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Approaching the Holy with Thomas B. Dozeman and Rudolf Otto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2011

Bruno M. Shah
Bruno M. Shah*
Affiliation:
869 Lexington Avenue, Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, New York, NY 10065, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article considers Thomas B. Dozeman's ecumenically orientated and biblically situated theology of ministry (Holiness and Ministry, 2008) by assessing his utilisation of Rudolf Otto's ‘idea of the holy’. Despite significant promise, basic obstacles to appreciating Dozeman's theology of ministry appear to a Catholic perspective. In order to understand the reason for this tension, Dozeman's methodology is analysed. Because of the particular way in which he incorporates the work of Rudolf Otto on the nature of holiness, Dozeman is unable to present a model of ministry wherein ‘word’ and ‘sacrament’ exist in harmony, or a model of ministry which looks to Jesus Christ for its formal type – two issues which any Christian theology of ministry must find problematic. In general, ecumenical and ministerial theologies are ill served by methodologies which are based in a transcendental anthropology of holy experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 279 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011

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References

1 Dozeman, Thomas B., Holiness and Ministry: A Biblical Theology of Ordination (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Henceforth, references to Dozeman are cited parenthetically.

2 Whether or not and how holy is distinct from sacred in English or in other languages is a thorny matter. Some authors believe in their identity, others make clear on their distinction, and others seem to be unconcerned that such a distinction is possible. Dozeman falls into this last category, according to which this article will treat the terms as basically fungible with each other. Scholarly accounts of the words’ distinction vary depending on the commentator's perspective and discipline. It is generally recognised that holy is more narrow and confessional in significance than sacred. However, historians and anthropologists of religion tend to incorporate holy within the broader, sociological or structural category of sacred, while theologians and biblical exegetes tend to recognise holy as a unique category of meaning, which stands utterly beyond the category of sacred. Rudolf Otto, whose theory of ‘the holy’ is critical for Dozeman, is in definite support of the latter view (although in German, there is no nominal distinction available, as there is in French and English, Otto's very purpose is to establish religiosity as a field of experience and valuation utterly autonomous from everything else mundane). Dozeman, however, would seemingly support the former view, which subsumes the significance of the ‘holy’ according to its pragmatic, mundane significance. For a helpful study of these words with reference to their biblical usage, see Bertola, Ermenegildo, ‘Le sacré dans les plus anciens livres de la Bible’, in Castelli, Enrico (ed.), Le sacré (Paris: Aubier, 1974), pp. 201–20Google Scholar. In the same volume, see Henri Bouillard's insightful essay on the use of ‘sacré’ in the study of religion, where he distinguishes between those of the French, sociological school (per Emile Durkheim) and those of more theological bent, among whom he counts Otto (‘La catégorie du sacré dans la science des religions’, pp. 33–56). Using the distinction between the sacred and holiness, Christian Duquoc has argued that the Catholic liturgical reforms of Vatican II were not intended to undervalue man's sense of the sacred, which has arguably been the effect. Rather, the Council sought to repristinate man's understanding of the sacred (which is objectively concerned with cultic places, things and actions) by more clearly orientating it to man's concern for the holy (which is subjectively concerned with man's ethical justice and personal closeness to God). See his ‘Du sacré au saint’, Lumière et vie 279 (2008), pp. 31–40.

3 Moses’ personal relationship with the all-holy God is a matter distinct from (but related to) his legitimacy and reception as a leader of the people. Indeed, Moses’ effective leadership is contingent on his mission's attention to the people's needs, the cries of which actually originate the call in the first place, according to the Providence of God: ‘The power of holiness resides in the relationship between God and the one who is called out. This special relationship is the source for a functional role of the ordained within the prophetic ordination to the divine word. The ordination occurs when the people of God recognize the charisma of the leader’. Dozeman, Holiness, p. 123.

4 Paul, John II, I Will Give You Shepherds (Boston: St Paul, 1992), nos. 7, 8Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., no. 11.

6 Ibid.

7 See ‘Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests’ in The Sixteen Documents of Vatican II, NCWC trans. (Boston: St Paul, 1999).

