Subject: Introduction to Methods in the Study of Religion

Topic: Phenomenological Approaches

a. Rudolf Otto
b. Van der Leeuw
c. Jouco Bleeker

Introduction
A careful study of the origin of the word “Phenomenology” reveals that its first proponents were
not people in the field of religion. They did not actually use the method in studying any
particular religion; they were scholars who were mostly in the field of philosophy. We shall
therefore trace the origin of the phrase in religious terminology.

The phenomenology of religion according to Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia (2007b)

“concerns the experimental aspect of religion, describing religious phenomena in terms
consistent with the orientation of the worshippers”. Phenomenological approach to the study of
religion views religion as being made up of different components and these components are
carefully studied in various religious traditions in order to gain understanding of them.

Phenomenology

The term “phenomenology” was first coined by the Swiss-German mathematician and
philosopher Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1764 from two Greek words whose combined meaning
was “the setting forth or articulation of what shows itself”. He used this term in his reference to
“illusory nature of human experience in an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge that
distinguished truth from error, Immanuel Kant, who was a contemporary of Lambert, also used
the term twice wherein he laid the foundation for its development “when he distinguished things
as they appear to us (which he called phenomena) from things as they really are (which he called
noumena)” Kant proposed that it is not possible to have a true and genuine knowledge of the
transcendent (noumena) as a science but in the immanent (or phenomena) it is possible since this
is a description of the structures of human experience. He therefore proposed phenomenology as
an appropriate field of philosophical and scientific inquiry.1

Phenomenological Approach
One of the most methodological approaches to the study of religion throughout most of the
discipline’s history has been called ‘phenomenology of religion’, its most famous proponents
being Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade. So pervasive was this approach that for sometime

1
S.A.Moreau, Walter A. Elwell.,ed., Phenomenology of religion (Michigan: Grand Rapid, Revised edition
2001),248.
‘phenomenology of religion’(also known in English as ‘history of religions was virtually
synonymous with Religionswissenschaft,or the academic study of religion.2
Phenomenology of religion is distinct from Historical, sociological, anthropological,
philosophical and theological approaches to the study of religion. Unlike them, it treats religion
as a phenomenon that cannot be explained in terms of any particular aspect of human society,
culture, or thought. Phenomenology of religion draws insights from Husserl’s notion of epoche
which means “I hold back”, he explains that a phenomenologist is concerned with consciousness
and so it does not matter whether the object of thought is real or not so question of ultimate truth
in the study of phenomena must be suspended or bracketed to allow the scholar understand the
religion being studied. This suspension of judgement or exclusion of presuppositions from one’s
mind is what he called “methodological neutrality or objectivity”. Phenomenology of religion is
also comparative, seeking out aspects of religious life that are, its proponents suggest, universal
or essential rather than applicable only to particular traditions.3

Understanding of Phenomenology in Religion

A careful study of the origin of the word “Phenomenology” reveals that its first proponents were
not people in the field of religion. They did not actually use the method in studying any
particular religion; they were scholars who were mostly in the field of philosophy.
Phenomenological approach to the study of religion views religion as being made up of different
components and these components are carefully studied in various religious traditions in order to
gain understanding of them. This approach owes its origin and conceptual development, to a
large extent to the following scholars namely: Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye, William
Brede Kristensen and Gerardus Van der Leeuw.4

Rudolf Otto
Rudolf Otto, son of William Otto was born on Sept 25, 1869 in Peine, Prussia and died on March
6, 1937. He was a German theologian, philosopher and historian of religion who exerted
worldwide influence through his investigation of man’s experience of the holy. Das heilige
(1917; The Idea of the Holy, 1923) in his most important work. He was educated at the
gymnasium in Hildesheim before becoming a student of theology and philosophy at the
University of Erlangen and later at the University of Gottingen, where he was made a lecturer in
1897, and teaching theology, history of religions and history of Philosophy. In 1917 he became
professor of systematic theology at the University of Marburg and he retired from in 1929
though he continued to live in Marburg the rest of his life.5

