This Weekend Beside Tom Torrance: You Did Not Choose Me, but I Chose You (John 15:16a)

There are occasions, of course, usually great and highly significant occasions , when some ultimate of this kind forces itself upon us which cannot be fitted into the formal framework of hitherto acquired knowledge, for the set of concepts to which it gives rise in being apprehended is found to conflict with the conceptual system within which our present knowledge is expressed: then we are faced with a serious dilemma, of rejecting what has thus become disclosed as absurd, or committing ourselves to radical reconstruction of that conceptual system, indeed a logical reconstruction of the axiomatic premises of that system. When human thought comes up against such an ultimate conflict between rival frameworks of thought or conceptual systems and the fundamental outlooks that lie behind them, it is poised on the threshold of a far-reaching change of mind or conversion. The conflict cannot be solved by formal argument between two alternative frameworks or systems of thought, but only through radical commitment to the intrinsic claims of the subject- matter, through a movement of the mind in which we allow it to fall under the power of the intrinsic intelligibility of things in the conviction that we can do no other in sheer fidelity to the truth.
It is essentially in this way that the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ came to be accepted by the early Church and classical Christian theology: they forced themselves upon the minds of Christians from their own empirical and theoretical ground in sharp antithesis to what they had believed about God in genuine conflict with the framework of secular thought or the world view of their age. That God himself had become man was an offence to the Jew and folly to the Greek; that Jesus Christ rose from the dead was deemed to be utterly incredible. Yet the incarnation and the resurrection forced themselves upon the mind of the Church against the grain of people’s convictions, as ultimate events bearing their own intrinsic but shattering claims in the self- evidencing reality and transcendent rationality of God himself, and they take root within the Church only through a seismic restructuring of religious and intellectual belief. (Extracted from Space, Time and Resurrection. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1976, 16-17)
Scipture Extract: Mark 9:2-13
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. Then they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He said to them, “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.”
Prayer:
Holy triune God of grace, we thank you that you come to us indeed and that you really give yourself to be known to us that we should be blessed in relationship with you. Trusting in the love by which you draw us near we pray for the renewing of our minds through the unique, saving and tender power of our Lord Jesus Christ that we should know him to be all in all on his own terms for our salvation. We pray these things through the name of him in whom all things hold together and in whom our joy is made complete. Amen.
Lectionary for 9 March 2008, the Fifth Sunday in Lent
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130:1-8
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45