8 For Dozeman, this duality proceeds from the ‘dual nature of holiness’. However, he sets about ‘[clarifying] the dual nature of holiness as a dynamic force and as a ritual resource by examining two contrasting contemporary studies of holiness’ (from Otto and Milgrom); whilst the dual nature theory itself proceeds from a third (that of Eliade; pp. 23–4). Notice how Dozeman's dichotomy gives spiritual ‘power’ entirely to the realm of the ‘word’: ‘The dynamic character of holiness is conceived as a power that directly invades humans. It provides the background for interpreting the ordination to the divine word in Christian tradition . . . The ritual character of holiness [on the other hand] is the basis for the Christian ordination to sacramental rituals’. In the end, these ‘two theories of holiness’ and their attendant, practical or ministerial implications ‘are in such profound tension with each other that they cannot be harmonized’ (p. 23).

9 Consider the words of the Constitution from Vatican II (1963), Sacrosanctum Concilium: ‘The liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses.’ On this point, Dozeman would agree. However, the conciliar document continues to say that man's sanctification ‘is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs’. See ‘The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’, Sixteen Documents, no. 7. Also see the Decree on the Sacraments from the seventh session of the Council of Trent (1547), particularly can. 6, whereby it is affirmed that the sacraments of the New Law ‘contain’ the grace they signify, such that they are not mere signs.

10 Program of Priestly Formation, 5th edn. (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2006), no. 68.

11 John Paul II, Shepherds, no. 21.

12 Ibid., nos. 16, 15.

13 Ibid., no. 13 (emphasis on ‘Moses’ added).

14 See n. 3, above.

15 See Pius XII's encyclical letter (1943), Mystici Corporis. nos. 61–3. Although not present in the text promulgated through Acta Apostolicae Sedis 35, the version of this document on the Vatican website provides paragraph nos. (See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi-en.html.) Dozeman believes that locating mystical experience exclusively in one's ordination to the word actually ‘addresses the problem of religious experience in a historical context. The ordination to the divine word addresses the problem of history and religious experience through the prophetic interpretation of past tradition accompanied by persuasive speech about its significance of later generations’ (p. 124). In other words, the invisible Church of Christ, which traverses and transcends time and space, can be accepted because of an individual minister's historical understanding and personal witness to transcendent experience.

16 John Paul II, Shepherds, no. 16.

17 Priestly Program, no. 14.

18 The functional or ritual resource of the sacraments, as distinguished from the dynamic ministry of the word, is dependent on Jacob Milgrom's theories about the Hebrew scriptures’ priestly theology of purity (generally, see pp. 28–32). Given the confines of this article, an extensive critical treatment of both Otto and Milgrom cannot be given. But again, this article will show how the philosophical outlook and outline of Otto's theory essentially predetermines the irresolvable tension between word and sacrament. Also see n. 8, above.

19 Raphael, Melissa, Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; emphasis added)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Raphael's interesting interpretation of Otto seeks to use his theory as the platform for a prophetic-feminist critique of unjust social structures. Such an argument is novel, since many critical theorists and liberationist theologians believe that the distinction between the sacred and the profane actually enables the machinations of social oppression.

20 The briefest and most recent introduction to Otto and Das Heilige in English is Colin Crowder, ‘Otto's The Idea of the Holy Revisited’, ch. 2 in Barton, Stephen C. (ed.), Holiness Past and Present (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2003)Google Scholar. At present, the two best in-depth overviews to Rudolf Otto available in English are Todd A. Gooch, The Numinous and Modernity (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000); and Almond, Philip C., Rudolf Otto: An Introduction to his Philosophical Theology (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1984)Google Scholar. Almond's work is widely referenced in recent secondary literature, and provides a worthy introduction to the life and work of Otto. However, Gooch's study is informed by much more acute philosophical and cultural savvy. Gooch's ultimate thesis is that Otto's contribution must be seen as situated within a desacralising modernity that it was trying to redress.

