Debate Teacher Reacts: James White vs. Keith Giles

But okay, however the debate topic was worded, it's not about slavery though. What a meandering missed opportunity here. Make Dr. White support himself in an area of scripture that you think he's weak on.

Make him defend his contentions that you believe are weak and should be challenged, but that means that you gotta pay attention to his contentions in his opening statement. Don't ask him to defend something that isn't even up for debate tonight though.

It has been way too long since I've done a Debate Teacher Reacts. Too long if you ask a lot of the Wise Disciple community, sorry about that. I have documented my recent struggles doing more of these, but the wait is over.

Today we are looking at James White vs. Keith Giles. What is marriage? I'm ready to go. I'm recently over a cold, I'm still drinking my lemon and honey tea, you can probably hear it in my voice. Look, this debate caught my eye right away because recently Matt Wall squared off against Jill Rogan on this same issue, and I reacted to that as well, and my reaction was tepid.

I just think that this is an important issue for non-Christians and Christians to be wrestling with and thinking through, particularly right now, so today let's jump into this debate between a traditional Christian and a progressive, I suppose, a progressive Christian, not sure where Keith Giles is on this.

Look, looks like the debate took place about a week ago, so it's fresh guys, it went down in Houston, Texas. Thankfully it wasn't Dallas because recently a lot of Dallas got shot down because of a huge ice storm, so it looks like the forecast in Houston, no ice, but 100 chance of clash?

That actually hurt me, physically, to make that joke. Alright, that's enough out of me, let's just jump right in, shall we?

Matthew 19 and the Debate Over Eunuchs and Marriage

Since it's what everybody is thinking about toward the end of your last statements, you said that eunuchs are mentioned in the Old Testament law. What specifically is said about them?

I believe there's a passage about how they're not allowed to enter the temple, I think it's in a passage in Leviticus, if I'm not mistaken. Thank you. It says something about how the lame or those who have mental illness or any other kind of birth defects or infirmities, or if they are eunuchs, are not allowed to enter the temple of God.

Okay, so real quick, let's get caught up to speed. Dr. White took first opening statement and he built his case based on this contention. If the Bible is the Word of God, and Jesus is who he claimed to be, which is the Word of God, then we should pay attention to Jesus' teaching on marriage.

So far, so good. He then went to Matthew chapter 19. This is where Jesus is asked about proper grounds for divorce, and Jesus quotes from Genesis to talk about not only the definition, but also the spirit of marriage.

And then, Dr. White exegeted the passage, which I just have to say, I really appreciate Dr. White when he kind of does this stuff. He is an excellent debater, but when he gets up to that debate stage, he's never not a.

Pastor.

And that's awesome. Mr. Giles, in his opener, took a less linear approach. He said that we shouldn't read the Bible according to a flat perspective, as he calls it, but according to a Jesus-centric perspective or view.

And so, when Jesus speaks in the Gospels, then we can finally understand what the Bible is saying, what it's talking about, particularly when Jesus comments on the Old Testament, which Jesus tends to do.

And I suppose the tactic here is meant to disqualify the Old Testament writings on marriage and extrapolate a view of marriage based primarily on the things that Jesus said. Mr. Giles then listed what he perceives as a lot of misunderstandings of various issues and terms that come from the Bible, like husband, like wife, marriage, gender, all of that.

One of the things that he said about gender, and this is why Dr. White is asking the question, is that according to Jewish rabbis, going all the way back to the Mishnah, to the Talmud, to the classical Midrash, Jewish law codes, there are six different recognized genders.

One of those genders is intersex, and another is eunuch. So Dr. White starts off the question about eunuchs.

If there is a physical deformity of the male sex organ, this individual was not allowed in the congregation of Yahweh, is that correct?

I would say yes. I think that that's the way they understood. What they were saying, was that this person must have had a deformity.

Okay.

And you are saying that that is a third gender?

I'm saying that that is the way Jewish teachers understood that. They understood that as not a male or a female, but something in between, a third gender.

What Jewish teachers?

