One of the questions that was recently posed to me in a Bible study was pretty good. The question was about the Bible itself. Does a person need to believe the entire Bible? For example, can a person believe the "heart" of the gospel but not necessarily believe some of the more extrodinary feats mentioned in the Old Testament?
My simple answer is "no", believe in God doesn't require the belief in the Bible. Sorry that this disappoints some but from what I read the requirements to salvation don't include any such test. We need to trust in Christ as savior and of course that does require some belief in who He is represented to actually be.
The debate as to what parts of the Bible or the literal understanding of the Bible is a great debate within and outside of the Christian Church. Often, what a person believes about the first six Chapters of the book of Genesis or whether they believe in "literal" interpretation regarding Paul's instruction for the qualifications of Deacons becomes a litmus test for Pastors, teachers or church membership. I don't believe that it has to be always treated with such gravity.
Jesus never taught that in order to be saved we had to believe in Adam and Eve or that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. The requirements for salvation and therein the requirements to be a member of the Christian church is quite simple: Belief in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins, and a belief that we are sinful but because of His holiness, we can become accepted into God's kingdom. Note that I'm taking great liberties at this point in the scripture but the reason is that I want to make sure no-one misunderstands that somehow a literal interpretation of every word in the King James Bible is somehow a pre-requirement for becoming a Christian.
At the same time, Jesus spoke of Adam and Eve as historical people. He embraced the entire Old Testament and even compared His coming death and resurrection (which is the cornerstone of the Christian faith) to the Biblical epic of Jonah and the Whale. Therefore, the need to understand the accuracy of the Bible is of high importance in our Christian walk. If not for personal faith, the trust and confidence in the Bible is definitely a requirement for the perpetuation of the faith. If we can't trust the Bible to be true, then we have a great deal of difficulty in using the teachings of the Bible in matters of faith.
I'm not the first to address this issue. Dr. John Warwick Montgomery proposes three tests to determine if we can believe the entirety of the Bible. The tests stem from the fact of what the Bible claims to be...God's revelation of Himself to and through man." If God has revealed Himself in literary form, that revelation would have certain properties due to His infinite knowledge and moral perfection:
It would be entirely true - His infinite knowledge would prevent errors and His truthfulness would keep Him from deception.
It would be a coherent unity therefore not self- contradictory.
It would contain God's will for man and provide the motivation to live according to that will.
I believe that God has revealed Himself in the Bible without error. The Bible itself claims this inerrancy (2 Timothy 3:16-17;Matthew 5:18; etc.). When it comes to believing the Bible, I'm like the guy that says, "I believe it all from Genesis through Maps".
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