No. I said that you said that a subjective experience is inaccessible to historical analysis, and I agree with you on that point. It does not follow from that agreement that a claim of having been divinely inspired cannot be tested. What I hold is that during testing (just as in real life post-any-alleged-inspiration), the fact of being divinely inspired will diminish in significance once understanding begins to develop and will continue to diminish in significance as understanding is furthered.
A claim is testable only if it yields observable consequences that discriminate it from natural explanations. For “divinely inspired” that means public markers such as independent contemporaneous attestations, verifiable predictions recorded before the fact, or distinctive textual features and transmission patterns not produced by ordinary composition and copying. None of these exist for Paul’s claim. Saying the inspiration “diminishes in significance” as understanding develops concedes it does no explanatory work. Either specify a falsifiable criterion the claim meets, or acknowledge it is irrelevant to public knowledge. As it stands, it is indistinguishable from a private conviction and cannot underwrite “not of human origin.”
Personal experiences can certainly constitute evidence. That being said, even if Paul's inspiration was of divine origin, it is true that his experience obligates no one. For that matter, his understanding obligates no one.
When the context of the preceding is taken as including the question concerning the development of understanding, then Paul would be rightly most concerned about how his own developing understanding can be best communicated to others. Those others are not obligated to understand Paul, but they might nonetheless be interested in developing an understanding about what Paul is saying or trying to say. Anyone interested in engagement with Paul could try to develop an own understanding of Paul's understanding and in so doing take account of the contexts in which Paul expresses his understanding, yet no one is ever obligated to try to understand Paul's understanding during an engagement with Paul.
Personal experiences count as evidence only for the person who has them; for everyone else they are anecdote until corroborated. Cross-cultural data make that plain: people in mutually incompatible religions report equally powerful “divine” experiences. Without external checks, such reports cannot decide between competing truth-claims. Your concession that Paul’s experience obligates no one is the point: absent independent corroboration, it cannot ground a public assertion of non-human origin or impose authority on others.
Communication and engagement are fine, but they don’t rescue the origin claim. If no one is obligated by Paul’s alleged revelation, then his message stands or falls on its human merits like any other philosophical program. That is exactly my position. Evaluate the arguments, ethics, and community effects as human products; the added label “divinely inspired” contributes nothing testable and therefore adds no rational weight.
Be careful. Sticking the word "historical" in front of "claim" does not justify the application of what you have been referring to as historical analysis - if it is in fact a fact about historical analysis that it has no access to subjective experiences, subjective inner states.
Calling Paul’s assertion “historical” isn’t a rhetorical trick; it describes its content. “The gospel I proclaim is not of human origin” is a claim about causation in the world, not just about how Paul felt. Historical method doesn’t need access to his inner states to evaluate that. It asks what public traces a non-human origin would plausibly leave and whether those traces exist. The relevant checks are objective: the literary form and language of the letters (standard Greco-Roman epistolary and argumentation), the external attestation (no contemporary, independent witnesses to his revelation), and the transmission record (no autographs; earliest substantial papyrus collections from around the early third century; ordinary scribal corrections and variants typical of human copying). All the observable evidence fits human composition and transmission, and none requires a non-human source. Because Paul’s origin claim yields no discriminating, public consequences, it cannot be verified historically and therefore cannot function as a warranted premise in public argument. Private experiences may motivate him; they cannot, by themselves, establish “not of human origin” for anyone else.
First of all, in accord with the applicability limits of historical analysis, every result from such analysis will always appear "fully human." After all, if Paul was actually divinely inspired, that was a personal, subjective experience which cannot be observed during or as a result of historical analysis.
Secondly, even if Paul's experience was actually one of divine inspiration, what Paul will make evident is his own human understanding. His inspiration can be of divine origin with his subsequently developed understanding naturally being fully human.
If a claim leaves no observable difference from ordinary causes, it cannot ground a public conclusion. Historical method is precisely what we use to test origin claims; if “divine inspiration” is defined so it produces no discriminating evidence—no independent witnesses, no verifiable predictions recorded before the fact, no atypically early and stable text—then it is irrelevant to history by its own terms. At that point, “not of human origin” reduces to a private confession, not a warranted premise. You can keep the experience as personal motivation; you cannot convert it into a public fact without public traces.
That concession empties the origin claim of evidential content. If everything accessible to inquiry—the wording, argumentation, and transmission—is “naturally fully human,” then the added label “divine origin” explains nothing, predicts nothing, and can be neither confirmed nor disconfirmed. It also cannot underwrite authority, because it makes no testable difference between Paul and any other capable writer who feels “inspired.” Either the claim yields public, falsifiable criteria—which it does not—or it remains an unfalsifiable belief with no bearing on what anyone else should accept. Under public criteria, the artifacts we have are human; beyond that, there is nothing to argue.