I can't name them by name, but I can show you the research that I've looked at from not just one single source, that there are a series

But when did they write? What time period?

There are old, going back into the Midrashes, there are references in the Torah, to these two eunuchs

The Torah is Moses, right?

So this is extremely important. You have to have, if you're going to refer to authorities and appear to refer to evidences that can be cited, you have to have those citations ready to go. You have to have them in hand and be ready, when asked, to cite them.

Because you probably will, if you're dealing with somebody who knows what they're doing on the debate stage. When you say, well, I don't know their names, when you get up during rebuttal, and you say, well, you know, if you want my research, let me know afterward, and I'll email it to you.

Um, nope. If you do these things, you've missed your moment. You absolutely should not refer to evidence that you are not willing to cite, especially when asked directly for them in cross-examination.

So good on Dr. White here.

Yes, the Talmud, I'm sorry, misspoke.

Okay, right.

The Talmud.

I think you might have misspoken earlier when you said

Yeah, okay, I apologize.

The Talmud.

Okay, alright. I think that's an important clarification.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, so these, the Mishnah, Gemara, and then the final Talmud, these are many, many, many centuries after Christ, right?

They were written down at that time, yes, but I believe the understanding from the Jewish people is that these were things that had been passed down for quite a long time before the written copies of what we have now.

But we have in the Mishnah material from 250 to 300 years after Christ.

Yeah.

Is there anything in there that substantiates any other view than a one man, one woman, gender binary marriage relationship?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Okay, alright. In Matthew chapter 19 Here we go. I need to, am I correct in hearing from your comments that you don't agree that Jesus is establishing the normative reality of a gender binary in creation in verse 4, is that true?

Okay, so this is classic James White. I haven't seen a lot of James White debates, you probably have seen more than me. But I've seen enough to notice that this is his move. And by the way, it's a good move as a debater.

When you build your case, and in these kinds of debates, exegesis is necessary, it's involved,.

Right?

And then your opponent challenges your exegesis in their rebuttal. Then by all means, pull your opponent onto your playing field. Matthew 19 is James White's home field, so to speak, and he wants his opponent to play on his turf.

Because you can challenge contentions that your opponent makes, and you should in cross-examination. But when you get your opponent to talk about your contentions, now you're doing two things at the same time.

You're drawing out clash in an attempt to undermine your interlocutor's arguments against you, but then you're also what's called advancing your case. Advancing your case simply means that you're focused on furthering the contentions that you began with in your opener.

James White's opener was all about Matthew 19, so he advances his case and bringing it up in cross-examination. This is a really great move.

I would say, what I'm saying is that Jesus is, he's doing that pattern of what he continually did. You have heard it said, and then he would quote the scriptures, and then he would say sort of a, but I say to you.

So he's not negating it, he's agreeing with them, the Sadducees, this is their perspective, yes, answering their question about specifically, can a man divorce a woman for any reason? He quotes the Genesis passage.

But I think just by virtue of the fact that in that same conversation, it's in that same context, it's not another day, it's not the next day, it's not another chapter, it's in that same context of that question about, where he quotes Genesis, the very virtue of the fact that Jesus would bring up what I believe many Jewish people would have understood as being a reference to a third gender type, and honors it, and says that this is something he understands is probably beyond their ability to grasp.

By virtue of the fact that he brings that up, I think he is introducing some new idea.

Okay.

So, you see why this is a good move. When your opponent has to find the words to defend their own interpretation of the text, and it's difficult to explain, as it appears from Mr. Giles, it's a little bit difficult,.

Right?

This works in your favor. Why is that? Well, because the judge, in this case the audience, right, can see the struggle. The struggle is real. The premise of the interchange in Matthew 19 is right in verse 3.

So do me a favor, open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 19, because I feel, I get the sense that James White is going to park here for a little while, and just track along the discussion on stage to Matthew chapter 19.

It says it right in verse 3. I have my Bible open. It's right in verse 3. The Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

Right?

Mr. Giles is arguing that Jesus decided to respond to this question by saying, you know what, everybody? This is a great opportunity for me to tell you about gender non-binary categories.

