Numinous Flashcards

• What three elements are included in tremendum?

  Awefulness, overpoweringness and energy or urgency
• What two elements are included in mysterium?

  Wholly other (totally outside our normal experience) and fascination (causes the subject to become caught up in it)
• What is a numinous experience?

  A sense of total awe and wonder. An individual gains a deeper understanding of reality and feels they have touched a different dimension.
• What makes an experience a religious experience?

  1) a mysterious quality - recognition that God is incomprehensible, that God can be met yet that he can never be captured, fully understood or described. 2) God is recognised as being of ultimate importance. 3) God has a quality that is both attractive and dangerous. There's a sense of privilege, but also a feeling that God cannot be controlled
• What did Otto say about numinous experiences?

  He used the term numinous to describe the feeling of awe-inspiring holiness. He said that ordinary language could not do justice to religious experience because it is unlike any other within our sense perception. Numinous feelings are not just a more intense version of our normal feelings, they are of a different kind.
• Why are numinous feelings non rational?

  We cannot reason our way to understanding numinous feelings because such feelings are non rational. They can't be explained.
• What is mysterium tremendum et fascinans?

  Focuses on God as transcendent. He is so far removed from humanity that we have no choice but to approach God with numinous awe, dread, fear and terror.