A Different Jesus?, pt. 4

Chapter 3: Why a Restoration?

This chapter is significantly longer than the previous chapters, and I really don't have that much time for this today, so I'm only going to do a little bit of it...

Right out of the gate we read: "Foundational to any understanding of the Latter-day Saint conception of Jesus Christ is the idea of a restoration of divine truth in modern times." Yup. What was it that our Savior said about building on sand? He gives a couple of OT spoof texts for Isaiah and Amos prophesying about it, and then some NT spoofs for the apostles warning of it. Of course none of these texts have anything to do with a great apostasy, but why should that stand in anyone's way? He concludes his opening paragraph stating: "That apostasy entailed the loss or corruption of divine authority and true doctrine." (his emphasis) and the next section (and the only one I'm covering today) focuses on those.

Let's tackle authority first. He defines it as "the power to act in the name of God" and states that the NT "clearly teaches the need for it." But I honestly don't see this concept as he describes it in the NT. And then he simply states, "With the death of the apostles, within approximately one hundred years of the crucifixion of Jesus, this authority...was lost from the earth." No explanation of how it was lost (the spoof texts earlier don't give us enough information to test his assertion), no description of what happened, no evidence to support his claim, just "it was lost." And then he gives us roughly 1800 years of church history compressed into a couple of paragraphs and skewed horribly.

While Catholics claim apostolic succession... and Protestants speak of a "priesthood of all believers," Latter-day Saints teach that God's divine authority was not to be found in the Old World by the middle of the second century A.D.

1. This isn't at all what the phrase "priesthood of all believers" means! Hello! Doesn't Eerdman's believe in fact-checking? Who edited this book? Here's what the phrase means:

To be sure, Christ's apostles call all who believe in Christ "priests," but not on account of an office, but because, all the faithful having been made kings and priests, we are able to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through Christ (Exod. 19:6; I Peter 2:9; Rev. 1:6). Therefore, the priesthood and the ministry are very different from one another. For the priesthood, as we have just said, is common to all Christians; not so is the ministry. The Second Helvetic Confession - Chapter XVIII

2. Again, no evidence for why the LDS teach that this authority was gone, it's just gone. Guess I'm asking too much...moving on:

The Roman Church had control of the Christian faith until the sixteenth century, when courageous men objected to, opposed, and broke away from Catholicism.

Church History a la The DaVinci Code. I'm guessing here (just a guess, because he doesn't spell it out) he means from the middle of the second century or so through the sixteenth. To call something the Roman church for the first few hundred years is silly. To think that as a persecuted group throughout the civilized world anyone "had control" is laughable. It wasn't 'til the 4th century that Constantine protected Christianity, and Rome certainly had no control over the Church then! And while the Reformers certainly were courageous (on the whole) the description of them as men who "objected to, opposed, and broke away from Catholicism" misses the point--sure they objected to it, protested it, but they didn't break away--they were kicked out! I do find it funny that Wesley seems to be lumped in with the Reformers--men whose doctrines he would oppose, and who were dead long before he came along.

One more point on his history. He holds up Roger Williams as someone who saw the need for apostolic authority to be given by God to the Church. He describes Williams as "the man known as the founder of the Baptist faith." I took a moment to ask a group of pretty knowledgeable Baptists if they agreed with that description. One Baptist who's taught Church History replied, "Uh, no." And that was the general consensus. I don't blame Millet for this totally, some editor along the way should've stopped this historical mess.

At this point he segues into the "loss or corruption of doctrine and I've gone on so long already, I'll leave that for tomorrow.