Questions for Loran and other TBM's who'd like to join in

[_Jersey Girl]

Loran,

I've decided to extract a comment you made and the question I asked out of an existing thread in order to isolate the topic for discussion. This thread is for the purpose of serious discussion that is to say, if you don't have a serious or thoughtful contribution to make, please do not post here. If a poster comes in here with off hand/off topic comments, I'm going to ask mods to move your posts. Thanks.

Loran

And the Church simply fell to pieces when this reached critical mass.

Jersey Girl

I want to know exactly when you think the falling apart of the church reached "critical mass".

_________________

[_Coggins7]

Loran,

I've decided to extract a comment you made and the question I asked out of an existing thread in order to isolate the topic for discussion. This thread is for the purpose of serious discussion that is to say, if you don't have a serious or thoughtful contribution to make, please do not post here. If a poster comes in here with off hand/off topic comments, I'm going to ask mods to move your posts. Thanks.

Loran

And the Church simply fell to pieces when this reached critical mass.

Jersey Girl

I want to know exactly when you think the falling apart of the church reached "critical mass".

By roughly the middle of the Second Century, but perhaps even earlier. The primitive Church was essentially dead by the beginning of the Third (even though there were still pockets of believers in rural areas, as late as the early Fourth Century, who, according to Augustine, still clung to some of the old ideas, such as the Anthropomorphic form of God etc.).

The early Church Fathers retained a number of primitive beliefs, even if not in complete form, but were already far too steeped in Alexandrian philosophy to be considered to have any real continuity with the First Century Saints. The Clementines, Hermes, The Ascension of Isaiah,The Hymn of The Pearl, and a few other documents are as close as you get, and in some ways this is quite close (The Pearl could have been, with a little reworking, written by Joseph Smith himself, or John Taylor or Parley Pratt). Ignatius, Polycarp, Origen, Irenaeus, and a few others retain, mixed in with the pervasive Alexandrian philosophical template, some interesting concepts as well, which were later completely dropped from Christianity.

Very interesting are the Five Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem (around 350 A.D.) in which the incomplete and modified endowment enjoyed a brief resurgence. The manner in which this compliments the modern Endowment is startling, but the form is clearly corrupt. The entire thing disappeared after Cyril.

[_Jason Bourne]

Jersey Girl

You keep bringing this up. Why? I know you know LDS cannot pin point and exact time they believe the apostasy took place. They never have claimed to do so. However, they do believe one occured and can point to what they believe are evidences of one. Of course you think they are full of it on this one. But you are not going to get any specific dates nor is it something that can be proven really or disproven. As I have noted before, LDS believer the the main thing in the apostasy was loss of priesthood authority and revelation from God. They believe that the start of this was with the death of the first apostles. They then believe false ideas continued to be brought in to the church. It was downhill from there so to speak.

Other then that I am not sure what you want. I recommend two books if you want more and I have recommended them to you before. The Great Apostasy by Talmage and Outlines in Ecclesiastical History by BH Roberts. These both delve into this topic extensively.

[_Coggins7]

Virtually every scholar of early Christian history, whether secular of Christian (except possibly the EVs and Fundamentalists, who are rigidly committed to a seamless continuity in Christian Authority), understand that something like a major alteration in doctrine and practice occurred, not only among early Christians, but among ancient Israelites as well (especially during the Babylonian captivity).

The only difference among these others and LDS is that we believe the Apostasy was, at some point, total (which does not mean that all true beliefs about Christ disappeared, but that many of them did, and ministerial authority was lost utterly). Catholics would disagree here, but many Catholic scholars would not argue that early Christianity was significantly altered before the rise of Roman orthodoxy. They would no doubt disagree about the ultimate meaning and significance of it, but not that it occurred.

But then the Roman church was the recipient of an already terribly corrupted version of Christianity by the time of the Council of Nicea and Constantine's turn toward Christianity as the religion of the western empire.
Augustine's Christianity was so far from Paul's or Peter's as to be virtually another religion altogether.

