National Lutheran CORE Gathering

Click "Comments" for news of the recent Lutheran CORE national gathering, a group of which the EMN is a part. One of our EMN members attended and it will be good to hear his views as well. BTW, you'll see that at one point the group was asked to move into "three working groups, depending on whether they perceived their synods as being strongly orthodox, moderate (inconsistent in positions and practice) or strongly revisionist." Where would you put our synod?
Also, check the resources section below. I've added a list of links to web sites with info on the reliability of the gospels from the current edition of Christianity Today. Maybe we should have another one with a list of sites that address the issue of Biblical authority in general. What would you suggest?

Irreconcilable Differences?

There is a good article from the NY Times about a book published by Professor James L. Kugel, formerly of Harvard and now teaching in Israel, called "How to Read the Bible". The book runs 800 pages but the article is a nice description of the professor's belief that modern scholarship has resulted in a focus on "the raw materials that made up the Bible", an approach that misses the point of the "real Bible". While the professor points to how we approach the Bible as being more important than the raw material, Christians would add that the basis for an approach to the Bible that is "real" is the Holy Spirit. That is, that the Bible is not interpreted, instead it's message is discerned. At any rate, the thing that interested me is the notion, already raised in the early stages of the ELCA's Bible reading initiative, that modern scholarship's concentration on "the raw materials" and orthodox views of the Bible based on the active presence of God through the materials are, as the title of the article states, "Irreconcilable Differences in Bible's Interpretations". It's worth thinking about and discussing. You can find the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/us/15beliefs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin