Origins Of Christianity

[steve_bank]

If I were an apologist I would say god inspired Paul to use Greek philosophy...after all hos god.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Paul makes a public origin claim—“not of human origin”—about the message he preached.

Paul claims to have been divinely inspired. Not even Paul thought his understanding was caused by God. The understanding and its expression as message were produced by Paul and not by God.

It has already been established that the validity or veracity of the message - the understanding - which Paul preached in no way hinges on the matter of whether or not Paul was divinely inspired.

It has already been established that the understanding expressed is not affected by the divinely inspired condition.

It has already been established that the understanding expressed is not affected by either the not-divinely-inspired condition or by the not-at-all-inspired condition.

This means that the divine inspiration - even if there actually was such an experience - is immaterial to the message which itself remains invariant in and across all possible inspiration contexts.

This means that there is no inspiration condition which is necessary in order for the message preached to be the valid or veritable.

If you ever understand the points above, then you will understand that there is something very much wrong with your insistence that there be evidence produced sufficient to establish that one of the inspiration contexts is more likely than the others. There is no inspiration context which makes a difference to the understanding expressed as the message preached.

This means that what has also been established is that the proper focus would be that upon the understanding expressed as the message preached. That is the focus which you avoid as if it were a plague.

In an attempt to avoid the issue about the understanding expressed you seek to rescue the inspiration issue from the necessity of its irrelevance. You do this by insisting that Paul uses the inspiration story against rivals -

to trump them. In Galatia, Paul is opposing emissaries pressing Gentile circumcision and fuller Torah observance as conditions for belonging. Their warrant was human authority from Jerusalem and continuity with Moses; Paul counters with a non-human warrant, saying he received his gospel “through revelation of Jesus,” then pronounces a curse on any contrary “gospel.”

Whether you are averse to or incapable of taking account of possibilities, the fact is that you have not considered the alternative possibilities relevant to your personal and reflexive blinkered preference for regarding Paul's reference to his having been inspired as a mere appeal to authority - and an inappropriate such appeal at that. (By the way, your reference to RCTs and like jargon is so very far removed from the taking into account of possibilities which is the discovery heart of science that I will not further bother with your trans-contextual disinterest in contingency; I will focus solely on that disinterest as it relates to the Paul context.)

It has already been established that a mere appeal to authority is always deficient but that it can also sometimes be appropriate.

This means that, in addition to the question of whether Galatians is a mere appeal to authority for the purpose of demanding deference, there is the matter of whether such a mere appeal (if actual) could have been appropriate.You ignore that issue even though by ignoring that issue you fail to achieve rational belief.

It is too bad for you that Paul's pronouncing a curse hurts your modern sensibilities. Rid yourself of that bias by noting that such a manner of expression was quite common in - and long before - Paul's context, as Paul makes evident himself in Galatians.

For that matter, Paul bringing up the story about his inspiration could be considered as an appropriate appeal to authority inasmuch as that way of speaking might have been expected for being not at all unusual in the context at hand.

But, as it turns out, his apparent appeal to authority was NOT a mere appeal to authority, because Paul fairly adeptly presents reasons explaining why the Galatians should turn away from Paul's rivals.

The fact of Paul even seeming to present reasoning in addition to what can appear to be an appeal to authority is sufficient basis for doubting that Paul's reference to his being divinely inspired was – and was intended – as an appeal to authority at all.

The fact that the reasoning Paul presented was itself not dependent on Paul's inspiration is sufficient basis for concluding as fact that Paul's reference to his inspiration experience was not an appeal to authority at all.

Maybe because of laziness, aversion, inability, or devotion to narrow-mindedness in service to a simplistic apologetics, you take no account of any possibilities other than that of your prejudiced preference, and you merely snip out a phrase to make it appear to be something that it is not.

You snip out a phrase to make it look like Paul was guilty of an inappropriate appeal to authority for the purpose of demanding deference when readily available to you was evidence and reasons for considering Paul differently.

But, before we get to the evidence that was available to you but which you chose to ignore, let us make believe that Paul's letter to the Galatians said nothing more than: I was inspired by God; therefore, you should do as I say.

Why would anyone respond to such a proclamation by demanding evidence that Paul was inspired? That would make no sense in any context, and, yet, that is your response.

Well, come to think of it, I can think of one context in which such a response makes almost a smidgen of sense. If Paul were addressing himself to someone ignorant of the message Paul had preached or someone who did not understand the message Paul had preached, then that person might demand proof of Paul's having been divinely inspired.

But even granting that almost a smidgen of sense is a characterization which is too generous. That response on the part of the ignorant or uncomprehending person doesn't really make even a smidgen of sense, because the only way it would be sensible at all for that person to demand such evidence would be if that person allowed it as right and proper to be thoughtless and freed from all responsibility for being.

That would require an allowance for it to be right and proper for a person to want only to take orders, and that would be to think that a person is justified by the fulfillment of orders given. If that is the only way that some person can be, that is one thing. Such a person is not at issue here. Instead, it is presumed that such a person is not to be regarded as typical of humans.

In terms of what is being presumed as most typical of human persons, from the perspective of Paul's understanding expressed as his message preached, anyone would be anathema who allows for it to be right and proper for a person to want only to take orders such that a person is to be justified by the fulfillment of orders given. Likewise, Paul's understanding would be anathema from the perspective of any person who allowed for adherence to rules/orders as the fully proper condition for being.

In Galatians, Paul establishes a perspective from which righteousness has always been the proper condition for being. He goes on to note that righteousness follows from faith and that neither law not its fulfillment can impart righteousness. Law is not necessarily incompatible with righteousness, but law by itself does not provide or generate the sort of freedom necessary for there to be righteousness.

Paul argues that those who insist that gentiles must be circumcised in order to be righteous mislead the Galatians with regards to the nature of righteousness. Nothing imposed or demanded can ever effect righteousness, and that is why Paul describes his rivals as wanting to enslave the Galatians to law. Those trying to be justified by the law are alienated from the sort of freedom from imposition that is necessary for there to be righteousness: “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

Paul is not there appealing to authority. And he is not demanding deference.

Admit it.

 

[steve_bank]

It was a time of superstition and illiteracy.

Paul may have been more educated than the average schlub but not educated in any sense of modern times. He would have been as susceptible to imagination and superstition as anyone else.

Like Christians do, Mr Pearl is projecting his modern philosophical approach to a 2000 year old Paul. Attributing a modern rationality to Paul inconsistent with the time.

Jesus, god, ad Paul as well become a projection of the believer.

Yahweh obviously being a reflection and creation of the the Hebrew tribal patriarch.

Gods are created by humans to support the status quo.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Ethical importance is not evidential weight.

What you are referring to as “ethical importance” was not intended as that “evidential weight” which you insistently and irrationally desire.

Your insistent desire is rationally deficient as a result of you having failed to consider alternative possibilities with regards to the matter of Paul's inspiration. There is no rational reason for you to think of Paul's inspiration only in terms of “cause” rather than as a factor that itself was insufficient (and necessarily so) to produce Paul's understanding. What is necessary for the sake of achieving rational belief is that you additionally think of Paul's inspiration in terms other than “cause” alone.

One point about what you are referring to as “ethical importance” is that it is an aspect of righteousness which itself is a condition which it is impossible to encapsulate within or generate by rules.

Righteousness exceeds the determinateness of rules. Righteousness achieved exceeds all determinateness because righteousness achieved is always only the context for that righteousness which has yet to be created.

This righteousness – of necessity – originates from the individual person's subjectivity without imposition. Righteousness originates without there being dispositive or probabilistic evidence for righteousness. Righteousness originates without there being a reason for being righteous other than a person's choosing to discover (more about) righteousness in seeking to create instantiations of righteousness.

A person loves the neighbor/stranger for the sake of that other person and for no reason other than for the sake of love for the sake of that other person so that righteousness can be further created in instantiations made manifest.

This is why righteousness is a matter of - and a product of - faith.

Your obsessive insistence that there be evidence against the ultimate irrelevance of Paul's inspiration serves no purpose other than as a way to avoid (by ignoring) the nature of faith.

In response to my question, “Who has this faith?”, all I get is this:

the moment you try to cash “not of human origin” as something more than a personal article of faith, the account is empty.

