Rick Warren - Is this right?

[Miriam1947]

**I don’t think we can assume that Jesus understood O.T. stories as literal. He used many parables in His own teaching. **

Oh yes, we all agree with you that Jesus used many parables in his own teaching.
We can often, 99% of the time really, tell when he is using a parable, because the story is so outlandish, or at least a parable mixed with a real happening, such as the story of Dives and Lazarus (Jesus never used real names to refer to mythical figures in his parables, and he named Lazarus as a person).

But Jesus didn’t have mere “understanding” or “interpretations” of the Jewish scritpures, the tanakh, as either literal or parable. HE WAS THE WORD, the very AUTHOR, with the Holy Ghost, of those VERY SAME scriptures, PLEASE let us not forget that !!!
He didn’t merely “understand them to mean” certain things, as if mere opinion, however learned the opinion, on his part.
NO. He KNEW whether those scriptures were referring to LITERAL people or not.
He has existed from all eternity. He himself MADE us. He himself, with the Father and the Spirit, INSPIRED the Scriptures. We very often forget that, and the GRAVE IMPLICATIONS of that fact.
So when Jesus refers to Adam and Eve as real, and God’s giving them marriage as a gift, he isn’t talking about a myth. When he says the flood swept away wicked people, he KNOWS that a flood swept away wicked people because HE sent the darned flood !!!
When he says that Sodom and Gomorrah were blown off the face of the earth,
he KNOWS what he is talking about because he, God Incarnate, is the very one
who blew Sodom and Gomorrah off the face of the earth, yes, our same Jesus of Divine Mercy blew two wicked cities off the face of the earth.
WE are the ones who try to “understand” whether certain scriptures and people mentioned are literal or not. We are not omniscient, we were not there.
Jesus was. When he says that the Israelites passed thru the parted waters, he KNOWS it happened, because HE IS THE ONE who parted the waters.
Please, for all our “modern scripture scholarship” (see the noses in the air of these scholars when they talk about their superior bible knowledge), we do not know 1/100th what Jesus knew. Not even 1/1000th. HE is the God who worked all those Old testament miracles in the Jewish scriptures. He doesn’t have to guess whether Adam and Eve were real or not. He KNOWS.

Excellent post.

 

[Publisher]

What do CAF members think of this?
Jesus Trusted the Bible. You Should, Too
by Rick Warren

“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:18 NIV)

You may have heard someone say, “I trust Jesus, but not the other guys who wrote the Bible.” There’s a problem with that logic.

Jesus trusted the Bible — every word of it! He taught that the Bible was a unique book, above all the others.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:18,“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (NIV)…

When Jesus talks about the Bible, he doesn’t just talk about it as poetry and history, either. He saw the Bible as something that changes lives. In Luke 11:28 Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it”(NIV). Jesus didn’t just want us to read the Bible. That’s what you do with poetry and history. Jesus wanted us to obey the Bible. That’s what you do with anything the Creator of the universe writes…

When Jesus talked about the Bible, he talked about it as if the people and events in it were real. He talked about all the prophets being real. He talked about Daniel being real. Jesus believed in Noah and everything that happened with the flood. He believed in Adam and Eve. Jesus believed in the tragedy of Sodom and Gomorrah. He believed in Jonah and him being swallowed by a large fish.

Jesus believed in some of the most disputed stories in the Bible, particularly Noah, Adam and Eve, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jonah. People who think that the Bible is mostly good stories that didn’t really happen always point to those four stories.
If Jesus really believed in Jonah, then I should, too. I don’t know how God created a fish who could swallow a guy, but he did.

I trust in the Bible because Jesus trusted in it.

Talk About It

Are there parts of the Bible that you have trouble believing? Why?
What do you think God wants to accomplish in your life through his Word?
MJ

Well…since friend Rick was speaking to a congregation…and he only had limited time to get his point across, he hardly would have been able to give a detailed historical account of scriptural development…I think he “cut to the chase” so to speak in his sermon and used a nuanced treatment of Biblical passages…since his listeners believed the Bible they read and posses…he would embrace that understanding in his sermon.

