Joel Webbon vs Ruslan, GodLogic: Who Won The Debate?

In a clash of YouTube heavyweights, Joel Webbon hosted both Ruslan and GodLogic to debate the resolution of whether interracial marriage was normative to God’s design following online exchanges and controversy. All three have six figure subscribers in the Christian YouTube space. Despite my initial prediction that Ruslan will likely argue the Critical Race Theory premise that race is a social construct, in what would be a defining moment of the debate, the actual debate was on whether the category of “morally permissible but not normative” exists in Scripture.

Obvious Disclaimer

The debate is not about whether interracial marriage is sinful. Although the context of the debate involves a heavy-handed propaganda push of interracial marriage promoted by governments and media, this debate does not state that it is sinful to marry outside one’s race. It doesn’t touch on ideal civil policy either.

Polygamy Sidequest

Though it could be viewed as straying into the weeds, to the casual observer, the debate brought up many examples of less than ideal marriage situations, most notably polygamy. Joel Webbon argues that since polygamy is not outrightly condemned in Scripture, the category of “morally permissible but not normative” exists. GodsLogic rebuts by citing 1 Timothy 3’s one-woman-man qualification for a church elder.

The debate shifts to whether the qualifications for an elder, not pertaining to character, are sin issues for all Christian men. “Able to teach” is a qualification of an elder, but not all men are able to teach, and to what degree is training a child in godly instruction translate into church leadership? 

The conversation brings up slavery, where GodLogic erroneously claims that the Bible condemns chattel slavery. Slavery is another instance of something permitted but not normative to God’s design. I do believe Joel Webbon proved that the category exists which would be necessary to prove the overall resolution.

Tower of Babel

Invoking a Stephen Wolfe argument, Joel Webbon argued that pre-Lapsarian humanity would have developed distinct nations that worshipped God. Sin, having entered the world, did not change these plans. The plan from all along was peoples from many nations worshipping God, as seen in Revelation. Webbon argues the sin of Babel was not just arrogance, but a refusal to fill the earth. Thus, God’s judgment included a mercy to assist man in filling the earth and creating distinct nations of people.

Therefore, Webbon argued, God, having created distinct races, demonstrated that marrying within was normative, which was a necessity for all the races/nations of man to emerge. Thus, interracial marriage is not normative to this end, even though it is morally permissible.

Ruslan responded by calling the entire argument a stretch, unfounded in Scripture, and cited Revelation as the undoing of ethnic purity.

Biblicism vs Natural Law

Ruslan and GodLogic were demonstrably biblicist. Thus, an argument not explicitly spelled out in Scripture is mocked by them. However, The Other Paul sent a superchat asking the “racial egalitarians” whether pre-Bible man would have known if homosexuality was wrong.

This is a natural law question which both biblicists answered by stating that the dominion mandate was passed down. Having read the Bible, Abraham’s father, Terah, was not a believer, fact highlighting that God especially chose Abraham. So how moral commands were orally passed down by nonbelieving generations is a stretch.

So Paul’s question exposed biblicism’s lack of depth and willingness to twist Scripture to maintain internal logic, as homosexuality is obviously wrong, Scripture aside. Two examples of this are ancient Roman historians who detested Nero’s homosexual degeneracy and Josef Stalin, being an anti-Christian communist, put the kibosh on Lenin’s gay activism.

In conclusion, the debate was won or lost according to whether one is a biblicist who needs every argument spelled out in Scripture or whether one takes a more Natural Law approach to logic and reason.