And that is unmitigated non-sense which you seek to veil with what is merely the seeming of a response.

Your obsessive insistence that there be evidence against the ultimate irrelevance of Paul's inspiration is itself an insistence that your remarks be irrelevant. And your remarks are irrelevant. You succeeded in achieving irrelevance for your remarks and your argument. That sort of irrelevance is not an achievement, but you can be proud of it if you must.

Paul knew that his personal experience was merely personally significant and of no ultimate importance to anyone – including not even of ultimate importance to himself. Paul knew that if there were to be any ultimate importance it was to be found only through his understanding and his expression of that understanding and what followed from his understanding.

In Galatians, Paul did not appeal to some authority supposedly emanating from his having had the experience he reportedly had. What Paul did was give reasons for why his rivals' understanding(s) should be rejected. And those reasons he gave regarded the nature of righteousness and love as presented in an understanding which was and is timelessly incompatible with the notions insisted upon by all those in adoration of rules (whether or not they are aware of and acknowledge that adoration).

Do you reject the idea that it is right to act with love for the neighbor/stranger for the sake of the neighbor/stranger without reason other than for the sake of love to be made manifest in that love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger?

There is no need of an answer to this version of the “Who has this faith?” question. Because the answer is obvious. There is only one possibility which can accommodate your remarks.

You reject that faith – a faith which, by the way, is prima facie apart from any faith regarding whether God is or not.

That rejection sufficiently explains why you have no interest in seeking an understanding about the understanding had by others. There is no love for an other person if there is no interest in understanding the understanding of the other person.

Thinking in terms of possibilities is absolutely necessary for seeking such understanding, and you choose to ignore possibilities to settle on the alleged and so-called “plain meaning” to be had from the manner in which others express their understandings as if that alleged “plain meaning” eliminates the burden of needing to think in terms of possibilities.

But you feel a need to justify yourself; so, you seek cover by searching out pre-chewed formalisms (rules) which you try to pitch as sufficient for understanding what a person means without the bother of identifying and pursuing alternative possibilities regarding what that person means.

Your in effect insistence on the sufficiency of rules in no way establishes objectivity; rather, what it effects is a pseudo-objectivity that you imagine as a substitute for and a displacement of any need for thinking on your own part. After all, there is always one's own subjectivity in one's own thinking, but one's own subjectivity cannot be said to exist in the thinking of others. Therefore, or so you imagine, your remarks avoid being subjective. The problem is, of course, that subjectivity has not thereby been avoided even if you have managed to achieve the void of not having your own subjectivity.

For example, when you were told previously that divine inspiration is not divine authorship, you responded by resorting to what “[m]odern psychological research shows” instead of presenting your own thinking in terms of the concepts divine and inspiration.

Of course, and has been repeatedly demonstrated, your own thinking in terms of those concepts was, is, and necessarily would be utterly irrelevant since the matter of inspiration itself is irrelevant. You resort to the “research” of others as a way of distracting from the irrelevance of the preference called your thinking in the hope that reference to the “research” of others would not be noticed as being every bit as irrelevant as is your own preference which itself is less thinking on your part than it is a matter of a thought happening to you.

Your argument about needing extraordinary evidence is built of dander from Hume’s thoughts about miracles.

Your argument from that dander - were it to be made valid - would beg the question against divine inspiration by casting that inspiration as a violation of some so-called law of nature despite the fact that Paul could describe his experience as miraculous but not a miracle in the sense of being a relatively rare sort of experience while not being a violation of some so-called law of nature.

Paul’s experience would be miraculous in the sense of an occurrence rather rare even in his own experience, and unique even in that rarity.

At the same time, it would not be a miracle in the sense of a violation of any so-called law of nature inasmuch as there are enough reports of similar sorts of experiences for Paul’s own experience to be regarded as rare (even if at all unique) rather than a miracle.

Well, there is all that plus the fact that Paul’s inspiration - whether it was rare or whether it was unique or whether it was a supernatural miracle - is totally, wholly, absolutely irrelevant to the understanding which Paul eventually developed and expressed himself.

The point that Paul’s understanding is the issue, and the fact that his inspiration is irrelevant is highlighted by the additional fact of there having been other reports of divine inspiration. Analytical comparisons of conceptualizations can be done without imagining – and especially without insisting - that something extraordinary is needed before there can be analysis of Paul's understanding as expressed in the message he preached.

Your argument from Humean dander is intended to camouflage the fact of your holding that empiricism alone is necessary and sufficient. You resort to camouflage since it is impossible to establish empiricism as sufficient, and, were you to acknowledge the fact of that insufficiency, you would have to admit to the inadequacy of the approach upon which you insist and rely. This means you lack that foundation which your heart desires.

No one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger thinks that love is a matter of “observable criteria at the level of outcomes” where “observable” means “publicly observable” because that love is never done for the sake of public display and, therefore, that love can be actual without being publicly observed or observable. Even so, other persons might observe circumstances and discern that there had been an act of that love.

No one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger thinks that love “is empirically tractable” although the manner in which that love is made manifest is always dependent upon subjective experience, including subjective empirical experience.

No one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger thinks that love is a matter of “observable criteria at the level of outcomes” and “is empirically tractable” except as in the manners explicated above, because such a person realizes love as “empirically underdetermined” for its being indeterminate rather than exhibiting the determinateness characteristically sought with – and presumed for the sake of - empiricism.

For one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger, love is not calculable or comparable in any manner that could result in satisfaction. That is because, for such a person, even though there is always a joyousness with love, love always entails some doubt that love has been done well enough – even if that person must acknowledge that love was done as well as that person could so do under the circumstances. This love is also not calculable because, for a person acting from faith in the righteousness of love, love is never without the sense of there being still immeasurably more to be done. In this sense, love is always comparably less for there being more yet to be done.

That indeterminateness of love is itself sufficient to put love beyond empiricism. That indeterminateness renders empiricism insufficient for accommodating faith in the righteousness of love. That indeterminateness goes a long way towards explaining the “unworldliness” of that love for which empiricism by itself is insufficient. Furthermore, that indeterminateness goes a long way towards explaining the rarity of that love being made manifest inasmuch as humans, in general, are in thrall to the desire for the settledness of determinateness – a desire for which indeterminateness is anathema.

Why are you so reticent to admit that you reject the idea that it is right to act with love for the neighbor/stranger for the sake of the neighbor/stranger without reason other than for the sake of love to be made manifest in that love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger?

 

[steve_bank]

Now Pearl is preaching.

True to form. When in doubt preach. Make the debate a mo tall issue not an issue of validity of Christianity.

The Golden Rule exists in different forms across cultures.

Given the context of the times and Jewish culture when Jesus says lo love your neighbor as yourselves I doubt that meant Pagans, Romans, and Gentiles in general. It meant other Jews.

Romans 2:12–16—The Conscience of the Pagans In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul establishes the fact that all individuals stand condemned before a righteous God. Even though the pagan Gentiles did not have the Law, they were still guilty because they transgressed their God-given sense of morality.

Homosexuals and fornicators and those who do not believe as I do need not apply. Heaven is an exclusive club .

 

[NoHolyCows]

Paul claims to have been divinely inspired. Not even Paul thought his understanding was caused by God. The understanding and its expression as message were produced by Paul and not by God.

It has already been established that the validity or veracity of the message - the understanding - which Paul preached in no way hinges on the matter of whether or not Paul was divinely inspired.

It has already been established that the understanding expressed is not affected by the divinely inspired condition.

It has already been established that the understanding expressed is not affected by either the not-divinely-inspired condition or by the not-at-all-inspired condition.

This means that the divine inspiration - even if there actually was such an experience - is immaterial to the message which itself remains invariant in and across all possible inspiration contexts.

This means that there is no inspiration condition which is necessary in order for the message preached to be the valid or veritable.

If you ever understand the points above, then you will understand that there is something very much wrong with your insistence that there be evidence produced sufficient to establish that one of the inspiration contexts is more likely than the others. There is no inspiration context which makes a difference to the understanding expressed as the message preached.

This means that what has also been established is that the proper focus would be that upon the understanding expressed as the message preached. That is the focus which you avoid as if it were a plague.