21 Not to be overlooked, further, is the influence of Martin Luther, whom Otto certainly sees as one of history's premier religious individuals. In many basic studies of Otto, one will find it stated that Das Heilige was the most-read theological work of the twentieth century. Theodore M. Ludwig places Otto on par with Karl Barth, in terms of theological influence in early twentieth-century Germany. See The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 11, ed. Mircea Eliade, s.v. ‘Otto, Rudolf’ (New York: Macmillan, 1987). Nevertheless, the actual achievement of Otto is still debated and opinions vary widely. See ch. 1 in Gooch, Modernity and the Numinous for a survey of critical assessments.

22 See Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy, trans. Harvey, John (New York: Oxford, 1923 [1917]), pp. 1–4Google Scholar. As Philip Arnold points out, the Pietist movement was essential for the origins of Liberal Protestant theology. In fact, it was in the writings of the Moravian Pietist, Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf (1700–60), that Otto first encountered the religious significance of ‘dread’ and ‘horror’. Moreover, von Zinzendorf taught that all men had a sensus Numinis, which no doubt influenced Otto's conception of ‘the numinous’ as critical for religious sensibility. See , Almond, ‘The Context of his Thought’, Scottish Journal of Theology 36 (1983), p. 350Google Scholar.

23 See Schleiermacher, Friedrich, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. Oman, John (New York: Harper & Row, 1958)Google Scholar. This edn carries an introduction by Rudolf Otto, wherein one sees his deep appreciation for Schleiermacher: ‘He did not wish to furnish new evidence for the “existence of God”, the independence of the soul, and immortality. . . . He sought to prove that if one experienced the environing world in a state of deep emotion, as intuition and feeling, and that if one were deeply affected by a sense of its eternal and abiding essence to the point where one was moved to feelings of devotion, awe, and reverence – then such an affective state was worth more than knowledge and action put together. And this was what the cultured had to learn from the beginning’ (p. xix). One might take Schleiermacher as giving a general apology for religion; Otto wanted to do the same, but ultimately, for Christianity. Also see Schleiermacher's refinement of his original apology in Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (eds), The Christian Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)Google Scholar.

24 Otto, Idea of the Holy, pp. 8–10.

25 Ibid., p. 6.

26 On ‘the numinous’, ibid., pp. 5–7. Otto was part of a larger movement of theorists who no longer viewed relationship to one or more deities but reference to ‘the holy’ as the specifying distinction of ‘religion’. The classic, programmatic statement in this regard is the first sentence of Nathan Söderblom's article, ‘Holiness: General and Primitive’, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 6, ed. James Hastings (New York: Charles Scriber's, 1914): ‘Holiness is the great word in religion; it is even more essential than the notion of God.’ For a history of the way ‘the holy’ and ‘holiness’ has figured into the study of religions, see Henri Bouillard, ‘La catégorie de sacré’.

27 Otto schematises the ‘tremendous’ and ‘fascinating’ moments in chs 4–6 of Idea of the Holy.

28 Ibid., p. 41.

29 See ibid., p. 13.

30 Ibid., p. 112. One of the arguments against Otto is precisely that he believes that mystical experience is a species of the genus of religious experience. For a critique of this position, as well as a general critique of Otto for believing that there can be a non-constructed or pre-thematic experience which is genuinely noetic or able to qualify for knowledge, see Barnes, L. Philip, ‘Rudolf Otto and the Limits of Religious Description’, Religious Studies 30 (1994), pp. 219–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Consider Mircea Eliade's introductory remark to his classic, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Task (New York: Harvest, 1959 [1957]), p. 10: ‘After forty years, Otto's analyses have not lost their value; readers of this book will profit by reading and reflecting on them. But in the following pages, we adopt a different perspective. We propose to present the phenomenon of the sacred [sic translation] in all its complexity, and not only insofar as it is irrational’ (italics original).

