Nicholas Dease :Personal Blog 1

On the Superiority of Religions

In Rudolf Otto's introduction to the Idea of the Holy, he notes that certain religions may describe their deities in terms of "clear and definite concepts." Attributes, be they physical or no, may be associated with the divine, and to this extent, the beliefs are "rational." Directly afterword, he notes that a superior religion is one that contains many of these conceptions. He states "it should admit knowledge--the knowledge that comes by faith--of the transcendent in terms of conceptual thought." Furthermore, he claims that conceptions within Christianity indicate a "very real sign of its superiority over religions of other forms and at other levels." (p. 1)

This inspires one to pose question: what is it about clarity that indicates a religion's superiority over others? Truly, can one even legitimately make that statement? While it is true that Christian doctrine is, if anything, well expressed in regard to conceptions of the divine, its significance surely must be determined by different factors. Even if a religion is ambiguous, can it not still produce the same level of meaning for different individuals?