I am reading volumes of church history by Jaroslav Pelikan, an eminent church historian. I just don't see where or when the apostasy was supposed to have taken place. What or when was the point of delineation? Can the Mormon church identify this break in the time line?

How does the LDS church get around the identity of the Church when Christ said that the gates of hell will not prevail against it?

Sorry, rogermartim, there is no answer to that question because it's all made up. I betcha even Tom Monson would be at a loss to explain.

The LDS aren't very good at giving an answer to this one. As a missionary, I felt the safest argument was to say that as soon as the apostles died the authority was gone. So, soon thereafter, the apostasy must have occurred. That avoided a discussion about Peter and Popes and Constantine and the gates of hell and all that which the LDS church never equipped any of us to discuss with Christians. You could never get an LDS authority to really nail this one down with any specificity.

But as a young missionary, I wondered a lot about this one too. I had companions who would tell people that it occurred with Constantine and assert that at that point the scriptures had been changed and the abominable creeds were adopted.

We were actually just pulling it all out of our butts because we didn't really know much history.

As far as "the gates of hell" not prevailing against "it" we would assert that ultimately Satan could not prevail against the LDS church and the restoration of revelation and authority or some such BS.

Yeah, but doesn't Mormon lore have it that John the Apostle, along with three BOM apostles, never died? That would kill that argument. Folks above are right; the Morg can't give a straight answer on that...

"I had companions who would tell people that it occurred with Constantine and assert that at that point the scriptures had been changed and the abominable creeds were adopted."

What is or was so abominable then vs now...especially with mormon church creed??

I'd love to be doing what you're doing--reading Pelikan's books. I'd also like to read some Brian Tierney and Roland Bainton.

The LDS church apparently had a rule that any baptism performed after AD 200 was presumed to be invalid, meaning that vicarious baptism was considered necessary. I think the death or disappearance of John, the last apostle, about AD 100 would be considered the point at which apostasy was inevitable, but it took a while for all the individuals, such as bishops, who had been ordained by apostles to die off.

It's too bad the current LDS officials and apologists can't embrace Origen, who lived until AD 253/254. As I understand it, he believed in preexistence and baptism for the dead. But he didn't have the "proper authority," so Mormons shouldn't read him, no matter how spiritual or persuasive he is. I'd like to read some Origen as well.

Origen believed a lot of stuff...and even castrated himself. I'm not sure he's the guy whose teachings I want to embrace.

Self-castration doesn't appeal to me either, but it's not so different from what the church asks of its missionaries and priesthood holders. I think Origen is closer to LDS theology than any other early church father.

Baptism for the dead was not something Origen believed in or practiced from anything I've read. He was quite Pauline- and Paul spoke against the Roman and Greek practices of cleansing their deads' souls through proxy water purification. JS's bad translation of the New Testament led him to believe Paul supported the practice. But we all know that in every other translation of the NT and the better translations of the NT speak against it. Proxy baptism would have been an abomination for all early Christians.

As for the apostasy- Talmage believed it was Linus, successor to Simon Peter in Rome who apostasized although gave no reason why. What we all need to understand is that the LDS process of succession was not modernized until after the reign of BY. Therefore the process of passing the priesthood keys through to the most senior apostle was not a part of the early Christian Church. Why wouldn't any of the bishops in Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Cairo, Corinth, Ephesus, etc. also claim authority? Well, because it didn't matter to them. It wasn't an issue until the Catholics made it one several hundred years after Linus (after the split of the Roman empire in two). This means that the whole basis for the LDS apostasy story have no foundation. Even Joseph Smith never spoke of authority as an issue until 1835 when he made up the restoration of the priesthood that he claimed occurred 6 years earlier but never spoke of it or wrote of it. I could go on, but I hate typing on my phone! Good night!

You're right, it wasn't baptism for the dead that Origen taught. Rather, it was a form of universalism. And I caught hints of reincarnation, maybe, but I'm still trying to confirm that.

He was quite Pauline?
I am guessing that was after the castration.

I don't know that we teach that.

Irenaeus (120 - 202 A.D.), bishop of Lyons, wrote 5 books commonly called "Against Heresies".

Copies of his books are available, and were used as part of the priesthood lessons in the early 60s.

"Apostasy to Restoration" by T. Edgar Lyon is a good reference book from an LDS perspective. It was the 1960 study manual for the priesthood meetings.

All very good comments.
Current LDS teaching indicates the year 96AD as the official beginning to the great apostasy since that's the year John was banished to patamos. There are some references to John's life in the "history of the church" by eusibius (300s) that are well worth reading about.

A basic understanding of the Early church is important as well. First be aware that many cities had christian churches. Communication was difficult hence the epistles. Every church had a father/bishop/pope what ever you want to call it. The pope of Rome won out because Rome was the biggest and most important city in the Empire and the popes began to have political power with the Romans officials. Peter never said Rome or the pope of Rome was special or anything. Catholic hierarchy with cardinals came later like in the 300s. Before that it was more like the American baptist church (unorganized).

