Using the Same Bible, Some Christians Defend Slavery and Others Decry It

As I pointed out in previous posts, slavery was defended by many conservative Christians in the 18th and 19th centuries. These Christians were not only southerners. Charles Hodge, for example, from Princeton Seminary defended the practice. It seems that most Calvinists did defend it. Three vocal Calvinist defenders were George Whitefield, R. L. Dabney and James Petigru Boyce. Those who spoke out against slavery tended to be non-Calvinists, for example John Wesley, Charles Finney, George Fox, and so-on.

Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address said:  Both [the pro-slavery side and the abolitionists] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

My point is that the Bible was not really clear on this important moral issue, just as it is not clear on much of what it teaches, including how one is to be saved. It seems that if the Bible were actually a divine revelation, an omniscient being could have done a better job of making himself clear.

Below is a 15 minute section from the documentary, God in America, which details how American Christians used the same Bible to both defend and condemn slavery.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Is the Bible Clear on How Someone can be "Saved"?

This post appeared on Luke's CommonSenseAtheism blog on Monday of last week. I am re-posting it here for any that may not have seen it.

One of the factors in my de-conversion from Evangelical Christianity was my realization that the Bible does not read as one would expect a divine revelation to read. First, it simply reflects the ideas and beliefs of the time and culture in which it was written. It would seem that if it were a divine revelation, it would present ideas that would transcend those of its times. For example, why doesn't it condemn slavery? Why does it attribute mental illness or epilepsy as demon possession? Second, it contains much information and detail that seems to be unimportant and unworthy of a divine being. For example, the detailed genealogies in 1 Chronicles (9 chapters) and the gathering of 100 Philistine foreskins by David (1 Sam. 18:25-27). Third, it is ambiguous on important matters such as how one is to be "saved" or redeemed to God. In an interview that I did with Luke on his Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot, I said:

If the Bible is really a revelation from God and if God really loves man and really wants to reconcile man to himself, would he not have made it much clearer how someone is to be saved? I know that if my children were separated from me and I had the opportunity to write them a letter to tell them how to get back to me, I certainly wouldn't do it in parables and language that's ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted a thousand different ways. I would do my best to make it crystal clear how they could find me .. and if I would do that as a finite human being, certainly God being infinite and being omniscient could find a way to do that. So as I looked at the Bible, as I read it, as I studied it I just came to the conclusion that it cannot be from a divine being.

Most Evangelical Christians will maintain that the Bible is clear on how to be saved. For example, Kevin Bauder, the President of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, writes:

In other words, the aspect of Scripture that can be understood by anyone is its saving message. Any truth that is essential to salvation is clearly and comprehensibly revealed "in some place of Scripture or other." Anyone can learn the way of Salvation by reading the Bible. It is no small matter that the way of salvation has been revealed in language that any person can understand. We do not have to rely upon sophisticated intellectual tools. We do not have to rely upon specially-endued ecclesiastical spokesmen. If we can read the Bible in our hands, then we can know how to be saved ("Fundamentalism: Whence? Where? Whither? Part 8").

Bauder is espousing one of the main tenets of the Reformation--the perspicuity of Scripture. The Reformers argued that one could understand the major teachings of the Bible without any help from the Roman Church. The RCC, on the other hand, maintained, that they, and only they, could properly interpret the Scriptures. One Roman leader is reported to have said that if we allow each person to interpret the Bible for himself there will be total confusion and an unlimited number of sects. That is precisely what has happened.

The fact is that Evangelicals cannot even agree among themselves as to what the Bible requires for salvation. They unanimously maintain that faith is required but they disagree on the meaning of faith, the exclusivity of faith, the origin of faith, and the object of faith.

The Meaning of Faith: What Exactly is Involved in Saving Faith?

Those who believe the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God cannot agree among themselves as to what exactly is involved in having saving faith. For some, faith is simply intellectual assent. For example, on the website of the Grace Evangelical Society, one reads:

Faith is the conviction that something is true. To believe in Jesus (“he who believes in Me has everlasting life”) is to be convinced that He guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him for it (John 4:14; 5:24; 6:47; 11:26; 1 Tim 1:16).

No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life (Rom 4:5; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5). This saving transaction between God and the sinner is simply the giving and receiving of a free gift (Eph 2:8-9; John 4:10 ; Rev 22:17).

For others, such as John MacArthur, John Piper, and J. I. Packer, saving faith is much more than simply intellectual assent. It is that plus submission to the Lordship of Christ? In his very popular book, The Gospel According to Jesus: What is Authentic Faith? , MacArthur argues that obedience

• is included in the "definition of faith, being a constitutive element in what it means to believe" (p. 171).
• is "an integral part of saving faith" (p. 174).
• is "synonymous with faith" (p. 174)
• is "indivisibly wrapped up in the idea of believing" (p. 176).

This is no minor controversy as it involves precisely what is required in order to be saved. It has evoked a number of books in which evangelicals debate one another on the nature of saving faith (1). The various positions are diametrically opposed to one another and cannot be harmonized.

The Exclusivity of Faith: Is Faith Alone Sufficient for Salvation?

While evangelicals such as John MacArthur and the Grace Evangelical Society disagree on what constitutes saving faith, they do agree that faith alone is the single requirement for salvation. Others who also believe the Bible to be inspired and inerrant, though, disagree. They would insist that water baptism is also required. Those evangelicals who trace their lineage to Alexander Campbell (including the churches of Christ, the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, and the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]) believe that faith plus baptism is necessary for salvation. Campbell, a former Baptist, became convinced that the Bible demanded baptism in order to receive forgiveness of sins. He maintained that he was following the clear teaching of Scripture. Campbell’s maxim was: "Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent."

On the churches of Christ website, one reads that through baptism:

•You are saved from sins (Mark 16:16 1 Peter 3:21)
•You have remission of sins (Acts 2:38)
•Sins are washed away by the blood of Christ (Acts 22:16; Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Peter 3:21)
•You enter into the church (1 Corinthians 12:13; Acts 2:41,47)
•You enter into Christ (Galatians 3:26-27; Romans 6:3-4)
•You put on Christ and become a child of God (Galatians 3:26-27)
•You are born again, a new creature (Romans 6:3-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17)
•You walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-6)
•You obey Christ (Mark 16:15-16; Acts 10:48; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).

