Editing Fast Fridays: 30 Minutes for God (section)

== Friday, January 31: Is it necessarily so? ==
You may know the George Gershwin work, Porgy and Bess, and its son, "It Ain't Necessarily So", which follows the modern, rationalist logic:

<poem>
''Oh, I Takes Dat Gospel
''Whenever It's Pos'ple -
''But Wid A Grain Of Salt!
''Methus'lah Lived Nine Hundred Years
</poem>Gershwin's brother penned the lyrics, which with the music follow a traditional Hebrew prayer incanted before reading from the Torah, ''Bar'chu et adonai ham'vorach'' ("Bless the Lord, who is blessed"). The melody also tracks the tonality of another traditional Jewish prayer. The character who sings the song is a drug dealer, and he is admonished by another character for being a sinner. Most people who know this song probably don't see it within that context, and feel their own Biblical doubts reinforced by it. 

Are they wrong to doubt it? Was Jonah really three days in a whale? Did Methuselah really live to 900 years? Was Moses really found in a basket floating in the Nile? 

To address those problems, we turn can to Mother Church who has thought a lot for a long time about this problem. From [https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/34/ Catechism paragraph 115]: <blockquote>According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two ''senses'' of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.</blockquote>We will review paragraphs 115-117, which is summarized in paragraph 118:

<blockquote>A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:
''The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;''<br>
''The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny''
</blockquote>
We'll have some fun today picking out your favorite "really?" passages from the Bible -- and we'll see just how and why they work in both the literal and the spiritual, and not just in the Old Testament, such as how, exactly did Noah get the giraffes into the ark and why did he bring mosquitos along as well. Jesus also confounds are faith numerously in the New Testament: ''eat your flesh? drink your blood?'' ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/6:22 Jn 6:22]) or Luke 10:5, ''given them my spirit, and if they don't like it take it back from them - huh?'' ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/10?5 Lk 10:5])

So BYOD (Bring Your Own Doubt) and we'll work it out -- and not by "thinking like a child," which isn’t going to get us there. That’s what led to rationalism and modernist doubt about the Scripture in the first place. Instead, we will think like theologians and make perfect “sense” of it!
----To discuss

* Scripture is the Word of God
* Jesus is fulfillment of the Old Testament
** typology

{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Literal
!Allegorical
!Notes
|-
|Noah
|flood
|baptism
|cleansing of sin
|-
|
|rainbow
|God's promise of salvation
(laying down the sword)
|Christ
|-
|Jonah
|defies God
|dies in the ocean
|Christ
|-
|
|hates the Ninevites
|Love thy enemy
|salvation for the gentiles
|-
|tower at Siloam ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/13:4 Lk 13:4])
|the wall falls & kills people
|n/a
|it fell, no larger meaning than to be prepared to meet your maker
|-
|Bread of Life
|body /blood of Christ
|n/a
|salvation
|-
|parables
|n/a
|
|
|}