Great apostasy in the New World Too?

[Gray]

22 hours ago, pogi said:

In the end, it looks like we are agreed that what you said below is only one interpretation and opinion among many, and cannot be established as fact:

 

No, it's very clear from the Pauline, Pseudeo-Pauline and Johannine epistles that there were different factions within Christianity from early in the movement, accusing each other of various degrees of apostasy. That's only "interpretation" in the sense that everything is.

[pogi]

47 minutes ago, Gray said:

No, it's very clear from the Pauline, Pseudeo-Pauline and Johannine epistles that there were different factions within Christianity from early in the movement, accusing each other of various degrees of apostasy. That's only "interpretation" in the sense that everything is.

If that is the case, it also seems clear that was not Christ's (or the apostles) intent for the church.  He/they clearly sanctioned a oneness, a singular church and body of believers, a united order. The point of the epistles was to unify the church in doctrine and practice. If different groups were accusing each other of "apostasy", that is strong evidence that they did indeed believe in a singular church with a singular authority.  Otherwise, they wouldn't be accusing each other of apostatizing from the church and the authoritative teachings/doctrines/practices.

All you are demonstrating is that the roots of the great apostasy were planted early.  I don't see evidence of anything else.

Edited March 13, 2018 by pogi

[theplains]

On 06/03/2018 at 11:50 AM, JLHPROF said:

Yes.  If Apostolic authority and the full gospel were on the earth there would have been no need for a restoration.
The New World church fell into the same apostasy as the Old World church

According to the 1997 Gospel Principles manual, "The perfect organization of the Church no longer existed, and confusion
resulted. More and more error crept into Church doctrine, and soon the destruction of the Church was complete. The period
of time when the true Church no longer existed on earth is called the Great Apostasy."

In LDS theology, Satan was able to destroy Christ's church twice (if you believe it existed in the Book of Mormon).

Jim

[JLHPROF]

5 minutes ago, theplains said:

According to the 1997 Gospel Principles manual, "The perfect organization of the Church no longer existed, and confusion
resulted. More and more error crept into Church doctrine, and soon the destruction of the Church was complete. The period
of time when the true Church no longer existed on earth is called the Great Apostasy."

In LDS theology, Satan was able to destroy Christ's church twice (if you believe it existed in the Book of Mormon).

Jim

It's an assumption that Satan did this.  Man is more than capable of putting error into doctrine all by himself.  This board is proof of that.
And I think the manual here overemphasized the word "Church" where apostasy is concerned.

[pogi]

10 minutes ago, theplains said:

According to the 1997 Gospel Principles manual, "The perfect organization of the Church no longer existed, and confusion
resulted. More and more error crept into Church doctrine, and soon the destruction of the Church was complete. The period
of time when the true Church no longer existed on earth is called the Great Apostasy."

In LDS theology, Satan was able to destroy Christ's church twice (if you believe it existed in the Book of Mormon).

Jim

Satan wins many battles, but he will lose the war.

[Gray]

On 3/12/2018 at 3:32 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Walter Weaver pointed out in 1993 that the criterion of uniqueness as a measure of the "oldest 'layer' of Jesus-tradition," which excludes anything from either Judaism or the Easter faith (the later Christian community) prevents a correct understanding of Jesus, saying that "the trend in Jesus research is away from this strict criterion [heavily used by the Jesus Seminar] and toward locating Jesus precisely within his Judaic context," which is what Pearson did.  Weaver added

I think that's a fair argument against the criterion of dissimilarity, but again, it's referring back to to the Jesus Seminar. Crossan is still active today, despite getting on in years. Granted my exposure so far is half a book and half a dozen recorded speaking engagements, but I haven't noticed that kind of emphasis in his current work. He portrays Jesus as a Jewish peasant who was concerned about  Roman occupation and Jewish collaboration with the occupiers, and about injustice. He portrays Jesus as a Jewish prophet who believed that the eschaton would come in collaboration with God to rid the world of injustice. That sounds pretty Jewish to me. Perhaps you've noticed something in his current material that I haven't.

The one area where Crossan seems to be an outlier among critical scholars is that he gives a very early date to a lot of the material in the Gospel of Thomas.

 

On 3/12/2018 at 3:32 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

In other words, biblical illiteracy is a huge problem even among Jesus scholars.  Indeed, after quoting Charlesworth's symposium comment that (following Käsemann) "apocalypticism was the mother of all early Christian theology," Weaver went on to say that   

This is Pearson's opinion as well.