In an attempt to avoid the issue about the understanding expressed you seek to rescue the inspiration issue from the necessity of its irrelevance. You do this by insisting that Paul uses the inspiration story against rivals -

You’re asserting what you haven’t shown. In the letters themselves Paul explicitly grounds his message in revelation “not from man” and “through Jesus Christ,” which is a causal-source claim about origin, even while he also reasons, drafts, and argues like any other writer. Saying “Paul didn’t think God caused his understanding” contradicts his own stated source. The human work of composing letters doesn’t cancel an origin claim; it makes that claim testable. On the public record—language, genre, rhetoric, situational arguments, manuscript transmission—everything is fully explained by ordinary human processes. That means the non-human origin claim has no evidential surplus to carry it beyond faith. Content can still be assessed on human merits; the origin claim cannot be cashed as a public fact without discriminating evidence.

Repeating “already established” doesn’t establish it. What you’ve done is stipulate that inspiration is evidentially idle for content evaluation. On that we agree: we can evaluate Paul’s ethics and theology entirely as human philosophy. But that concession doesn’t rescue the public origin claim. The moment Paul (or you on his behalf) uses “not of human origin” as more than personal motivation—as a truth about source—it must be supported by observations that favor that hypothesis over human origin. You haven’t provided any, and the documentary features we actually have are exactly what human origin predicts. So yes, discuss the content as human; no, the origin claim doesn’t gain historical warrant.

You’ve argued that inspiration is irrelevant to content; I’ve never disputed that. My insistence is about your separate, public assertion of origin. If you keep it private—“it motivates me”—there’s nothing to test. Once you assert “not of human origin” as a fact about where the message comes from, you’ve left the realm of mere content and entered causal attribution. Causal attributions in history are warranted only when they generate observable differences. Here, none do. Therefore the rational posture is: the content rises or falls on human reasons; the non-human origin claim carries no evidential weight.

I’ve repeatedly evaluated Paul’s letters as ordinary Greco-Roman argumentation about ethics, communities, and theology—precisely the human focus you say you want. What I refuse is the leap from “we can discuss his ideas” to “his origin claim deserves public credence.” Those are distinct. The first is permissible and fruitful; the second remains unsubstantiated.

Two things follow, and neither helps your position. First, the moment Paul puts “not of human origin” forward as a public warrant against rivals, he’s no longer talking about your content-only “understanding”; he’s making an origin claim meant to carry argumentative force. Origin claims are evidential claims by nature. If the claim does real work, it must yield some public discriminator—something about the letters or their transmission that is more expected on “non-human origin” than on ordinary human authorship. We find none. Second, if, as you now say, the inspiration context “makes no difference,” then you’ve conceded my point: the origin claim is evidentially idle and should be set aside when assessing the letters. Either way, the burden is clear. If the claim is used, it must be evidenced; if it can’t be evidenced, it adds nothing and should be dropped.

I’ve already done exactly that. On human merits alone, Paul’s letters are ordinary products of their time: Koine Greek, standard epistolary form, situational arguments from shared scriptures, practical guidance to communities, and a thoroughly human manuscript history with many variants. Evaluated as ethics and theology, his counsel about love, conscience, communal discipline, and eschatology sits within familiar Jewish and Greco-Roman debates. None of that requires a non-human source, and none of it becomes stronger by asserting one. So I have focused on the content and found it fully explicable as human work; and when you or Paul re-introduce the origin claim as an authority trump, I point out—correctly—that it has no supporting discriminator and therefore no place in a public argument.

Because he does. In the polemical context of his letters he appeals to revelation language to trump alternative gospels and to ground his authority. When a claimant invokes special origin to overrule rivals, the claim stops being a private motive and becomes a public warrant. At that point, by the standards that govern any historical assertion, the claim must be supported by discriminating evidence. We have none. The texts, their language, their arguments, and their manuscript history are indistinguishable from fully human production. Conclusion: treat Paul’s counsel on its human merits; but the “not of human origin” assertion, as a public claim, is evidentially idle and cannot bind anyone who doesn’t already believe it.

Whether you are averse to or incapable of taking account of possibilities, the fact is that you have not considered the alternative possibilities relevant to your personal and reflexive blinkered preference for regarding Paul's reference to his having been inspired as a mere appeal to authority - and an inappropriate such appeal at that. (By the way, your reference to RCTs and like jargon is so very far removed from the taking into account of possibilities which is the discovery heart of science that I will not further bother with your trans-contextual disinterest in contingency; I will focus solely on that disinterest as it relates to the Paul context.)

It has already been established that a mere appeal to authority is always deficient but that it can also sometimes be appropriate.

This means that, in addition to the question of whether Galatians is a mere appeal to authority for the purpose of demanding deference, there is the matter of whether such a mere appeal (if actual) could have been appropriate.You ignore that issue even though by ignoring that issue you fail to achieve rational belief.

It is too bad for you that Paul's pronouncing a curse hurts your modern sensibilities. Rid yourself of that bias by noting that such a manner of expression was quite common in - and long before - Paul's context, as Paul makes evident himself in Galatians.

For that matter, Paul bringing up the story about his inspiration could be considered as an appropriate appeal to authority inasmuch as that way of speaking might have been expected for being not at all unusual in the context at hand.

But, as it turns out, his apparent appeal to authority was NOT a mere appeal to authority, because Paul fairly adeptly presents reasons explaining why the Galatians should turn away from Paul's rivals.

The fact of Paul even seeming to present reasoning in addition to what can appear to be an appeal to authority is sufficient basis for doubting that Paul's reference to his being divinely inspired was – and was intended – as an appeal to authority at all.

The fact that the reasoning Paul presented was itself not dependent on Paul's inspiration is sufficient basis for concluding as fact that Paul's reference to his inspiration experience was not an appeal to authority at all.

Maybe because of laziness, aversion, inability, or devotion to narrow-mindedness in service to a simplistic apologetics, you take no account of any possibilities other than that of your prejudiced preference, and you merely snip out a phrase to make it appear to be something that it is not.

You snip out a phrase to make it look like Paul was guilty of an inappropriate appeal to authority for the purpose of demanding deference when readily available to you was evidence and reasons for considering Paul differently.

But, before we get to the evidence that was available to you but which you chose to ignore, let us make believe that Paul's letter to the Galatians said nothing more than: I was inspired by God; therefore, you should do as I say.

Why would anyone respond to such a proclamation by demanding evidence that Paul was inspired? That would make no sense in any context, and, yet, that is your response.

Well, come to think of it, I can think of one context in which such a response makes almost a smidgen of sense. If Paul were addressing himself to someone ignorant of the message Paul had preached or someone who did not understand the message Paul had preached, then that person might demand proof of Paul's having been divinely inspired.

But even granting that almost a smidgen of sense is a characterization which is too generous. That response on the part of the ignorant or uncomprehending person doesn't really make even a smidgen of sense, because the only way it would be sensible at all for that person to demand such evidence would be if that person allowed it as right and proper to be thoughtless and freed from all responsibility for being.

That would require an allowance for it to be right and proper for a person to want only to take orders, and that would be to think that a person is justified by the fulfillment of orders given. If that is the only way that some person can be, that is one thing. Such a person is not at issue here. Instead, it is presumed that such a person is not to be regarded as typical of humans.

In terms of what is being presumed as most typical of human persons, from the perspective of Paul's understanding expressed as his message preached, anyone would be anathema who allows for it to be right and proper for a person to want only to take orders such that a person is to be justified by the fulfillment of orders given. Likewise, Paul's understanding would be anathema from the perspective of any person who allowed for adherence to rules/orders as the fully proper condition for being.

In Galatians, Paul establishes a perspective from which righteousness has always been the proper condition for being. He goes on to note that righteousness follows from faith and that neither law not its fulfillment can impart righteousness. Law is not necessarily incompatible with righteousness, but law by itself does not provide or generate the sort of freedom necessary for there to be righteousness.

Paul argues that those who insist that gentiles must be circumcised in order to be righteous mislead the Galatians with regards to the nature of righteousness. Nothing imposed or demanded can ever effect righteousness, and that is why Paul describes his rivals as wanting to enslave the Galatians to law. Those trying to be justified by the law are alienated from the sort of freedom from imposition that is necessary for there to be righteousness: “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

Paul is not there appealing to authority. And he is not demanding deference.

