Why Does Rick Warren Quote Non-Christians?

Despite the clarity of Warren's position on theological issues, including his stand against the new Age movement (see my articles Is Rick Warren A New Ager?, Saddleback Church: The Cross, Sin, and Hell, Repentance and Rick Warren, and The Doctrinal Essentials of Christianity—and Rick Warren), many critics have continued to assert that he is most definitely a New Ager simply because he has occasionally quoted, cited, or referred to various individuals who could indeed be connected to the New Age. Quoting a New Ager doesn't link Rick Warren to the New Age any more than his quoting of the atheist Bertrand Russell ("Unless you assume God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless") links him to atheism.

Warren feels, and I do too, that a person does not have to be a Christian in order to make an astute observation, or say something that is true. All "truth"—wherever it may be found—is God’s truth. For example, a true observation about the way people think or feel is a true observation, no matter who says it. So if I quote something that is true in order to make a point, then it really doesn't matter who said it, whether they were a Buddhist, an atheist, or a space alien! On my own website, for instance, I have quoted Oscar Wilde, who said: "Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory." Does this link me in any way to homosexuality? Hardly.

Christians as far back as the first century were quoting pagans in hopes of communicating the truths of the Gospel. They saw that unbelievers, including the Greek philosophers, had made astute observations about God and possessed some truths consistent with Christianity. In the Gospel of John, for instance, we find the Greek word logos (“Word”) being used to describe Jesus. Logos was a Greek philosophical term that represented "reason" as a sort of bridge between the unreachable God and earthly matter. Hence, Jesus, as the eternal logos, is the bridge between God and man.

Like John, Paul the apostle also quoted various pagans in his attempts to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the unbelieving world. The following is excerpted from my book Rick Warren and the Purpose that Drives Him.

Are we now going to say that John and Paul can (or should be) tied to Greek paganism? I don't think so.