32 Otto, Idea of the Holy, pp. 112, 136.

33 Ibid., pp. 45 ff.

34 Ibid., p. 51. Otto's Lutheranism comes through strongly; for, in his encounter with the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the man who recognises himself as ‘profane’, ‘unclean’ or ‘sinful’ does not desire to become holy himself, but to have his sinfulness ‘covered’ (ibid., p. 54). The search for the highest religion, then, is the search for that religion which is most conscious of man's need and opportunity to be imputed with holiness. Unlike the French sociologists (à la Emile Durkheim), Otto does not counterpoise ‘the holy’ to the common, secular realm, which is ‘the profane’. As Bouillard and others point out (see n. 2, above), the French school is sociologically reductive. Otto, on the other hand, thinks that the profane is distinctly religious in scope. For his part, Dozeman has no use for Otto's understanding of the profane. Apparently, Dozeman prefers a sociological rendering of the profane, and generally shies away from any discussion of ‘sin’ that is not in the general terms of egoism. Thus, ‘the goal of biblical religion is to overcome the separation between God and humans, the sacred and the profane, and ultimately to overcome the violence that originates from the human ego’, and which enters the world through Cain's fratricide. See pp. 16–19.

35 As Adina Davidovich notes, the reason Otto turned to a Friesian brand of post-Kantian epistemology is that Fries ‘supplements the transcendental analysis of experience with a psychological introspection’, such that the Kantian critique is not merely of the subject's knowing, but, more broadly, of the subject's entire field of experiencing. Such reflection leads to ‘the discovery that certain principles or modes of thought function in our cognitive and evaluative life as an empirical fact’. See her Religion as a Province of Meaning: The Kantian Foundations of Modern Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), pp. 150, 155–6.

36 Almond notes, ‘The central pivot of Otto's theory of religion’ is that ‘the study of religion and theology needs to be grounded in the analysis of the religious consciousness’. See his ‘Context’, p. 349.

37 Otto, Idea of the Holy, p. 8, and Dozeman, Holiness and Ministry, p. 27.

38 Davidovich, Religion, p. 185. By ‘noeticity’, she means to say that these religious experiences are bearing of genuine – even if non-conceptual – knowledge (see p. 149).

39 See Poland, Lynn, ‘The Idea of the Holy and the History of the Sublime’, Journal of Religion 72 (1992), pp. 175–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 The short but compact work of John Webster is a genuine contribution to theological approaches to ‘the holy’. It is critical for Webster that ‘theological thinking about holiness is itself an exercise of holiness’. See his Holiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 8.

41 John Webster recognises that there are basically two paths towards understanding ‘holiness’. One option pursues a religious phenomenology, which takes its cues from the history of religions. ‘That option has had and continues to have a powerful presence, both in some dominant styles of religious and cultural studies, and in those modern Christian theologies that do their work under the spell of Tillich's correlation of “the holy” and “the divine”.’ ‘This is because in them the generic notion of “the holy” has been accorded priority over exegesis, and has in effect swamped the specificity of a Christian understanding of holiness’. Furthermore, ‘God is not simply holy mystery, the nameless and voiceless whence of some sense of the numinous, an ineffable and indefinite deity. In his unalterable and unassailable majesty he is the one who he is’. See ibid., pp. 18, 36. Hence, Webster would also be critical of Roch Kereszty's recent formulation for a renewed ‘integral theological treatise’, insofar as the foundation is located ‘within the context of Universal Salvation History, and therefore in the context of the history of religions’, Kereszty encourages theologians to ‘concentrate on the phenomenon of the holy’ in order to ‘show’ that the ‘full revelation of divine holiness’ is found in Jesus. See his ‘Toward the Renewal of Theology and the Theologian’, Communio 35 (2008), pp. 278–9. To be sure, Webster's theologising is specifically Protestant, since he emphasises scripture as the hermeneutical absolute, free from metaphysics but yet still germane to ontology. Nevertheless, Webster advocates a position which grants heuristic priority to revelational data – i.e. the Bible and the person of Christ – and is therefore amenable to genuine ecumenical discourse. For a relevant Protestant critique of the theological trend inspired by Otto, see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromily (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991 [1988]), pp. 115, 136–40.

42 Otto, Idea of the Holy, p. 178.

43 Dozeman's methodological principle of ‘canonical criticism’ means for him that ‘the Torah is constructed to speak directly to future readers about the ongoing power of holiness in the Mosaic office’ (p. 9). However, Dozeman's reader must wonder, who or what establishes the terms of intelligibility? For a Christian theology, it must be the person and event of Christ in light of the church's tradition.