Admit it.

I considered the relevant alternatives and said so explicitly: Paul advances two strands in Galatians—argument from scripture and experience, and a claim of non-human commissioning. Recognizing the first does not erase the second. When Paul says he “did not receive [the gospel] from any man… but through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12) and stakes his stance over against Jerusalem emissaries on that basis, that is an appeal to superhuman authority in addition to his reasoning. Calling it what it is isn’t “blinkered”; it’s an accurate description of what’s in the letter.

“Appropriate” rhetoric in a first-century polemic doesn’t convert a deficient warrant into evidence. The question is not whether a move was culturally common; it’s whether it supplies any public discriminator for “not of human origin.” It doesn’t. So your concession that authority appeals are deficient concedes my point about their evidential weight.

Rational belief isn’t about whether a move was “appropriate”; it’s about whether it’s evidential. Paul’s revelation claim may be contextually expected and pastorally strategic, but none of that makes it evidentially probative. I am evaluating warrant, not style.

Anathemas were common; that’s exactly the point. Their prevalence proves they are rhetorical pressure, not evidence. “Even if we or an angel from heaven…” (Gal 1:8–9) is a boundary marker, not a discriminator for source.

Expected, yes. Evidential, no. Expectedness undercuts your case; if everyone frames claims in revelatory language, that language cannot, by itself, distinguish divine from human origin.

Correct—and I’ve already acknowledged Paul’s arguments from Abraham, Spirit-experience, and the dysfunction of law. But adding reasons does not subtract the appeal to revelation; both are present. The existence of argumentation does not erase an explicit non-human warrant.

That inference doesn’t follow. A speaker can use both ethos (claimed authority) and logos (reasons). Paul’s narrative of independent revelation (Gal 1:11–17) is plainly introduced to trump “man-taught” rivals. Denying that function ignores the text’s own contrast.

Non sequitur. Independence of one line of argument does not negate the existence of another. The revelation claim remains an appeal to non-human warrant whether or not his scriptural reasoning could stand alone.

We’ve been over this pattern. Accusing me of “ruse” or “snipping” doesn’t change the record: I’ve repeatedly treated both the revelatory claim and the argumentative material. Assertions about my motives are not a substitute for dealing with the evidential point.

Nothing was snipped. I quoted the revelation and the curse precisely because, in Galatians, Paul uses them to disqualify rival warrants. That is a demand for deference to a source claim. His additional reasons don’t transform that into something else.

I never said Galatians “says nothing more.” I said: when the origin claim is used to trump rivals, it enters the evidential arena and must be testable. In Galatians it is used that way, therefore it is fair to assess—and it lacks any public discriminator.

It makes perfect sense whenever the proclamation is invoked to bind others. If you want a community to treat one “gospel” as uniquely warranted because of its origin, origin ceases to be private piety and becomes a public claim. Public claims require public support.

Understanding the content and testing the warrant are distinct. I can grasp Paul’s arguments about Abraham and still ask for evidence when he says the source is non-human. Comprehension of content does not obligate acceptance of origin.

Demanding evidence is the opposite of thoughtless. It is precisely how responsible public reasoning avoids mistaking assertion for fact. The Galatians are being asked to choose between rival messengers; testing warrants is rational, not evasive.

You’ve inverted the point. Treating origin as evidential is what prevents blind order-taking. If origin is unfalsifiable, it should not be used to command allegiance; if it is falsifiable, it must be supported. Either way, evidence guards against mere deference.

And yet in Gal 1:8–9 Paul does pronounce an anathema tied to origin: “even if we or an angel…” That is exactly why I flagged it. He doesn’t merely argue; he binds the community by a source claim. That’s what puts the claim under evidential scrutiny.

All of this is content I have already evaluated on human terms—scriptural interpretation, pneumatology, and ethics in a Second Temple Jewish frame. None of it requires non-human origin, and none of it becomes more cogent by asserting one.

That is Paul’s thesis, and it can be, and has been, assessed as a human theological argument. It doesn’t answer the separate issue I raised: when he fortifies the thesis with a non-human origin claim and a curse, those additions have zero evidential support and therefore no binding force on outsiders.

He is doing both. The revelation narrative is an appeal to superhuman authority; the anathema is a demand for deference to that claim against rivals. The presence of additional reasoning doesn’t erase either feature. That is the text as written, not a projection.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

What you are referring to as “ethical importance” was not intended as that “evidential weight” which you insistently and irrationally desire.

Your insistent desire is rationally deficient as a result of you having failed to consider alternative possibilities with regards to the matter of Paul's inspiration. There is no rational reason for you to think of Paul's inspiration only in terms of “cause” rather than as a factor that itself was insufficient (and necessarily so) to produce Paul's understanding. What is necessary for the sake of achieving rational belief is that you additionally think of Paul's inspiration in terms other than “cause” alone.

One point about what you are referring to as “ethical importance” is that it is an aspect of righteousness which itself is a condition which it is impossible to encapsulate within or generate by rules.

Righteousness exceeds the determinateness of rules. Righteousness achieved exceeds all determinateness because righteousness achieved is always only the context for that righteousness which has yet to be created.

This righteousness – of necessity – originates from the individual person's subjectivity without imposition. Righteousness originates without there being dispositive or probabilistic evidence for righteousness. Righteousness originates without there being a reason for being righteous other than a person's choosing to discover (more about) righteousness in seeking to create instantiations of righteousness.

A person loves the neighbor/stranger for the sake of that other person and for no reason other than for the sake of love for the sake of that other person so that righteousness can be further created in instantiations made manifest.

This is why righteousness is a matter of - and a product of - faith.

Your obsessive insistence that there be evidence against the ultimate irrelevance of Paul's inspiration serves no purpose other than as a way to avoid (by ignoring) the nature of

Good—then we agree they’re different categories. Paul’s public claim “not of human origin” is an evidential claim about cause. Such a claim is warranted only if there are publicly checkable observations that are more expected on “non-human origin” than on ordinary human authorship. If none exist, the origin-claim has no evidential weight regardless of any ethical importance you find in his message.

Calling inspiration a “factor” is already causal talk. A factor is evidentially relevant only if it changes what we should expect to observe. If “inspiration” leaves the language, genre, argumentation, predictions, and manuscript history exactly as ordinary human processes predict, then it contributes nothing to the origin question. I have considered the alternatives: H₁ (human authorship) predicts what we have; H₂ (“not of human origin”) predicts nothing we observe better than H₁. On public evidence, H₂ is unwarranted.

That is a normative thesis about virtue, not an empirical discriminator of origins. Whether righteousness resists codification has no bearing on whether Paul’s letters originate outside human cognition. Source attribution is settled by observable features, not by the philosophy of ethics.

Even if righteousness “exceeds rules,” the claim “not of human origin” remains a factual assertion. Its credibility rises or falls with public evidence. Expansive language about righteousness does not supply that evidence, and it cannot convert an evidentially idle origin-claim into a warranted one.

Grant that people can commit to ethical ideals without probabilistic proof. That concession still leaves the origin-claim untouched. Private commitment may ground conduct, but public claims about textual origin require public evidence. You cannot import “no evidence needed” from ethics into historical source analysis.

That ethic can be assessed on human reasons and effects. It neither adds to nor subtracts from the evidential standing of “not of human origin.” Ethical commendability is not a proxy for source verification.

Faith may motivate you; it does not bind outsiders on matters of fact. If Paul’s origin-claim is ultimately a matter of faith, then by your own framing it carries no public warrant. That concedes my position: evaluate his counsel as human philosophy; treat the origin-claim as evidentially idle.

Insisting on evidence for a public factual claim is standard rational method in history, science, and law. You yourself call inspiration “irrelevant” to the content; that supports my stance: do not use the origin-claim to ground authority or trump rivals. Keep categories clean—ethics by commitment, origins by evidence—and the conclusion is straightforward: the letters look exactly like human work, and nothing in the record differentially supports “not of human origin.”

NHC

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Paul explicitly grounds his message in revelation “not from man” and “through Jesus Christ,” which is a causal-source claim about origin

Your interpretation does not fit with Paul's emphasis on the importance of understanding as an always personal development.

