R.C. Sproul

And the refrain goes, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

And I think we can identify with that, can't we?

There are those moments in our own experience when we contemplate the mystery of Christ.

the greatness of God, the secrets of the workings and operation of the Holy Spirit.

But it causes us to tremble.

There is something fearful about it.

Early in the 20th century, a German theologian who was also an expert in the field of sociology and anthropology wrote a small book that had an enormous impact on the thinking of his generation.

His name

was Rudolf Otto.

And his book, when it was originally published, had a very short and crisp title, simply in German, Das Heilige, which literally means

When it was translated into English, the English title for this book was called The Idea of the Holy.

Now Otto didn't carry any brief or traditional conservative evangelical Christianity.

He was examining not simply something about God, but he was perhaps even more interested in people.

His study was a study on how human beings react and respond to whatever they consider to be holy.

It may be the feelings and reactions of people in primitive tribes to animistic spirits that frighten them.

It may be a priest in a temple.

It may be a Christian in prayer.

And he said, how do people respond emotionally, intellectually, and psychologically to a sense of the presence of the holy?

And basically, he said that the normal human response to the holy is ambivalence.

But that which is sacred attracts and repels at one and the same time.