But you just admitted that you don't have anything for hundreds of years after Jesus that would have indicated that that is how they would have understood what he said, right?

I would say that, again, what I quoted earlier, that there are multiple sources, Jewish sources, rabbis, I believe before Jesus and after Jesus, not just after Jesus, that affirmed the six different gender types.

Who?

I don't have their names, but if you want, I can read you the names of what they are in the Hebrew.

All right.

I can do that.

But you just said that in Matthew chapter 19, you said that Jesus is doing the same thing he did when he said, you have heard it said, but I say unto you. Is that how you understand verse 4?

I think it's following a similar pattern, yes, because I think Jesus establishes a pattern in his teaching where quite often he will quote Moses, but then he will suggest something that's a radical...

But when he says, you have heard it said, he's referring to the rabbinic interpretation, is he not?

He's quoting Genesis.

Not in Matthew 19. He doesn't say, you have heard it said. He says, have you not read?

Yes.

That's completely different than you have heard it said.

Right.

But it's the same kind of pattern. It's the same thing he does in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, you have heard it said and I for an eye are tooth for a tooth. That's not something they heard said.

That is something that they would have read in the Old Testament scriptures.

So when later on in Matthew, dealing with the Sadducees, when Jesus says, have you not read what God spoke to you? He's clearly referring there to reading scripture, not to simply rabbinic interpretation, right?

Yes.

In the context of answering their very specific question about can a man divorce a woman for any reason?

No.

That was later on in Matthew when he's talking to the Sadducees about the resurrection. It's different, completely different context here in Matthew chapter 19. He's not saying you have heard it said, but I say to you, he says, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female.

So he is specifically quoting from scripture and holding them accountable to it and not changing anything. How do you get a, how do you get your, how do you substantiate the assertion that what is clearly a citation of scriptural authority is being changed into I am changing this now?

Where do you get that from?

So Mr. Giles does have a point here, okay? So what Dr. White is after is some kind of verbal indicator that provides evidence for Mr. Giles' claim. The pattern that we find in the Sermon on the Mount is revealed by a verbal phrase, a verbal indicator.

You have heard it said, but I say to you. This repeated phrase reveals Jesus' intention to bring to light concepts that perhaps the Israelites had not considered before. So the question is that Dr. White is trying to, I think, press Mr. Giles on is where is the verbal indicator that Jesus is doing the same thing in Matthew 19 that he's doing in the Sermon on the Mount?

And so if you stay in verse 4, then yes, Dr. White is correct, right? Have you not read that he created them from the beginning male and female? So it appears in verse 4, Jesus is upholding the Old Testament teaching, but wait a sec.

In verse 9, Jesus does say, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual morality and marries another commits adultery. So now Jesus is revealing something that the Israelites had not considered before with regard to marriage, which is why his disciples approached him afterward and responded the way that they did.

By the way, this doesn't help Mr. Giles' overall argument, okay? Because here, Jesus is not adding liberties and freedoms to the Old Testament teaching. He's certainly not changing the subject to talk about gender non-binary categories.

He's actually restricting the reach of the understanding of the law.

Why?

Because he's revealing the spirit behind the law. One man, one woman, one flesh for life.

Well, again, in the same way that in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says, and he quotes, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or things like that, or when he says, you know, God sends rain on the just and the unjust, which is a direct contradiction of what Moses says in Deuteronomy, he follows that pattern.

When he's speaking specifically to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, he will quote their scriptures, but then he will offer a corrective or something to advance those ideas farther than they are.

Comfortable.

He even says that in the text when he says, not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it is given. For some are eunuchs because they're born that way, others were made that way, others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven, and the one who can accept this should accept it.

So don't you, I'll ask you when it's my turn.

Yes.

Don't you see that you are taking the initial answer that he gives, then the disciples respond to that and react to that, and then Jesus is now addressing their question, but you're taking this later discussion and reading it back into the actual answer that Jesus gave, and the result is we don't know what the answer he gave actually means.

