Response to Ken Ammi & Zakary McGaha Video: “IRD 14 - Aftershow for Ken’s Nephilim debate”

Back in December, 2020, I took part in a debate with Ken Ammi of truefreethinker.com, which aired live on Jack Ashcraft's program, "Expedition Truth" (see link under "Other Media Appearances" on this page). The debate came about as a response to a challenge issued by Ken after my initial appearance on Jack's program back in July of that year, and centred around the issue of post-Flood giants. Ken wished to argue that there was no such thing affirmed by Scripture.
So we had the debate (or at least, a start on one) and although it was very brief, there was time to get a feel for each other's positions. I will discuss the debate itself at a later time, primarily because I note that Ken has begun posting his own thoughts post-debate on his blog, and I'd like to allow him to finish that before I interact with it.

What I can talk about for now is a video that appeared shortly after the debate aired, on a YouTube channel that Ken Ammi co-hosts with Zakary McGaha, oddly titled IndieRockDinosaur. The episode was impromptu, owing to the fact that a scheduled guest appearance on the program had fallen through, so in the absence of the planned content, Zak and Ken fell back on Ken's immediately-preceding debate appearance as fodder for the slot. I say all that just to show that the video was not a premeditated attempt at rehashing the debate unopposed, in fairness to Ken. You can find a link to it on Ken's site.

Much of the video does not relate to either the debate, to myself or to my book, so to spare you the hour, thirteen minutes and ten seconds of your life (fifteen minutes of which was Ken repeating himself and rehashing his opening statement from the debate), I’ll only touch on the stuff relevant to my work.
As for the actual content of the debate itself and Ken’s thoughts on that, as mentioned above, I’ll respond to it once Ken has finished tabling his thoughts on it (in an intended four-part series, no less!) on his blog, and then I’ll respond to that. 
What I will tackle here is the material in the post-debate video that touches on Ken’s understanding of my views and of my work that did not arise purely from the debate. I’m doing this because to my way of thinking, the debate itself (or a subsequent debate given the lack of time) would have been a more appropriate forum for that discussion, so that I might have had an opportunity to work through the issues with Ken in real time. In the absence of that, and since I haven't received an invitation to defend my view, I will do so here.

Ken referred to the exchange with me as "iron sharpening iron," and I think that it was. I appreciated Ken's fairness and willingness to listen, and his clear presentation of his points. Ken was then, and remains, polite and respectful of me as far as I can see, for the record.

So, what am I taking issue with?

In reference to my position being informed by the cultural context of the authors of Scripture (including, but not limited to, that of their pagan neighbours) Ken stated “it (pagan worldview) does bleed into his (T.J. Steadman’s) theology to a certain extent.” He did not elaborate on that statement. Since he appears to have made extensive notes during his reading of my book, I would have thought he might have been able to produce at least one example, and given that he appeared here on his own show in his own time, with a sympathetic co-host, and my book in front of him for reference, there really wasn’t any obstacle to him substantiating that claim - if indeed he could. He didn’t. 

Ken takes issue with the fact that I frequently refer to "my view" on what the Biblical text means, and he is implying that my view is at odds with a plain reading of Scripture. The fact is that I formulated my views from study of the history, culture, and literature of the Bible’s authors as part of the context in which the Biblical text was written, on top of detailed study of the Biblical text. That means that I take into account issues of genre, style, and purpose, as well as date, authorship, audience, historical interpretation, geography, geopolitics, religion, even the climate! - all of which I give lesser status than the affirmations of the text itself. But the challenge for the modern reader is to determine what those affirmations are. 
Ken’s main objection to what I had to say came down to what was in essence a simple assertion (granted, he does not say this in so many words) that the text has to mean what it says at face value. Well, that’s great except for where it doesn’t work. Let me show you some examples of where a face-value reading of the text gets you nowhere:
“Women shall be saved through childbearing.” 1 Tim. 2:15 NIV (Are barren women going to Hell?)
“Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness.” Gen. 9:22 KJV (So what - Noah curses his grandson into slavery because his own son saw him in the nude?)
“I am the door of the sheep.” John 10:7 KJV (Jesus is a wooden barrier in a pasture?)
“The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.” Ecc. 1:5 ESV (Well, it might look like it does, but isn’t the point here about the passage of time rather than the perceived movement of celestial bodies?)
“Saul went in to cover his feet.” 1 Sam. 24:3 KJV (We’d rather not just come out and say that the king was pooping, and had his pants down.)
“Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.” Gen. 41:57 ESV (So, indigenous Australians and South Americans traveled to Egypt for meals?)
And we could go on. 
The point is, you can’t always arrive at an affirmation of truth by taking things at face value, for a wide variety of reasons. In order to understand the author, you have to understand the context. I’m sorry that it takes more work for us than it did for the original audience of Scripture. But that’s the reality of our situation in the 21st century. The idea that Scripture can’t communicate truth by non-literal interpretation because it requires additional knowledge, is not how Sola Scriptura works. Sometimes (in fact, very often!), we need to reach beyond the covers of our Bible to get more information and fill in the blanks left behind. We are separated from the Bible’s authors by over two millennia, different cultures, different geography, different science, different languages, and a host of other factors. 
This is a sharp contrast to the audience of Scripture, who were what we call a “high context audience.” They were already intimately familiar with the affirmations of the text because they were steeped in the same culture that produced the text (to say nothing of the oral tradition that preceded it). For that reason, the author is not compelled to explain every name, cultural reference, poetic structure or geographical relationship identified in his work. It’s accepted as a given that these things were understood - by the original audience, not by us. We have to do the work. And that’s why God appointed in His Church (among others) pastors and teachers. God doesn’t expect everyone to have to do this. In fact, it’s not even a salvific issue if you can’t. But we are called to be a complete body in Christ, and part of that completeness is having people who can do this work, involved in educating and edifying the rest of the body. Ken (at least, in his words) does affirm that context is important, but it seems that it’s not important enough to allow that information to change his position. 
So, that’s why I have an interpretation of the words on the page that might differ from Ken’s. And I don’t have a problem with that. If Ken wants to correct my understanding on any of these matters, he needs only to show how his own interpretation makes better sense of the available data. 