Therefore, you have warrant for thinking that your interpretation of snippets selected entirely for the purpose of defending your prejudice is defective.

An alternative perspective which is compatible with both divine inspiration and understanding as an always personal development has been presented repeatedly.

That alternative perspective is more rational than your preferred perspective by virtue of the fact that the alternative perspective demonstrates greater breadth of compatibility and applicability than does your prejudiced perspective.

That alternative perspective is incompatible with your preferred perspective.

Your preferred perspective is discarded for the inherent and irremediable flaws which render your preferred perspective unavoidably less rational.

That leaves you to consider as a possibility that Paul did not emphasize the importance of understanding as an always personal development.

Do not waste my time with that, because Paul's position on speaking in tongues is sufficient for removing whatever minuscule amount of credence there might have been with some notion that Paul did not emphasize the importance of understanding as an always personal development.

Therefore, for the sake of achieving a more rational belief than that which is your preferred prejudice, you must first discard your preferred perspective for being inherently and irremediably flawed.

This matter is the keystone for everything else you say. Being irremediable, your argument is collapsed, and this part of the discussion is concluded.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Calling inspiration a “factor” is already causal talk.

False. It is talk in terms of what contributes to what became determinate. If a factor is itself not sufficient for what follows, then that factor is unnecessarily referred to as a cause, and it is thereby erroneous to insist on referring to it as a cause.

A factor is evidentially relevant only if it changes what we should expect to observe.

Think of all that however you wish, but the only matter which is relevant is Paul's understanding which might have had divine inspiration as a factor, but Paul's understanding is invariant across the inspiration contexts.

Therefore, even if Paul mistakenly identified as a divine inspiration the inspiration which he experienced, the understanding he subsequently developed remains unaffected by whether he was inspired by God or not.

The inspiration is irrelevant, and you only keep trying to revive the inspiration in the hope of defending your erroneous because unjustifiably narrow interpretation.

Your interpretation is still collapsed and dead.

 

[DBT]

If divine inspiration/ not the work of man is false, the bible is merely the work of man, a testament to what someone, human and fallible, believed about God and Jesus at that time and place.

 

[steve_bank]

I wonder if what Mr Pearl posts is divinely inspired or is he using what we generally refer to as Greek philosophy and logic to make am argument in support of anunprovable supernatural belief?

Does Mr Pearl have divine authority?

Inquiring minds want to know. Is what he posts about Paul god's truth?

What say you Mr Pearl, what is your authority to say what Paul meant?

 

[steve_bank]

Thomas Aquinas used ancient Greek philosophy, especially the metaphysics of Aristotle, to provide a rational basis for Christian theology. He synthesized Aristotle's concepts of matter and form, potential and act, with Christian doctrine to create a unified worldview. His major contributions, informed by Greek thought, include the concepts of natural law, just war theory, and arguments for God's existence (The Five Ways).

Thomas Aquinas

1. The First Way: Motion.
2. The Second Way: Efficient Cause.
3. The Third Way: Possibility and Necessity.
4. The Fourth Way: Gradation.
5. The Fifth Way: Design.

Aquinas was the RCC 'hit man; he went around debating dissent.

Moses Maimonides, a central figure of medieval Judaism, synthesized Jewish thought with ancient Greek philosophy, primarily Aristotle and Neoplatonism, to create a philosophical framework for understanding God and the world. His magnum opus, The Guide for the Perplexed, attempts to reconcile Jewish scripture with Aristotelian logic, presenting God as a pure, simple, and incorporeal intellect and proposing that human spiritual perfection is achieved through intellectual contemplation and philosophical inquiry.

I read A guide For The perplexed. He said when interpretation of scripture conflicts with science, interpretation has to change.

We trace western thought back to the ancient Greeks for a good reason, they form the basis. Greek philosophy and mythology are inextricably intertwined in culture and Chrtianity.

A basic form of argument, the syllogism. Methodical evaluation of evidence.


Christianity is synthetic. Multiple influences from the beginning.

A simple example is the iconic Christmas tree. The tree comes from Pagan traditions, topped with a Christian angel or cross.

 

[NoHolyCows]

And that is unmitigated non-sense which you seek to veil with what is merely the seeming of a response.

Your obsessive insistence that there be evidence against the ultimate irrelevance of Paul's inspiration is itself an insistence that your remarks be irrelevant. And your remarks are irrelevant. You succeeded in achieving irrelevance for your remarks and your argument. That sort of irrelevance is not an achievement, but you can be proud of it if you must.

Paul knew that his personal experience was merely personally significant and of no ultimate importance to anyone – including not even of ultimate importance to himself. Paul knew that if there were to be any ultimate importance it was to be found only through his understanding and his expression of that understanding and what followed from his understanding.

In Galatians, Paul did not appeal to some authority supposedly emanating from his having had the experience he reportedly had. What Paul did was give reasons for why his rivals' understanding(s) should be rejected. And those reasons he gave regarded the nature of righteousness and love as presented in an understanding which was and is timelessly incompatible with the notions insisted upon by all those in adoration of rules (whether or not they are aware of and acknowledge that adoration).

Do you reject the idea that it is right to act with love for the neighbor/stranger for the sake of the neighbor/stranger without reason other than for the sake of love to be made manifest in that love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger?

There is no need of an answer to this version of the “Who has this faith?” question. Because the answer is obvious. There is only one possibility which can accommodate your remarks.

You reject that faith – a faith which, by the way, is prima facie apart from any faith regarding whether God is or not.

That rejection sufficiently explains why you have no interest in seeking an understanding about the understanding had by others. There is no love for an other person if there is no interest in understanding the understanding of the other person.

Thinking in terms of possibilities is absolutely necessary for seeking such understanding, and you choose to ignore possibilities to settle on the alleged and so-called “plain meaning” to be had from the manner in which others express their understandings as if that alleged “plain meaning” eliminates the burden of needing to think in terms of possibilities.

But you feel a need to justify yourself; so, you seek cover by searching out pre-chewed formalisms (rules) which you try to pitch as sufficient for understanding what a person means without the bother of identifying and pursuing alternative possibilities regarding what that person means.

Your in effect insistence on the sufficiency of rules in no way establishes objectivity; rather, what it effects is a pseudo-objectivity that you imagine as a substitute for and a displacement of any need for thinking on your own part. After all, there is always one's own subjectivity in one's own thinking, but one's own subjectivity cannot be said to exist in the thinking of others. Therefore, or so you imagine, your remarks avoid being subjective. The problem is, of course, that subjectivity has not thereby been avoided even if you have managed to achieve the void of not having your own subjectivity.

For example, when you were told previously that divine inspiration is not divine authorship, you responded by resorting to what “[m]odern psychological research shows” instead of presenting your own thinking in terms of the concepts divine and inspiration.

Of course, and has been repeatedly demonstrated, your own thinking in terms of those concepts was, is, and necessarily would be utterly irrelevant since the matter of inspiration itself is irrelevant. You resort to the “research” of others as a way of distracting from the irrelevance of the preference called your thinking in the hope that reference to the “research” of others would not be noticed as being every bit as irrelevant as is your own preference which itself is less thinking on your part than it is a matter of a thought happening to you.

Your argument about needing extraordinary evidence is built of dander from Hume’s thoughts about miracles.

Your argument from that dander - were it to be made valid - would beg the question against divine inspiration by casting that inspiration as a violation of some so-called law of nature despite the fact that Paul could describe his experience as miraculous but not a miracle in the sense of being a relatively rare sort of experience while not being a violation of some so-called law of nature.

Paul’s experience would be miraculous in the sense of an occurrence rather rare even in his own experience, and unique even in that rarity.

At the same time, it would not be a miracle in the sense of a violation of any so-called law of nature inasmuch as there are enough reports of similar sorts of experiences for Paul’s own experience to be regarded as rare (even if at all unique) rather than a miracle.

Well, there is all that plus the fact that Paul’s inspiration - whether it was rare or whether it was unique or whether it was a supernatural miracle - is totally, wholly, absolutely irrelevant to the understanding which Paul eventually developed and expressed himself.