That the writer of the gospel of “Matthew” used the LXX also is not a big surprise since those Greek speaking Jews of the Diaspora used it as their principle source of scripture. Many of them had lost touch with their Hebrew speaking cousins in Palestine…so would not have been able to read or understand the Hebrew…nor would their larger audience of Greek speaking Christians who used the gospel in their own liturgical setting…certain readings of the scriptures were read each sabbath and the gospel of choice, whether “Mark” or “Matthew”, the two earliest renditions of the life of Jesus written in liturgical style…each section corresponding to the Jewish liturgical year and reading schedule of scripture…if Jesus used the LXX is in doubt as he was a Palestinian Jew with ties to Jerusalem…doubtful Greek scripture translations would have been used in a very “Jewish minded” audience of Scribes, Pharisees and Saducees and interpreters of the Law.

That the early Christians used the LXX, especially those outside of Palestine and that the writers of the gospels were of the Diaspora used it as well is accepted by scholarship. As we know “Matthew” used it since in his birth narrative he quoted from the LXX of Isaiah.

I do not beleive the gospels are necessarily actual “blow by blow” events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but rather devices used to draw parallels to the OT “prophesies”…Jesus’ life was “fleshed out” retelling OT stories and instead of having the OT characters of Moses, David, Elijah, and others “re-casts” Jesus as the main character to bring fresh and new the OT scriptures as pointing to Jesus in the forefront of Christian thought.

The “sermon on the mount” reasts Jesus as the “new Moses”…the prophet Moses had spoken of in the Pentatuch “yet to come”…as the “new Joshua” bringing us into the “Land of Promise”…parallels througout the gospels can be made with the OT…no wonder some of the ECF’s claimed the “OT was revealed in the New”…of course it was…the OT was used as the very framework and “bones” of retelling Israel’s story anew in and through the life of Jesus of Nazareth…so much so that the conflict between Christians and Jews after the destruction of the Temple vying for the “authentic” continuation of “Israel” and Judaism…Christianity became very Gentile while Jews became more “pharisee” in belief and practice, shifting away from the Saducee temple cult of sacrifice.

Rich Warren would have had a difficult time keeping his message to an hour if he first gave a detailed historical development of OT scripture, translations and it’s use of the early Greek speaking Jewish Christians and Gentile converts to Christianity.

As friend Sufjon stated…Rick Warren is “over-using” “Matthew” in his sermon to get a point across to teach something the writer of "Matthew’ never really intended.

 

[Armyvet007]

This is gloriously circular and question begging: the Bible says Jesus trusted scripture. I call the Bible, a book produced after Jesus, scripture. Jesus is God because the Bible tells me so. Therefore I should trust scripture. I think this is why I am a Catholic non-believer.

Science is True because the scientific method is True. The scientific method is True because science proves it to be.

Or

Science is True because the scientific method is True [assumed Truth] and, the Bible is True because God is True [assumed Truth]. Both boil down to faith in their respective assumed Truths to be True. Circular reasoning only applies if your belief in either has to be based on provable Truths.

 

[fred_conty]

“Jesus believed in some of the most disputed stories in the Bible, particularly Noah, Adam and Eve, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jonah. People who think that the Bible is mostly good stories that didn’t really happen always point to those four stories.
If Jesus really believed in Jonah, then I should, too. I don’t know how God created a fish who could swallow a guy, but he did.”

Warren mentions 4 events that people have serious doubts about their actual reality:

1. Adam and Eve
2. Noah
3. Johah
4. Sodom and Gomorrah

He skipped one, that of the exodus thru the Red(reed) Sea.

Has the catholic church ever said anything definitively on any of these except Adam and Eve story and the Exodus story.

The church as said because of original sin, the story of two first parents is historically true.
Because with more than one set of parents, then it would be possible that some would have original sin coming from the parents who sinned, and others would not have original sin coming from a different set of parents.

The Exodus story is true, but the miracle of Moses parting the waters is sometimes explained as a non miracle. That is that a very intense wind blew and divided the water. However in this explaination too little attention is paid to the timing. That is, it was when Moses raised his arms the water seperated and when again on the other side Moses rased his arms that the water returned upon the Egyptians.
The story of Joshua also has him parting the waters of the Jordan river to enter the promised land.

However, do the stories of Noah, Jonah, and Sodom, remain historically questionable according to the church? I believe a person may view them historical, or prefigurative and non historical. Does anyone know for sure?

Just a question.

 

[Leon_Bloy]

Well that’s kind of a deceitful answer.