Other evangelical groups also insist that baptism is an important element for salvation, although they would disagree with Campbell that it follows faith (and must be by immersion). For example, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, holds that baptism precedes faith and somehow produces faith. On their website, they state:

Baptism, we believe, is one of the miraculous means of grace (together with God's written and spoken Word) through which God creates and/or strengthens the gift of faith in a person's heart (see Matt. 28:18-20; Act. 2:38; John 3:5-7; Act. 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21; Titus 3:5-6; Gal. 3:26-27; Rom. 6:1-4; Col. 2:11-12; 1 Cor. 12:13).

Although we do not claim to understand how this happens or how it is possible, we believe (because of what the Bible says about baptism) that when an infant is baptized God creates faith in the heart of that infant. This faith cannot yet, of course, be expressed or articulated, yet it is real and present all the same (see e.g., 1 Peter 2:21; Acts 2:38-39; Titus 3:5-6; Matt. 18:6; Luke 1:15; 2 Tim. 3:15; Gal. 3:26-27; Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:11-12; 1 Cor. 12:13). This faith needs to be fed and nurtured by God's Word (Matt. 28:18-20), or it will die.

Evangelical Anglicans also hold that baptism regenerates. (2) The vast majority of evangelicals, however, disagree; but, yet all claim to be following the "clear" teaching of the Bible.

The Origin of Faith: How is Faith Generated?

Bible-believing evangelicals also cannot agree on how man acquires faith. Calvinists say that faith is a gift from God. According to them, Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God's gift of salvation - it is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God (see here). While Arminians say that faith originates in man. According to them, The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God's Spirit and be regenerated or resist God's grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man's act and precedes the new birth. (see here).

So, some Christians read the Bible and conclude that God determines who is saved and implants faith in those people and other Christians read it and conclude that any man can choose to have faith. This is a crucial matter but yet Christians reading the same Bible come to different conclusions.

The Object of Faith: In Whom Must One Have Faith?

Most evangelicals would hold that one must have faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. However, there is a growing movement among evangelicals who maintain that one can be saved without ever having heard of Jesus. For example, the evangelical John Sanders writes:

Saving faith … does not necessitate knowledge of Christ in this life. God’s gracious activity is wider that the arena of special revelation. God will accept into his kingdom those who repent and trust him even if they know nothing of Jesus ("Is Belief in Christ Necessary for Salvation?" The Evangelical Quarterly 60.3 (July-Sept. 1988): 252-53).

Similarly evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock states:

Faith in God is what saves, not possessing certain minimum information… A person is saved by faith, even if the content of faith is deficient (and whose is not?). The Bible does not teach that one must confess the name of Jesus to be saved ... The issue that God cares about is the direction of the heart, not the content of theology (A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions [1992], p. 158).

In other words, these evangelicals hold that as long as one has faith in accordance with how much revelation one has of God, that is sufficient for salvation. Other evangelicals violently disagree. They insist that one must have faith specifically in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. (3) But then this group of evangelicals disagree among themselves on precisely what one must believe about Jesus in order to be saved. Must one believe that Jesus is a member of the Trinity, co-equal with the Father and the Spirit or is it adequate to believe that Jesus is the Son of God without being more specific? The debate goes on.

So, what must one do to be saved? It depends on which bible-believing evangelical you ask. Even though they all agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, they cannot agree on what it says. As I stated at the beginning, it seems to me that if the Bible were really a divine revelation, it would be clear and unambiguous throughout but at the very least it would be plain on how one is to be saved.

ENDNOTES

(1) After MacArthur published his Gospel According to Jesus in 1988, Zane Hodges, a longtime professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote a book opposing his position: Absolutely Free: A Biblical Reply to Lordship Salvation (1989). Charles Ryrie, another professor at Dallas Seminary, tried to take a middle of the road position in his book, So Great Salvation: What It Means to Believe in Jesus Christ (1989) disagreeing with both Hodges and MacArthur.

(2) See Article XXVII in the Thirty Nine Articles (1563) and "The Public Baptism of Infants," in the Book of Common Prayer (1662).

(3) See D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (1996) and John Piper, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved? (2010). For a debate among evangelicals on this subject, see John Sanders, Ronald Nash, and Gabriel Fackre, What About Those Who Have Never Heard?: Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (1995).

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist"

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist," so says an article in the LA Times by Mitchell Landsberg. It is based on a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Landsberg asks the question:

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

This fits my experience as well. When I was a believer, I was aghast at the general ignorance among my fellow Christians on the Bible and Theology. Even in a fundamentalist Evangelical church, most Christians have never read the entire Bible, most could not give reasons for their faith (apart from perhaps some religious experience), and most did not know exactly what they were supposed to believe doctrinally.

If you want to take the quiz, it can be found here.

How Does a Believer Know the Bible is the Word of God?

I have often made the claim that evangelical Christians believe things in the Bible that they would reject in other ancient literature due to their prior faith commitment to the Bible as the Word of God. Christians typically do not come to believe because of evidence and arguments. They come to believe for a number of emotional, psychological and social reasons. Once they have made this commitment and especially if they have some religious experience connected with it, no amount of reason or evidence will convince them they are wrong. I have been criticized by some who say that their belief in the Bible is not due to a "faith commitment." But listen to what John Calvin taught:

Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgement or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it -that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgement, but we subject our intellect and judgement to it as too transcendent for us to estimate. This, however, we do, not in the manner in which some are wont to fasten on an unknown object, which, as soon as known, displeases, but because we have a thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth; not like miserable men, whose minds are enslaved by superstition, but because we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it—an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge. (Institutes, 1.7.5)

While not all evangelical Christians may believe just because of some faith commitment or religious experience, I think the majority do. Once one has made this commitment then he or she will be determined to defend whatever is in the Bible. Even if they can't defend it, they will still believe, because the Spirit told them its true. One of the leading Christian apologists, William Lane Craig, admits as much.

