Are Evangelicals Open-Minded?

My experience within evangelical/fundamentalism tells me that they are not. They will often claim to be willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads but in reality they are not. They have determined that the Bible is the literal Word of God and therefore nothing that contradicts it can possibly be true. This was illustrated in a previous post in which William Craig admitted that no evidence could possibly disconfirm his faith because he has the "witness of the Spirit" in his heart.

When I was at Bob Jones University, there were two incidents in particular that awoke me to the fact that honest scholarship was not allowed in evangelicalism.

First, around 1980 a book came out entitled: Decision Making and the Will of God by Gary Friesen. Friesen argued that the traditional view that God has a perfect will for your life including whom you should marry, where you should go to school, what occupation you should choose, etc. was really not biblical. He argued that the will of God in the Scripture only had to do with moral issues and that non-moral issues could be decided by Christians using wisdom (i.e., applying biblical principles).

At the time, I thought that Friesen was right about what the Scriptures taught. However, the administration at Bob Jones Univ. did not. They had taught for years that God has a perfect will for you life. One day after class, I asked Stewart Custer if he had read the book. He said, "No, but I need to read it because Dr. Bob has asked me to write a refutation of it." I was flabberghasted. I thought to myself, that is not being intellecutally honest. You are going to read the book with your mind already made up.

Second, around 1986, Bob Jones, Jr. called John MacArthur a heretic because John was teaching that it was the death of Christ that saves not his literal blood. Even though John graciously clarified his position for BJU, they would not accept it. In 1988, I wrote an article in the Calvary Theological Journal in which I basically agreed with MacArthur. Virtually all of the Bible faculty at BJU agreed with my position but were ordered by Bob, Jr. not to address the issue. They were not to address it in class nor in correspondence.

While these two examples may appear extreme, I think they illustrate the fact that evangelicalism does not allow free inquiry.

My Name = 666

It was the summer of 1983 and I was sitting in a Ph.D. class at Bob Jones University on the Book of Revelation. Dr. Stewart Custer was waxing eloquent on Revelation 13:18: Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number [is] 666. He was explaining the various interpretations of this passage. Some said it just referred to the number of man repeated three times (the number six is held by some to be the number of man in the Bible, the number seven is the number of God, etc), sort of like an ungodly trinity. Others believed it refered to a literal human being whose identity could be found by adding up the value of his name.

At this time in history, Arabic numerals were not used in the Graeco-Roman world but rather each letter of the alphabet had a corresponding numerical value. For example, in Greek, the first letter alpha equals one and beta, the second letter, equals two, etc. The same was true with the Hebrew alphabet. Many Bible scholars on this basis identified the beast of Revelation as Nero. They argued that the Greek spelling of his name, “Nerōn Kaisar,” transliterates into Hebrew as “נרון קסר”. When you add up the values of each Hebrew letter you get 666.

I thought this was fascinating so I decided to add up the letter values in my name. Ken Pulliam transliterates into Greek as Κεν Πυλλιαμ. When I added up the value of each letter, I was flabbergasted. The letters equaled 666. I thought this can't be possible. I added them up again thinking maybe I had made a mistake. I added them up a third time. There was no way around it. My name equaled 666.

I admit this actually bothered me for awhile. Then I realized that there were billions of people on the planet and, while I didn't know the precise statistical formula, I was certain there were probably thousands of people whose name also equaled 666.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I am sure that some of my former colleagues and students probably think that I am the man of sin or at least a type (forerunner) of the last great embodiment of evil. After all, I am an apostate. I knew the truth, believed the truth, and then turned away. Hebrews 6:4-6 says there is no hope for me.

For [it is] impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put [Him] to an open shame.

So I guess for those fundamentalists and evangelicals that take the Bible literally, this is just further proof that it is the Word of God. What further proof do you need (spoken with tongue firmly in cheek)?