What Is the Sacred?

What Is the Question?

The sacred, in the philosophical and religious tradition, is the dimension of reality that commands reverence and awe, distinct from the ordinary and the profane. The word comes from the Latin sacer, meaning "holy" or "set apart," and it carries the sense of a reality that is qualitatively different from the everyday, that demands a distinctive response, and that is taken to be the object of the religious life. The concept is central to the phenomenology of religion, where it names the category that defines the religious, and it has been the subject of philosophical reflection from the early church through the modern period. The philosophical questions the sacred raises are deep. Is the sacred a real feature of the world, or a projection of the human mind? How is it related to the divine, the moral, and the aesthetic? And what does it mean to say that something is sacred?

The SEP entry on religious experience treats the sacred as the central category of the phenomenology of religion, especially in the work of Rudolf Otto, who gave the concept its classic philosophical form in The Idea of the Holy. The philosophical work is to articulate the concept, to distinguish it from related ideas, and to ask the philosophical questions it raises.

Historical Background

The concept of the sacred is ancient and universal. In the Hebrew Bible, the sacred is the holy, the dimension of reality that belongs to God, and the distinction of sacred and profane is the distinction of what is set apart for God from what is ordinary. The Hebrew Bible treats the sacred as the defining category of the religious life, from the temple, which is the sacred space, to the Sabbath, which is the sacred time, to the priest, who is the sacred person. The Greek and Roman religions had analogous categories, and the phenomenology of religion has shown that the sacred is a feature of religious traditions across cultures.

The philosophical engagement with the sacred is more recent. Augustine, in City of God, treated the sacred as the dimension of the divine, the reality that is the source and end of the created order, and the object of the religious life. The medieval scholastics, including Aquinas, systematized the Augustinian account, and treated the sacred as the attribute of God, the "holiness" that is the divine excellence. The early modern period, with the rise of naturalism and the critique of religion, challenged the concept, and the Enlightenment treated the sacred as a projection of the human mind, a category that the modern science of religion would explain away.

The modern recovery of the concept was led by Rudolf Otto, in The Idea of the Holy (1917). Otto argued that the central religious experience is the experience of the "numinous," the encounter with what he called the "wholly other," a reality that is not reducible to the moral, the aesthetic, or the rational. The numinous, on Otto's view, has a distinctive phenomenology, marked by the mysterium, the tremendum, and the fascinans: the experience of mystery, of awe and dread, and of fascination and attraction. The numinous is the experience of the holy, in the strong sense of a reality that commands reverence and that is qualitatively distinct from the ordinary.

Mircea Eliade, in The Sacred and the Profane (1957), developed the phenomenology of religion, and treated the sacred as the defining category of the religious, the dimension of reality that the religious traditions have always recognized and that the modern secular age has obscured. Eliade's account has been influential in the comparative study of religion, and it has shaped the contemporary understanding of the sacred.

Otto: The Numinous

Otto's account of the numinous is the classical form of the concept, and it deserves a closer look. Otto's central claim is that the experience of the sacred is the experience of the numinous, the encounter with the wholly other, and that the numinous is a sui generis category, not reducible to the moral, the aesthetic, or the rational. The numinous, on Otto's view, has a distinctive phenomenology, marked by three features.

The first is the mysterium, the experience of mystery, the sense that the reality encountered is beyond the ordinary categories, that it is wholly other, and that it cannot be captured in the ordinary concepts. The second is the tremendum, the experience of awe and dread, the sense that the reality encountered is overwhelming, that it is beyond the human powers, and that it commands a response of reverence and fear. The third is the fascinans, the experience of fascination and attraction, the sense that the reality encountered is also the source of the deepest human longings, and that it draws the experiencer to itself.

The three features, on Otto's view, are not separable but are three aspects of a single experience, the encounter with the numinous. The experience, Otto argued, is not a projection of the human mind but an encounter with a real divine reality, and the persistence of the experience across cultures and across history is evidence for the reality of the numinous. The numinous, on Otto's view, is the object of the religious life, the reality that the religious traditions have always recognized, and the experience of it is the heart of the religious life.

The Sacred and the Profane

The concept of the sacred is inseparable from the concept of the profane, the ordinary, the everyday, the not-sacred. The distinction of sacred and profane, in the phenomenology of religion, is the defining distinction of the religious, the distinction that marks off the religious from the non-religious. The sacred is the set apart, the holy, the dimension of reality that commands reverence, and the profane is the ordinary, the everyday, the dimension of reality that does not command reverence.