The point that Paul’s understanding is the issue, and the fact that his inspiration is irrelevant is highlighted by the additional fact of there having been other reports of divine inspiration. Analytical comparisons of conceptualizations can be done without imagining – and especially without insisting - that something extraordinary is needed before there can be analysis of Paul's understanding as expressed in the message he preached.

Your argument from Humean dander is intended to camouflage the fact of your holding that empiricism alone is necessary and sufficient. You resort to camouflage since it is impossible to establish empiricism as sufficient, and, were you to acknowledge the fact of that insufficiency, you would have to admit to the inadequacy of the approach upon which you insist and rely. This means you lack that foundation which your heart desires.

No one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger thinks that love is a matter of “observable criteria at the level of outcomes” where “observable” means “publicly observable” because that love is never done for the sake of public display and, therefore, that love can be actual without being publicly observed or observable. Even so, other persons might observe circumstances and discern that there had been an act of that love.

No one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger thinks that love “is empirically tractable” although the manner in which that love is made manifest is always dependent upon subjective experience, including subjective empirical experience.

No one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger thinks that love is a matter of “observable criteria at the level of outcomes” and “is empirically tractable” except as in the manners explicated above, because such a person realizes love as “empirically underdetermined” for its being indeterminate rather than exhibiting the determinateness characteristically sought with – and presumed for the sake of - empiricism.

For one who is acting from faith in the righteousness of love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger, love is not calculable or comparable in any manner that could result in satisfaction. That is because, for such a person, even though there is always a joyousness with love, love always entails some doubt that love has been done well enough – even if that person must acknowledge that love was done as well as that person could so do under the circumstances. This love is also not calculable because, for a person acting from faith in the righteousness of love, love is never without the sense of there being still immeasurably more to be done. In this sense, love is always comparably less for there being more yet to be done.

That indeterminateness of love is itself sufficient to put love beyond empiricism. That indeterminateness renders empiricism insufficient for accommodating faith in the righteousness of love. That indeterminateness goes a long way towards explaining the “unworldliness” of that love for which empiricism by itself is insufficient. Furthermore, that indeterminateness goes a long way towards explaining the rarity of that love being made manifest inasmuch as humans, in general, are in thrall to the desire for the settledness of determinateness – a desire for which indeterminateness is anathema.

Why are you so reticent to admit that you reject the idea that it is right to act with love for the neighbor/stranger for the sake of the neighbor/stranger without reason other than for the sake of love to be made manifest in that love done for the sake of the neighbor/stranger?

It isn’t nonsense to apply one neutral rule: when someone makes a public origin claim (“not of human origin”), that claim needs public discriminators—observations more expected if the claim is true than if it’s false. Without those, the claim remains a private article of faith, not a historical finding. That’s logic, not veiling.

You keep repeating “inspiration is irrelevant.” If you mean “irrelevant to whether Paul’s ethical counsel is worthwhile,” I’ve already agreed. But you also grant that Paul publicly used “not of human origin” as warrant against rivals. The moment the origin claim is used to ground authority, it becomes a public claim and requires public evidence. That is directly relevant.

Even if Paul personally ranked content over experience, he still asserts “I received it by revelation.” Private experiences don’t bind public belief. Content can be assessed on human merits; origin claims need independent support. That’s the entire distinction I’m drawing.

Both things happen in Galatians. He argues ethics and scripture, yes, and he also anchors his standing in “not from man… but through revelation” and pronounces anathema on contrary gospels. Arguments about law and righteousness are human-philosophical; the origin claim is a separate assertion. If you want that assertion to carry public weight, it needs public support. It doesn’t have it.

No. And whether I affirm altruism has nothing to do with whether Paul’s origin claim is evidentially supported. Ethics and source-attribution are different questions.

Loaded insinuations about my “faith” avoid the point. The issue isn’t my psychology; it’s whether a public claim about origin has public evidence. It does not.

I reject using an untestable origin claim as public warrant. That says nothing about my view of neighbor-love.

False. I’m distinguishing two tasks: understand the content (which we can do) and adjudicate the origin claim (which requires discriminating evidence). Refusing to collapse those is intellectual honesty, not lack of interest.

Considering alternatives is exactly what I’m doing: human authorship/transmission vs. non-human origin. On every publicly checkable feature, the data are fully explained by the human hypothesis. That’s not “plain meaning” idolatry; it’s comparative inference.

Method isn’t “cover”; it’s how we avoid special pleading. If you have a concrete, testable discriminator that favors “not of human origin” over human origin in Paul’s case, present it. Otherwise the claim remains faith-only.

Objectivity is constrained intersubjectivity: public reasons others can check. That’s exactly what origin claims require if they’re to bind anyone beyond the claimant. You haven’t provided such reasons; you’ve asserted irrelevance.

Pointing to well-documented natural pathways for visions, conversions, and moral insight is directly relevant: it shows human mechanisms sufficient for the effects you attribute to a non-human source. That lowers, not raises, the probability of the non-human hypothesis.

You can’t keep calling inspiration “irrelevant” while defending Paul’s use of it to trump rivals. If you now stipulate it’s irrelevant, then the origin claim carries no evidential or authoritative weight. That’s my position.

I’m not demanding “extraordinary” anything. I’m asking for differential evidence—observations more expected if “not of human origin” is true than if ordinary authorship is. Without that, the posterior probability doesn’t move. That’s basic inference, not Hume worship.

No appeal to law-violation is required. Even if inspiration were a rare natural experience, the evidential question remains: does the “not human origin” hypothesis predict anything we see that human processes don’t already predict? It doesn’t.

Rarity is not a marker of non-human causation. Rare human experiences are still human.

Exactly—and that undercuts the need to posit a non-human cause. Similar experiences with human explanations make the human hypothesis sufficient.

Then we agree on the consequence: treat the origin claim as faith-only and evaluate the letters as human work. That has been my position from the start.

Right—and none of that supplies public evidence for “not of human origin.” It shows why the content can be assessed independently of origin assertions.

No camouflage. When claims are offered to the public as facts, the only fair currency is public evidence. That’s not metaphysical “empiricism is sufficient for all truths”; it’s the minimal standard for shared warrant.

Whether an act of love is public or private is irrelevant to the origin question. Love’s value doesn’t convert Paul’s origin claim into evidence.

Agreed that lived ethics involves subjectivity. Again, that has no bearing on whether a non-human cause for Paul’s message is evidenced.

Underdetermination in ethics doesn’t authorize underdetermination in historical claims about source. The latter rise or fall on public evidence.

All of this can be true and it still wouldn’t furnish a single public discriminator for “not of human origin.” Category error persists.

Even if love outruns measurement, Paul’s origin claim is not love; it’s a factual statement about how he got a message. Facts offered to others require evidence. None has been provided.

I don’t reject it. I reject treating an unfalsifiable origin claim as public warrant. Keep the ethics if you value them; drop the evidential pretense around “not of human origin” unless you can present a concrete, publicly checkable discriminator that favors it over ordinary human authorship. Until then, the account remains faith-only—and that’s the precise and unrefuted point.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Your interpretation does not fit with Paul's emphasis on the importance of understanding as an always personal development.

Therefore, you have warrant for thinking that your interpretation of snippets selected entirely for the purpose of defending your prejudice is defective.

An alternative perspective which is compatible with both divine inspiration and understanding as an always personal development has been presented repeatedly.

That alternative perspective is more rational than your preferred perspective by virtue of the fact that the alternative perspective demonstrates greater breadth of compatibility and applicability than does your prejudiced perspective.

That alternative perspective is incompatible with your preferred perspective.

Your preferred perspective is discarded for the inherent and irremediable flaws which render your preferred perspective unavoidably less rational.

That leaves you to consider as a possibility that Paul did not emphasize the importance of understanding as an always personal development.

Do not waste my time with that, because Paul's position on speaking in tongues is sufficient for removing whatever minuscule amount of credence there might have been with some notion that Paul did not emphasize the importance of understanding as an always personal development.

Therefore, for the sake of achieving a more rational belief than that which is your preferred prejudice, you must first discard your preferred perspective for being inherently and irremediably flawed.

This matter is the keystone for everything else you say. Being irremediable, your argument is collapsed, and this part of the discussion is concluded.

