Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Human Insight or Divine Revelation

In a recent article, published shortly after his death, Roy Hoover1 linked (human) insight and (divine) revelation:

What Paul regarded as a revelation we often refer to as an insight…I mean to use insight in this essay in the same sense as the meaning Paul had in mind in using the term revelation—that a new reality had become visible to Paul when God raised Jesus Christ from the dead…”2

An insight is a sudden thought that arises from within. A psychologist might define it as follows: “In psychology, insight occurs when a solution to a problem presents itself quickly and without warning,”3 or perhaps better: “The ability to see and understand clearly the inner nature of things, esp. by intuition.”4 Psychologists regard insight as a common human ability and have developed therapies relying on human insight in the treatment of patients with mental difficulties.5 On the other hand, in Pauline thought a revelation was something initiated from a divine source that came from outside an individual (Gal 1;12; 2:2; 2 Cor 12:1).

            What are we then to make of Hoover’s suggestion that (human) insight and (divine) revelation are the same experience? One seems to cancel-out the other. That is to say: if it is revelation, it is not human insight, and vice versa. Julian Jaynes, late Princton psychologist, however, theorized that ancient humans had a bicameral mind (i.e., two-chambers). One part of the mind issued commands that the other half of the mind perceived as voices of the Gods. Jaynes argued that the ancients did not consider their emotions and desires to be from within themselves, but their inner emotions came from the outside as actions of the Gods.6 The human mind began shifting to human consciousness around the 2nd Millenium BCE, Jaynes argues.7

Today, it is generally thought that sudden flashes of insight that suddenly present themselves to us emerge from the subconscious. Yet how are we to explain auditory “hallucinations,” where people hear voices telling them to do certain things, or people of religious faith claiming to have received “answers” from God to their prayers? Might such experiences be from the subconscious, occurring as a historical residue of the bicameral mind that today is referred-to as insight? Reactions to Jaynes’ hypothesis are mixed, some positive and others negative.8

            On at least two occasions Paul, in his undisputed letters, claims to have had revelations from the Lord (Gal 1:12; I Cor 11:23) and on one occasion claims that the Lord spoke to him, and Paul quotes the Lord’s very words: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9). Could these occasions be considered instances of a residual bicameral mind at work in the first century CE? The bicameral mind is a mental state in which an experience of the right hemisphere of the brain is transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. Or must we think that Paul was only speaking metaphorically. That is, he didn’t mean to say that he heard an actual voice. It was only a sudden flash of insight that came to him.

            Hoover preferred to describe as (human) insight what Paul described as (divine) revelation, and Jaynes’ hypothesis presents a plausible theory for explaining divine revelation as simply human insight. What an awesome and terrifying thought! If true, God-believers are more alone in the universe than ever before.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

1Late Weyerhaeuser Professor of Biblical Literature and Religion Emeritus at Whitman College.

2Roy W. Hoover, “The Origin of Paul’s Gospel and the Power of Insight,” The Fourth R 37.5 (November-December 2024), 18.

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight

4Webster’s New World College Dictionary, under the word “insight.”

5Philip G. Zimbardo, et al., Psychology. Core Concepts (6th ed.; Boston: Pearson, 2009), 576-77.

6Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consciousness in the Break-down of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), see his readings of the Iliad, p. 72 (date of the Iliad is around 8th/7th century BCE).

7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality#:~:text=Jaynes%20theorized%20that%20a%20shift,complexity%20in%20a%20changing%20world. See his argument for the breakdown of the bicameral mind in Mesopotamia: Jaynes, Origins, 223-246.

8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality#:~:text=Psychiatrist%20Iain%20McGilchrist%20proposes%20that,that%20McGilchrist%20mischaracterized%20Jaynes's%20theory.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Charlie, I enjoyed reading the article and your analysis. I hadn't been aware of Jaynes' theories about the brain. But perhaps Paul's revelation from God can better be explained by a resolved titanic psychological/emotional struggle rather than "insight" (as suggested by Hoover). Insight (as per Hoover) does seem to apply to the Founding Fathers' "insight" regarding the equality of all men in the pursuit of happiness before God, which perhaps grew, at least in part, from the experience of freedom in the new land. But Paul engaged in a titanic psychological struggle between the authority of Jewish religious law and the Jesus follower claim that one's relationship with God was based in trust/faith. Trust and freedom from the law won out. This was not "insight" but experiencing victory in a life and death internal struggle.

Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa..

Charles Hedrick said...

Hi Gene,
Thanks for engaging the issue. And it is good to chat with you again. I think Roy's point was that whatever may have occasioned his new thinking, the new thought arose from within Paul rather than from outside by revelation. And we usually refer to new thinking within ourselves as insight.
Cordially,
Charlie

Anonymous said...

Hi Charlie,
If I may share a personal tale. When I was still in my mid-twenties and in graduate-school I had a long standing really severe problem with perfectionism that was taking greater control of my life. It interfered with my life in many ways, but I particularly remember that I was unable to complete course work, completely endangering my life goals. I had a part-time night job "ringing out registers" after a department store closed; at the end of the process with each register a bell would ring. One night when my thoughts were especially troubling one of the register bells went-off, I suddenly felt free, stopped competing with the other guys doing the registers and soon felt released from the academic pressure I put upon myself. To me, what happened was not the result of insight but of a complex resolution of internal dynamics set off by a bell. To the contrary, I think of insight as being the result of thoughtful rational reflection. It appears to me that Paul also had a big time internal psychological battle and the bell that went off for him was a vision of the cross of Jesus Christ replacing the law with fruits of the spirit (begin with Romans 7-8).

Gene