Can we agree that Jesus taught that the scriptures teach that God created man, male and female?

So notice, so this is really difficult, okay, and everybody has to be careful here because all of this happens in real time, on stage, in front of a lot of people. The heart is beating, you know, everything is happening.

We have to be very careful as interlocutors on stage, especially during cross-examination, to not make speeches. James White is technically explaining why Mr. Giles' interpretation is wrong. He really should try to ask a question.

When you say, well, don't you think that, and then you end up making some kind of an argument that belongs in rebuttal, no, just ask the questions.

When he's quoting that text, haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female? Yes, he's quoting that text, yes, to answer a specific question about, can a man divorce a woman for any reason?

So it shouldn't shock us that he's quoting something that specifically is talking about a man and a woman.

And so he answers with a creation mandate and then makes application. Verse 5, right?

Yes, he does.

And if the gender binary is not a part of the foundation of his answer, then verse 5 doesn't make any sense, does it? Because it says, this reason a man shall leave his father and mother. There's no third gender, there's no six genders, there's only two, right?

And if they had asked him about something like that, then that would have made sense, but they specifically ask him, can a man divorce a woman for any reason?

Right.

I find it interesting that if Mr. Giles' claims are true, and Jews always recognize six different genders, why didn't they ever ask Jesus about that? If it was really something they were wrestling with themselves, and everybody knew about it, the way we know about it today, why didn't they challenge Jesus on that issue?

Seems to me, a lot of these scribes and chief priests and such, they were seeking to trip Jesus up on various issues in order to get him into trouble, and that's literally what some of the Gospels say.

In the same way that they asked Jesus a question about taxation in Caesar, right? Why didn't they ask Jesus about non-binary folks?

He answers by quoting scriptures about a man and a woman. Why would we expect him in that answer?

But a few sentences later...

Well, no, because again, as I said in my opening, we shouldn't be looking at something to say, is it biblical? We should be saying, is it Christ-like? Because Jesus does come, and one of the things that Jesus does is he reforms our ideas and our views of who God is and what God is like.

And so this is a situation where, yes, he begins by answering their question and saying, okay, yes, can a man divorce a woman for any reason? Yes, and here's a verse about a man and a woman pleading, you know, pleading to father and mother, pleading to your wife.

But then the answer, because he gives it the way he does, and now taking power out of the man's hands in the marriage relationship, now they are no longer able to oppress women in this way.

Is there anything about power or oppression in this text?

It's the same answer. It's the same conversation. The fact that he just turns to his disciples and addresses their shock at what he said. Jesus isn't only talking to one audience here. He's talking to the Jewish leaders, but he's also has his disciples right there with him.

That's part of their being his disciples. He's teaching them.

Why would I be incorrect in saying that you're contradicting yourself. Because you said we go with Jesus, and yet now your interpretive lens for interpreting Jesus in Matthew chapter 19 is 21st century viewpoints of oppression and power.

So, I totally get what this question is trying to accomplish. What Dr. White is asking is, I mean, basically, how are you not committing eisegesis of the text right now? You know? I mean, if the question of Matthew 19 is, is it lawful to divorce for any cause, and Jesus says the only cause of divorce should be sexual immorality because marriage was designed—this is a definition statement—marriage was designed by God from the beginning to be one man, one woman, one flesh for life, and then the disciples get upset afterwards, and they say, well, maybe it's better not to marry then, and then Jesus says, well, some people won't be happy with being one man, one woman, one flesh for life, for those folks don't marry.

And then he goes on and says there's all kinds of eunuchs. There are even eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. On what exegetical grounds, Mr. Giles, can you claim that the disciples understood Jesus to be introducing non-binary categories there?

On what exegetical grounds from Matthew 19 can you claim that Jesus is saying anything else other than marriage is one woman, one man, one flesh for life? For argument's sake, let's suppose Mr. Giles' support of same-sex marriage and gendered non-binaries is the correct view.

He has not shown any kind of support for his claim from this particular exchange in Matthew 19. Follow the exchange verse by verse. It's not there. So this is not exegesis, this is exogymnastics.

