Holy
Holy. Term brought to prominence in the history of religions by N. Söderblom and R. Otto. For Söderblom, the distinction between the Holy and the Profane (cf. Sacred and Profane) is the fundamental category of all religion. Otto saw the apprehension of the Holy through the operation of the religious a priori as the root of all religion: just as there must be a priori conditions which make possible such forms of human judgement as the scientific, the moral, and the aesthetic (and these different categories of judgement cannot be converted into each other, but give rise to different communities of human discourse), so, in Otto's view, there must be a priori conditions which give rise to the category of religious judgement, the human sense, different from the moral or the aesthetic sense, of a mysterium tremendum fascinans et augustum, an awe-inspiring depth of mysterious otherness, which attracts and yet terrifies. This is the numinous. See also HOLINESS.
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