What I do not seem to be able to successfully communicate to you is that even unwarranted unbelief about an actually divine inspiration is not a problem. It is not a problem, because it is irrelevant to understanding Paul's understanding which can also be thought of - and tested - in terms of Paul's expression of his understanding. Although no one is ever obligated to (try to) understand Paul's understanding, any engagement with Paul's understanding can be assessed/judged in terms of the manner undertaken in order to understand Paul's understanding. If someone is stuck on the question of how is that person to know that Paul was actually divinely inspired, that person has not yet gotten to the attempt to understand Paul's understanding
Suspending belief in an unsubstantiated origin claim does not block understanding; it protects it. Historians read, translate, and analyze Paul’s arguments, genres, and social aims without granting his self-authorization “not of human origin.” We do this with every ancient author: we can reconstruct meaning and intention without believing Homer had a literal Muse or that Plato wrote under divine afflatus. Your claim that the origin question is “irrelevant” is contradicted by Paul’s own use of it as a warrant against rivals. Content and origin are separable for interpretation, but the moment Paul invokes origin to secure authority, origin becomes central for evaluation. On public criteria—language, rhetoric, manuscript history—there is no independent warrant for a non-human source. Understanding his “understanding” is fully achievable while rejecting the unsupported premise that it came from beyond human cognition.
Saying that love is a "psychological state with well-studied cognitive and neurobiological correlates" is fluff because it neither bolsters your position nor rebuts my remark. If you pay attention to what I said, you will notice that I never even tried to put forth "a demonstration of divine causation" with regards to love or any other matter. Rather, I corrected you by showing how you can have invariance despite there being variation in content.
Your “invariance despite variation” point concedes mine. Demonstrating that a concept like love can retain a definitional core while its expressions vary does nothing to establish a supernatural cause for any text. It shows exactly what human phenomena look like: a stable abstract schema fleshed out differently across contexts. That is precisely how Pauline “love” functions—defined in general terms, applied variably across communities and issues. This pattern requires no divine input and supplies no testable marker of one. You did not demonstrate divine causation because there is none to demonstrate within your own framing; you merely restated a human, conceptual regularity. It leaves the origin claim untouched and unsupported.
Look at that word "observable". Its use there entails a subjective perspective, an interpretation. That is fine, but the legitimacy of that interpretation is compromised by the failure to take account of other perspectives/interpretations. Your "observable" has left the realm of historical analysis. You are not controlling for context variables which is something that is essential - but only if the goal is to understand the understanding, the expression of an other person, a goal which no one is obliged to pursue.
“Observable” names publicly checkable features, and historical method controls subjectivity by intersubjective constraints: shared grammars of Koine Greek, dated manuscript witnesses, recognizable rhetorical forms, comparative literature, and independent peer review. Those controls are the context variables you claim are missing. When I say Paul’s letters are deliberative persuasion, that rests on surface features anyone can verify: epistolary openings and closings, diatribe questions to an imaginary interlocutor, peri de topic shifts, chains of reasons and conditionals, imperatives aimed at concrete outcomes. Multiple trained readers applying the same controls converge on those classifications. Alternative “perspectives” are admissible only if they fit the documents’ grammar, genre, historical setting, and transmission record; if they don’t, they’re discarded. By those standards, Paul’s content is accessible and interpretable as human rhetoric, and his origin claim remains exactly what I said: uncorroborated by any discriminating public evidence. Either provide a falsifiable criterion that his claim uniquely satisfies or accept that, by your own terms, it reduces to a private conviction with no force in public argument.
What you call a collapse is more aptly described as an apparent inconsistency, quite possibly even a contradiction, and I told you that what appears to be at least an inconsistency is a legitimate entrance point for a different argument. However, that would be addressing a different issue than the matter of the alleged divine inspiration that gave rise to the understanding preached as gospel. As Politesse has repeatedly tried to make clear, not everything Paul said and wrote was the allegedly inspired gospel preached.
Calling it an “apparent inconsistency” doesn’t move the needle. Paul explicitly ties his right to teach and to overrule competitors to his origin claim: “not from men,” “received from the Lord,” and “a command of the Lord.” That is not a side issue; it is the warrant he invokes when enforcing doctrine and practice. You can try to carve off some sayings as “not the inspired gospel,” but Paul himself doesn’t present his authority piecemeal. The same letters that set out the “good news” also ground his corrections and commands in revelation language. If the origin claim is removed as you suggest, his letters revert to ordinary human exhortation competing on equal footing. If the origin claim stays, it must be evidenced. It isn’t.