The Christian Delusion: Chapter Seven--What We've Got Here Is a Failure to Communicate

In chapter seven of The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (ed. John W. Loftus), Loftus asks the question: what are we to make of the way God communicated, given the final canonical Bible? My claim is that God did a woefully inadequate job, especially since he's supposedly omniscient and knows how "sinful" people such as us could misunderstand his words (pp. 181-82). The fact is that the Bible is so unclear that it has given rise to literally thousands of different interpretations. Loftus cites the words of Robert Ingersoll, 19th century agnostic: Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed His will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war and centuries of sword and flame (p. 182). He also cites the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure his creatures understand his intention--could that be a god of goodness. Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of truth (p. 182).

Loftus argues that if finite man can see what improvements could have been made in the clarity of the Bible in order to eliminate confusion, strife and suffering, why could not an omniscient God have foreseen the problem and thus made his will crystal-clear so that only the stubborn or defiant would have failed to see it?

Areas that could have been made more clear include moral issues and doctrinal issues. Two of the most significant moral issues in human history which the Bible helped to perpetuate is human slavery and the inequality of women. The Bible clearly condones slavery. As a matter of fact, prior to the Civil War in the United States, conservative Christian theologians, especially in the South, defended ownership of slaves based on specific biblical texts (typically it was the more liberal Christians who tended to oppose slavery). As Loftus points out, one simple addition to the 10 commandments, such as, "thou shalt not own another human being as property," would have prevented this barbaric and inhumane practice, at least by those who claimed to believe the Bible.

With regard to the place of women, the OT clearly identifies women as the property of their husbands. Their rights are extremely limited as compared to men. In the NT, while the situation is somewhat better, women are still seen as inferior to men. Untold hardship and suffering has been inflicted on women throughout the centuries because God did not clearly state their equality with men. Did God not care about the suffering that would take place due to the Bible's failure to condemn these practices? I think it makes more sense to see the Bible as reflecting the moral sensibilities of the time and culture in which it was written than to suppose an all-loving and all-knowing God is the author.

The Bible is also unclear with regard to a number of doctrinal issues. This ambiguity has resulted in Christians persecuting Christians and even killing Christians who differed with them on doctrine. For example, the Eucharist has been a major contention between Protestants and Catholics. Did Jesus mean for his words, "this is my body" and "this is my blood" to be taken literally or symbolically? Wars between Catholics and Protestants in 16th and 17th century Europe brought the death of at least seven million people. While there were certainly other issues involved in the conflicts, there is no doubt that religion played a major role. Protestants have also killed each other over doctrinal disputes. Calvin is known to have had Michael Servetus burned at the stake (for denying the Trinity) and Anabaptists drowned (for rejecting infant baptism). In the American colonies, various Protestant sects persecuted, including imposing fines and imprisonment, other Protestants for disagreements on doctrinal matters.

Even today, while physical suffering is usually not inflicted, there is enormous division and strife in the "body of Christ" over various doctrines. Christians simply cannot agree on even the most basic elements of their faith, for example, how one is to be saved, whether that salvation can be lost, whether man has the free will to choose to be saved or whether the choice was made for him through predestination, whether or not there is a hell for the eternally lost and if it does exist what the nature and duration of the punishment is to be. The list goes on and on.

How do Christian apologists respond to the problem that Loftus has raised in this chapter. Christians might finally respond by claiming that no matter what God revealed it would still be misunderstood by the Church to some extent and used to justify harming other people (p. 201). But as Loftus replies, if God had been at least as clear as human beings today could be in revising the Bible, There would be no way the historic church could biblically justify religiously motivated crusades, wars, heresy trials, witch hunts, or slavery (p. 201). The simple fact is that the Bible does not read as one would expect a divine revelation to read. It reflects the mindset of late Bronze age peoples, not the mind of an omniscient being.

The Christian Delusion: Chapter Six--The Bible and Modern Scholarship

Today I continue my trek through The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (ed. John W. Loftus). Chapter six is by Paul Tobin, the author of The Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus (2009). Tobin is a former Christian who decided to investigate the claims of the Bible for himself and his investigation led him to reject his former beliefs. He holds degrees in engineering and business administration and maintains a website, The Rejection of Pascal's Wager, where much of the information in the book was originally published.



His chapter in The Christian Delusion is entitled, "The Bible and Modern Scholarship." He maintains that modern scholarship has shown that the Bible 1) is inconsistent with itself, 2) is not supported by archaeology, 3) contains fairy tales, 4) contains failed prophecies, and 5) contains many forgeries (p. 148).

Tobin gives a few samples of contradictions in the Bible, such as the two diverse creation reports in Genesis 1 and 2, the two accounts of how many animals Noah brought into the ark, one saying that Noah brought one pair of each kind of animal into the ark and another account in which he brings in seven pairs of clean animals, Paul saying that salvation is by faith alone and James saying it's not by faith alone, and so on. Massive books have been written by Christians in an attempt to deal with the discrepancies in the Bible, for example Gleason Archer's New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (480 pages) and Norman Geisler's Big Book of Bible Difficulties (624 pages), thereby demonstrating how many contradictions there really are in the Christian Scriptures.

Archaeology used to be cited by apologists as "proving" the accuracy of the Bible, but that argument has pretty much disappeared in the last 20 years. The reason is that recent archeological studies have shown that the Hebrew Scriptures have little or no basis in historical fact. Tobin writes: Since the last decade of the twentieth century there is a growing consensus in modern scholarship that the major elements of the Exodus tale (the Israelites living in Egypt for 430 years, the exodus of this large group out of Egypt into Canaan, and the intervening forty years of wandering in the Sinai Peninsula) are also myths, not history (p. 154). This is the conclusion of such leading archaeological scholars as William Dever (Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, 2003), Eric H. Cline (From Eden to exile: unraveling mysteries of the Bible, 2007), and Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman (The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, 2002). In addition, there is little archaeological evidence for any of the events recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures until after the time of Solomon. Finkelstein and Silberman write:

If analyzed from a purely archaeological standpoint, Jerusalem, through those intervening centuries--including the time of David and Solomon--was probably never more than a small, relatively poor unfortified hill country town, no larger than three or four acres in size (David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, 2006, p. 274).

