LDS Priesthoods Not Found In The Writings Of The Early Church Fathers

[dzheremi]

If Peter had passed his keys to the Antiochian bishop, that man would have not continued to be a bishop, but would have taken on the title of apostle, unless Peter only ordained him as a bishop, and kept the keys of the apostleship with him as he went to Rome.

We believe the same thing happened in Rome and that Peter ordained Linus to the office of bishop, but not to the office of apostle.

There is no such thing as "office of apostle", though. That's something your religion made up.

 

[Peter1000]

It would be really helpful if Mormons would stop trying to force Christianity into their restorationist 'prophet/apostle matrix' or whatever, as though any actually-existing church should have to fit into the made-up requirements for being the true Church that Mormonism has made up to place itself in a higher position than the lowly Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant churches.

For Orthodox Christians, we have the same prophets and apostles as you'll find in the scriptures, since we are Christians. There is no indication anywhere in early Christianity itself that there needed to be a continuing line of apostles and prophets in order to testify to the validity of the Church or whatever; in fact, the more common opinion was and is that the age of public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, and what we have received since is to strengthen us in the faith that was once delivered to the saints. ('Saints' in this context meaning Christians, not Mormons.) This is through the guidance of the Holy Spirit -- the One God Who also guided our fathers and masters the apostles and the disciples into all truth, including in the writing of the Holy Scriptures -- but it is not anything new, so it's not 'revelation' in the sense that Mormons would use that word when talking about, say, the D&C. This is why you don't see any additions to the scriptures since a long time ago in Eastern Christianity, even though the Christian East (unlike the Western churches) never officially closed its canon. There's not a sense of needing to add anything to what we have received.

The people who came with something new (e.g., Marcion, Montanus and his prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla, Sabellius, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, etc.) are condemned for having done so, as they did not hold to the faith that was once delivered to the saints, nor sought to strengthen themselves and others in it, but instead came with their own foreign messages which they said they received from God, but which did not comport with the Old and New Testaments, which is the test according to the ancient witness of actual Christian saints such as St. Jerome (writing below to his friend Marcella in 385, after the Montanists had begun pestering the Christians in Rome):

If, then, the apostle Peter, upon whom the Lord has founded the Church, has expressly said that the prophecy and promise of the Lord were then and there fulfilled, how can we claim another fulfilment for ourselves? If the Montanists reply that Philip's four daughters prophesied at a later date, and that a prophet is mentioned named Agabus, and that in the partition of the spirit, prophets are spoken of as well as apostles, teachers and others, and that Paul himself prophesied many things concerning heresies still future, and the end of the world; we tell them that we do not so much reject prophecy— for this is attested by the passion of the Lord — as refuse to receive prophets whose utterances fail to accord with the Scriptures old and new.​

I am absolutely positive you are right, that it was the more common opinion, that public revelation ended with the death of the last apostles. That is a sure sign of apostacy that public revelation ceased. That the bishops were no longer receiving revelation as to how to grow and administer the church is the exact problem.

 

[Peter1000]

There is no such thing as "office of apostle", though. That's something your religion made up.

Whether you call it an office, a position or just straight apostle is irrelevant. If you don't have living apostles in your church you cannot do the following:

1) the membership of the church cannot be perfected.
2) the work of the ministry stops. (no baptisms etc,)
3) you cannot edify the member of the church.
4) we will never come to a unity within the church.
5) we will never know the true knowledge of the Son of God, of his perfection and the stature of Christ's fulness.

And this is what would happen to us if we lost our living apostles:

We would be tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.

Boy, does this bible scripture nail it right on the spot. That is why we have thousands of Christian churches now because we have been tossed to and fro and carried away with every wind of doctrine by crafty men who have deceived.


Here is the bible scripture that says this so you will not think I made it up.
Ephesians 4:11-14 King James Version (KJV)
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

 

[chevyontheriver]

To imply that popes are something other than bishops is to subscribe (unknowingly, in your case) to Roman Catholic ecclesiology, and if you're going to do that you might as well just be a Roman Catholic, since you're already accepting of their take on history anyway (and that same take is greatly at variance with Mormonism).