[_Coggins7]

I would also recommend, from a non-LDS perspective, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, by Bart Ehrman.

[_Jersey Girl]

JB

You keep bringing this up. Why?

I'm asking Loran to support his assertion with evidence. Why isn't that clear to you?

[_Jason Bourne]

I'm asking Loran to support his assertion with evidence. Why isn't that clear to you?

What is clear is you reject the idea of total apostasy and nothing any LDS has posted on this makes any difference to you. That is fine. I still find it odd that a Protestant does not believe in at least a large apostasy of some sort. I know it was a hallmark issue for the refomers. But It is a point you seem to like to hammer on regardless of what LDS say. You keep asking for some specific date or event when it has been noted that one just does not exist. That is why I wonder why you keep bringing it up.

[_Coggins7]

It is interesting that most historians of Christianity, of whatever background (excepting probably the fundies), do not dispute the large changes that took place between roughly the end of the 1st century through the first part of the 3rd. The dispute is to what degree it took place and the degree to which those changes really mattered.

The Roman church was one, and just one, of the many organizations competing for the title of "orthodox" after the last of the Apostles and who claimed to have the legitimate teachings handed down from those Apostolic personalities. Everyone was claiming to have the forty day teachings, but the problem was, no one actually did, at least in any but fragmentary or altered form. Virtually the entire Nag Hammadi collection is a testament to a serious and concerted effort to preserve, in eclectic form, the early Christian mysteries and higher forty day teachings that do not appear in the New Testament but which the New Testament makes clear did exist.

The Roman church became the Christian church through he fortunes of politics and war, not because they had any special claim to authority or doctrinal purity that many other Christian and Gnostic Christian groups could not have have claimed equal access to.

[_Jersey Girl]

Resurrecting this thread. Jason wanted to know why I bring up the Great Apostasy.


1.The threads that are started there are frequently interrupted with excessive blathering, making it impossible to have a serious dialogue. Why wouldn't I make
repeated attempts to engage a person or person(s) in serious dialogue on "Mormon Discussions" MB?

2. To the best of my recollection, I've brought up The Great Apostasy only once before. It is the VERY CORE of Mormon doctrine..why wouldn't I want to discuss it?

3. In those rare instances where I've been able to engage a serious LDS poster, I almost always learn some new piece of information that has not been presented to me previously. Sometimes it has little to do with Mormon doctrine itself. Why shouldn't I want to learn?

As I stated in the OP and thread title. If someone is willing or interested to participate in this thread, please do. If you dislike the thread, why bother?

Jersey Girl

[_Coggins7]

1.The threads that are started there are frequently interrupted with excessive blathering, making it impossible to have a serious dialogue. Why wouldn't I make
repeated attempts to engage a person or person(s) in serious dialogue on "Mormon Discussions" MB?

Hmmm. This seems to be a problem--with every thread in this forum!

2. To the best of my recollection, I've brought up The Great Apostasy only once before. It is the VERY CORE of Mormon doctrine..why wouldn't I want to discuss it?

I think Jason was just getting at the fact that its pretty much as well established outside the Church as within. Its just that, as I pointed out, we take its consequences much more seriously, and to the logical conclusions implied by it, than do other Christian sects.

3. In those rare instances where I've been able to engage a serious LDS poster, I almost always learn some new piece of information that has not been presented to me previously. Sometimes it has little to do with Mormon doctrine itself. Why shouldn't I want to learn?

As I stated in the OP and thread title. If someone is willing or interested to participate in this thread, please do. If you dislike the thread, why bother?

Jersey Girl

Fire away, but watch out for Dude, Schmo, Mercury, PP, Harmony, Kimberly, Scratch, Tal, and the rest of the Mormondiscussions.com goof troop. There are a number of Snidely Whiplashes waiting there on the tracks ready to pull the lever and send any serious thread off the rails and crashing to the jagged rocks below.