Paul’s emphasis on personal understanding does not negate that he also makes a public causal-source claim about origin; the two are orthogonal. A person can urge understanding and simultaneously assert “not from man…through Jesus Christ.” The former is pastoral advice; the latter is an origin claim offered to others. Origin claims require public discriminators; pointing to his emphasis on understanding does not supply them.

There is no “snippet” problem here: the origin language is programmatic, not incidental. Citing it is not prejudice; it is quoting the claim under dispute. Declaring my reading defective does nothing to alter the methodological point that a public origin claim has to be supported by observations more expected on that claim than on ordinary authorship.

Compatibility is not evidence. A perspective that can accommodate any outcome provides no test and no discriminator. That makes it unfalsifiable and therefore unable to carry public warrant about origin.

Greater “breadth of compatibility” is the opposite of greater rational support; it lowers predictive specificity. Models that explain everything predict nothing. Rational appraisal favors hypotheses with risky, discriminating predictions that the data actually bear out. Your alternative supplies none.

Incompatibility is not adjudication. What decides between incompatible accounts is publicly checkable evidence that favors one over the other. You have not produced any such evidence for “not of human origin.

Assertion is not disposal. My criterion is the standard one in history and science: if two hypotheses are on the table, count as evidence only what differentially favors one over the other. That criterion is neither “inherent” nor “irremediable” flaw; it is the minimal requirement for public warrant. You have not met it.

There is no dispute that Paul stresses understanding; that is irrelevant to the evidential status of his origin claim. Ethical and pastoral content can be evaluated on human merits regardless of the truth or falsity of “not of human origin.”

Agreed that he privileges intelligible understanding over uninterpreted utterance. That concession reinforces my point: content is assessable as human work. It does not convert his separate origin assertion into an evidenced fact.

There is nothing to discard until a competing account provides a concrete discriminator that the artifacts exhibit and that ordinary authorship would not already predict. Paul’s letters—language, genre, argumentation, and manuscript history—are exactly what ordinary human processes predict. Without contrary discriminating evidence, “not of human origin” remains a private article of faith, not a publicly warranted conclusion. Declaring the discussion “concluded” does not change that.

Calling something a “keystone” and declaring the debate “concluded” does not supply a single piece of public evidence for the origin claim. My position rests on a basic, non-negotiable requirement in historical method: if a text’s origin is claimed to be “not of human,” the claim needs a discriminator—some observation that is more expected on that hypothesis than on ordinary human authorship. Paul’s letters, their language, argumentative style, and transmission fit ordinary authorship exactly and present no contrary discriminator. Until you provide one, nothing has “collapsed” except the attempt to treat assertion as evidence.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

False. It is talk in terms of what contributes to what became determinate. If a factor is itself not sufficient for what follows, then that factor is unnecessarily referred to as a cause, and it is thereby erroneous to insist on referring to it as a cause.

In every serious framework for causal reasoning—science, history, law, and analytic philosophy—“contributing factor” is causal language. Causes are almost never individually sufficient; they are partial, probabilistic, or INUS conditions (insufficient but non-redundant parts of an unnecessary but sufficient complex). Epidemiology, econometrics, and tort law all treat a factor that raises the probability of an outcome or helps produce it within a set of conditions as a cause. So if “inspiration” is asserted to have contributed to Paul’s message, that is a causal-source claim about the origin of the content. Causal claims earn their keep only by yielding observations more expected on the claim than on its rivals. Paul’s letters, their rhetoric, and their manuscript history match ordinary human authorship without remainder; there is no differential signature for a non-human contributing factor. If you retreat to saying inspiration had no observable consequences for the content—neither necessary nor sufficient—then by your own move it is epistemically idle and cannot function as public warrant. Either way, the origin claim does no evidential work.

Think of all that however you wish, but the only matter which is relevant is Paul's understanding which might have had divine inspiration as a factor, but Paul's understanding is invariant across the inspiration contexts.

Therefore, even if Paul mistakenly identified as a divine inspiration the inspiration which he experienced, the understanding he subsequently developed remains unaffected by whether he was inspired by God or not.

The inspiration is irrelevant, and you only keep trying to revive the inspiration in the hope of defending your erroneous because unjustifiably narrow interpretation.

Your interpretation is still collapsed and dead.

If Paul never used “not of human origin,” origin would indeed be irrelevant to public assessment. But he does deploy it as warrant against rivals. The moment origin is offered as a reason to prefer his message, origin becomes evidentially relevant and must change what we should expect to observe. Your “invariant across contexts” claim is both unargued and self-defeating: if the content is truly invariant whether inspiration occurred or not, then the origin claim can do no warranting work. Either way—content varies and we test for differences, or content is invariant and the warrant evaporates—the appeal to inspiration cannot ground authority.

Then you have conceded my point. If the understanding is unaffected by whether the origin is human or not, the origin claim has zero evidential weight. What follows is straightforward: evaluate Paul’s letters on ordinary human criteria—language, genre, argumentation, transmission—and nothing in those artifacts favors “not of human origin” over human authorship. A claim that makes no observable difference cannot adjudicate between Paul and his opponents and cannot obligate outsiders.

I address origin only because Paul and you invoke it to trump rivals. When origin is not used as a warrant, I explicitly set it aside and weigh the content on human merits. On those merits, the letters are standard Koine Greek epistles employing recognizable Greco-Roman form, Jewish scripture argumentation, and context-specific persuasion, preserved via an ordinary, variant-rich manuscript tradition. That is not a “narrow interpretation”; it is the normal historical method. If you insist the origin claim is irrelevant, stop using it as leverage. If you use it as leverage, it must be testable—and it fails that test.

Declaration is not demonstration. We have already covered this circle several times: you alternate between saying inspiration is irrelevant and treating it as a meaningful counter to rivals. The record shows I have answered both horns. If inspiration has public consequences for content, specify them; none have been shown. If it has no public consequences, it is epistemically idle and cannot ground authority. Those are the only two options, and neither rescues the origin claim.

NHC

 

[steve_bank]

Trump anointed by god. Trump invoked god after it happened, god sawed him. The old divijne authority scam. There are Christians who think Trump was sent by god to save them.

Wind it back to the OT days and the beginnings of Christianity and here you have it. Always clais of divine authority. Moses and god speaking through the burning bush,

Religious commentators with ties to Donald Trump and his evangelical supporters claimed he was "anointed by God" after a bullet grazed his ear during an assassination attempt in July 2024
. They interpreted his survival as a sign of divine favor and compared his injury to the biblical practice of consecration with blood on the ear.

It goes deeper. Heard this on Christian radio today.

Biblical reference: Some figures, such as pastor Jentezen Franklin, likened the bullet graze and Trump's handling of his wound to the ritual described in Leviticus 8, where priests were consecrated by having blood put on their right ear, thumb, and toe. In this view, the injury was not a mere accident but a spiritual act of anointing.

Christianity grows and grows as it always has. Always invoking some kind of divine authority linked to scripture.

 

[Politesse]

Trump anointed by god. Trump invoked god after it happened, god sawed him. The old divijne authority scam. There are Christians who think Trump was sent by god to save them.

Wind it back to the OT days and the beginnings of Christianity and here you have it. Always clais of divine authority. Moses and god speaking through the burning bush,

Religious commentators with ties to Donald Trump and his evangelical supporters claimed he was "anointed by God" after a bullet grazed his ear during an assassination attempt in July 2024
. They interpreted his survival as a sign of divine favor and compared his injury to the biblical practice of consecration with blood on the ear.

It goes deeper. Heard this on Christian radio today.

Biblical reference: Some figures, such as pastor Jentezen Franklin, likened the bullet graze and Trump's handling of his wound to the ritual described in Leviticus 8, where priests were consecrated by having blood put on their right ear, thumb, and toe. In this view, the injury was not a mere accident but a spiritual act of anointing.

Christianity grows and grows as it always has. Always invoking some kind of divine authority linked to scripture.

Uh, that is not the most famous Bible passage about a rising politician being wounded in the face and miraculously "recovering".

 

[steve_bank]

Uhhhh ... okey dokey. Didn't say it was the most famous.

The point being Christianity grew and continues to grow by claims of divine authority by individuals and groups going back to the beginning, such as Paul.