I hate to put in a contrary word to you but Catholic ecclesiology knows popes are bishops.

 

[chevyontheriver]

So are Popes bishops or prophets?

Bishops. And bishops have the prophetic role, and the apostolic role, with the pope in Rome as first among equals. Popes and bishops and priests have the priesthood, with bishops (and popes, because popes are bishops) having the fullness of that priesthood.

 

[chevyontheriver]

gates of hell = sin's power over the world

Once Jesus paid the price for all mankind, the gates were torn off their hinges. They have no more power over humanity.

The Biblical citation about the gates of hell has it that those gates will not prevail against the Church. Doesn't say much about the gates of hell having no power against humanity. In fact it doesn't say that the prevailing Church will not suffer even while prevailing. Just that the gates of hell will not prevail (against the Church).

Matthew 16:18
English Standard Version
18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

 

[dzheremi]

I hate to put in a contrary word to you but Catholic ecclesiology knows popes are bishops.

Here is definitely not the place for disagreements between Christians, but in Orthodox ecclesiology there is no bishop who cannot be disciplined by force by the Holy Synod if that is deemed necessary, including the most senior bishop/patriarch/Pope who by right chairs that same synod.

Meanwhile, at the first Vatican Council in 1870, the following was pronounced (apologies for the formatting and bold; it is here as it is at the link):

1. Since the Roman pontiff, by the divine right of the apostolic primacy, governs the whole church, we likewise teach and declare that
   • he is the supreme judge of the faithful [52] , and that
   • in all cases which fall under ecclesiastical jurisdiction recourse may be had to his judgment [53] .
   • The sentence of the apostolic see (than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone,
   • nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon [54] . And so
   • they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as if this were an authority superior to the Roman pontiff.
2. So, then,
   • if anyone says that
     • the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and
       • not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and this
       • not only in matters of
         • faith and morals, but also in those which concern the
         • discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that
     • he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that
     • this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful:
     let him be anathema.

---

I will leave it up to the readers of the thread to determine if this sounds like the rights and responsibilities conferred upon bishops/patriarchs in their respective non-Catholic churches. I present it here not to start an argument but to give an example of the kind of thing that I had in mind to substantiate my earlier point concerning the RC stance on your Pope. These are all very much unlike what we say concerning our Pope in the Coptic Orthodox Church (who does not have universal jurisdiction over all churches, and whose authority is definitely not greater than that of an ecumenical council; it's not even greater than the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church in particular, the deposing of Pope Yusab II as recently as the 1950s bearing witness).

I don't know that this necessarily precludes any RC from understanding the Pope of Rome to also be a bishop (i.e., He has his own see over which he presides, for sure), but again, things like the above indicate that it goes quite a bit beyond that, at least relative to the other 'Papal' churches.

So...okay.

 

[He is the way]

Bishops. And bishops have the prophetic role, and the apostolic role, with the pope in Rome as first among equals. Popes and bishops and priests have the priesthood, with bishops (and popes, because popes are bishops) having the fullness of that priesthood.

Bishops are not apostles neither are apostles called bishops. High priests have the Melchizedek Priesthood, but priests have the Aaronic priesthood. In the Bible bishops were not called Popes or prophets. There were at least two high priests when Jesus was on the earth.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Bishops are not apostles neither are apostles called bishops. High priests have the Melchizedek Priesthood, but priests have the Aaronic priesthood. In the Bible bishops were not called Popes or prophets. There were at least two high priests when Jesus was on the earth.

wife is home, my only post for now

"
For example, in an excursus in his commentary on Philippians, J. B. Lightfoot expanded on why he believed “elder” and “overseer” are synonymous terms in the New Testament. He confidently states,

It is a fact now generally recognised by theologians of all shades of opinion, that in the language of the New Testament the same officer in the Church is called indifferently ‘bishop’ (episkopos) and ‘elder’ or ‘presbyter’ (presbuteros)."
Hierarchy in the Church?

1 Peter 5:1
The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:

Peter is an Apostle and Elder. The Greek word for Elder as you can see in the top quote is what a Bishop is in the New Testament.