It was oppression. You yourself even said it in your opening statement that the reason why, when they took spoils of war, was because these women would be left to fend for themselves and would probably starve to death and would have no man to take care of them.

And so because that is a continuation of that system, Jesus is correcting that it was an oppressive system against women. And so when Jesus says that you can only divorce for the cause of adultery, he's putting power back in the hands of the woman.

And it's evidenced by the fact that his own disciples decide, why get married at all?

Let's go.

Scripture, Authority, and the Old Testament in the New Covenant

Where would you say that the Bible instructs us that the Bible is our ultimate authority?

The Lord Jesus himself tells us that by his very example, I gave you Matthew chapter 22, have you not read what God spoke to you saying? That's repeated by Peter. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, the constant reference to the scriptures.

In fact, for the apostle Paul, graphe, grammata, these are all standard terminologies that everybody knew was in reference to the scriptures that were in the possession of Timothy and.

Paul.

And Paul says they are the honest us, they are God breathed. And that for Timothy to do the works of the man of God, he is referred to one thing, to the the honest us scriptures.

So then how would you respond to the fact that Jesus says in Matthew 28, that our ultimate authority is him.

He says, also, when I gave us the scriptures, he's he's God speaking as God's word. So it's his it's his word. That's he's the one who who created us, made us, sustains us. And so he is he cannot be separated from from that which he has given to us.

I do believe fully in the deity of Christ, that Jesus Christ is the incarnate son of God, that he is Yahweh in human flesh.

I take it that this line of questioning is meant to lead to some kind of distinction by the Bible proper and Jesus Christ. You know, the the issue is, as Dr. White just pointed out, that there is no distinction.

Here, though.

You know, Mr. Giles himself quoted Jesus earlier saying, I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. That means there is no distinction between Jesus and God's word. Jesus would never command us to do something that is out of step with the spirit of the Old Testament teachings.

OK, do we agree on that? I guess I'll ask. No, well, I guess I can ask that question.

You might get asked that again. Well, yes, I do say that a little bit differently. So if you want, you can ask me that. Do you would you do you feel like there's ever any place where Jesus either contradicts the Hebrew Scriptures?

You probably wouldn't go that far or or modifies the Hebrew Scriptures using this authority that he has because he is Christ, the son of God.

No, obviously, what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount is not modifying the Hebrew.

Scriptures.

He is rebuking the traditions of the elders that have been added to the Scriptures and have become the lens through which the Scriptures have been viewed. So the prophets did the same thing over and over again.

God gave them the sacrificial system, and yet they then turned it into a business venture that no longer represented individuals who are repentant for sin. So it's the same thing that Micah does, that Hosea does, and Jesus does it with the developments especially taking place with the Pharisees during the intertestamental period.

So far, so good, you know? I mean, whether or not you're on one opponent's side in this debate, the criteria that should guide your listening in this debate is the Bible. Who is accurately representing the Bible better than the other?

That has to be your criteria in any debate on the Scripture, you know? Like, if what is marriage comes from a definition given in the Bible somewhere, then obviously whoever is representing the Scripture correctly, better than the other guy, is the one doing the better job in the debate.

And James White, so far, is far superior in this regard.

What about in, again, in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus makes this statement, he's giving essentially the reason for his statement of why you should turn the other cheek lest those who curse you to go to those who hate you, and then he says, because God sends rain on the just and the unjust, do you not see that as a direct contradiction of what Moses says in Deuteronomy about God sending rain only on the righteous but drying up and sending drought on the fields of the unrighteous?

No, there's two different contexts. One is talking about blessing and cursing, the other is talking about common grace. When God causes it to rain, like he did today, it rained on my nice, pretty Christian truck, just like everyone's pagan truck.

So that's just the context of that. The blessings and cursings in Deuteronomy, that's a completely different context in the sense of, I will bless your crops, I will curse those who rebel against me, etc., etc.

So there's two different ways of recognizing God's providence in those situations.

