Both Acts 16:31 and 1 Corinthians 7:14 teach us that when Christian husbands marry atheist wives, they are saving the immortal soul of the wife. Indeed, Acts takes it a step further, alleging that his entire family will be saved. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 7, which deals with the laws of marriage, explicitly forbids the husband from divorcing his atheist wife because doing so will cause her to be damned. Interestingly, the reverse is also true. Christian wives cannot divorce their atheist husbands. See verses 12-14. Yay for gender equality??

But then merely two verses later in 1 Corinthians 7:16, the bible is less confident about its earlier claims. In the latter verse the bible essentially says, “Look, we may be wrong, but maybe we’re right.” The “for all you know” is an interesting little phrase to throw into the bible. Apply it elsewhere or anywhere (here included), and it’s basically saying “the bible might be wrong.”

So basically, reading Acts is straightforward: Christian husbands, by virtue of being Christian, save the immortal souls of their entire family (as long as they live under the same roof). 1 Corinthians says pretty much the exact same thing, but then it adds a caveat: It may be wrong “for all you know.”

This contradiction also appears in my video: