The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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There is a problem with Knox's statement that "only in the experience of those who receive the revelation can the revealing event be said to occur at all" (The Early Church and the Coming Great Church: 48). If this statement were true simply as it stands, there could be no such thing as a responsible "No" to the gift-demand of the revealing event.

The only way there can be such a "No" is if "receiving the revelation," in the sense of a responsible "Yes" to the revealing event's gift-demand, is analyzed correctly as involving, in fact, a double receiving: (1) receiving a historical event as existentially significant (i.e., being "called" by the event); and (2) receiving a historical event as decisive for my existence (i.e., being "chosen" by the event through my own choosing, my own acceptance of its call).

Whereas the first receiving is as necessary a condition of the possibility of a responsible "No" as of a responsible "Yes," a "No" is distinguished from a "Yes" in that it involves no second receiving but only the first, its rejection of the event's gift-demand taking the place of the second receiving.

17 December 2007; rev. 7 December 2008

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