Work launched on guide to reading, understanding the Bible

Shrimp here: Nod, nod, wink, wink, work under way, alright! Work to end our way of life as we know it (or remember it fondly).

Please don't take this the wrong way Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and Professor Craig Nessan. I am sure you are principled human beings, love Jesus and all that, and you really believe in the causes for which you are true crusaders. I am glad you want to feed the world and understand that part of human righteousness. However, you are about to make a mess of hermeneutics in the Lutheran church and give unpricipled nut jobs an authority to point to, so they can give the National Man Boy Love Association permission to meet in the church basement.

And, because almost no one can see this except us crustacaens, The Lutheran magazine happily is pressed into serive in its April 2006 edition. Do read every word carefully. You humans can still read, right?

"Work is under way on a major resource to help ELCA members read the Bible with understanding and in a Lutheran approach, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson told the Conference of Bishops gathered March 2-7 in Lake Geneva, Wis.

“Book of Faith: Lutherans Read the Bible” will be developed over the coming year with an anticipated introduction at synod assemblies in spring 2007, the bishop said.

“We are increasingly a biblically illiterate church,” he said, one in need of such a guide.

The 2005 Churchwide Assembly authorized the project as an examination of how “word and witness go together,” Hanson said.

To help the bishops, Craig L. Nessan, academic dean and professor of contextual theology at Wartburg Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, presented a 20-page paper, “The Authority of Scripture.” He noted that biblical literalism developed in the late 19th century as a way of defending the authority of Scripture against other interpretations.

Today, he said, “in an era where many people are searching for something reliable to stand upon, literalist teaching about the Bible and its authority has proven very attractive and durable.”

Martin Luther took a different view, Nessan said, quoting him: “It is not enough simply to look and see whether this is God’s word, whether God has said it; rather we must look and see to whom it has been spoken, whether it fits us. That makes all the difference between night and day."

For the sake of the people of God, somebody stop these people. Go here to verify that this butchery and misdirection and misuse of Luther actually happened in a publication that has Luther as the base of its name. More importantly, go here to read the paper that Hanson had Nessan present to the Council of Bishops (damage has already been done).

Yes, damage has already been done, but if this thing becomes an official document of the ELCA, said body is doomed.

Revisionists have hammer and tongs. They are shaping the ELCA to fit their dreams of the perfect social agenda agency. As someone said over at alpb, Hanson will be able to do what Griwold only dreamed of...