Obviously, if the stories of the Patriarchs, Moses, the Exodus, the Conquest, and everything else up to the time of Solomon has no basis in history, then it must be mythology or legend. Fables are also a part of the Hebrew Scriptures including a talking serpent (Gen. 3) and a talking donkey (Num. 22). Tobin argues that the NT too contains myths or legends including the virgin birth, Herod's slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem, Mary's and Joseph's trip into Egypt, the Roman census, the wisemen, the star of Bethlehem, and so on (pp. 157-63).

"Fulfilled" prophecies have also been cited often by Christian apologists as proof that the Bible is of divine origin. Tobin (pp. 164-65) maintains that the NT writers used their fertile imaginations to draw parallels between the life of Jesus and the OT prophecies (e.g., compare Matt. 2:14-15 with Hosea 11:1-2). The fact that the details of the prophecy could not be understood until after its fulfillment speaks volumes. What good is a prophecy if it is not understood before its fulfillment? Apologists have also frequently cited the prophecies in the book of Daniel as proof of divine inspiration. The fact is, though, as Tobin shows, many of the prophecies in Daniel were written after the event they pretended to predict. They were really "postdictions" instead of "predictions." Most scholars believe that Daniel was written sometime around 165 BCE. The events it "predicts" prior to this time are remarkably accurate but the ones it predicts for later are off the mark. Evidence of this is found in the book of Daniel itself where God allegedly told Daniel "to seal up the book until the end time" (12:4).

Lastly, Tobin discusses the forgeries in the Bible. Modern scholarship agrees that the book of Daniel, the later part of Isaiah (chs. 40-66) and portions of the Psalms are forged. There is also consensus in rejecting Paul as the author of the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus) and Peter as the author of the second epistle of Peter. In addition, much doubt exists that Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Peter, James and Jude are authentic. Conservatives, aware that the existence of forged documents in the Bible would be damaging to their insistence that it is from God, have attempted to mitigate this damage in three ways.

The first is to avoid using the word "forgery" at all cost and use abstruse words like "pseudepigraphy" and "pseudynomity" instead. The second step is to claim that the disciples of Paul (or Peter or James or Jude) wrote under their master's name because the letter "was intended as an extension of his thought--an assumption of the great apostle's mantle to continue his work." The final step is to then say that the ancients accepted pseudepigraphy as something normal and would not consider it negatively as we would today (p. 167).

Tobin shows this last point to be false. Greek and Roman authors warned their audience about forgeries written in their names. The famous Greek doctor Galen actually wrote a whole book telling his audience how to distinguish his work from forgeries (p. 168). Paul himself, if he is the real author of 2 Thessalonians, warns that there could be a letter circulating that falsely purports to be from him (2 Thess. 2:2). In addition, Tertullian records that in his day (2nd century CE), a presbyter had been tried and convicted for forging a document (The Acts of Paul) pretending to be from Paul (see Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities, pp. 31-32).

Though Tobin does not mention it, one of the principles used by those who selected the books to be included in the canon was authenticity. If modern scholarship is right in its conclusions, much of the NT and some of the OT should have never been included. Furthermore, two of the major "proof texts" for the divine inspiration of the Bible, 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21, would not have been included in the canon thus nullifying their impact on the doctrine of inspiration.

Tobin conclusively shows through the five points made in this chapter that modern scholarship has dealt a death-blow to the idea that the Bible is the Word of God.

Do "Ancient Biographies" Always Present Reliable History?

I was listening to the William Craig--Richard Carrier debate today and something jumped out at me. Craig argued that the gospels should be considered as real history because they are in the literary genre called "ancient biographies." I remember Craig Keener and Mike Licona making similar claims at the 2009 Apologetics Conference in New Orleans.

It is true that most scholars believe that the gospels are written in the same literary form as the "ancient biographies." Does the fact that they are written in this genre, however, demand that they be accepted as always presenting reliable history? I maintain that it does not.

Karl Ludwig Schmidt, in The place of the Gospels in the general history of literature (German published 1923; English translation by Byron McCane 2001), writes:

Since the Gospels do represent biography of some sort, however, we need to clarify the essence of ancient biography, In Weber Votaw's opinion [The Gospels and Contemporary Biographies, American Journal of Theology 19 {1915} 45ff.], there were two types: precise, objective, historical biography; and practical pedagogical, popular biography. The latter type, which was largely confiend to antiquity, depicts and glorifies specific heroes. Popular biographies of this sort were especially plentiful during the centuries immediately before and after Christ including Xenophon's Memorabilia, Arrian's Epictetus and Philostratus's Apollonius of Tyana.(p. 3)

Skeptics have often put forth the idea that the story of Jesus was a "copycat" of the story of Apollonius. I do not wish to debate the merits of that argument right now, but simply point out that the Life of Apollonius is in the literary genre of an ancient biography and even Christian apologists would reject its miraculous stories about Apollonius. If they would reject the Life of Apollonius as unhistorical, then why not the Gospels, since they are in the same literary form?

Jona Lendering, in the introduction to the on-line English translation of Flavius Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius, writes:

In the Life of Apollonius, the Athenian author Philostratus, a sophist who lived from c.170 to c.247, tells the story of Apollonius of Tyana, a charismatic teacher and miracle worker from the first century CE who belonged to the school of Pythagoras. It is an apologetic work, in which Philostratus tries to show that Philostratus was a man with divine powers, but not a magician. He also pays attention to Apollonius' behavior as a sophist.

