Unlike evangelicals, orthodox Lutherans (as do all orthodox Churches) would question the “literal” interpretation of a passage of Scripture whose “literal” meaning was never once mentioned in the writings of the Early Church Fathers.

For instance the Rapture. Certain passages of Scripture certainly sound as if they support a sudden, secret taking up of living believers into the air to meet Christ, but there is zero evidence in the writings of not only the Early Church but of ANY ONE in the Church until the Plymouth Brethren in England preached this interpretation in the 1830′s .

So to orthodox Christians, even to Lutherans who’s founder made famous the statement “sola Scriptura”, we would not accept the literal interpretation of a passage as “Gospel” unless it had support in the writings of the Church Fathers. When Luther and his followers proclaimed “Sola Scriptura” to the world in the 1500′s, they did not mean, “Toss out the writings of the ‘Catholic’ church fathers, we will only accept OUR current fifteenth century, western-European, UNDERSTANDING of the literal interpretation of the Bible as our sole authority for Christian doctrine.

Again, to Luther and to orthodox Lutherans today, the Bible is the final authority, over and above Popes, Councils, Church Fathers, AND contemporary, individual interpretation. However, the literal interpretation often cannot be understood without cultural, literary, and social context…and we can primarily only obtain this context from contemporaneous writings.

Again, I must emphasize the critical difference between orthodox Christians and evangelicals: the foundation of an evangelical Christian’s faith is the inerrancy of the Bible. This is because Jesus and how he agrees with THEIR doctrine of salvation can ONLY be found in the Bible. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of evangelicals will not allow an appeal to extra-biblical texts as having any authority in helping us to understand the meaning of a passage of Scripture. The Bible for these Christians is the ONLY authority to establish Christian doctrine, so therefore the ultimate authority on the meaning of Scripture is…the individual evangelical reading the text.

Just to be clear, I and many other orthodox Lutherans, divide Christianity along these lines:

1. Roman Catholic
2. Eastern Orthodox
3. orthodox Lutherans
4. conservative Reformed (we include most Baptists and evangelicals in this group)
5. Liberal Protestants (includes liberal Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc.)