The distinction is expressed in the religious traditions in a number of ways. The sacred space, the temple or the holy place, is the space that is set apart for the divine, and the profane space is the ordinary space. The sacred time, the Sabbath or the festival, is the time that is set apart for the divine, and the profane time is the ordinary time. The sacred person, the priest or the holy person, is the person who is set apart for the divine, and the profane person is the ordinary person. The sacred object, the icon or the relic, is the object that is set apart for the divine, and the profane object is the ordinary object.

The distinction of sacred and profane, on the phenomenological account, is not a distinction of value but of category. The sacred is not better than the profane, but different, and the difference is the difference of the divine from the ordinary. The sacred is the dimension of reality that is the object of the religious life, and the profane is the dimension of reality that is the object of the ordinary life.

The Sacred and the Moral

The relation of the sacred to the moral is a central philosophical question. Otto argued that the numinous is not the moral, though it is connected to it, and that the experience of the sacred is not the experience of the moral law but of a reality that is qualitatively distinct. The moral, on Otto's view, is the rational and the good, the dimension of reality that is the object of the moral life, and the sacred is the wholly other, the dimension of reality that is the object of the religious life. The two are connected, because the holy God is also the good God, but they are not identical, and the experience of the sacred is not reducible to the experience of the moral.

The question has been sharpened by the modern philosophy of religion. Kant, in the Critique of Practical Reason, treated the moral as the rational, and reduced the religious to the moral, holding that the moral law is the source of the religious, and that the religious is the recognition of the moral law as the command of God. The Kantian account has been influential, and it has produced a form of religion that is essentially moral, with the sacred reduced to the moral. The defender of the Otto account can reply that the reduction does not take seriously the phenomenology of the religious, and that the experience of the sacred is not reducible to the experience of the moral, but is a distinctive encounter with the wholly other.

The Sacred and the Aesthetic

The relation of the sacred to the aesthetic is another central philosophical question. The sacred, on Otto's view, is not the aesthetic, though it has aesthetic features, and the experience of the sacred is not the experience of the beautiful but of the wholly other. The aesthetic, on Otto's view, is the beautiful, the dimension of reality that is the object of the aesthetic life, and the sacred is the holy, the dimension of reality that is the object of the religious life. The two are connected, because the holy God is also the beautiful God, but they are not identical, and the experience of the sacred is not reducible to the experience of the aesthetic.

The question has been sharpened by the modern philosophy of art. The aesthetic experience, on the modern account, is the experience of the beautiful, the disinterested pleasure that is the object of the aesthetic life. The experience of the sacred, on the Otto account, is the experience of the wholly other, the reverence and awe that is the object of the religious life. The two are connected, because the experience of the beautiful can be a route to the experience of the sacred, and the religious traditions have often used the beautiful, in art and music and architecture, as a means of evoking the sacred. But the two are not identical, and the experience of the sacred is not reducible to the experience of the beautiful.

The Reality of the Sacred

The central philosophical question is whether the sacred is a real feature of the world or a projection of the human mind. The defender of the reality of the sacred, such as Otto, holds that the experience of the sacred is the encounter with a real divine reality, and that the persistence of the experience across cultures and across history is evidence for the reality of the sacred. The critic, drawing on the modern philosophy of religion, holds that the experience of the sacred is better explained by psychology and culture, and that the sacred is a projection of the human mind, a category that the modern science of religion can explain away.

The debate is part of the larger question of the argument from religious experience, and it bears on the wider question of whether theism is more probable than not on the total evidence. The honest philosophical stance is to take the experience of the sacred seriously, to engage with the explanatory challenge, and to weigh the evidence as carefully as the question deserves. The deeper lesson is that the question of the sacred is part of the larger question of how to understand the relation of the human and the divine, and the older concept, with its insistence on the reality of the sacred, may still have something to teach us.

Contemporary Relevance

The concept of the sacred remains a live topic, both in philosophy and in the wider culture. The persistence of the experience of the sacred, even in secularized societies, and the revival of contemplative practices and of interest in the religious traditions, suggest that the sacred is a deep feature of human spirituality, and the philosophical question of what to make of it is correspondingly urgent. The honest philosophical stance is to take the concept seriously, to engage with the modern critiques, and to ask what the concept names that the alternatives do not. The work of philosophy is not to dismiss the concept by procedural fiat, but to do the careful work of comparison and assessment that the question deserves.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Religious Experience" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-experience/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "William James" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Augustine" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/

Related Topics

• What Is Religious Experience? — the wider category.
• What Is Mysticism? — the experiential core.
• What Is Prayer? — a related practice.
• Is Faith Rational? — the wider question.
• What Is Grace? — the divine assistance.
• Does God Exist? — the central question.
• Philosophy of Religious Experience — the wider domain.