Arnold Meyer, in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 5 (1913, 2151ff), quoted in Schmidt (pp. 21-22) compares the gospels to the Hellenistic miracle literature which was prevalent in the first century of the Christian era. He writes:

oral traditions were collected, along with notes, letters, and documents both genuine and falsified. . . . Miracle stories were strung together, and a biography of the miracle-worker was formed, starting with the first miracle and leading to an amazing conclusion after a remarkable series of events, including healings, persecutions, accusations, and imprisonment. Even the birth of the hero was bathed in miraculous light . . . Clever conversations with friends and foes were then added, including pleas of defense before civil magistrates.

Schmidt has this to say about the 4th Gospel(p. 21):

In the Gospel of John, the miracles of Jesus are narrated, and then the signs are discussed; and in the same way ancient biographies of miracle workers also made changes, additions, and accentuations, selecting them from a virtually inexhaustible supply (Jn. 20:35; 21:25).

I can hear some apologists crying, "The Life of Apollonius does not fit the characteristics of an ancient biography." I disagree and so do the scholars I have quoted but for the sake of argument, lets say its not the typical ancient biography. Okay, how about the writings of Plutarch (46 -127 CE)? All agree that his Parallel Lives represents the literary genre of the ancient biography.

Does Plutarch always present historical facts in his biographies? Listen to Tracy Deline:

Plutarch sometimes "improved on the truth." Plutarch was still not always accurate. Aside from simple memory-related errors, such as interchanging insignificant names, Plutarch seemed to emphasize different versions of a series of events in different Lives so as to accentuate the role (or a specific characteristic) of the various men. C.B.R. Pelling (Plutarch's Life of Antony, p. 36) states that "in such cases, he was improving on the truth, and he knew it (Ancient Biography).

The following is from Biography - Ancient Biography, Medieval And Renaissance Biography, The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries, The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries:

Many of the earliest "histories" were biographical accounts of the lives of important historical figures. Biography often has been associated with the field of history (and at times has been considered a branch of it), but distinctions between them were drawn beginning in ancient times. Whereas the writers of histories always have purported to present the truth accurately, biographers more obviously have praised their subjects or have presented them as exemplars for moral or didactic (educational) purposes. . . . The mixture of fiction with fact in biography means that it has much in common with imaginative literature.

More on Plutarch's writing style (from About.com):

Plutarch's biographies often focus on anecdotes about the subject, while omitting details of his (and it always is 'his') career that we would love to know. Although the biographies are comparatively short (mostly between 20 and 30 pages long), Plutarch cannot resist digressions on anything that catches his interest. See, for example, the digression on the Athenians? treatment of retired beasts of burden in his life of Cato the Elder. Plutarch is also very interested in omens and frequently notes prodigious events, such as monstrous births, that preceded any great battle or the death of his subject.

Hector Avalos (The End of Biblical Studies, p. 120) has this to say about Plutarch:

Consider also the case of Plutarch, the Greek historian, whose biography, title Ceasar, forms another of the most quoted sources for the assassination story. Plutarch has a separate biography, titled Brutus, for one of the alleged conspirators. However, these two biographies don’t always agree on important details. In Caesar (66.4), Plutarch says that a man named Decimus Brutus Albinus delayed Antony’s entrance into the senate-house, where the assassination is said to have taken place. But in Brutus (17.2), Plutarch says it was a man named Trebonius who detained Antony.
According to C.B.R. Pelling, who is a meticulous empiricist, “It is possible that Plutarch has deliberately distorted the narrative in Caesar by transferring the act to D. Brutus: such techniques are not unknown in his work” (Plutarch’s Method of Work in the Roman Lives, Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 {1979}: 79). Pelling presents examples where Plutarch provides contradictory dates for events, as well as cases where Plutarch attributes speeches to Antony and Cassius that were attributed to Casesar in other passages.

Another clear example of an ancient biography is Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars . The website About.com has this to say about Lives of the Caesars

It covers the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors, from Augustus to Domitian. . . .It concentrates on the personal lives of its subjects, and their more interesting peccadilloes, which is probably why it has survived. How much is fact and how much is just gossip and rumour is difficult to say.

Suetonius, in the Life of Vespasian (7.13), claims that the Emperor once cured the blind and the lame through the power of of the god Serapis. I wonder is Christian apologists such as Craig or Licona accept this claim as historical fact?

Dale C. Allison in his book Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet writes concerning the general reliability of sacred biographies:

Hagiographical traditions and sacred biographies written by the devotees of a founder or religious savior are notoriously unreliable. Tradents gather what they can and concoct what they cannot gather, often reaping what their founder did not sow. The result is that everywhere history coalesces with myth....Once we doubt, as all modern scholars do, that the Jesus tradition gives us invariably accurate information, unvarnished by exaggeration and legend, it is incumbent upon us to find some way of sorting through the diverse traditions to divine what really goes back to Jesus. (p.1-2)

I am sure more examples could be produced but this is sufficient to show that the ancient biography genre does not always record genuine history. For Craig to argue, as he does in the debate with Carrier, that just because the gospels are in the literary form of the ancient biography they must be accepted as presenting real historical facts is flat wrong.

How Long Does it Take a Legend to Develop?

Evangelical apologists, citing Roman historian A. N. Sherwin-White, argue that the gospel of Mark's account of the empty tomb cannot be legendary because the time between the event (circa 30 CE) and its being recorded in Mark's Gospel (circa 60-70 CE)is too short. But is 30-40 years really too short a time for legend to develop? I don't think so. We have an example of such a development in the 20th century.

Richard Carrier, in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (eds. Robert M. Price and Jeffrey Jay Lowder, Prometheus, 2005, pp. 174-176), discusses the rise of the Roswell alien spacecraft legend. He writes:

There are still people today who believe that in 1947 an alien craft crashed and was recovered, along with alien bodies, by the United States government, and that this was subsequently covered up and kept secret. Though the "core story" of a saucer crash arose immediately in 1947, the elaborations began to appear as early as 1978, when an eyewitness, Maj. Jesse Marcel, described the recovery of the spacecraft in an interview. He never recanted his story, and since then the legend has grown enormously, with numerous devoted believers. This represents a clear case of a legendary development only thirty years after the fact, with all the subsequent additions to the legend (alien bodies, government threats against witnesses, storage of the craft on a military base in Arizona, physics-defying pieces of debris, and so on) arising less than fifty years after the fact, less than twenty years after the first legendary development. Even though modern literacy, skepticism, and technology have made it possible to expose this legend with copious evidence, thousands still believe it.