2
Tim Murphy, Religiouswissenschaft as Colonialist Discourses The Case of Rudolf Otto: The finish
society for the study of Religion, Temenos Vol.43, No.1 (2007), 7-27.
3
Summer B,Twiss and Walter H. Conser,Jr., eds., Experience of the Sacred: Reading in the
Phenomenology of Religion (Hanover NH: Brown University Press, 1992), 111.
4
Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia .
5
Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approach to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and Theories
of Research Introduction and Anthology (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 425
Rudolf Otto was brought up in circles of Lutheran piety, and looked for the meeting point of
academic theology and religious experience. Deeply influenced by mystics like Eckhart, he
sought a solution with the help of the philosopher Kant, the theologian Schleiermacher, and the
psychologist William James. Otto’s initial mentor guiding his inquiry into the specific character
of the religious response was the eminent German philosopher and theologian
Friedrich Schleiermacher. It was Schleiermacher’s early work, specifically his book Über die
Religion. Reden an die Gebilden unter ihren Verächtern  (1799; On Religion: Speeches to Its
Cultured Despisers, 1893), to which Otto gave particular attention. What appealed to him in this
work was Schleiermacher’s fresh way of perceiving religion as a unique feeling or awareness,
distinct from ethical and rational modes of perception, though not exclusive of them.
Schleiermacher was later to speak of this unique feeling as man’s “feeling of absolute
dependence.” Otto was deeply impressed by this formulation and credited.6

The Idea of the Holy

Various influences had played upon Otto’s reflections through the years, aiding him in
reformulating the religious category that was to carry him beyond Sxhleiermacher. His early
teacher at Gottingen, Albrecht Ritschl, had located religion in the realm of value judgments,
whereas, more significantly, his theological colleague at Gottingen, Ernst Troeltsch, sought for a
religious a priori as the ground of religious interpretation and judgment. Otto was impressed by
William Jame’s shrewd insights in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), yet he found
James’ empirical method inadequate for interpreting such phenomena. Otto was particularly
attracted to the thought of J.F.Fries, already mentioned, whose notion of Ahndung (obsolete form
of Ahnung; literally, “presentiment,” or “intuition”), a yearning that yields the feeling of truth,
opened up to him a way of dealing with religious phenomena sensitively and appropriately.
These “feelings of truth” Otto sought to schematize in his The Idea of the Holy.7
In that work, However, Otto was conscious of moving beyond his previous efforts, exploring
more specifically the nonrational aspect of the religious dimension, for which he coined the term
numerious, from the Latin numen (‘god’, ‘spirit’, or ‘divine’), on the analogy of “ominous” from
“Omen.” The numinous, the awe-inspiring element of religious experience.
Thus, The Idea of the Holy, while benefiting from earlier studies, represented for Otto a new
venture and a radical shift in the nature and ground of his inquiry. The concern here was to
attend to that elemental experience of apprehending the numinous itself.

Although the mysterium, which Otto represents as the form of the numinous experience, is

beyond conception, what is meant by the term, he insists, is something intensely
positive. Mysterium can be experienced in feelings that convey the qualitative content of the

6
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Otto
7
William James The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London/New York:
Longmans, Green & Co., 1902),57.
numinous experience. This content presents itself under two aspects: (1) that of “daunting
awfulness and majesty,” and (2) “as something uniquely attractive and fascinating.” From the
former comes the sense of the uncanny, of divine wrath and judgment; from the latter, the
reassuring and heightening experiences of grace and divine love. This dual impact of awesome
mystery and fascination was Otto’s characteristic way of expressing man’s encounter with the
holy.

The non-rational dimension

Otto’s first claim concerns the relation between the affective dimension of religious experience
and reason. It is related to his suggestion to conceive of the numinous as “‘the holy’ minus its
moral factor or ‘moment’, and …minus its ‘rational’ aspect altogether.”8
Otto argues that religious experience involves a “creature feeling”. This “creature feeling” is
conceived as a “non-rational” dimension of life. This talk of a “non-rational element in the idea
of the divine” is supposed to capture that the “creature-feeling” cannot be exhaustively
explicated in terms of concepts and their logical association. 9 Rather, it is the other way around:
Taken by themselves, “rational” or conceptual contents, such as the idea of a transcendent reality
or the doctrine of original sin, are mere possibilities of thought, and the subject could consider
them while remaining completely indifferent as to whether they apply in actuality. According to
Otto, this intuition is achieved by the very “creature-feeling” that involves specific “feelings of
abasement and prostration and of the diminution of the self into nothingness.”10
Otto has been much criticized for his discussion of the non-rational dimension. Feigel, one of
Otto’s earliest critics, regarded The Idea of the Holy as a “manifestation of a more general trend
toward irrationalism.”11 Heidegger criticized that the “concept of the irrational, after all, is
supposed to be determined from out of the opposition to the concept of the rational, which,
however, finds itself in notorious indetermination.”

