Transcription
So, in this video, we're going to see Charlie Kirk go head-to-head with a British university student from Cambridge University on the accuracy of the Bible. Now, as a person who isn't very well-versed on the Bible, I'm really depending on you guys to let me know your thoughts and your comments about this back and forth and let me know who is more accurate in what it is that they're speaking about. Let me know in the comment section down below.
But as usual, let's watch the video in full and then I'll discuss further towards the end. Thank you.
Our fourth question tonight is from Rudy Ellis Jones from Emanuel College. Hello. Thanks for coming today's talk. Um, so my question as someone studying archaeology and biological anthropology, um, I've learned that moral codes and social norms have always been fluid, shaped by time, culture, power. So many ancient and recent societies embraced same-sex relationships and even the idea of third genders uh, well before Western conservatism even existed. So, when you claim that modern conservative values represent some kind of universal objective moral truth, like you said on your chair over there, um, aren't you just defending a selective, historically recent ideology that erases most of human history and targets people who have always been part of it?
No. But can you point to me, and maybe you can educate me. Can you point to me a great power that endorsed same-sex marriage, not cohabitation, but marriage in ancient Mesopotamia, as marriage as recognized as marriage in recognized by the state 100%? And how did that work out for them?
It worked out perfectly fine. It was an accepted norm of society.
Okay. I still think it's wrong.
Can—Okay. Okay. Swiftly moving on. So, you said it was based on scripture and you believe that there are moral, objective, universal truths.
Yes, there are. So, murder is wrong today and murder was wrong 2,000 years ago. Right?
Okay. Fair. That's not same-sex. But fair. Fair. I see your point. There are moral truths that that are transcendent of time, place, and matter. Okay. But but so just to clarify, you believe that this is in the Bible. This is laid out in the Bible that man shall not sleep with man. And so therefore, it's also repeated throughout the New Testament as well.
Matthew, in the book of Matthew, Jesus reaffirms the biblical standard for marriage.
Okay. I'm going to make two very, very quick points. So the first, um, so if we look at the Old Testament in isolation, just to start off with as an example. So let's look at Exodus 35:2, which suggests that if you work on the Sabbath, you should be put to death. If you look at Leviticus 11:7, it suggests that if you have pork, you should be put to death. Let me finish. I'll be done. Uh, if you plant two crops side by side, you should be stoned by your entire village. If you wear a suit, which you are wearing now, that contains two different fibers intertwined into the same jacket, you should be burnt at the stake by your own mother. Now, following that rationale, in Leviticus uh 18:22, when it states that man shall not sleep with man, why aren't we burning ourselves at the stake as well? Why aren't we stoning ourselves to death?
[Applause]
Do you care to address my main contention that Christ affirmed biblical marriage in the book of Matthew? And can you tell me the difference between the ceremonial, the moral, and the ritual law? And then finally also tell me about Christianity, the difference between the New and the Old Covenant, or are you just going to cherry-pick certain verses of ancient Israel that do not apply to new Christianity?
Oh, fair, fair. I could. So we'll look at two points then. So firstly, um, if we look at the Old Testament, uh, we can see the kind of inconsistencies there. We've already touched upon that, right? That makes sense. Second, he mentioned the point of Jesus and Christ. He never mentioned anything to do with homosexuality at all.
Well, hold on a second. In the Bible, he affirmed, he affirmed biblical marriage as one man and one woman. He said, "A man shall leave his..."
In the New Testament.
No, in Matthew, that is not correct. I believe in the New Testament. In the New Testament, well, Romans is also in the New Testament. Secondly, in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul talks negatively about homosexuality explicitly. Also, homosexuality is repeated in the book of Titus and in the book of Jude as not being favorable, as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, not even talking about the Old Testament verses.
There are three types of the 613 Levitical laws. And you, you know, of course, in your own way, cherry-pick some of them. We do not live under the ceremonial. We do not live under the ritual, and but we do live under the moral. There's only 10 of the moral that we as Christians believe we're bound to. Some believe nine, which of course is the Decalogue. And so, none of those that you mentioned, we as Christians believe that we live under. However, we do look at what Christ articulated as the biblical standard of marriage. And we can also look to church tradition for this as well. And the church has had a tradition for well over 2,000 years. Even myself as a Protestant acknowledges that tradition is marriage between one man and one woman.
And fair point, but I—Okay. Say we put aside the Old Testament for now. We'll put that aside and the inconsistencies there, and we'll look purely at the New Testament, following your rationale. Okay. Now, when you say that Christ lays specifically, and the New Testament states specifically, that man shall not sleep with man, I'd like to point out a linguistic error on that point.
I did not say that. I said the biblical marriage was affirmed, and then Romans 1 did talk negatively about the action of homosexuality. In fact, that affirmation comes from eight lines in there that suggest that man shall not sleep with man.
Yes, of course. Yes. The Old Testament and New Testament harmonize one another, but Christ brought it to a different level, a different covenant, and a different moral teaching. It wasn't just enough to say that you shall, you know, man shall strike eye for eye, so that you shall turn the other cheek, that you shall love your enemy. Christ's moral standard was much more even elevated than that of the Israelites and the Hebrews.
Well, I'm going to ask you whose Bible.
Okay. Now, your Bible that you use currently is written in the English language, right?
Correct.
Yeah. The King James version.
Yes. Thanks to Tyndale.
Well, exactly. It's written in the English language, which in itself is only say 500, 500 years old. Now, Christianity in itself, say 2,000 years old or even older.
Yeah. Correct.
Now, which means that the Bible was originally written not in English, but in ancient Greek.
Koine Greek.
Huh?
In Koine Greek.
Yeah. Correct.