Jesus didn’t “trust the Bible” - there was no real Bible to speak of when Jesus was on Earth, just the Old Testament scripture.

But then again, there was also an important amount of tradition that accompanied the Old Testament, and the priesthood.

I can’t believe that Rick Warren is all for that.

Absolutely - well said!

 

[manualman]

This is gloriously circular and question begging: the Bible says Jesus trusted scripture. I call the Bible, a book produced after Jesus, scripture. Jesus is God because the Bible tells me so. Therefore I should trust scripture. I think this is why I am a Catholic non-believer.

If this is your only hangup, you’d better get ready to be baptized.

The catholic logic goes thus: Jesus is a historical figure beyond reasonable question and we have more corroborating evidence of his existence and teachings than anyone else in his era of history. The historical record of his crucifixion and death is beyond question by all reasonable measures of historical scholarship. The accounts of his resurrection and the subsequent spread of christian beliefs defy any other rational explanation than that they are factual. (No personal gain for him or his disciples, the failure of the hostile Roman authorities to produce a body that could refute the claims, etc). The historical reality of his resurrection gives weight to his theological claims and to his delegation of authority to his apostles. (Hey, if God is going to submit to death and then resurrect himself, are you really claiming that he’d then let 12 opportunists hijack his teaching and message?) By virtue of that delegated authority, I can then have reasonable trust in the ability of those apostles to record and tansmit his teaching to believers (i.e. compile the bible). This isn’t the least bit circular in logic. It starts with the historical fact of Jesus and ENDs demonstrating the inspiration of the bible.

 

[AbideWithMe]

There were no pens first of all those days nor when the Septuagint was used.
MJ

Martin—

Where do you get the idea that there where no pens in those days? I do calligraphy. Reed, quill, and metal pens where in use long before Jesus’ time. How do you think the scrolls where written in ink if they didn’t have pens?

 

[MartinJordan]

Martin—

Where do you get the idea that there where no pens in those days? I do calligraphy. Reed, quill, and metal pens where in use long before Jesus’ time. How do you think the scrolls where written in ink if they didn’t have pens?

Im talking today’s Pens, ie ball point, fountain pen,etc. Besides “stroke of a pen” is not in the actual translation from the Greek.

Once again, Rick uses a Bible (NIV in this case) that “fits” in what he’s talking about.

MJ

 

[AbideWithMe]

Im talking today’s Pens, ie ball point, fountain pen,etc. Besides “stroke of a pen” is not in the actual translation from the Greek.

Once again, Rick uses a Bible (NIV in this case) that “fits” in what he’s talking about.

MJ

Martin—

It’s true that ball point pens are a recent invention, but the NIV translation that Rick Warren quoted doesn’t imply that a ball point pen was meant…people mostly used reed pens at that time, with some parts of the Dead Sea scrolls written with quill pens. I suppose from being a calligrapher I picture the historically appropriate type of pen whenever I read “pen” anywhere.

Actually, the Greek is “iota” and “keraia”, which refer, respectively, to the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet (iota is thought to also be related to yodh, the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet), while keraia is a horn-like curved stroke of a pen. “Jot” and “tittle” are translations of iota and keraia. However, the NIV’s “smallest letter” and “stroke of a pen” are accurate translations of iota and keraia, as well.

I guess that’s more calligraphy trivia than you ever wanted to know.

 

[MartinJordan]

Martin—

It’s true that ball point pens are a recent invention, but the NIV translation that Rick Warren quoted doesn’t imply that a ball point pen was meant…people mostly used reed pens at that time, with some parts of the Dead Sea scrolls written with quill pens. I suppose from being a calligrapher I picture the historically appropriate type of pen whenever I read “pen” anywhere.

Actually, the Greek is “iota” and “keraia”, which refer, respectively, to the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet (iota is thought to also be related to yodh, the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet), while keraia is a horn-like curved stroke of a pen. “Jot” and “tittle” are translations of iota and keraia. However, the NIV’s “smallest letter” and “stroke of a pen” are accurate translations of iota and keraia, as well.

I guess that’s more calligraphy trivia than you ever wanted to know.

Fair enough on the technicalities on “stroke of a pen”. I appreciate the charitable clarification you provided.

MJ

 

[AbideWithMe]

Martin, you’re welcome.