If “as the heavens are higher than the earth,” the thoughts of God transcend the dimensions of human cognition, then the process of translating that message into human language must inevitably entail loss of information and distortion. Theology insists that prophets recorded divine inspiration without error, but from the perspectives of cognitive science and psychology, a human being can never be a transparent pane of glass. Every human processes information within a “cognitive prison” built of their historical background, personal desires, and the structural limitations of the brain.
Editing and Emphasis of Memory: The Face of God in the Mirror
The human brain is not a recording device. When we take in information, we instinctively emphasize what aligns with our values and unconsciously delete or modify what is incomprehensible or threatening. Even if the experience of a prophet’s “The word of the Lord came to me” was profoundly intense, the moment it is moved into sentences, their vocabulary, cultural biases, and contemporary political climate are inevitably smeared upon the tip of the pen.
Ultimately, the voice of God we encounter in scriptures is not a raw, live recording of the Divine, but “refracted light” emerging through the cognitive filters of ancient Hebrews or first-century Jews. To look at this refracted light and believe one has seen the sun’s true form may be a massive human cognitive illusion. To believe the divine will was transmitted with absolute precision requires the extreme premise that God deleted the prophet’s ego and turned them into a mechanical ghostwriter—an idea that clashes with the divine attribute of valuing human free will and individuality.
The Dangerous Gamble of the “Word Made Flesh”
To overcome these limitations of transmission, Christianity puts forward the logic of “Incarnation”—that the Word became flesh. It argues that a “person,” rather than a text, became the message. Yet, this too is not free from cognitive distortion. Even those who witnessed Jesus firsthand remembered and recorded him differently according to their own perspectives (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).
One describes him as a revolutionary, another as a divine priest. This proves that the moment divine revelation enters human history, it is swept away by the rough seas of human subjectivity. The setting of revelation being given only to a “special” few carries the inherent risk that the power and biases of that minority become absolutized in the name of God. We are not listening to the will of God; we are believing in “human interpretations” claiming to be the will of God.
The Intellectual Stance: Enduring the Imperfection of Text
Must we then discard all these imperfect messages? The intellect chooses neither “blind trust” nor “nihilistic negation,” but rather “critical reading.” Accepting that revelation was contaminated as it passed through the human medium is, in itself, the humility of the intellect. We must engage in a painful struggle to strip away the human desires and biases hidden behind the text to find the fragments of “universal truth” that may lie beyond.
We must not take the words of the prophet as the direct, verbatim words of God. Instead, by analyzing the limitations they faced and the biases they held, we must paradoxically reconstruct the “core values” they sought to convey. More important than answering whether the divine will was transmitted accurately is the constant act of doubting whether the transmitted message is being used as a tool to justify human ego-inflation.
Closing Thoughts
Ultimately, the will of God can never be transmitted “accurately” to humans. Human language is finite, human cognition is distorted, and human memory is edited. Every “Special Revelation” we encounter is like groundwater seeping through the cracks of jagged human rocks. It contains life-giving moisture, but it is also full of impurities mixed in from the stone.
Our task as intellectuals is not to sanctify that groundwater and drink it unconditionally, but to purify it through the filters of sophisticated criticism and reflection. If we accept that God’s thoughts are higher than ours, we must paradoxically accept that no “special interpretation” offered by man can be identical to God’s thought. Upon that imperfect ladder, we continue to ask today: Is this the will of God, or is it my own projection borrowing the name of God? As long as we do not stop asking this, the spark of truth will guide us, however faintly, even within the contaminated text.
The Intellectual Property of Min Jinseong
From chronological traces to algorithmic artifacts.
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