The semester (1968) I was thrown out of seminary for being gay (it was a bit more complicated than that, but that was the core of it), I was taking a class in Christian Existentialism. I was invited to withdraw before we advanced to the Existentialists, but we had read Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto as background. (I have no idea how one gets to Existentialism from them; but most of what happens in institutions of higher learning I do not understand.)
My discovery of Rudolf Otto was one of the few important events of my mercifully short seminary career. My seminary stay certainly did nothing to increase my faith.
I’m grateful to have found Otto’s language for the “idea of the holy” to carry with me in mind, spirit, and body. I’m sure modern seminary students have much more au courant ideas about the holy than Otto's. The church wouldn’t set clergy loose without the most up-to-date, which is not to say Oprah-approved, ideas about the holy. But Otto’s understanding suffices for me.
My understanding of the holy, absent Otto's guidance, would be based on a sentimental sense of wonder at the mystery of life, perhaps best expressed by the love song my aunt sang at my parents’ wedding in 1937, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I’ve Found You,” not by anything the church has taught me. "Sweet mystery" would pretty much sum up the holy for me.
But Otto's sense of mystery is based in reality, not "sweetness." The idea of the holy is inextricably bound up with piety. But the numinous is directly related to the new piety that Jesus taught:
Piety. . . . meant to possess God and His presence at all times in an experiential way, that is, to fill the entire life with the feeling of His nearness. And this feeling was. . . . a feeling of the deepest reverence and meekness in the presence of Him who sits enthroned above all the world and all creatures in unspeakable secrecy, the name of whom is Holiness. At the same time it contained a liberating, redeeming, and childlike trust which lifts its possessor above all servitude into eternal love. . . .
Piety and the idea of the numinous go hand in hand. Both are rooted in doing the will of God.
Jesus certainly demanded that they “do the will of God” . . . But what had hitherto been regarded as “the will of God”? The law, the thora. . . .precepts of a social character, of right, and of divine service, ceremonies and observances, especially precepts respecting “purity,” particularly ritual and Levitical purity . . . . Embedded among all of these were also commands of a purely religious and ethical character which referred not to external things but to the conscience . . . such a demand as, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But these were not properly appreciated, because they mingled indiscriminately with ceremonial and ritual precepts. The duty of loving one’s brother was placed alongside of ritual observances as if they were of equal worth. And it was worse even than that; where ethical and ceremonial duties clashed, the former had to give way. Men watched with greater anxiety for the exact form of some sacrificial obligations than for love to their fellows, for ritual purity than for purity of heart. The first act of Jesus was to emancipate the ethical. He freed it from that dangerous conjunction and conformation with the ceremonial, the ritual, and the legal.
Jesus emancipated the ethical from the “dangerous conjunction and conformation with the ceremonial, the ritual, and the legal.”
The Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will vote in August on the ceremonial, ritual, and legal considerations of whether or not the church should bless same-sex marriages and/or ordain gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered clergy (or some-such questions; the exact questions before the house do not matter).
Whatever the question the ELCA will consider, it is purely ceremonial, ritual, and legal (the legal based, of course, on sound - always sound - theology). This comes in the form of voting whether or not to accept a “Sexuality Statement.”
When a church debates a “sexuality statement,” it is, of course, using a euphemism. “Sexuality statement” and “sexuality study” are (at least in part) ecclesiastical code words for, “Another attempt to decide whether or not gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals are—by our ceremonial, ritual, and legal standards—persons.”
I fear that, because Rudolf Otto’s writings are passé, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will never get around even to considering the possibility that the very act of voting on yet another “Sexuality Statement” means that, for the ELCA,
The duty of loving [our gay and lesbian] brothers [and sisters is] placed alongside of ritual observances as if they were of equal worth. And it [is] worse even than that; where ethical and ceremonial duties [clash], the former [have] to give way. [The ELCA is already watching] with greater anxiety for the exact form of some sacrificial obligations than for love to their fellows, for ritual purity than for purity of heart.
It would be possible for the ELCA to purify our ritual and lose the idea of the holy.
All quotations from:
Otto, Rudolf. Life and Ministry of Jesus, According to the Critical Method. (1908).
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