Great Apostasy revisited

[InCognitus]

22 hours ago, Zosimus said:

This is the tension in this discussion innit. Many of the things Mormons see as early Christianity is Platonism. Both Origen and Clement of Alexandria was heavily influenced by Plato. Origen, who you quote, was a student of the platonist Ammonius Saccas who also taught Plotinus, the founder of neoplatonism.

This goes back to the earlier questions in this thread, if we remove the Hellenist influence from Judaism and Christianity, we'd not have all these works that allow us to recognize all these 'original teachings' that Joseph Smith restored.

This is why it feels to me that Hansen has things backwards. The early Christians that had training in Plato somehow were the ones that managed to inject many of the 'original teachings' that were later rejected as heresies by the orthodox Church. Smith restored many of them

I think it would be hard to separate some of what we see in early Christianity from Platonism because it's hard to identify who borrowed from who.  The gospel of John in the New Testament shares many themes with the writings of Philo (for example), and some of the early Christians said that Plato had borrowed some of his ideas from Moses (i.e. Justin Martyr, First Apology of Justin, Chap. LIX, Clement of Alexandria, Instructor, Book 1, Chapter 8, and elsewhere). 

But I'm not sure why you think Jacob Hansen has things backwards.  Did you watch the video?  What do you think he got wrong?  The problems came when the Christians started replacing the earlier teachings with philosophical ideas that they viewed as more defensible and changed the doctrine to be entirely based on Greek Philosophy instead of ideas found in scripture.  I think that's what Hansen was trying to say.

Edited Wednesday at 03:55 AM by InCognitus

[Zosimus]

4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

The gospel of John in the New Testament shares many themes with the writings of Philo (for example)

And Philo was also a Hellenized Platonist

4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

But I'm not sure why you think Jacob Hansen has things backwards.  Did you watch the video?  What do you think he got wrong? 

I think he has it backwards because he doesn't acknowledge or even bring up that the gospel of John in the New Testament shares many themes with the writings of Philo, a Hellenized Jewish Platonist who was very popular during the lifetimes of the authors of the New Testament. Here's a good overview from the Community of Christ (RLDS):

Philo of Alexandria: Judaism as Greek Philosophy

He also doesn't mention that the writings of Origen and Clement of Alexandria sound an awful lot like Philo, a Hellenized Jew that they had read and coopted. Or that Justin Martyr, who you quote above, was also heavily influenced by Plato.

Origen: The First Christian Genius
Justin Martyr: The First Christian Philosopher

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The problems came when the Christians started replacing the earlier teachings with philosophical ideas that they viewed as more defensible and changed the doctrine to be entirely based on Greek Philosophy instead of ideas found in scripture.  I think that's what Hansen was trying to say.

That is what he is saying. What he isn't saying is that it was largely the three hellenized Christians you quote above that did the replacing. And those three were heavily influenced by Philo, a hellenized Jew.

While you agree with Hansen, he would not agree with you.

Maybe a better way to approach Hansen's claim is that platonism was adapted by Philo, Origen, Clement, Justin Maryr and others to come up with some incorrect ideas, while many original truths resembling platonism were later deemed heretical by church councils. Origen is a good example. We Mormons see many of his ideas such as the pre-existence of souls, a pre-cosmic fall, and a universal restoration (apokatastasis) as being similar to our original truths, yet he was posthumously branded a heretic by a church that became suspicious of the teachings of a pre-cosmic fall,  pre-existence of souls and a universal restoration. Those teachings felt too much like Greek philosophy.

The problem was never Plato's ideas, it was the way Christians have either misused Plato to become a more cosmopolitan faith, or rejected Plato because he wasn't a Judean patriarch.

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and some of the early Christians said that Plato had borrowed some of his ideas from Moses (i.e. Justin Martyr, First Apology of Justin, Chap. LIX, Clement of Alexandria, Instructor, Book 1, Chapter 8, and elsewhere). 

Notice it was two Christian admirers of Plato that made the claim? I think it was Justin Martyr who also said that Socrates was a Christian. Although I’m sure he really wanted it to be true, It's clearly not true, or possible.