Imagine if a promise of eternal life to a miserably oppressed and suffering underclass had been attached to this story, along with promises of a perfectly vicious revenge on their enemies and oppressors. Imagine that an army of the most fanatic of those who believe the story actively promoted this creed, seeing every attempt to stop them as part of the government's conspiracy, confident that their own suffering and death would be rewarded and their torturers and murderers duly punished in the end. Imagine that like many Pentecostals today, these people could "prove" their doctrine's truth by performing miraculous healings and handling of snakes, and adducing scriptures that support them. With only a little luck, could such a religion really fail to triumph?

The analogy here with the empty tomb story is strong. It turns out that the genuine historical core is that a weather balloon carrying top secret nuclear-detonation detectors (actually modified sonar buoys) fell from the sky over Roswell, was recovered by an unknowing crew involving Marcel, and really was subsequently covered up by the Air Force. Yet this historical core was obliterated within a small group of believers and entirely replaced by the legend of an alien spacecraft. If their oral tradition had just happened to be the only one to survive in print, then we would have virtually no way at all to debunk this myth--we would not even know whether it was a myth.

The only reason we know the truth in this case is because our society provides enormous resources to an investigator: huge amounts of government records accessible to anyone, a national mass media system, skeptical organizations dedicated to hunting down and publishing testimony and evidence, plus books, libraries, newspapers, universal literacy, and so on. None of this was available in antiquity. Yet even if it were we could still expect the Roswell story to flourish among many people, just as it has done today. And if such a corruption of historical tradition, the replacement of a genuine historical core with an elaborate legend, can arise in so short a time, and be believed by so many, on little more than hearsay and speculation, becoming transformed by believers into "historical fact," then certainly the same thing could have happened to the empty tomb story.

I think the Roswell legend is an excellent analogy. There was 31 years between the time of the event (1947) and the first legendary embellishment (1978). Since 1978, the legend has grown to enormous proportions. If Mark was written circa 60 CE, that would be about 30 years from the time of the death of Jesus (circa 30 CE). So if the Roswell story can be embellished in less than 30 years in modern times, why couldn't the story of Jesus be embellished in ancient times? It would have been much easier for the story to take on legendary elements in ancient times. Again to cite Carrier,

How would a myth be exploded in antiquity? They had no newspapers, telephones, photographs, or access to public documents to consult to check a story. There were no reporters, coroners, forensic scientists, or even detectives. If someone was not a witness, all people had was a man's word, and they would most likely base their judgment not on anything we would call evidence, but on the display of sincerity by the storyteller, by his ability to persuade, and impress them with a show, by the potential rewards his story had to offer, and by its "sounding right" to them. (Ibid., p. 172).

To one who is not already committed to believing (faith)in the divine inspiration of the Bible, it seems to be obvious that the Gospel account has the characteristics of a legend.

The Memory of Eyewitnesses

In yesterday's post, I discussed Jan Vansina's research regarding the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Today, I turn to Elizabeth Loftus' discussion of the subject. She is a world renowned expert on the matter of false memories. She is often called upon to testify at trials where eyewitness testimony is being used. She is the author of the leading book on the subject, Eyewitness Testimony (Harvard University Press, 1996).

In Scientific American (September 1997, vol. 277, #3, pp. 70-75), Loftus explains how memories can become corrupted:

Research is beginning to give us an understanding of how false memories of complete, emotional and self-participatory experiences are created in adults. First, there are social demands on individuals to remember; for instance, researchers exert some pressure on participants in a study to come up with memories. Second, memory construction by imagining events can be explicitly encouraged when people are having trouble remembering. And, finally, individuals can be encouraged not to think about whether their constructions are real or not. Creation of false memories is most likely to occur when these external factors are present, whether in an experimental setting, in a therapeutic setting or during everyday activities.

False memories are constructed by combining actual memories with the content of suggestions received from others. During the process, individuals may forget the source of the information. This is a classic example of source confusion, in which the content and the source become dissociated.

In a CBS newsreport on the subject, Charles Osgood says:

According to this theory, memories are not stored like snapshots, but are instead like sketches that are altered and added to every time they are called up. Loftus has shown subjects who are given false information about an event or scene tend to incorporate it into their memories, and "recall" the false information as a part of their original memory even two weeks later. In other experiments, subjects asked to imagine scenarios can then become convinced that the imagined scenario is a real memory.

In the November 2003 issue of American Psychologist, Loftus says:

But could one create an entire memory for an event that never happened? My first attempt to do this used a procedure whereby participants were given short narrative descriptions of childhood events and encouraged to try to remember those events. While participants believed that all of the descriptions were true and had been provided by family members, one was actually a pseudoevent that had not occurred. In this study, approximately 25% of participants were led to believe, wholly or partially, that at age 5 or 6 they had been lost in a shopping mall for an extended time, were highly upset, and were ultimately rescued by an elderly person and reunited with their family (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). Many added embellishing details to their accounts(Make-Believe Memories, p. 869)

At the end of the above article, Loftus concludes: People’s memories are not only the sum of all that they have done, but there is more to them: The memories are also the sum of what they have thought, what they have been told, what they believe. Who we are may be shaped by our memories, but our memories are shaped by who we are and what we have been led to believe.(p. 869).

How does Loftus' research relate to the supposed eyewitness testimony found in the New Testament? Many apologists, such as Josh McDowell, have argued that either the disciples were lying or the events really happened. These apologists maintain that since no one would die for something they know to be false, then the events, including the resurrection of Jesus, must have actually taken place.