Most of those guys are getting on in years, so we are not likely to see a lot more come forth from their pens.  I followed the Jesus Seminar closely back in those days, and enjoyed a good deal of what they said.  A lot of good stuff.  I have several of their books.  Meantime a whole new generation of NT scholars has come forth which does not share the views of the Jesus Seminar and which correctly insists that Judaism must be emphasized, and I agree.  Crossan was deeply  mistaken and must now be swept aside.  Pearson was quite correct, and he was also perceptive enough to see that LDS esoterica shared a great deal in common with Gnostic esoterica (he had an LDS student at UCSB).

Crossan is still publishing, and still used in academic coursework. But of course he's still just one scholar among many.

[Gray]

23 hours ago, pogi said:

If that is the case, it also seems clear that was not Christ's (or the apostles) intent for the church.  He/they clearly sanctioned a oneness, a singular church and body of believers, a united order. The point of the epistles was to unify the church in doctrine and practice. If different groups were accusing each other of "apostasy", that is strong evidence that they did indeed believe in a singular church with a singular authority.  Otherwise, they wouldn't be accusing each other of apostatizing from the church and the authoritative teachings/doctrines/practices.

All you are demonstrating is that the roots of the great apostasy were planted early.  I don't see evidence of anything else.

I don't think any of them were trying to establish some kind of lasting institution. They were very much looking forward to an imminent eschaton. Jesus' death was of course unexpected, and in the wake of that there were many different interpretations of it, and many christologies. The "oneness" never solidified until the fourth century. But it is precisely that solidification and oneness that is associated with apostasy, at least in LDS thought.

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Gray said:

I don't think any of them were trying to establish some kind of lasting institution. They were very much looking forward to an imminent eschaton. Jesus' death was of course unexpected, and in the wake of that there were many different interpretations of it, and many christologies. The "oneness" never solidified until the fourth century. But it is precisely that solidification and oneness that is associated with apostasy, at least in LDS thought.

I agree that the apostles were not privy to the details of the whole plan.  Christ's death and resurrection caught them by surprise, despite Christ's awareness and teachings about it.  While they may have been awaiting an "imminent eschaton", all evidence suggests that they were trying to keep a united church in preparation for that day.  There is good evidence that there was indeed a united authority, with Peter at the head.  While the apostles were less then successful (something we cannot really fault them for given the times) at containing splinter groups and maintaining a united establishment/institution with effective organizational practices, I think we would be hard-pressed to suggest they didn't at least try to keep the church/doctrine/practices pure and united.  While "oneness" may have been better established later on, I disagree that a true "oneness" of Christianity has ever existed, despite the efforts of Christ and the apostles. There have always been splinter groups.

[Gray]

28 minutes ago, pogi said:

I agree that the apostles were not privy to the details of the whole plan.  Christ's death and resurrection caught them by surprise, despite Christ's awareness and teachings about it.  While they may have been awaiting an "imminent eschaton", all evidence suggests that they were trying to keep a united church in preparation for that day. 

I think certainly the attempt  was to maintain a unified movement and a unified theology, but those making the attempt to do so already believed very different things about Jesus. Then again, the same is certainly true in the LDS movement, where there has been high level disagreement about the nature of Jesus.

 

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There is good evidence that there was indeed a united authority, with Peter at the head.  While the apostles were less then successful (something we cannot really fault them for given the times) at containing splinter groups and maintaining a united establishment/institution with effective organizational practices, I think we would be hard-pressed to suggest they didn't at least try to keep the church/doctrine/practices pure and united. 

Peter was an authority, to be sure, as was James. Then there was Paul, who struggled to establish his own authority, and who had his own unique theological views (including a rather radically negative view of the law of Moses).

It's perhaps illustrative of the fragmented nature of early Christianity that every gospel presents a different Christology. And Paul's Christology is different still, to say nothing of the gnostics and other groups. Christianity evolved from a mostly traditional Jewish movement in its early days to a radically heretical splinter movement very rapidly, within the space of about 80 years. But not every group evolved in the same way or at the same time.

To illustrate my point, if we were to adopt the religion of Peter, we would no longer be Christians or Mormons in any recognizable sense. We would be first century observant Jews who identified the Messiah in the person of Yeshua of Nazareth. If we were to adopt the religion of Paul, it would another different set of beliefs altogether. The religion of the Johannine community was quite extreme compared to that of the early apostles - the J's believed that Jesus was God from eternity past, for instance. That was an innovative belief.

 

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While "oneness" may have been better established later on, I disagree that a true "oneness" of Christianity has ever existed, despite the efforts of Christ and the apostles. There have always been splinter groups.

I suppose that "true oneness" is impossible, but there's a reason why you can't talk about Christian orthodoxy until centuries after Christ - it didn't exist. In the second century you start to see proto-orthodoxy - Christians coming up with doctrines that would later win the day. But those views weren't "orthodox" in their time.

The fourth century is when you at least start to get some kind of official orthodoxy and uniformity.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Gray