ABSTRACT
Thinkers who maintain that religious experience is a sufficient warrant for theological beliefs are under a plain obligation to describe this experience and to explain why it should be regarded as a guarantee of its own validity. Nobody expects that a description of aesthetie experience will itself be a work of art or that a description of religious experience will itself be a divine revelation. It would require at least a chapter by itself to deal with the relations between Otto and Kant. For Kant such a doctrine would be mere mysticism or Schwrmerei; but it is the most plausible adaptation of his philosophy to the needs of the religious consciousness as described by Otto. To religious feeling Otto applies the adjective numinous, derived from the Latin word numen. The numinous object that is, the object of numinous feeling is said to be mysterium tremendum.