Loftus has shown that its not that simple. People can believe things happened that didn't really happen. These memories can be just as real and as strong for the individuals as events that did occur. Memory is a complex phenomena that is only now beginning to be understood.

Is Eyewitness Testimony Reliable?

Most Christian apologists, (for example, see Eyewitness Testimony for Jesus' Resurrection Appearances by Gary Habermas), believe that the case for Christianity is strong because of alleged eyewitness testimony to the life, death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (I say alleged eyewitness testimony because, apart from Paul's five words in 1 Cor. 15:8, it is not an established fact that we even have true eyewitness testimony of the resurrection. What we have are second and third hand accounts from those who claim they spoke with eyewitnesses or we have anonymous writings from those who claim to have been eyewitnesses.)

Even if we assume, however, that there is genuine eyewitness testimony of the events in the life of Jesus recorded in Scripture, then there is still the question of the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

Below is a quote from Oral Tradition as History by Jan Vansina (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). Vansina is widely recognized as one of the leading authorities on the subject of the oral transmission of history.

Here is what he says about eyewitness testimony:

In the best of circumstances, even the best of witnesses never give a movie-like account of what happened, as all accounts of accidents show. Eyewitness accounts are always a personal experience as well and involve not only perception, but also emotions. Witnesses often are also not idle standers-by, but participants in the events. Furthermore, an understanding of what happened cannot occur through mere data of perception. Perceptions must be organized in a coherent whole and the logic of the situation supplies missing pieces of observation. The classical cases of car accidents or purse snatching document this to satiety. A witness reporting a car accident typically first heard a smash, then saw it, then deduced how it happened—how both cars were traveling before the accident after which he or she built up a coherent account of the incident. Usually he did not see the two cars before the accident drew attention to them. Most witnesses cannot resolve themselves to build up a story starting with a noise and the result of the accident first. If a witness was traveling in one of the stricken cars, much of what took place happened at a speed greater than his own reaction time allowed him to perceive. Such persons often only remember one or two images of the accident. Yet when called upon to tell what happened, they must become coherent and build up a tale in which the logic of the situation makes up most of the account. (pp.4-5)

Eyewitness accounts are only partly reliable. Certainly it is true that complex or unexpected events are perhaps rarer than simple, expected events. Yet even here the account remains imperfect. The expectation of the event itself distorts its observation. People tend to report what they expect to see or hear more than what they actually see or hear. To sum up: mediation of perception by memory and emotional state shapes an account. Memory typically selects certain features from the successive perceptions and interprets them according to expectation, previous knowledge, or the logic of “what must have happened,” and fills the gaps in perception. (p. 5)

Note several things from Vansina's statements.

1. Eyewitness accounts are always a personal experience and involve not only perception, but also emotions. Witnesses often are also not idle standers-by, but participants in the events.

If there is genuine eyewitness testimony in the Scriptures, it is from individuals who are not objective by-standers but individuals who have a "stake in the claim." This automatically makes their testimony somewhat suspect.

2. Furthermore, an understanding of what happened cannot occur through mere data of perception. Perceptions must be organized in a coherent whole and the logic of the situation supplies missing pieces of observation.

If there is genuine eyewitness testimony in Scripture, it is from individuals who had to "make sense" of what they saw. They interpreted what they saw in accordance with their world view, which in the first century, was one in which the supernatural realm (angels, demons, God, etc.) regularly invaded the natural realm. So, their testimony is "colored" by their world view, a world-view which is largely rejected today.

3. The expectation of the event itself distorts its observation. People tend to report what they expect to see or hear more than what they actually see or hear.

In other words, all personal testimony is subjective. People interpret the events in light of their emotional connection to the person(s) involved and in light of what they see as compatible with their overall set of beliefs about a person or an event.

As Vansina says: To sum up: mediation of perception by memory and emotional state shapes an account. Memory typically selects certain features from the successive perceptions and interprets them according to expectation, previous knowledge, or the logic of “what must have happened,” and fills the gaps in perception.

So, the claim to eyewitness testimony in Scripture, even if true (and that is far from certain), does not guarantee the authenticity of the events therein described.

Recently, a thorough defense of the eyewitness testimony reported in the Bible has been written by Richard Bauckham, Professor of New Testament at St. Andrews University in Scotland. It is entitled: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony. This work is probably the best possible defense of the claim of eyewitness testimony in the New Testament. I will interact with this book in upcoming posts.

Can one be "saved" by just reading the Bible?

Another reason for my de-conversion from evangelical Christianity was my realization that the Bible is a very ambiguous book, i.e., subject to many different interpretations.

Kevin Bauder, the President of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, would certainly disagree with me. He has written an article on the Perspicuity of Scripture available online. Perspicuity, which means “clearness or lucidity, as of a statement” was a major tenent of the Reformation. The Reformers argued that one could read and understand the major teachings of the Bible without any help from the Roman Church. The RCC, on the other hand, maintained, that they, and only they, could properly interpret the Scriptures.

So which is it? Is the Bible unambiguous or is it open to a variety of opposing interpretations?

In the article, Bauder makes the following admission:

In some circles, one finds a naïve belief that a solitary individual, given no prior instruction, can simply sit down with a Bible and discover the entire Christian faith. The problems with this view are manifold. The first and most obvious is that no one has ever actually done this. The second is that God never intended anyone to do so—God’s plan was for those who had been taught to commit what they had learned to faithful people, who would in turn teach others (2 Tim. 2:2). The third is that wherever people have tried to start from nothing and interpret the Bible for themselves, they have (almost?) invariably produced error and even heresy.

I applaud him for this honest admission. However, prior to this statement, he writes:

In other words, the aspect of Scripture that can be understood by anyone is its saving message. Any truth that is essential to salvation is clearly and comprehensibly revealed "in some place of Scripture or other." Anyone can learn the way of Salvation by reading the Bible.

It is no small matter that the way of salvation has been revealed in language that any person can understand. We do not have to rely upon sophisticated intellectual tools. We do not have to rely upon specially-endued ecclesiastical spokesmen. If we can read the Bible in our hands, then we can know how to be saved.