Thus, Elder = Bishop and Peter being an Apostle is Both a Bishop and an Apostle.

Good Night Friend and To All a Good Night,
Daniel

 

[chevyontheriver]

Bishops are not apostles neither are apostles called bishops. High priests have the Melchizedek Priesthood, but priests have the Aaronic priesthood. In the Bible bishops were not called Popes or prophets. There were at least two high priests when Jesus was on the earth.

Nobody answered my question about how to compare and contrast 'the Twelve' with 'the apostles'. The reason I ask is that Barnabas and Paul (and some others) are called apostles but are not part of the Twelve. Answering that would go a long way to answering your issue in saying bishops are not apostles.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Here is definitely not the place for disagreements between Christians, but ....

Right.

We shouldn't be at odds over this thread but I see it beginning to happen. The LDS scarcely knows of the existence of Orthodoxy, but they know they can't abide by the continued existence of any part of original Christianity. Through this thread I have tried to present the existence of the Catholic faith or the existence of the Orthodox faiths as something that invalidates the claims of Joseph Smith. I don't know whether Joseph Smith ever ran across an Orthodox church. I doubt he actually ran across a Catholic Church before he decided that all the religious groups in his upstate New York town were all wrong. In any event they don't have a handle on you guys. They can trot out this and that thing about Catholics but they don't know what to say about the Orthodox. So they go back to complaining about Catholics. You don't have to get all bent out of shape about that, but exploit the opportunity. They complain about hundreds of massacres ordered by the popes (and way after their date for total apostasy anyway, if they even could be shown to have happened).

 

[Peter1000]

It would be really helpful if Mormons would stop trying to force Christianity into their restorationist 'prophet/apostle matrix' or whatever, as though any actually-existing church should have to fit into the made-up requirements for being the true Church that Mormonism has made up to place itself in a higher position than the lowly Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant churches.

For Orthodox Christians, we have the same prophets and apostles as you'll find in the scriptures, since we are Christians. There is no indication anywhere in early Christianity itself that there needed to be a continuing line of apostles and prophets in order to testify to the validity of the Church or whatever; in fact, the more common opinion was and is that the age of public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, and what we have received since is to strengthen us in the faith that was once delivered to the saints. ('Saints' in this context meaning Christians, not Mormons.) This is through the guidance of the Holy Spirit -- the One God Who also guided our fathers and masters the apostles and the disciples into all truth, including in the writing of the Holy Scriptures -- but it is not anything new, so it's not 'revelation' in the sense that Mormons would use that word when talking about, say, the D&C. This is why you don't see any additions to the scriptures since a long time ago in Eastern Christianity, even though the Christian East (unlike the Western churches) never officially closed its canon. There's not a sense of needing to add anything to what we have received.

The people who came with something new (e.g., Marcion, Montanus and his prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla, Sabellius, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, etc.) are condemned for having done so, as they did not hold to the faith that was once delivered to the saints, nor sought to strengthen themselves and others in it, but instead came with their own foreign messages which they said they received from God, but which did not comport with the Old and New Testaments, which is the test according to the ancient witness of actual Christian saints such as St. Jerome (writing below to his friend Marcella in 385, after the Montanists had begun pestering the Christians in Rome):

If, then, the apostle Peter, upon whom the Lord has founded the Church, has expressly said that the prophecy and promise of the Lord were then and there fulfilled, how can we claim another fulfilment for ourselves? If the Montanists reply that Philip's four daughters prophesied at a later date, and that a prophet is mentioned named Agabus, and that in the partition of the spirit, prophets are spoken of as well as apostles, teachers and others, and that Paul himself prophesied many things concerning heresies still future, and the end of the world; we tell them that we do not so much reject prophecy— for this is attested by the passion of the Lord — as refuse to receive prophets whose utterances fail to accord with the Scriptures old and new.​

I am absolutely possitive that the more common opinion was: public revelation ended with the death of the last apostles. That is a sure sign of apostasy, that public revelation ceased. That the bishops were no longer receiving revelation as to how to grow and administer the chuch.

 

[Peter1000]

Right.

