Another 95 Theses

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Another 95 Theses

12: The church teaches almost nothing about Laestadius, and its members would be shocked at his sermons (almost all of them post-conversion), which were harsh and crude, full of legalism, pagan superstition, and sexual imagery and content.

14: The ecstatic visionary mysticism that Laestadius fostered is utterly foreign to what people experience in the church today, yet he considered it an essential indication of “living faith.”

94: Contrary to the church’s doctrinal requirements, there is no historical evidence whatsoever for any special group of believers passing along the keys of absolution in an unbroken chain from Jesus and the disciples; rather it is clear that there was a slow evolution of Christian thought—over many painful centuries—about the nature of sin, whether it might be forgiven at all after baptism, and the limits and means for obtaining such forgiveness.