There is no such thing as any doctrinal statement or theological system that you have any rational grounds whatsoever by which to falsify. Falsify! Forget falsification, you've just undermined any ability to even vaguely refute any wild-eyed wack job's doctrinal claim.
If David Koresh wants to have sex with your daughter and makes some freakishly idiotic "argument" from the bible, you have NOTHING but you own personal opinions and emotion reactions with which to combat his theology.
That is the result and the consequence of such doctrinal policies. What are you even doing here if this is what you believe is how the bible should be handled? Who is it, exactly, that gets to decide what is to be taken literally and what isn't? Is it you? Is it everyone? Is it just whoever happens to be reading the bible who gets to decide for themselves and on the fly whether their going to take one passage to mean what it says and another as some allegorical contrivance that no longer has any relevancy to our modern society? Who gets to decide, MWinther, and by what standard?
When literalist Christians tell me to just open the Bible and read it, as if the truth were simply written there in black and white, I can't help thinking they must be joking. Lutheran scholars have never been able to agree on biblical interpretation, even though the Reformation principle says Scripture alone (
Sola Scriptura) is the norm. Sola Scriptura says that Scripture is the final authority, not that Scripture is self‑interpreting in a way that produces uniformity. Once you remove a magisterium, every theologian becomes his own interpreter, every pastor becomes his own exegete, and every synod becomes its own doctrinal center.
The result is not unity but plurality. This is why Lutheranism fractured almost immediately after Luther's death. In fact, Lutherans disagreed from the beginning. Luther disagreed with Karlstadt on the Lord's Supper, images, liturgy, and the pace of reform. He disagreed with Melanchthon on free will, the law, the sacraments, and the role of reason. The conflict between Gnesio‑Lutherans vs. Philippists evolved into a full‑blown civil war inside Lutheranism.
Sola Scriptura
guarantees interpretive diversity, because Scripture is not a commentary on itself. It contains no inspired hermeneutical manual. These require interpretive decisions: law and gospel, wisdom and apocalyptic, narrative and poetry. Some read Scripture through a historical‑critical lens, some through a confessional‑dogmatic lens, some through a pietistic or charismatic lens, and some through a sacramental‑liturgical lens. Sola Scriptura does not adjudicate between these.
Human reason and experience inevitably enter the process. Even Luther admitted this when he said: "Scripture is clear, but not to us." What he means is that clarity is in the text, but the interpreter is clouded. Without a magisterium, the "final authority" becomes the interpreter. This is why Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anabaptism, and later evangelicalism all diverged despite claiming the same principle.
The irony is that Lutherans appeal to Scripture alone, but in reality they rely on confessions. Confessional Lutheranism insists that the Bible is the only norm, while the Confessions are the correct interpretation of the Bible. But this only shifts the problem: Who interprets the Confessions? Who decides what counts as "confessional"? Who adjudicates new doctrinal questions not addressed in the 16th century?
Thus the disagreements continue. Lutheranism claims Scripture alone, but in practice it operates with a thin, rationalized hermeneutic that suppresses the supernatural world of the Bible. The result is a tradition that
claims unity in Scripture but
lives in interpretive diversity.
For example, when it is asserted that the Flood narrative depicts a literal, global catastrophe, this contradicts most scholars of religion. Flood myths are widespread across the world and typically express the primordial fear that chaos might engulf the ordered world. The sea functions as a traditional symbol of chaos, as seen in the Gospel account of Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Ancient peoples lacked any notion of fixed natural laws; they believed that cosmic order depended on the ongoing favour of the gods. Hence the Aztecs offered sacrifices to ensure that the gods remained benevolent and that the sun would rise again. The underlying logic of the Flood myth is the fear that disorder will erupt when humanity violates divine commands. It carries a warning, one that remains worth taking seriously even today.