We shouldn't be at odds over this thread but I see it beginning to happen. The LDS scarcely knows of the existence of Orthodoxy, but they know they can't abide by the continued existence of any part of original Christianity. Through this thread I have tried to present the existence of the Catholic faith or the existence of the Orthodox faiths as something that invalidates the claims of Joseph Smith. I don't know whether Joseph Smith ever ran across an Orthodox church. I doubt he actually ran across a Catholic Church before he decided that all the religious groups in his upstate New York town were all wrong. In any event they don't have a handle on you guys. They can trot out this and that thing about Catholics but they don't know what to say about the Orthodox. So they go back to complaining about Catholics. You don't have to get all bent out of shape about that, but exploit the opportunity. They complain about hundreds of massacres ordered by the popes (and way after their date for total apostasy anyway, if they even could be shown to have happened).

The reason we do not give much attention to the "Orthodox" is because we see them having split off or schismed with the mother church, which we see as the Catholic.

If Catholic held the keys and the priests of the Catholic were endowed with revelation from Jesus, then if you give up your Catholic priesthood, what power and authority are you working under? It is a false priesthood.

So the OO schism happened around 450ad, and the EO happened about 1054ad. We believe both gave up the true priesthood for some worldly power grab. So there is nothing to really say to the "Orthodox". They are just out. But remember God has an alternative method whereby all of the righteous peope will still be given all that it takes to be saved. He did not abandon them, their leaders did.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I am absolutely possitive that the more common opinion was: public revelation ended with the death of the last apostles. That is a sure sign of apostasy, that public revelation ceased. That the bishops were no longer receiving revelation as to how to grow and administer the chuch.

No. The closure of public revelation is a sign that the faith once delivered to the apostles will not be transmogrified into something else in later generations. We have a fixed public revelation, and that fixed revelation judges all subsequent opinions. It's not like in one generation we can look down on Black people and then we get a new public revelation and then they're OK. Maybe a new revelation comes along and they're not OK again. You couldn't rule that out.

We have one fixed and completed body of revelation. Which means that with only a little wiggle room for development of doctrine, we are stuck with the doctrines of the early Church. Which is a great and good thing. We can't invent anything truly new. You can. We can't. To me that is a sure sign of truth, that the Church is the pillar of truth, not changing whenever someone has a new idea.

But that does not mean that private revelation has ceased. That continues. But we don't record every last instance of it to record in an ever expanding cyclopedia of revelation that all have to believe. That's a distinction that you missed, the distinction between public and private revelation. Private revelation is judged by public revelation, by Tradition, and by the teaching authority of the Church. If it passes the tests it can be labeled as not injurious to the faith. But never binding on the faith of others. And we have many such private revelations that have been found passable. The difference is we do not listen to every supposed new revelation even if it came from the lips of an angel. Here's Galatians 1:8

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

We hold to that. And the way we hold to it is to test all things and only hold to what is good. And the test of what is good is what is in accord with the closed canon of Scripture, not with what somebody claims authority over you claims as new teaching. Which is why Catholics, and the Orthodox hold to Scripture and Tradition and the Teaching Authority of the Church, all three, as a bulwark against inventive theology. We're old school. And that's no sign of apostasy. It's a sign of fidelity.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

The idea that there were no popes in the bible is weak, but the idea that a bishop can take upon himself the title of apostle, or that the bishops succeeded the apostles and had their world-wide authority to administer the church is the first sign of the apostasy.

Why was Constantine consistently being bothered by the bishops to make decisions concerning the church and their problems. And after Constantine, for hundreds of years, the emperor was the final jurisdiction for major problems between bishops. It is because bishops did not take the place of the apostles. The emperors tried to step into the breach, but without the Holy Spirit, they just made a bigger mess of the whole thing.

So again, one of the first signs of apostasy was the apostles were killed and Jesus finally stopped replacing them.

IOW if you do not have apostles in your church with authority to administer the church with an unbreakable line to the original apostles you are in apostasy.
And a bishop is not an apostle.

As we’ve already established it is up to God to appoint Apostles in order to preserve the Church from apostasy. You cannot blame us for what your God should have done if there is a standard of preserving truth. Evidently the Mormon God had decided that the world wasn’t worth it, that his people should be abandoned to their sin and to error. That they should forever be denied the highest celestial reward in heaven.

