of religion in a qualitatively unique experience for which he coined the term numinous. Descriptive psychology revealed the nonrational dimensions of this experience as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans, dimensions that, Otto said, were conjoined to rational or conceptual elements through a process that, loosely following Immanuel Kant, he called schematization. Otto's ideas became foundational for much twentieth-century work in the study of religion that claimed to be phenomenological or scientific rather than theological.
Life
Born on September 25, 1869, in Peine in the region of Hanover, Germany, Otto spent his childhood in Peine and Hildesheim, where his father owned malt factories. After graduating from the Gymnasium Adreanum in Hildesheim, he studied first at the University of Erlangen, a conservative neo-Lutheran institution, then at the University of Göttingen, where liberal theology and the historical-critical study of the Bible prevailed.
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