A Study on Educational Implication of Rudolf Otto’s Religious Experience

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to describe educational implication of religious experience. Religious experience is the major subject to understand religions. Although religious experience has various aspects, it may be explained by essential elements. Rudolf Otto concentrated his attention on the emotional aspect of religious experience. He named religious feelings ‘creature-feeling’ which may be divided into terrifying(tremendum) and fascinating(fascinans). Joachim Wach valued Otto’s idea about it highly. I am also interested in Otto’s idea which is divided into terrifying and fascinating. I especially concentrate the educational implication of terrifying and fascinating. Firstly, I tried to understand paternal love and maternal love in order to explain the educational implication about polarity. Secondly, I explained the educational mechanism of terrifying and fascinating. According to Erich Fromm, paternal love is conditional and unnatural, maternal love is unconditional and natural. Children’s respects are molded by paternal love and their stability are molded by maternal love. Children build various relationships on the basis of these. Carl Jung said that human beings form their character through unifying polarity. Religious experience is also related to building character. Terrifying makes human beings reflect on themselves and correct their behavior, fascinating makes them get close to the Holy and be intoxicated with peace and happiness. In conclusion, it can be described that religious experience with terrifying and fascinating has educational influence on human beings as paternal love and maternal love do on children.