We’re at that point of the conversation I mentioned in my first post. You’ll continue to repeat your arguments as we respond to them. Now you’ll double down on blaming Christians. Then afterwards you’ll say that because we lack apostles we apostatized and the debate will go on ad infinitum at this rate.

The problem I see is obvious. No one here is arguing that Bishops took the place of the Apostles. The Apostles were a unique office and one which they obviously didn’t intend to continue. It cannot be argued reasonably that there was no opportunity for there to be no more Apostles appointed because John never died. Peter also admitted there were plenty of qualified individuals who could have been made Apostles.

To argue that they would have all been killed or not listened to is a weak argument. Not even all Christians were killed in the Roman Empire, this despite their being subjected to persecution during the reigns of certain Emperors. Church leaders were always targeted yet the Churches found the means to continue in the hardest circumstances. There were Bishops of Rome in the heart of the Imperium since Paul and if they could survive persecution why couldn’t God’s anointed Apostles survive?

Again, it’s a stunningly weak argument that assumes such a negative view of history. Oh the past was violent, the Prophets couldn’t possibly have survived in those conditions? Only in the glorious republic of America can God and his message thrive!

In your previous response I didn’t bother responding to, you said Apostles were not listened to post John’s death. Well, is it any wonder when the majority of so called Apostles were false Apostles? Montanism is the most prominent example and even they managed to survive until the sixth century according to Wikipedia. Many Gnostic and heretical groups survived and Mormonism couldn’t have competed with any of them? This doesn’t exactly argue for the robustness of your religion if it couldn’t handle the second century.

 

[dzheremi]

The reason we do not give much attention to the "Orthodox" is because we see them having split off or schismed with the mother church, which we see as the Catholic.

If Catholic held the keys and the priests of the Catholic were endowed with revelation from Jesus, then if you give up your Catholic priesthood, what power and authority are you working under? It is a false priesthood.

So the OO schism happened around 450ad, and the EO happened about 1054ad. We believe both gave up the true priesthood for some worldly power grab. So there is nothing to really say to the "Orthodox". They are just out. But remember God has an alternative method whereby all of the righteous peope will still be given all that it takes to be saved. He did not abandon them, their leaders did.

Oh yes, the great 'worldly power grab' of rejecting Chalcedon, which put the Egyptians, Syrians, and Axumites (and later the Armenians) out of communion with the imperial Church!

Because that's the way you get worldly power: by rejecting what the empire around you is doing!

I swear, Peter, you couldn't sound more ignorant of what actually happened in history if you were literally trying to. Please stop trying to interpret history that your cult has nothing to do with and gives you no grasp of (since Mormonism teaches its 'great apostasy' theory in lieu of history). You are only revealing yourself to be massively and by this point purposely ignorant, to put it in the nice way.

 

[dzheremi]

Also, everybody notice the double-bind involved here: In the Mormon understanding of Christian Church history, they don't have to pay attention to the Orthodox because the Orthodox supposedly 'broke off' from the Catholic Church. So it was bad that they did that/it robs them of whatever legitimate authority they may have had (the "keys" of the priesthood, according to Peter above), since they split the Church.

But also in the Mormon understanding of Church history, the Catholic Church was itself the evidence of the great apostasy, made obvious through its nefarious behavior such as ordering hundreds of massacres in the Middle Ages and all this. So it was bad if anyone stayed in the Catholic Church.

You can't leave, but also you can't stay. There's basically nothing you can do. The apostasy happens anyway, because no matter what you do it will be used as 'proof' of the 'great apostasy'.

And lest we forget, the entire reason for the Mormon religion existing in the first place is the supposed reality of the 'great apostasy'. This is literally all they have, and it's built upon such logic so faulty as to make its actual reality unfalsifiable...which is another way of saying it's not provable. (Since its existence isn't dependent on what actually happens/happened.)

