explicitly or implicitly. Aspects of the divine studied in the Cognitive Science
of Religion include superhuman agency, counterintuitiveness, access to social-
ly strategic information, and boundless qualities (see sections 1.3, 2.2, and 8.2).
Whereas these and other aspects of the concept of the divine rely on evolved,
cross-culturally recurrent cognitive traits, the task of the biblical scholar is to
show how a particular concept of the divine in a given cultural context
emerged from these building blocks. Previous studies discussed topics such as
Christology, God’sinfinite knowledge and timeless existence in the Hebrew
Bible, and the conceptualization of the Holy Spirit (Theissen, 2011a, 2011b;
Czachesz, 2012b; Theissen, Chan, & Czachesz, 2016; and above in this section).
Using cognitive science to discuss the concept of the divine in the New
Testament brings a new element to the exegetical tradition, that of empirical
and naturalistic foundations. According to the traditional perception of biblical
exegesis, a systematic account of the theological insights of the texts of the New
Testament yields statements of timeless validity that are the foundation of
Christian theology. When exegetical positions shift and respective theological
views change, it is due to paradigm changes, which are themselves embedded in
broader cultural trends. For example, the Reformation, liberal theology, or
Protestant neo-orthodoxy were parts of major historical and cultural changes
and brought corresponding shifts of positions considering the interpretation of
the divine in the New Testament. A cognitive perspective, however, willingly
submits itself to the constraints of empirical science. If evidence accumulates
against a particular cognitive model, it gives reason for rethinking the exegetical
results that resulted from the application of that particular model. For example,
ongoing experimental work on minimal counterintuitiveness might lead us to
rethinking aspects of the above-mentioned studies of divine attributes and
Christological change in biblical texts. Does this mean that any study using
cognitive models can produce only ephemeral knowledge? Given the nature of
the scientific enterprise, the answer is that changes are to be expected but they
represent moves toward incremental precision. In modern science, even major
paradigm shifts preserve the truth of much that has been said before, while
putting old knowledge into a new context. Thus Newtonian mechanics is“false”
in the sense of not telling the full story, which does not mean that it would not
still answer most practical problems of everyday physics perfectly. Our scientific
understanding of how the brain functions is much newer than Newtonian
mechanics, yet a cumulative change of cognitive neuroscience toward a more
precise picture is already palpable. In contrast, exegetical discussions that rely on
solely philological and philosophical arguments are seldom decided with any
enduring effect (which does not mean that such debates are not important); in
fact, holding one or another position is a matter of intellectual schools, personal
identities, and subject to periodic turns.
This takes us to the second meaning of “transcendence,” that is, the
existence of norms, values, and axioms beyond empirical evidence. The
Hermeneutical Reflections 211