All language, in so far as it consists of words, purports to convey ideas or concepts; that is what language means; - and the more clearly and unequivocally it does so, the better the language. And hence expositions of religious truth in language inevitably tend to stress the `rational' attributes of God.

But though the above mistake is thus a natural one enough, it is none the less seriously misleading. For so far are these `rational' attributes from exhausting the idea of deity, that they in, fact imply a non-rational or supra-rational Subject of which they are predicates. They are `essential' (and not merely `accidental') attributes of that subject, but they are also, it is important to notice, synthetic essential attributes. That is to say, we have to predicate them of a subject which they qualify, but which in its deeper essence is not, nor indeed can be, comprehended in them; which rather requires comprehension of a quite different kind. Yet, though it eludes the conceptual way of understanding, it must be in some way or other within our grasp, else absolutely nothing could be asserted of it. And even mysticism, in speaking of it as [Here Otto has in Greek font "to arreton" which I can't reproduce in plain text], the ineffable, does not really mean to imply that absolutely nothing can be asserted of the object of the religious consciousness; otherwise, mysticism could exist only in unbroken silence, whereas what has generally been a characteristic of the mystics is their copious eloquence.

- Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, p. 2.