I mean, say whatever you will about the schisms Peter brings up without knowledge of them. People may disagree as to their reasons or their dating or whatever (e.g., was the East-West schism between the Chalcedonians really in effect in 1054, or is it better to date it to 1204, with the sacking of Constantinople? Is the schism at Chalcedon really best dated to 451, or is it better to date it to 506 when the Armenians rejected it, or 536, the last date when the Copts and the Greeks in Egypt shared the same patriarch, HH Pope Theodosius I?), but both sides of them agree that they happened. They're a settled fact of history by now.

This is very unlike the Mormon 'great apostasy', which is not shown at any point to have definitely happened, hence it is not spoken of or written about by historians anywhere outside of Mormon polemics, which take its existence to be more axiomatic than actual. (So they don't have actual dates or events corresponding to those dates where they can say it definitely happened like I have for my examples above.)

 

[He is the way]

Also, everybody notice the double-bind involved here: In the Mormon understanding of Christian Church history, they don't have to pay attention to the Orthodox because the Orthodox supposedly 'broke off' from the Catholic Church. So it was bad that they did that/it robs them of whatever legitimate authority they may have had (the "keys" of the priesthood, according to Peter above), since they split the Church.

But also in the Mormon understanding of Church history, the Catholic Church was itself the evidence of the great apostasy, made obvious through its nefarious behavior such as ordering hundreds of massacres in the Middle Ages and all this. So it was bad if anyone stayed in the Catholic Church.

You can't leave, but also you can't stay. There's basically nothing you can do. The apostasy happens anyway, because no matter what you do it will be used as 'proof' of the 'great apostasy'.

And lest we forget, the entire reason for the Mormon religion existing in the first place is the supposed reality of the 'great apostasy'. This is literally all they have, and it's built upon such logic so faulty as to make its actual reality unfalsifiable...which is another way of saying it's not provable. (Since its existence isn't dependent on what actually happens/happened.)

I mean, say whatever you will about the schisms Peter brings up without knowledge of them. People may disagree as to their reasons or their dating or whatever (e.g., was the East-West schism between the Chalcedonians really in effect in 1054, or is it better to date it to 1204, with the sacking of Constantinople? Is the schism at Chalcedon really best dated to 451, or is it better to date it to 506 when the Armenians rejected it, or 536, the last date when the Copts and the Greeks in Egypt shared the same patriarch, HH Pope Theodosius I?), but both sides of them agree that they happened. They're a settled fact of history by now.

This is very unlike the Mormon 'great apostasy', which is not shown at any point to have definitely happened, hence it is not spoken of or written about by historians anywhere outside of Mormon polemics, which take its existence to be more axiomatic than actual. (So they don't have actual dates or events corresponding to those dates where they can say it definitely happened like I have for my examples above.)

Does it really matter when people turned away from loving God? When people stop loving God and turn away from His commandments of LOVE they don't have the Holy Ghost to guide them. They are then left to kick against the pricks. That is what happened to the Pharisees. They thought they were living the law perfectly, but they sought the honor and glory of man, not the LOVE of God. The fruits of LOVE are humility, charity, kindness, virtue, honesty, benevolence, long suffering, hope, faith, and obedience.

 

[Peter1000]

No. The closure of public revelation is a sign that the faith once delivered to the apostles will not be transmogrified into something else in later generations. We have a fixed public revelation, and that fixed revelation judges all subsequent opinions. It's not like in one generation we can look down on Black people and then we get a new public revelation and then they're OK. Maybe a new revelation comes along and they're not OK again. You couldn't rule that out

.

This is the problem. To have a fixed public revelation is the downfall of the church. I do agree that the church must have a bulwark of doctrine that cannot be trifled with.

In our church, we have doctrines that are permanent, and then we have policies that can change as the world changes.

For instance there will never be a time when we will say you can join the church but you do not have to be baptized. The doctrine of baptism is fixed in our doctrinal bulwark. There are many doctrines that are fixed and will not change.

Then we have policies such as how many Sunday School teachers will we have in each ward? This number can change according to all kinds of factors. How old must a boy or girl be to serve a mission, etc., etc., etc.

Plural marriage was a policy. The Lord introduced plural marriage as a stop gap measure to take care of sisters who lost husbands to persecution. Plural marriage was also introduced to build up the numbers of people in the church quicker than the normal monogamy marriages would have done.

