Going Beyond the Intellect
- davidwperk
- Aug 7
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 8
Devotional Reflection, Thursday, August 7, 2025
Proper 13, the week of the eighth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. David W. Perkins, Th.D.
Key phrase for reflection from today’s Gospel reading:
9:2 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, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such
as no one on earth could bleach them.
You will find the full text of today’s Gospel reading at the end of this reflection.
Daily Office Lectionary readings (BCP, 978)
AM Psalm [83] or 34; PM Psalm 85, 86
2 Samuel 11:1-27; Acts 19:11-20; Mark 9:2-13
Today we celebrate the Feast of Catherine Winkworth. (See below.)
David's Reflections
Yesterday, August 6, we celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration. Today’s daily office Gospel contains Mark's account of the transfiguration. The disciples were terrified by the experience; they had just encountered a direct revelation of God's glory and holiness.
In 1923, Rudolf Otto published his classic, The Idea of the Holy. He argues that our rational definition of God's holiness as absolute goodness reduces the concept to an ethical idea. Contrasted with that rational response to the idea of God, the Bible witnesses to a non-rational response, a response that Otto called 'creature feeling'--a sense of our creatureliness in the presence of what he called the mysterium tremendum (tremendous mystery), the awesome mystery of the presence of God. See Isaiah 6 for an example from Hebrew Scripture—Isaiah encountering God in the Temple. Revelation 1 gives an example from the Christian Scriptures, the seer having a vision of God.
Otto says that this non-rational response to God's mysterious and overwhelming presence has several common ingredients; for one, the element of awfulness, being filled with awe. In today’s Gospel Peter spoke impulsively because he was filled with awe. This numinous experience also leaves one feeling overpowered, feeling small and impotent. There also is an element of energy or urgency. Here Peter felt the need to DO something in the moment. There also can be a sense of the ineffable. One is in the presence of the transcendent, the wholly other with a sense that the mystery is beyond our grasp. This numinous encounter also has an element of fascination. Not only is one overwhelmed and awed but one feels the desire to draw closer.
So much of our spiritual experience is based in the intellect and reason. Yet, you may be able to recall moments when your skin crawled, when you felt a chill, when tears were near, when you felt filled with awe. It may have been during a particularly stirring hymn or sermon. It may have been in response to a natural phenomenon like an incredible display of lightening or a star-filled night or a meteor shower. It may have been when awakening from a vivid dream. It may have come while receiving Holy Communion or during prayers for healing. Perhaps you were reading the Bible or poetry or devotional literature and felt ushered into God's presence.
In such moments we are encountering something of the mystery and holiness of God, that ineffable and overwhelming presence. Yet, that presence is at once powerful and gentle, awe-filled and loving, dreadful and attractive. We are safe in that presence. It is God, coming to us to disclose to us a hint of God’s unlimited and pervasive being and inviting us to be in the divine presence.
I am not suggesting that spirituality is anti-intellectual. Rather, to experience the divine in these ways takes us beyond the intellect into a supra-intellectual space.
At the risk of prolonging this reflection, consider these three examples of people experiencing the numinous.
German hymn by Tersteegen:
God himself is present:
Heart, be stilled before Him:
Prostrate inwardly adore him.
Augustine, The Confessions, ii., 9. 1.
"What is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without wounding it? I am both a-shudder and a-glow. A-shudder, in so far as I am unlike it, a-glow in so far as I am like it."
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (p. 66).
"The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two."
I lived in a remote location in rural Georgia for six years on ten acres with a panorama of the southern sky and a population density of 17 people per square mile. That spot had very little light pollution. When I would return from a densely populated area and get out of the car at night, the Milky Way glowed brightly above. Each time an involuntary “Oh, my God” would escape my lips. Awe and wonder at such vastness. Our living mostly indoors and away from the natural world has blunted our experience of awe.
Recently, I read two amazing books by Dale C. Allison, Jr., professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. I recommend them to you in the context of this reflection. The Luminous Dusk: Finding God in the Deep Still Places (Eerdmans, 2006) and Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age. (Eerdmans, 2022). I would welcome discussing them with you or forming a book group in person or on Zoom to discuss them.
Collect of the Day, Proper 13, the eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, 232)
Today we celebrate the Feast of Catherine Winkworth, translator of hymns and social activist. (died 1878 CE).
Collect of the Feast of Catherine Winkworth
Comfort your people, O God of peace, and prepare a way for us in the desert, that, like your poet and translator Catherine Winkworth, we may preserve the spiritual treasures of your saints of former years and sing our thanks to you with hearts and hands and voices, eternal triune God whom earth and heaven adore; for you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen
A Collect for Protection
O God, the life of all who live, the light of the faithful, the strength of those who labor, and the repose of the dead: We thank you for the blessings of the day that is past, and humbly ask for your protection through the coming night. Bring us in safety to the morning hours; through him who died and rose again for us, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (BCP, 124)
For Quiet Confidence
O God of peace, you have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 832)
In the Order of Worship for Evening
Almighty, everlasting God, let our prayer in your sight be as incense, the lifting up of our hands as the evening sacrifice. Give us grace to behold you, present in your Word and Sacraments, and to recognize you in the lives of those around us. Stir up in us the flame of that love which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn in us to eternal life and to the ages of ages. Amen. (BCP, 113)
A Collect for Mission
O God of all the nations of the earth: Remember the multitudes who have been created in your image but have not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus Christ; and grant that, by the prayers and labors of your holy Church, they may be brought to know and worship you as you have been revealed in your Son; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, 257)
Daily Office Gospel
2 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, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one* on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5Then 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.’ 6He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved;* listen to him!’ 8Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9 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. 10So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. 11Then they asked him, ‘Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ 12He 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? 13But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.’
Daily Prayer Offices in The Book of Common Prayer
Morning Prayer, Rite 2, page 75, Book of Common Prayer
Noonday Prayer, p. 103, Book of Common Prayer
Order of Worship for Evening (Vespers), p. 109, Book of Common Prayer
Evening Prayer, Rite 2, page 115, Book of Common Prayer
Compline (Night Prayer), Page 127, Book of Common Prayer
Daily Devotionals, page 136, Book of Common Prayer
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