Ken appears to believe that my hermeneutical approach lends itself to “science fiction” in that it leads to making “everybody into “giants.”” He goes on in his usual style to claim that “giants” is a vague, generic, subjective, unspecified term (see my argument above concerning the high-context audience of Scripture), which demonstrates that perhaps Ken’s issue is that he really doesn’t want to get pinned down on word definitions or meanings at all. He doesn’t appear to understand the words “science,” “fiction,” or “giants,” for example (and let’s not go into “Nephilim” or “Anakim”).
I wrote a book about unusually large and powerful people, for a contemporary audience which naturally associates the term “giants” with unusually large and powerful people, and yet Ken would have us believe that there’s some reasonable basis on which to question what I mean by the word. This is some high-level pedantry going on here, and it doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the discussion. But I can put that aside and still see Ken as a brother. Everyone has their trademark spin; this is Ken's.

Here’s where Ken crosses a line between casually implying that I’m in danger of misleading people, and outright misrepresenting me: He claims that I affirm that the Biblical Samson was in fact a giant. 
This comes despite the fact that I never actually say, nor even imply, that Samson was a giant. In fact, I affirm the opposite and I wrote half a chapter in pursuit of that fact. The subtitle of that portion of my book is actually called, “Samson Was Not a Giant” (Answers to Giant Questions, pp. 245-250).
Ken needs to pay more careful attention to the difference between affirmation of a person’s attributes and portrayal of a character. He didn’t misrepresent my book, per se. He just misread and misunderstood it (Ken actually says in his video, “Overall, I didn’t really understand it.”), and used that misunderstanding to misrepresent my view.
My view, as per the text of my book, which Ken actually quoted in part, is that the author is PORTRAYING Samson as a giant - not AFFIRMING that he was one. It’s a characterisation. It’s an allusion. It’s rhetoric designed to communicate a truth - not a truth about size or strength, but about the character of Samson; his sin, his depravity, his violence, all of which ties back to Genesis 6 through the lens of his questionable conception, his great strength and a plethora of other textual cues. This is theological messaging designed to show that God was working out His purposes for the world in Israel, using a fallible, imperfect and indeed wilfully rebellious instrument in Samson, as a means of beginning to overturn Israel’s misfortune. And the means by which the author chose to show this, was more than just blandly stating the events of Samson’s life. The author crafted his story into a subtle reminder that the entire creation needed to be restored, that the spiritual forces of evil still needed to be dealt with, and that Samson might have helped to deliver Israel but he was insufficient to be the Messiah. In other words, the hope of Israel (and by extension, the world) was yet to come, and this story serves to remind us of that fact. 
This is the kind of theological messaging that later gave rise to the apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple Period, and which equipped Jesus’ followers with the interpretive framework to process the meaning of His life and ministry, His accomplishments on the cross, and even beyond His resurrection. So it is vitally important that we recognise what the authors of Scripture are telling us, not only in their affirmations of history, but in the way they tell those stories. To see Scripture at only the surface level is to miss so much of what the Bible has to tell us; especially the wonderful promise it holds.

I enjoyed the debate with Ken; I wouldn't mind doing it again, although going by what Ken had to say on the post-debate video, it sounds like he'd rather not have another debate as such. Call it a conversation; I don't mind. At any rate, Ken is a brother in Christ Jesus. Don't let the perceived tone of my words say things I'm not saying about him. I respect Ken for his dogged pursuit of truth, even if I disagree with his conclusions, and I find much of the content he presents on other matters to be well worth checking out.

As mentioned above, once Ken has finished releasing his thoughts on the debate, I'll have something to say in response. Until then, keep searching - and Get Answers!

- T.J. Steadman