In short, Otto’s claims about the relation between the “creature-feeling” as a non-rational
dimension of religious life and its conceptual articulation in a similar manner. Thus, to return to
the two examples mentioned earlier, the idea of a transcendent reality or the doctrine of original
sin should not be regarded as bizarre vagaries. Rather, they should be understood as explications
of a specific way in which a subject finds herself in the world. However, it is important to

8
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 6.
9
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,61.
10
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,53.
11
Todd A. Gooch, The Numinous and Modernity: An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto’s Philosophy of
Religion (New York: DeGruyter, 2000), 133.
mention that this does not rule out that the “creature-feeling” as the nonconceptual, pre-
intentional backdrop of particular religious beliefs and doctrines is co-shaped by concepts. To
deny this possibility would be to misunderstand Otto’s position. Indeed, Otto claims that, in the
course of religious history (and, arguably, in the course of a religious person’s lifetime as well),
the “creaturefeeling”—or come to call the “numinous” feeling—passes through a process of
development from a more primitive “daemonic dread” to more mature forms of worship,
reverence and devotion.12 This process is described as a rationalization and moralization of the
more primitive forms. According to Otto, concepts—especially ethical concepts—enrich and
refine the feeling in question. So, for instance, the peculiar feelings of self-depreciation and
absolute profaneness involved in the “creature-feeling”, although they are originally not
connected to the awareness of having transgressed a moral law, can appropriate “meanings
derived from social and individual ideals of obligation, justice, and goodness” and take shape as
sense of sin. According to Otto, it is only where the “creature-feeling” is rationally enriched
and/or ethically refined that we can speak of the holy in the proper sense. The enrichment of the
relevant feeling is possible as those meanings from other spheres of life are just as dependent
upon the affective dimension of human life as religious meaning is. I will return to this in section
4 and present two ways in which the numinous feeling is shaped by ethical concepts.13

The “numinous” as “an object outside of the self”

Otto’s second claim concerns the status of the creature-feeling: He rejects psychologism about
religious feelings and ascribes to them an intentional structure (without using this terminology).
Taken in itself, the “creature feeling” can be regarded primarily as a self-conscious emotion, “a
feeling concerning one’s self in a special, determined relation, viz. dependence.” Yet according
to Otto, this view is too restrictive. The “creature feeling” is part of a more comprehensive
affective dynamic involving a reference to something beyond or other than the subject: “Rather,
the ‘creature-feeling’ is itself a first subjective concomitant and effect of another feeling-
element, which casts it like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate and primary
reference to an object outside of the self.” 14 Otto calls this object “the numinous”15 and explicitly
draws on James’ conjectures about the origin of the Greek gods: “It is as if there were in the
human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we
may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular
‘senses’ by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.”16