The Lord was well aware that this system was not going to last forever, and so we do not consider it a doctrine. In fact in the D&C section 132 the Lord tells JS that marriage is to be between one man and one woman, unless instructed by the Lord to have more than one wife. So if you were to call marriage a doctrine, this is what the doctrine is: Marriage is between one man and one woman, unless the Lord instructs otherwise, for his purposes, and he decides when to practice and when not to practice. He decided to allow plural marriage in the OT, but did not allow it in the NT. Why, you will have to ask the Lord.

Your public revelation (fixed) is like our doctrine (fixed), and your private revelation (changing) is like our policies (changing).

We have one fixed and completed body of revelation. Which means that with only a little wiggle room for development of doctrine, we are stuck with the doctrines of the early Church. Which is a great and good thing. We can't invent anything truly new. You can. We can't. To me that is a sure sign of truth, that the Church is the pillar of truth, not changing whenever someone has a new idea.

I would suggest your fixed and completed body of revelation is contained in the bible, and that is why there are thousands of Christian churches in the world today, because every church has it own fixed body of revelation that they adhere to as their interpretation of the bible. Which of all the churches has the true fixed revelations?

The difference is we do not listen to every supposed new revelation even if it came from the lips of an angel. Here's Galatians 1:8

Are you that astute as to know when an angel is from God and when an angel is of satan? What is your formula for knowing?

Which is why Catholics, and the Orthodox hold to Scripture and Tradition and the Teaching Authority of the Church, all three, as a bulwark against inventive theology. We're old school. And that's no sign of apostasy. It's a sign of fidelity.

Then why is the Catholic and Orthodox not one church? Why are they many? Because the interpretation of the public revelation is different. Some or all of the churches do not believe in the true public revelation. That is why we all need living apostles to keep us on the right track and unify our churches so we are not children being tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by cunning men that deceive.

 

[Peter1000]

Also, everybody notice the double-bind involved here: In the Mormon understanding of Christian Church history, they don't have to pay attention to the Orthodox because the Orthodox supposedly 'broke off' from the Catholic Church. So it was bad that they did that/it robs them of whatever legitimate authority they may have had (the "keys" of the priesthood, according to Peter above), since they split the Church.

But also in the Mormon understanding of Church history, the Catholic Church was itself the evidence of the great apostasy, made obvious through its nefarious behavior such as ordering hundreds of massacres in the Middle Ages and all this. So it was bad if anyone stayed in the Catholic Church.

You can't leave, but also you can't stay. There's basically nothing you can do. The apostasy happens anyway, because no matter what you do it will be used as 'proof' of the 'great apostasy'.

And lest we forget, the entire reason for the Mormon religion existing in the first place is the supposed reality of the 'great apostasy'. This is literally all they have, and it's built upon such logic so faulty as to make its actual reality unfalsifiable...which is another way of saying it's not provable. (Since its existence isn't dependent on what actually happens/happened.)

I mean, say whatever you will about the schisms Peter brings up without knowledge of them. People may disagree as to their reasons or their dating or whatever (e.g., was the East-West schism between the Chalcedonians really in effect in 1054, or is it better to date it to 1204, with the sacking of Constantinople? Is the schism at Chalcedon really best dated to 451, or is it better to date it to 506 when the Armenians rejected it, or 536, the last date when the Copts and the Greeks in Egypt shared the same patriarch, HH Pope Theodosius I?), but both sides of them agree that they happened. They're a settled fact of history by now.

This is very unlike the Mormon 'great apostasy', which is not shown at any point to have definitely happened, hence it is not spoken of or written about by historians anywhere outside of Mormon polemics, which take its existence to be more axiomatic than actual. (So they don't have actual dates or events corresponding to those dates where they can say it definitely happened like I have for my examples above.)

Your dates of schisms are dates that correspond to continued and deeper apostasy. Thank you.

Just tell me, in 451 when the OO split from the RC, which church was the true mother church? Or which church was the true Christian church. Since you think you are the Orthodox church you must believe that you teach the word with more truth than the RC, or why split?

So do you call yourself the true church of Jesus Christ? And if not, why not?