That's right. And what Jesus is probably alluding to when he says what he says are some of the Psalms, which talk about God's blessings being expressed in the rain that falls out of the sky and causes plants to grow up, rivers to gush forth, and all of that.

And the end result is that man can eat and drink and his heart can be strengthened, right? Deuteronomy 28 is very specifically about Israel's disobedience to the covenant that they made with God.

Okay, so let me ask you this. 50 years ago, we could be sitting in a church like this debating whether or not we as Christian pastors or ministers should marry a white person and a black person. And in fact, 50 years ago, that is what Christians debated.

And it was difficult for many Christians who thought it was okay to do that to make an argument, because there's like 15 different passages in the scriptures that actually command God's people not to marry people of other races.

So here we are today arguing a different subject. And you said in your opening that for us to change our minds on something as fundamental as this question of marriage, that we would need sort of like this overwhelming biblical.

Support.

We'd have to do some exegesis. We'd have to find some proof that God didn't say this, or oh my gosh, God said this other thing and we misunderstood it. So how would you, in the time we have remaining, how would you, using only the Bible, argue that slavery is wrong?

Okay, let me double check. The topic for tonight, what is marriage? Got it. What does this have to do with the topic of debate tonight, though?

You know what I mean?

The topic of debate, which by the way, again, I've said this in other videos, this is not a strong resolution by any stretch. Whoever's putting on these debates, and I'm probably the only person in the room making this kind of comment, right?

But the resolution, what is marriage, is not strong. And I don't think that it's strong enough to be properly debated, in my opinion. If we want to have solid debates that draw out excellent clash, make sure the resolutions are more clear than what is a thing.

But okay, however the debate topic was worded, it's not about slavery, though. What a meandering missed opportunity here. Make Dr. White support himself in an area of scripture that you think he's weak on.

Make him defend his contentions that you believe are weak and should be challenged. But that means that you've got to pay attention to his contentions in his opening statement. Don't ask him to defend something that isn't even up for debate tonight, though.

You've just taken precious time away from poking holes in Dr. White's contentions.

To parallel the clarity of the Bible's teaching on the nature of marriage with the abuse of scriptures in regards to something like that, because we clearly have the over and over again repeated statement in scripture that there is neither male nor female, notice gender binary, not there's 447 genders, but there's neither male nor female, there's neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, Scythian, that's a race, all are one in Christ Jesus.

And so you have the clarity of that statement, along with the clarity of the teaching of the entirety of the Bible on the gender binary and marriage. And so comparing the two of them is simply an impossibility.

But then you switched from the illustration to slavery. And the argument there would be, what kind of slavery are we talking about? Because the scriptures allowed for slavery in war. And again, it was to preserve life.

And people don't understand that. If your husband and your culture, your city has been wiped out, and you're not going to have any means of preserving life. So God has always been about preserving life.

Even in situations where you were living in a culture that could not produce the amount of food that would allow people to stay alive without those support structures. So the issue is, are we talking about Roman slavery?

Are we talking about Greek slavery? Are we talking about man stealing? Are we talking about those types of slavery? It's very clear what it says there. But slavery has existed throughout human history, continues to exist today.

And God's word actually addressed it and said, this is the only way that this can exist for the purpose of life. And we're afraid to say that. I'm not afraid to say that. There, I don't believe there's such thing as problem passages in this book.

There are just passages that I'm not willing to submit myself to.

So is there a specific place where God tells them, the Jewish people, the nation of Israel to take slavery for the specific reason of preserving life?

Well, when you say for this specific reason, everyone would have known exactly why that was necessary. Everybody would have known what would happen if you did not do that. They were allowed to do that.

And, but it was only within those certain confines. That was a, you know, you can say, well, it doesn't say for the preserving of life. Well, everybody who was reading it would have understood exactly that because everybody understood what happened in war and what would, what would take place once a city, like a city state or something like that was destroyed.

But when the, when the scriptures talk about slavery, they, like in Leviticus, it also makes, God seems to make a provision, not just for, as you're saying, in the spoils of war, for, if you, if it even is the case that it was for preserving of life, I think that's, that's debatable.