12
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,113.
13
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,114.
14
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,10.
15
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,11.
16
William James The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature...,58.
Within this framework, the numinous as an “object outside of the self” can be conceived of as
the formal object of a peculiar kind of feeling in a similar manner as offense is the formal object
of a feeling we call “anger” or danger is the formal object of fear. A more thorough description
of the numinous will follow in section 3, but we can preliminarily think of it in terms of
awefulness and mysteriousness. In fact, Otto suggests a distinction that is formally very similar
to Kenny’s:
“numinous” category of value and of a definitely numinous state of mind, which is always
found wherever the category is applied. This mental state is perfectly sui generis and irreducible
to any other; and therefore, like every absolutely primary and elementary datum, while it admits
of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.17
That is, the “numen” signifies the relevant target (material object) of the numinous feeling
whereas the “numinous” signifies the specific and irreducible evaluative property (formal object)
in terms of which the target is apprehended. Among the possible instances of a numen are,
arguably, particular cups, places, stars, books, animals, persons, events, propositions, or complex
ideas such as the Kingdom of Heaven. Otto does not claim that all these instances necessarily
evoke a numinous feeling in each and every person. Actually, a lot of persons may be said to be
insensitive to the numinous, as he admits18 Otto gives a couple of reasons for this view: For one,
those more primitive forms are not entirely superseded, for more refined forms also occur in
more “mature” religious life. Secondly, however, when they occur in this latter context, they do
so as something enriched by—or inextricably connected with—other elements, say further
feeling elements such as the mysterious or moral concepts such as truthfulness.

Van der Leeuw

Van der Leeuw was born in 1890 in the Hague, Holland, where he received his primary and
secondary school education. In 1908 he enrolled in the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Leiden (1908-1013) where he studied the history of religions with W.B. Kristensen and the
Egyptian language with P.A.A. Boeser. He finished his studies in Leiden in 1913 and continued
to study a semester in Gottingen and a semester in Berlin where he worked with K. Sethe and A.
Erman. 19

In 1916, he obtained Th. D. at Leiden with a dissertation on ‘Representations of the Gods in the
ancient-Egyptian Pyramid Texts’. From 1916-1918 he was a minister in the Dutch Reformed
Church. He was active in the Dutch Reformed church where he adhered to the ethical theology,
17
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,7.
18
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
its Relation to the Rational...,8,85.
19
Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods, and Theories of
Research Introduction and Anthology, 2nd Edition (Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 390.
which stressed the value of religion as a reality of the heart and as an existential datum. Later he
was particularly active in the liturgical movement in his church and in attempts to reform it. In
1918 he was appointed at the new chair of the History of Religions, the ‘Theological
encyclopedia’ and Egyptology at the University of Groningen. He later also taught Liturgy. 20
From 1945-1946 he was minister of education, arts, and sciences. In 1950 Van der Leeuw
presided the International Congress of the History of Religions held in Amsterdam and became
the first president of the newly founded International Association for the History of Religions;
this put the seal of his international reputation. He died shortly afterward in Utrecht in 1950. 21

Van der Leeuw is considered as the most important figure in the phenomenological tradition
because of the impetus he gave to the movement. He drew on various disciplines ranging from
philosophy and psychology, through anthropology, history and theology to the relationship
between religion and art. He had argued for an interdisciplinary approach. Nevertheless, he
remained phenomenologist in so far as in his descriptions. 22

Major contributions and Works

Van der Leeuw’s books that are relevant to the study of religion fall into a number of categories.
Most of his scholarly work was in the field of comparative studies and phenomenology, for
which he wrote an introductory work, Inleiding tot de godsdienst-geschiedenis (1924), and the
famous handbook titled Phanomenologie der Religion (1933), subsequently translated into
English as Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1938). Further, he produced articles and
books on subjects as varied as sacrifice, mysticism, representations of Paradise, children in
worship, the image of God, and the God-human relationship as well as articles on myth and
mythology and on immortality. In other categories, Van der Leeuw’s works are numerous. His
major historical studies concern ancient Egyptian religion, although he also wrote on ancient
Greek religion and produced studies of ancient calling-songs and lamentations and on the
meeting of early Christianity and paganism. Also important are his books on liturgies, religious
art, and on music and religion, and several theological works which often derive their insights
from the history and phenomenology of religion. His work also comprises of writings on
Phenomenological method and on issues of philosophical and theological anthropology. He also
wrote extensively on Christian topics and on various literary and cultural subjects. The total
number of publications amounts to about 650. 23