Now, if we look at the Greek terminology, man. Yes. And Jesus spoke Aramaic. You could translate things. You acknowledge that that's where we translate things. But translations are linguistically ambiguous. As a former classicist, I know that language can't be translated directly. So, for example, if we look at the translation of of of certain words into man. So, I've got two words here. So, I've got *malakoi*, which means essentially soft, which isn't necessarily directly saying a gay man. And then we've got, how do I say that? Um, *arsenokoitai*, which essentially means prostitutes. Now, if we look at things linguistically, we can pick apart the Bible and say that actually it wasn't saying man shall not sleep with man. It's saying man shall not sleep with prostitutes, which is an entirely different linguistic thing.
I'm not even getting into Leviticus though. My contention is completely New Testament focused.
This isn't Leviticus.
Well, but you said man shall not sleep with man. So you're talking about Romans.
Okay. This is—this is these words are used throughout the—
Well, actually, in Romans 1, it was actually women sleeping with women. So you got your verses wrong. In Romans 1, Paul is prophesying about the end of the world, and he's saying that in the end times, woman will like with woman like, and man will like—I think it might say man will like men. You have to get the verses specifically. But it is agreed upon, and you can agree this is why tradition is important, and I even say this as a Protestant, is that we believe that scripture is very important, but also look to tradition. Church tradition has had an unbroken chain affirming matrimony, holy matrimony being one man, one woman. One, even as a non-Catholic, I'm glad that Pope Leo has reaffirmed in the last couple of days. And so I'm not even sure your contention, your point. Are you saying that the Bible doesn't affirm marriage as one man, one woman? Are you saying church tradition doesn't affirm marriage as one man?
The Bible doesn't affirm, but clearly doesn't affirm. That is complete nonsense. It's—it's a linguistic error. But Christ, our Lord, which is the standard, he affirms this idea that you will leave your father's home, going back to Genesis 1:2, and this idea of Abraham leaving his father's home, and you will cleave to your wife, that a new, they'll be called one. In fact, this idea of a new creation, which is something that is then used by the Apostle Paul to describe the the the church of Christ and the bride of the church and the bride, the church being the bride of Christ with, um, Jesus. So, I'm not even sure your contention.
It is—Yeah, but you're just avoiding my point. I'm saying the Bible that we have today is 100% a translation, and a translation, I acknowledge that, is ambiguous. And I believe—
Well, hold on. But what about specifically in Matthew or in the book of Romans? And but in order for you to be correct, you mean the church fathers translated it wrong when they were within like 50 years of this. In order for your contention to be correct, you have to say that the early church fathers that wrote the early letters to the church, they were translating it wrong, and the tradition they established was wrong. So by then we can lean on tradition and scripture. So when you get tradition plus scripture, you get something that is authentic, that is real, and that is verifiable.
I've already highlighted the tradition does not align with scripture. We've gone back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia.
But no, but understand, but at the time they all—they all spoke Greek. They wrote Greek, and they—they spoke Aramaic. For example, when they were writing the early Gospels, the the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they were obviously writing in Greek. They knew that language. So, in Matthew, when they were writing Greek, and then the early church fathers knew Greek and adopted that as church tradition, we have a 2,000 unbroken chain. I think you can irrefutably say that it was the teachings of Christ for one man and one woman because the church tradition has been unbroken for 2,000 years, and they derived it from scripture of that original language. You can't argue that that makes sense. I mean, if we agree to disagree, then we're going to be looking at biology.
Do you know better than the church fathers?
No, I don't. I'm not saying I know better than the church fathers. What I'm saying is linguistically, there is undeniably an error, regardless of what you say. That is our lens, maybe, but not from the people when they were making these traditions. I agree they may have got that right, but that may not have been their original meaning. What we're saying is the meaning has been warped over time because societal and cultural context, such as the British Empire, bring this question to close.
It can be, but that is why tradition matters because the tradition they understood the context.
Tradition is context-dependent.
Well, yes and no. Because of course tradition is, but if the tradition lasts for 2,000 years, then we look back as to how did they get to that conclusion? How did they reach that verdict? And if that verdict is in alignment with what we see in scripture, it means that their verdict was correct in scripture.
They never—they never reached that verdict. As I have historically pointed out, they all—in all of the major church councils, it was very modern day.
Well, no, no. I'm talking about in like 300 and 400 and 500. The original, in the scale of 2,000 years, is nothing.
No, but they set this unbroken chain. We've had an unbroken chain and a course that says that marriage is one man and one woman. The church has never wavered on this, promoted by the British Empire under British former Christianity all the way back to like 200 or 300. The idea of biblical Christianity goes back to the early, early times of the church when it was a scattered, persecuted church, well before King Justinian and well before the Eastern Roman Empire, well before mass conversions, when it was a persecuted church, the church believed in one man, one woman, and because they got it from the script—scripture itself.
We want to keep going, or can we move on to the next question, please? Thank you. Thank you.
Now, look, like I said at the start of the video, uh, it was an interesting back and forth, but like I said, I am not someone who is very well-versed when it comes to, um, the Bible and and things of that nature. But I'm curious, what are your guys' thoughts about this back and forth? I'm depending upon you guys, my audience, to let me know within this back and forth who was actually right in what it was that they were speaking about. Let me know in the comment section down below. I will be looking forward to and replying to your guys' comments because this was an interesting back and forth. I really believe that the student was able to hold his own when it came to what Charlie Kirk was saying. But I'm really, really intrigued to see your guys' thoughts.
While you guys are down there in the comments section, do me a massive favor and hit that subscribe button. I always want to add people to our family. Al while you're also doing that, uh, please also turn on the bell notification so that you get notified every time we upload a brand new video. Also, alongside that, hit the uh thumbs up button purely for the YouTube algorithm. Let's push this video out and get in front of as many people as we possibly can. And with that being said, I will see you guys in the next one.