SOURCE: "Introduction: Rudolf Otto and The Idea of the Holy," in Rudolf Otto's Interpretation of Religion, Princeton University Press, No. 1947, pp. 1-18.

In the following essay, Davidson examines the influence of The Idea of the Holy and several of Otto's other major works on modern religious studies.

The leadership of German thought has been well established in Protestant theological circles since the time of the Reformation and Rudolf Otto stands out among those men who have helped to perpetuate it into our own day. There are at present, of course, unmistakable indications that this intellectual preeminence of Germany has been at least temporarily brought to an end. The crisis in the German Church itself, the policies of the German government for the past decade or more, and the inevitable consequences of a tragic period of post-war reconstruction, all make continued German leadership in the theological thought of the...