So, while he would not say that the entire message of the Bible is perspicuous, he does believe that the basic message of “how one is to be saved” is crystal clear.

I completely disagree with his contention. If the way of salvation is so clear and obvious in Scripture, then why is there not unanimous or at least nearly unanimous agreement among those who accept the Bible as the Word of God on how one is to be saved?

I think you could make the point that the New Testament says clearly that one needs to believe (have faith) in Jesus in order to be saved (e.g. John 3:16). But there is still a host of questions:

1. What exactly is faith?

a. Is it merely intellectual assent? Members of the Grace Evangelical Society answer in the affirmative. On their website, one reads:

Faith is the conviction that something is true. To believe in Jesus (“he who believes in Me has everlasting life”) is to be convinced that He guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him for it (John 4:14; 5:24; 6:47; 11:26; 1 Tim 1:16).

No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life (Rom 4:5; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5). This saving transaction between God and the sinner is simply the giving and receiving of a free gift (Eph 2:8-9; John 4:10 ; Rev 22:17 ).

b. Is it intellectual assent plus submission to the Lordship of Christ? John MacArthur and many strict Calvinists would say, Yes.

MacArthur writes that faith

‘encompasses obedience,’ and that obedience is ‘an integral part of saving faith.’ Indeed, obedience is bound up in the very 'definition of faith,’ being a constitutive element in what it means to believe.’ Thus any ‘concept of faith that excludes obedience’ must be rejected because obedience is ‘indivisibly wrapped up in the idea of believing.’ In fact, ‘the character of true faith’ is nothing less than the ‘higher righteousness’ of the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-11.8. MacArthur even suggests that obedience is ‘synonymous with’ faith. (See The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith?, pp. 173-176)

2. Is faith alone enough for salvation?

MacArthur and the Grace Evangelical Society and most evangelicals would say, “Yes.” However, other Protestant groups, such as those who trace their lineage to Alexander Campbell (including the Churches of Christ, the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, and the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]) would say, “No.” Campbell, a former Baptist, became convinced that the Bible demanded baptism in order to receive forgiveness of sins. So faith alone was not enough. Listen to the churches of Christ website:

You should know that by baptism:
•You are saved from sins (Mark 16:16 1 Peter 3:21)
•You have remission of sins (Acts 2:38)
•Sins are washed away by the blood of Christ (Acts 22:16; Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Peter 3:21)
•You enter into the church (1 Corinthians 12:13; Acts 2:41,47)
•You enter into Christ (Galatians 3:26-27; Romans 6:3-4)
•You put on Christ and become a child of God (Galatians 3:26-27)
•You are born again, a new creature (Romans 6:3-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17)
•You walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-6)
•You obey Christ (Mark 16:15-16; Acts 10:48; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).

These groups believe they are following the clear teaching of Scripture. Campbell’s maxim was: Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.

In addition to the Campbellite churches, many Lutherans believe that baptism is an integral part of what is required for salvation.

3. How does one acquire faith?

a. Calvinists (monergists, i.e, salvation is solely God’s work) say that it is a gift from God. "Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God's gift of salvation - it is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God.(See here.)

b. Arminians (synergists, i.e., man cooperates with God in salvation) say that faith originates in man. "The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God's Spirit and be regenerated or resist God's grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man's act and precedes the new birth. Faith is the sinner's gift to God; it is man's contribution to salvation.”. See here.

c. Lutherans as alluded to above, say that the seed of faith is implanted in the infant at the moment of baptism and that seeds need to be nurtured until it blossoms into saving faith. See here.

4. What is the necessary object of faith?

In other words, must one have faith in God or must that faith be specifically in Jesus Christ in order to be saved? Evangelicals for the most part would answer it must be in Jesus Christ although many of them leave the door open for “those who have never heard the gospel” to have some type of belief in the God of nature and thus be saved. As one author put it:

Most evangelicals believe that conversion involves explicitly recognizing Jesus Christ as God's Son and the mediator of salvation. Thus one's loyalty and trust is properly placed in Christ himself as the one true locus of faith. An alternative model, however, suggests that the key to conversion is not the conscious recognition of who Jesus is and what he does, but rather has to do with the heart's disposition toward the true God, however God is apprehended. And according to this model, since God has revealed Godself in a variety of ways throughout the world, one can hope and even expect that many will enter eternal life without ever hearing of Jesus Christ.

Clark Pinnock has argued for this position in A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions.

5. If one has to believe specifically in Jesus Christ in order to be saved, the next question is what must one believe about him?

a. Must one acknowledge that he is co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father or may one believe that he is somehow a notch below God the Father, albeit still divine. Virtually all evangelicals would say the former because this debate was fought in the early church and Athanasius defeated Arius(see here ).

But why was there a dispute in the first place if the Scripture is perspicuous? And was Arius some evil man who denied the Bible? No, he was following what he honestly thought the Scriptures taught.

b. While evangelicals pretty much insist that one accept the full deity of Jesus in order to be saved, there is still disagreement among themselves as to what happened to the deity of Christ during the incarnation. Some say he laid aside some of those attributes, which in effect would make him not deity during his time on earth.

Other evangelicals would insist that he merely laid aside the use of those attributes, albeit, still possessing them. Granted, the more educated evangelicals seem to agree that he did not lay aside any of his attributes, but the popular exposition of the subject by many preachers claim that Jesus did all of his miracles not by his own power but as an ordinary man aided by the power of the Holy Spirit (for example, John R. Rice, Commentary on Luke and many charismatic preachers). Can a person be "really saved" if he/she has that view of Jesus Christ?

So, there you have it. The Bible is crystal clear on how one is to be saved. Anyone can just pick up a Bible start reading and “get saved.” Yeah, right. I have to agree with the Ethiopian eunuch when Philip approached him in Acts 8:30-31:

Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?"

It seems to me that if the Bible were really the Word of God, it would be clear and unambiguous throughout but at the very least it would be plain on how one is to be saved.