Although I highly doubt Plato could get any of his ideas from the books of Moses, I would think that Judeans and Greeks got many of their ideas from the same earlier sources. 

Edited Wednesday at 07:41 AM by Zosimus

[telnetd]

On 7/13/2026 at 11:07 PM, InCognitus said:

Jesus was God before he was a man, and God the Father was God while he was a man, or else he would not have had the power to lay down his life and take it up again (as Joseph Smith said he did), and Jesus did what his Father did.

Who did Heavenly Father atone for?

[telnetd]

On 7/13/2026 at 11:07 PM, InCognitus said:

The early Christians taught that Jesus is "the first-born of all creation

Jehovah's Witnesses view this as the first-creation of God. This is similar to what
your church believes; that he is the first-spirit son born (created) in some way to 
heavenly parents.

[InCognitus]

On 7/14/2026 at 11:45 PM, Zosimus said:

On 7/14/2026 at 9:19 PM, InCognitus said:

The gospel of John in the New Testament shares many themes with the writings of Philo (for example)

And Philo was also a Hellenized Platonist

Yes, that was my point, along with similar ideas in the gospel of John.

On 7/14/2026 at 11:45 PM, Zosimus said:

I think he has it backwards because he doesn't acknowledge or even bring up that the gospel of John in the New Testament shares many themes with the writings of Philo, a Hellenized Jewish Platonist who was very popular during the lifetimes of the authors of the New Testament.

Jacob Hansen doesn't put down philosophy in his video, so I don't see why he would need to mention those things. His focus was to make plain the evolution of ideas that made the later ideas incompatible with the earlier ideas about God.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend him, I just don't see any justification for saying he has it backwards (and still don't).  I'm trying to understand your comment.

On 7/14/2026 at 11:45 PM, Zosimus said:

Origen is a good example. We Mormons see many of his ideas such as the pre-existence of souls, a pre-cosmic fall, and a universal restoration (apokatastasis) as being similar to our original truths, yet he was posthumously branded a heretic by a church that became suspicious of the teachings of a pre-cosmic fall,  pre-existence of souls and a universal restoration. Those teachings felt too much like Greek philosophy.

This is the point that I think Jacob Hansen was trying to make.  But it's not that the earlier teachings felt too much like Greek philosophy, but that those earlier teachings became completely incompatible with the later developed philosophical teachings (i.e. creation ex-nihilo, a more absolute monotheism of a "homoousious" Father and Son, etc.)

[InCognitus]

On 7/16/2026 at 10:06 AM, telnetd said:

On 7/13/2026 at 9:07 PM, InCognitus said:

Jesus was God before he was a man, and God the Father was God while he was a man, or else he would not have had the power to lay down his life and take it up again (as Joseph Smith said he did), and Jesus did what his Father did.

Who did Heavenly Father atone for?

Joseph Smith only said that God the Father was God prior to him being a man, since he had the power to lay down his life and take it up again, and Jesus followed him in that. 

[InCognitus]

On 7/16/2026 at 10:11 AM, telnetd said:

Jehovah's Witnesses view this as the first-creation of God. This is similar to what
your church believes; that he is the first-spirit son born (created) in some way to 
heavenly parents.

I know you know better than to make this false analogy and misrepresentation.

Latter-day Saints believe:

• Jesus has existed eternally (there was never a time that he was not).  Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father.
• The word "create" or "created" does not mean created from nothing.  It means to organize.  
• The Bible teaching that Jesus is the "firstbegotten" of the Father (Hebrews 1:6), the "firstborn of every creature" (Colossians 1:15).  Those are biblical teachings.

So for you to say that what Latter-day Saints believe "is similar" to what another group believes where that group believes that God created all things from nothing (creation ex-nihilo) and that Jesus is a created being (in that same sense of creation) is not just misleading, it's a flat out lie.

Now here's a question for you.  Do you believe in creation ex-nihilo like the Jehovah's Witnesses do?  Are your beliefs similar to Jehovah's Witnesses in that regard?