The Development and Structure of Van der Leeuw’s Phenomenology

20
Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion…, 390.
21
“Leeuw, Gerardus Van Der…, np.
22
Christopher Augustus Bixel Tirkey, Religion Primal Religion (Delhi: ISPCK, 2005), 56.
23
“Leeuw, Gerardus Van Der…, np.
The phenomenological approach Van der Leeuw took to studying both religious data and the
phenomena of s religion itself thought to be his most novel contribution. He searched the vast
amount of religious data for structure and purpose while being guided by a specific perspective
of religion as a whole. Van der Leeuw used this strategy to reject some of the prevalent parochial
theological interpretation, assessment and judgmental frame work of the day. By doing this, he
opened the door to new sorts of research into many interpretations of religious information as
well as the possible theological significance of fundamental natural and human occurrences. Van
der Leeuw’s phenomenology was distinguished by its theological focus and psychological
orientation. He significantly relies on psychology, particularly structural psychology, in his
strategy. However, he does not view phenomenology in the same sense as modern empirical
psychology; rather, he views it as a method of addressing a topic through one’s experience. The
goal of studying religion was understanding psychology through experience. The researcher’s
“subjectivity” is a critical fact in understanding psychology through experience. Van der Leeuw
argues that this should be done carefully in order to fully grasp a religious phenomena as human
expression.24

Gerardus Van Der Leeuw approach to religion

As phenomenological approach to the study of religion develops, Gerardus Van der

Leeuw was another person who gave it a wider meaning in his Phanomenologie der Religion
published in 1933. He follows Kristensen in many respects. Van der Leeuw sees understanding
as a subjective aspect of phenomena, which is inherently intertwined with the objectivity of that
which is manifest. Explaining his view in the second edition of his book published in 1956, Van
der Leeuw correlates subjective experience, expression, and understanding with three objective
levels of appearing-relative concealment, relative transparency and gradually becoming
concealed or manifest-wherein the understanding of what is becoming revealed is the primordial
level of appearing from which the experienced concealment and expressed transparency of
appearing are derived.25

Writing about Van der Leeuw, Waardenburg (1978) explains that his phenomenology of
religion is based on three fundamental divisions namely: God-Man-Relation between God and
man. In his words “the relation between God and Man, which was a central issue in the whole of
Van der Leeuw’s, thinking, is inevitably the basis of his phenomenological work”. 26 His
phenomenology of religion centers on or is aimed “primarily … with understanding’, and this
understanding of religion was for him part of a general attitude of understanding towards
reality”27 To Van der Leeuw, rather than explanation, understanding should be the aim and
24
Leeuw, Gerardus Van Der…, np.
25
Van der Leeuw, G. (1956) Phanemenologie der religion. 2nd edition. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr
(p.769).
26
J. Waardenburg, Reflections on the study of religion. (Mouton: The Hague, 1978), 222.
27
J. Waardenburg, Reflections on the study of religion. (Mouton: The Hague, 1978),. 224).
purpose of the study of religion. The business of phenomenology of religion is mainly to
interpret the various ways in which the sacred appears to human beings in the world, the ways in
which humans understand and care for that which is revealed to them, for that which is
ultimately wholly other mystery.

It can be deduced from its first proponents that the aim of phenomenology of religion is to
understand the meaning or essence of religion and interpreting the various manifestations of the
sacred as revealed to man.

Claas Jouco Bleeker,

Life and work

Claas Jouco Bleeker,  (1898–1983), Dutch historian of Egyptian religion and leading figure in
the field of phenomenology of religion. Claas Jouco Bleeker was born in Beneden Knijpe, the
Netherlands, and attended school in Leeuwarden. He went on to study theology at the University
of Leiden. There he specialized in Egyptology and the history of religions, chiefly under the
tutelage of W. Brede Kristensen, whose work influenced him greatly. He continued his studies at
the University of Berlin, and in 1929 he received his Th.D. from the University of Leiden for his
thesis De beteekenis van de Egyptische godin Ma-a-t (The Significance of the Egyptian Goddess
Maat). In 1925 Bleeker began a career as a minister in the Dutch Reformed church, serving first
in the town of Apeldoorn. He held pulpits in various Dutch cities until 1946 when he was
appointed professor of the history of religions and the phenomenology of religion at the
University of Amsterdam. He remained in that post until his retirement in 1969.