The RCC continues to try to maintain its claim to absolute Christian authority on Earth, despite all the scandals going far back. The claim is based on the gospel 'you are Peter and on this rock I will bulidm y church', and claiming the popes are in a line of succession from Peter.

That clam of a commission from Jesus in the gospels wreaks of a self serving fiction, a direct commission form Jesus.

The gospels were written near the end of the 1st century well after Jesus would have lived. The idea that the gospels represent a single Certainty directly based in an HJ is not a reasonable assumption.

Same with Paul.

Christians seem to view characters like Paul, Jesus and Moses as two dimensional stoic wooden cutouts. As in the awful movie The 10 Commandments.

Paul would have had his own human ambitions as would any Evangelical leader today.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

when someone makes a public origin claim (“not of human origin”), that claim needs public discriminators

Your notion is both unsupported and illogical.

No reason has been supplied explaining how it is that because someone makes a statement in public, that statement "needs public discriminators".

You have made a necessity claim.

But it is not necessary in any sense of necessary that a statement "needs public discriminators" for that statement having been made in public.

you also grant that Paul publicly used “not of human origin” as warrant against rivals.

False.

I said: "The fact that the reasoning Paul presented was itself not dependent on Paul's inspiration is sufficient basis for concluding as fact that Paul's reference to his inspiration experience was not an appeal to authority at all." I could, of course, rephrase "sufficient basis for concluding as fact" as "sufficient basis for taking as fact" or as "sufficient basis for assuming as fact" with the emphasis in all versions remaining on Paul's reasoning being - and making itself ever more - independent of the inspiration.

In response, you said: "The existence of argumentation does not erase an explicit non-human warrant."

You are incorrect.

Your statement means: "The existence of argumentation does not erase what necessarily cannot be anything other than non-human warrant." Your statement is a necessity claim.

The fact that the argument Paul presented was itself not dependent on Paul's inspiration provides sufficient reason for denying that very necessity which you claim. The argument was presented because it was thought to be a good argument sufficient for its contextual purposes. The argument did not depend on "non-human warrant"; therefore, the supposed claim of non-human warrant would - at best - itself be regarded as a redundancy. But it is not even necessarily a redundancy, because, in light of the intent to present an argument, the reference to the inspiration can be intended as a way of contrasting viewpoints by highlighting distinctly different compatibilities. That is precisely how what you call a claim of non-human warrant was used - more about which is found below. So, the redundancy is not necessary, but for now it remains possible; consequently, a correct version of your statement could have been: "The existence of argumentation does not erase the possibility of there also being an additional claim of non-human warrant."

The point is that your use of "explicit" is false for being an erroneous claim of necessity rather than the more appropriate claim of possibility.

You also said: "A speaker can use both ethos (claimed authority) and logos (reasons)." That statement would be more correct in context if you had said: "A speaker can use both reasons and what might appear to be claimed authority." It is necessary that there be interpretation in order for there to be what appears to be "claimed authority". That necessity of interpretation imparts a burden upon any assertion of there necessarily being a "claimed authority" occurrence.

You said: "Paul’s narrative of independent revelation (Gal 1:11–17) is plainly introduced to trump 'man-taught' rivals." Your statement means: "Paul’s narrative of independent revelation (Gal 1:11–17) is necessarily introduced only to trump 'man-taught' rivals." That statement is false. It is false because it is a claim of exclusivity entailed by necessity, but that necessity is never established; therefore, the exclusivity claim is false.

Paul's letter to the Galatians was certainly intended "to trump 'man-taught' rivals", but that trumping was by the reasoning which was independent of the report of inspiration. You interpret "man-taught" to necessarily mean "man-taught and therefore necessarily wrong". However, by the reasoning provided by Paul, "man-taught" is not a premise; it is, instead, a conclusion that validly follows from Paul's argument.

The position of the rivals is shown to be incompatible with the nature of righteousness. Paul's understanding, on the other hand, is compatible with the nature of righteousness. Since the rival understanding is inconsistent with the understanding about the nature of righteousness, the rival understanding necessarily deviates from what follows from divine inspiration in the absence of "man-made" or "man-taught" error, whereas Paul's expressed understanding does not (at least yet) so deviate from what follows from divine inspiration.

This means that reference by Paul to his own alleged experience of divine inspiration is not necessarily for the purpose of invoking "non-human warrant", and that means you are logically wrong to characterize Paul's reference to inspiration as nothing other than or not possibly other than a claim of non-human warrant.

Paul shows that the understanding expressed by the rivals is erroneous by the necessity of entailment. This means that there is no meaning lost by substituting "erroneous" for "man-taught" to get "to trump erroneous rivals."

This additionally highlights your own error. Your statement now means: "Paul’s narrative of independent revelation (Gal 1:11–17) is necessarily introduced only to trump erroneous rivals." However, it is not a revelation nor even an inspiration which trumps the rivals. Rather, it is Paul's reasoning which trumps the erroneous rivals, and your claim about the reference to the inspiration is made even more intensely wrong owing to your mis-taking of "man-taught" as if it is necessarily intended to mean "necessarily wrong".

Even if errors are always produced by human thinking, human thinking does not always produce errors.

In essence, Paul's argument boils down to this conclusion: "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value." That is to say that Paul's rivals are in error when they deny this point which follows from the reasoning - the argument - which Paul provided. Paul's reasoning is compatible with the possibility of Paul having been divinely inspired, but that reasoning is not at all dependent on Paul having been divinely inspired.

It has been indubitably and logically established that Paul did not necessarily make reference to inspiration for the purpose of trumping his rivals by referring to an experience of having been divinely inspired.

I reject treating an unfalsifiable origin claim as public warrant.

Logically, it has been indubitably established that Paul's reference to his reported experience of divine inspiration was not necessarily intended as an appeal to authority.

Therefore, it is illogical for you to insist that Paul necessarily presented an "origin claim as public warrant."

With regards to the possibility of his having presented an "origin claim as public warrant", reasons aplenty have been provided to warrant thinking that such was not the purpose of his referring to the inspiration experience he reportedly had.

But, since neither Paul's message nor his reasoned argument depends on whatever is the fact regarding the reported inspiration, it is wholly irrational to obsessively insist that there be evidence one way or the other with regards to whether the inspiration was actual and whether that inspiration, if actual, was actually a case of divine inspiration.

Requests for evidence are not inherently rational for being requests for evidence.

Paul's message as the expression of his understanding as developed by his reasoning is the public claim to be questioned, challenged, tested, and even modified for the purpose of furthered development of understanding. For that, it is a good thing that the validity and veracity of his public message do not depend on the actuality of the experience which he reports as having been the impetus for the conversion away from the way he previously had been thinking.

Even if Paul had certainly presented a claim of non-human warrant in addition to the argument he presented, his argument remains utterly unaffected by such a claim for non-human warrant. This means that it is illogical in such a circumstance to insist that it is necessary that there be evidence for the claimed non-human warrant before Paul's message could have any possible validity or veracity.

A claim of having non-human warrant can be wrong, but that claim and its wrongness are irrelevant given an argument which does not itself depend on the claim of non-human warrant. Paul's argument depends on faith in righteousness but not on inspiration and not on non-human warrant.

Your "evidential" argument is illogical in terms of its expression and focus.

 

[steve_bank]

A charismatic leader dies and there are close disciples left. Undoubtedly power struggles occur to one degree or another.

Decisions have to be made, who is in charge? A reference is made of Paul carrying funds between groups. Preaching the word takes money. Organization.

Each gospel writer would have a following, There would be competition. Supernatural embellishment to establish status and authority.

It is not the gospel of or dictated by Jesus, it is the gospel ACCORDING TO Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John.

I don't think human nature and social behavior has changed much in 2000 years.

If you want to understand Christianity 2000 years ago look at American Christianity today. Many leaders big and small claiming authority from god.

The Southern Baptist Convention is known for contentious internal politics.

Jimmy Carter Leaves Southern Baptists

abcnews.go.com

Oct. 20 -- Former President Carter, a longtime Sunday school teacher, is walking away from the Southern Baptists because of the church’s stance on equality for women.

In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published today, Carter says Southern Baptist leaders reading the Bible out of context led to the adoption of increasingly “rigid” views.