Finally Mat 16:18 is pretty obvious no matter what the Lds think that Christ had in mind of building his church on Peter, which means "rock" in Latin. and the Catholic or "Universal" church is what he had in mind at the time. The catholic church is the mother church. whether protestants like it or not.

Around 1829.

Actually never. And the idea of the apostasy is not an invention of the Mormonism. It is a myth coming from the Protestant reformation, in particular anglican anti-Catholicism. To claim that the church needed a renewal they also had to claim that it had apostasized in some way. Among normal churches, that is outside of Mormonism, the traditional anti-Catholicism has largely been dropped by now.

The Hugh Nibley fan boys love to quote Origen and Irenaeus. As quoted by Nibley, of course, not that they would read the actual source. They are too contextless in Christian church history to understand them anyway.

I was taught that once the last Apostle died off, the Priesthood power was no longer on the earth and Christ's origin Gospel was lost from that point forward.

That is basically what we taught as I recall. But there is always that sticky issue of John never dying. Oh well. Mormonism is so full of contradictions it makes your head spin.

John never died??? That's the first I heard of that. What is the reasoning behind that for th mormon church?

According to the LDS church:

"The latter-day scriptures clarify that John did not die but was allowed to remain on the earth as a ministering servant until the time of the Lord’s second coming (John 21:20–23; 3 Ne. 28:6–7; D&C 7)."

Read "Restoring the Ancient Church" by Barry Bickmore. The basic argument is acceptable to Catholics. LOL.

The Great Apostasy happened early (according to things taught
early that contradict current LDS teachings) and it happened
very late (according to things written by Church Fathers later
that seem to fit with current LDS teachings).

Hard to pin down a date when you cherry-pick all your evidence
based on what seems useful to you.

pretty easy for me to answer. The day Christ died. That's when it began. Not being overly religious here but long ago I pretty well threw the old testament into the trash and everything after the first four gospels into the trash. To me, whether you believe in a Christ or not, following the simple things in there, you really can't go wrong and the world would be a lot better place if that's the only 4 books you ever read in your life. Everything else to me is mumbo jumbo coming from man's ideas.

About 600 BCE with the destruction of the the Israelite temple.

Around 4,000 BC.

When JS wrote the book of Mormon.

The group with which Sidney Rigdon had been associated, the "Restoration" movement, often called Campbellites, had decided that with the death of the last of the original apostles, the original Church went apostate. The Pilgrims had similar ideas. Hence, JS merely stole from these groups the idea of "restoration". The essential error was that Christianity not only evolved during the NT period but continued to evolve. There is no point in time that can choose. The concept of the "United Order" stemming from the Church in Jerusalem was previously used even by the Pilgrims and, of course, failed. Frankly, trying that was simply stupid. That did not even last throughout even NT times. One should note that Bennett persuaded Strang to try it! The intent was to destroy that off-shoot, Bennett knowing that Strang, like JS, was a charlatan.

The history of Christianity is one of evolution and reform, sometimes sects going off the deep end.

One should note that even the banishment of the cross was not new but was essentially done by those establishing the "Church of Christ". They also eschewed the celebration of Christmas as did the Pilgrims.

All attempts at "restoration" are doomed to failure because there was no single moment to choose as the correct one as even the organization of the NT church was constantly changing to meet changing circumstances.

"Church of Christ" is one of the splinter groups of the Campbellites. "Disciples of Christ" is another.

Smith definitely did not come up With the idea of a restoration. He pinched it from others.

The key difference is that the Church of Christ group believe in not using instrumental music while the Disciples of Christ do use instrumental music.

A careful study of early Christianity shows that what really happened, most likely, was that there never was a pure and right church. No one wrote about it until well after the supposed events of miracles, crucifixion and resurrection. Then each story, written not in Aramaic or Hebrew but Greek, got more detailed with each telling. More detailed, but also less accurate about places, history and contemporary facts. Sort of like someone making up a story! They ret-conned it. It's also easy to interpret it as a remix of other religious memes and tropes that existed then. Very early, there were dozens of Christian cults that in no way resembled modern concepts of the faith. The Christian faith we (and imaginative Joe Smith and friends) viewed is actually what it was after being forged by the Romans in subsequent centuries by killings and book-burnings. There is, in fact, good reason to believe that Jesus never existed, but was a myth.
The bible was Joe's primary inspiration. That detestable tome was compiled by committee centuries after, and competing texts and rejected gospels were agressively searched out and destroyed. What survived was a church that met political purposes. We'll thus never know the details of those earlier sects, any one of which could have been a purer form.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2014 09:29PM by rationalist01.