 So the value that the particular religious emotion-types have for adherents of any particular religious tradition is very great. They are a sine qua non for genuine adherence to the tradition, and the degree to which they are actual in the life of any adherent is an index of the depth with which that adherent represents his or her tradition and is a successful human specimen by its lights. No wonder, then, that one strand of philosophical reflection about religious emotions, differing even more from the Schleiermacher-Otto and James axes than these differ from each other, is self-consciously criteriological or regulative. Clarificatory reflection about religious emotions serves a purpose of buffering the tradition against the demoralizing corrosions of the spirit of the age. One thinks of the work of Jonathan Edwards and Søren Kierkegaard. (See the entry on  Søren Kierkegaard.)