This was addressed above, but, to reiterate: the fact of being divinely inspired will diminish in significance as understanding is furthered. If someone is stuck on the question of how is that person to know that the origin of Paul's inspiration was "a non-human source", that person has not yet gotten to the attempt to understand Paul's understanding.
Understanding a text never requires swallowing its self-authorization. We can and do analyze Paul’s arguments, genres, and aims without crediting his claim of revelation—exactly as we read Plato without believing in a literal Muse. Your assertion that origin “diminishes in significance” simply concedes that the claim adds nothing testable. But Paul deploys that claim to compel deference when disputes arise. When a claim is used to bind others, it does not “diminish”; it demands verification. None exists beyond Paul’s say-so.
All claims are historical in that all claims occur within time, within history. And, yet, not all claims are accessible to historical analysis - by your own reckoning and admission. This means that something other than historical analysis is necessary. But only if understanding the understanding of an other person is what is sought.
Everything happens in time, but only claims that yield public traces can be tested historically. Private experiences are not thereby upgraded to public facts. If you want to explore Paul’s inner states, that is pastoral psychology, not evidence for “not of human origin.” The moment Paul’s inner conviction is advanced as a public premise—“my gospel is not from man”—the only responsible method is to ask for public discriminators. We find none. That ends the historical question. What remains is personal belief, which others are under no rational obligation to share.
And you have already admitted that historical analysis is not applicable to inner states such as understanding. As you say, "Sound historical analysis does not diagnose inner states".
If God is, maybe God is not the egomaniac that so many humans describe and/or expect. Imagine being concerned with the development of others' understanding, particularly with the development of others' understanding about the understanding of others. When someone is able to so imagine, then the very arbitrariness of the burden of proof assignment becomes not just apparent but obvious. But there might be another aspect which it is necessary to realize. Not all claims are intended to convince. Sometimes claims are invitations.
Correct—and that is why inner states cannot carry a public argument. You do not get to smuggle an uncheckable experience into civic space and call it decisive. Keep it as your motivation if you like; it cannot function as evidence of non-human origin. Without independent attestation, we are left with a human author using ordinary rhetoric in ordinary letters, transmitted by ordinary scribes. That is where the evidence stops.
I do not see you doing exactly that or anything close to that, because you have not made evident any evidence that you are concerned with understanding the understanding of Paul or others.
That being said, the "good news" is for humans; therefore, it most definitely is to be evaluated and further developed in understanding by humans. That fact is perfectly compatible with - and does not at all detract from - belief in God and continued belief in God. Except maybe for those believers who have interpreted/imagined the good news or God-belief as having somehow delivered them from the burden of having to further the development of their understandings and their persons. Indeed, that has been the gist of much Jewish criticism regarding how the Christianity of/for the common man and woman in particular has developed. But that is a different tangent.
I am doing exactly that by treating Paul’s letters as human arguments about God, ethics, and community, and evaluating them on their merits. In the undisputed letters, Paul lays out a moral program and community policy using ordinary tools of reason. In Romans and Galatians he argues a thesis about justification, marshaling scripture, analogies, and stepwise logic. In 1 Corinthians he addresses concrete problems—factions, sexual ethics, litigation, food offered to idols, assembly order—by weighing harms and benefits, appealing to precedent, and issuing practical directives. In 1 Thessalonians he exhorts work, sexual restraint, and mutual encouragement; in Philemon he negotiates a social conflict by rhetorical appeal rather than fiat. Across these, the genre is recognizable Greco-Roman epistolary rhetoric and diatribe: thesis, objections, replies, imperatives, and community sanctions. That is precisely “understanding Paul’s understanding” through what he actually wrote and how he argued—without importing an unverifiable claim about non-human origin. Nothing in those texts requires more than human cognition to explain their content or their effects.
On this we agree: the message is evaluated and developed by humans. That admission decides the evidential question. If human evaluation and development are sufficient to account for the content, the arguments, and the community practices we observe, then the additional label “not of human origin” adds no explanatory value and supplies no independent warrant. Believe it if you wish, but it does no work in public reasoning. Paul’s ethics and ecclesial guidance can and should be weighed exactly as we weigh any other ancient moral philosophy: by coherence, consequences, and fit with evidence. Once you concede that, the origin claim becomes superfluous to assessment; if kept, it remains a personally meaningful confession, not a historical finding that binds anyone else.
NHC
