BRIGGS: (Then he says this which speaks directly to your type...)
"Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."
(You are intelligent, but you fail to make the necessary connections... you "hear" but don't/won't understand, you see but refuse to "SEE")
"And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them."
(In other words, you've seen so much and heard/read so much and refused to take it as truth that you have in effect rejected God, and he has abided your wishes.)
TILL: In all that Briggs says, he assumes that a quotation from the Bible settles everything. I'm perfectly aware of the scriptures that he quoted, and when I was a Church-of-Christ preacher I used to quote the one from Isaiah quite often. Boy, did it make good sermon fodder for ripping apart Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Pentacostals, Presbyterians, etc. for not having the insight to be members of the Church of Christ. Now Reverend Briggs applies it to me for not having the insight to believe anything and everything the Bible says. His application of it is no more valid than mine was when I used it as described above. So I will repeat my challenge to him: please prove that the Bible is in any sense the "inspired word of God." His mere say-so won't do. I demand proof, and he can give no proof but mere tradition and wishful thinking. I don't doubt at all that he desperately wants the Bible to be the inerrant word of God, but wishing a thing to be true will not make it true.
BRIGGS: Not only that, but also I Corinthians 2:14 says... "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
TILL: Yes, I am familiar with this one too. Subscribers to *The Skeptical Review* will remember that it was the basis for my front-page article in the Spring 1995 issue ("The Wisdom of the World"). I pointed out in the article that this is the favorite "proof text" of Christians who want to justify rejecting any scientific or logical fact that conflicts with the Bible. In the face of insurmountable evidence against their beliefs, they can always find comfort in quoting this scripture. This is exactly what Reverend Briggs is doing now, but it proves nothing except that the NT says it. Reverend Briggs would make a better impression on me (and other subscribers to the list too, I'm sure) if he would try to prove that there is even any such thing as "the Spirit of God." God is a spirit (John 4:24), so does this mean that a spirit has a spirit?
BRIGGS: So, you are at a disadvantage from the start. The bible is written so that those who already have a prejudice against it are confused and the unregenerate man by nature cannot understand the things of God for they are SPIRITUALLY discerned.)
TILL: My, this is a good commentary on the character of Briggs's god. He demands that all people believe things that are fantastic and incredible and if they don't, he will send them to hell, so how does he choose to reveal these "truths" to us that we absolutely must believe or be damned eternally in hell? Does he choose clear and explicit ways of communicating them? No, he reveals them in "parables" and "dark sayings" so that the unregenerated will be at a "disadvantage from the beginning." Well, Reverend Briggs can have his god, because I find it impossible to have any feeling but contempt for such an entity as this.
TILL:
>This was a ludicrous
>notion, because the history of Israel, according to its own historians, was
>filled with corruption of the same type that was used as an excuse to
>exterminate the other nations.
BRIGGS: Well, I am going to have to ask for your sources on this one. This brings up an interesting side point I am sure that we will get into later, but, how much weight do external "secular" historians of the time hold with you. I am anxious to hear your answer on this. (Basically because so many non- "Christian" historians verify biblical events....)
TILL: I have to clear up a matter that Reverend Briggs is confused about. When I referred to "its [Israel's] own historians," I wasn't referring to nonbiblical historians. I meant the "historians" who wrote the books of the Bible that are considered history. If we are to believe them, Israel (Yahweh's own chosen people) was just as corrupt as the nations that Yahweh ordered Israel to "utterly destroy" and "leave nothing alive to breathe."
Thus, we have the strange case of a god who ordered the extermination of "evil" people who occupied a territory so that it could be settled by a people who were just as corrupt and evil as the original occupants whom Yahweh wanted massacred. I suppose that only someone who has the "Spirit of God" to help him "spiritually discern" matters could see any sense in this.
I would ask Reverend Briggs to explain it to us, but he would probably say that it would be useless to try because we don't have the "spirit of God" to help us "spiritually discern" his explanation.
Briggs wanted sources for my claim that Israel's own historians admitted that the Israelites themselves were as corrupt as the nations they drove out of Canaan, so I must ask a question. Doesn't this preacher know anything about the Bible? Here he is telling me that I can't "spiritually discern" the Bible because I don't have the "Spirit of God," but he himself seems to lack knowledge of rather basic things taught in the Bible. Anyway, here are some references for him to consider.
After promising to give the land of Canaan to the Israelites, Moses told them that it wasn't because of any person righteousness of their own that Yahweh was doing this but in order to fulfill his promise to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "Know therefore that Yahweh thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness, for thou art a stiffnecked people" (Dt. 9:6). He went on to rebuke them for having been a rebellious people from the day they came out of Egypt (v:7). The story of the wilderness wanderings is almost a continual narrative of rebellion after rebellion against Yahweh and Moses his leader. If Reverend Briggs doesn't know this, he should read the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
After the Israelites went into the land of Canaan, they were constantly in trouble with Yahweh for various acts of disobedience. Judges 3:7-8 says that the children of Israel "did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh," so he sent Chushanrishathaim of Mesopotamia against them to take them into bondage. Their sin on this occasion was serving the "Baalim and the Asheroth," in other words idolatry, so just how did "God's children" at this time differ from the original inhabitants they had recently driven out of the land?
Just a chapter later, they were in hot water with Yahweh again: ""The children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh," and so Yahweh sent Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor, against them (although Joshua's forces had already wiped out Jabin king of Hazor in an assault that "utterly destroyed" Hazor and left none alive to breathe, Joshua 11:10-15). There are, in fact, about a half dozen references in the book of Judges alone to the times when Yahweh was ticked off at the Israelites (for doing evil in his sight) and sent foreign armies to take them captive). If Reverend Briggs wants references, he can read them for himself.
We read also that the Israelites offered their children as burnt offerings, just as the "wicked" people they had driven out of the land. Psalm 106:34-39, "They [Israelites] did not destroy the peoples, as Yahweh command them, but mingled themselves with the nations, and learned their works, and served their idols, which became a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood. Thus were they defiled with their works, and play the harlot in their doings."
So we have Reverend Briggs arguing that those rotten, corrupt nations around Israel were so evil and wicked that Yahweh just had to order them exterminated. Then the Israelites themselves occupied the land and did things fully as corrupt as the original inhabitants. Perhaps Reverend Briggs can use the "Spirit of God" to help him "spiritually discern" this matter sufficiently to help us make at least a little sense from it. My heart may indeed be "waxed gross," as Isaiah said in the passage that Briggs quoted, but I don't think that my brain is yet waxed gross, and my brain tells me that the "explanations" that Reverend Briggs and his inerrantist cohorts hatch up to explain Bible discrepancy make no sense at all.
BTW, I would love to hear about those many non-Christian historians who have verified so many biblical facts. Now I will ask him for references.
I will continue my analysis later, but right now I must give my wrist some rest.
Farrell Till