Bleeker's interest both in the religion of ancient Egypt and in religious phenomenology continued
throughout his life. His writings on Egyptian religion consist for the most part of studies of
individual deities, such as Die Geburt eines Gottes: Eine Studie uber den agyptischen Gott Min
und sein Fest (The Birth of a God: A Study on the Egyptian God Min and His Festival; 1956),
and research on particular aspects of Egyptian religious life, such as Egyptian Festivals:
Enactments of Religious Renewal (1967).28

His work in the field of phenomenology was strongly influenced by Kristensen and Gerardus van
der Leeuw. Bleeker was concerned with establishing phenomenology of religion as a distinct
scholarly discipline that would examine the meaning of religious phenomena in the light of their
realized “essence.” He understood religion to be structured in terms of "(a) a holy vision of the
Supreme Being or of the being and the will of the Deity, (b) a holy path that a man must pursue
in order to be freed from his sin and suffering, and (c) a holy action that the believer must carry
out in the cult and in his personal religious life”. 29 He proposed three main objectives for
phenomenology of religion. First, it must seek to understand individual phenomena that appear
28
https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/
bleeker-c-jouco
in all or many religious systems, such as prayer (this type of inquiry he called “theoria”). Second,
it must try to discover the inner laws that determine the structure of a particular religion
(“logos”). Finally, it should attempt to elucidate the way in which religions develop and evolve
(“entelecheia”).30

Bleeker viewed the study of religion as an examination of humanity's varied relationships with
God, and he attempted to understand humankind in light of its various attitudes toward divinity.
Furthermore, he believed that the science of religion could engender greater mutual respect and
understanding among religious groups holding widely differing opinions.

Phenomenology of Religion

Jouco Bleeker distinguished three type of phenomenology of religion: the descriptive

phenomenology that restricts itself to the systematization of religious phenomena, the typological
phenomenology that formulates the different types of religion, and the specific sense of
phenomenology that investigates the essential structures and meanings of religious phenomena.
In terms of this more specific sense, phenomenology of religion has double meaning: it is an
independent science that creates monographic and handbooks, such as Van der Leeuw’s Religion
in Essence and Manifestation and Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion, but it is also a
scholarly method that utilizes such principles as the phenomenological epoche and eidetic vision.
Although Bleeker frequently used terms borrowed from Husserl and philosophical
phenomenology, he claimed that they were used by phenomenology of religion in only a
figurative sense.31

According to Bleeker, phenomenology of religion combines a critical attitude and concern for
accurate description with sense of empathy for phenomena. It is empirical science without
philosophical aspiration, and it should distinguish its activities from that philosophical
phenomenology and of anthropology. Phenomenology of religion systematizes historical facts in
order to understand their religious meanings.

Bleeker analyzes phenomenology of religion as inquiry into three dimensions of religious

phenomena: theoria, logos, and entelecheia. The theoria of phenomena discloses the essence and
significance of the empirical facts. The logos of phenomena provides a sense of objectivity by
showing that hidden structures are built up according to strict inner laws and the religion always
possesses a certain structure with an inner logical. The entelecheia of phenomena reveals the
dynamics and development of religious life and invincible, creative and self-regeneration force.
29
The Rainbow: A Collection of Studies in the Science of Religion (Leiden, 1975). 8.
30
C. J. Bleeker, A Personal Appreciation" in the festschrift Liber Amicorum: Studies in Honour
of Professor Dr. C. J. Bleeker (Leiden, 1969), 5–7
31
John R. Hinnells, The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, (London: Taylor & Francis Group),
194.
Phenomenology, it is frequently stated, abstract s from historical change and presents a rather
static view of essential structures and meanings. The phenomenologist of religion must also
study the dynamics and development of religious phenomena.32

Conclusion

In effect Otto is adding to what discussed about the Mystical experience under James. Otto
describes the central 'feeling' of the Mystical experience as a kind of “creature-feeling”.Through
this paper hence we learn the method of phenomenology as propagated by Van der Leeuw,
Rodolf Otto and Jouco Bleeker. We come to understand the role of experience, epoche, empathy,
and editect vision. Hence allowing us to have a broader perspective on interpreting and
understanding religious experience.

32
https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Routledge_Companion_to_the_Study_of/Y4ltUhHAhzEC?
hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=jouco+bleeker+phenomenological+approach&pg=PA194&printsec=frontcover