My question was mostly rhetorical anyway. If Mormons are right the only option would seem to be a complete mass apostacy where the ECFs were just gravely mistaken about succession. In that I think Mormons have a certain consistency at least compared to mainstream Protestants. What got me curious is that Mormons have a doctrine of succession (unlike most Protestants) yet they reject tons of early references to it. Seems ironic to my mind to reject Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprian who all wrote in the 200′s or earlier, but then accept a similar claim of succession 1500 years (!) later made by Smith.

Here is Cyprian in AD251 as taken from the article cited above:

“The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ He says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatever things you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth, they shall be loosed also in heaven.’ And again He says to him after His resurrection: ‘Feed my sheep.’ On him He builds the Church, and to him He gives the command to feed the sheep; and although He assigns a like power to all the Apostles, yet He founded a single chair, and He established by His own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was; but a primacy is given to Peter whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. So too, all are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the Apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?” (Treatise on the Unity of the Catholic Church, 1st edition)

So it seems Cyprian was either gravely mistaken and decieved -or- Mormons are. Now I love Mormons, I lived in Idaho as a kid surrounded by them, they are great people who love much, but for ecclesiology why should people listen to Mormons instead of Cyprian and the rest of the ECFs? It doesnt seem to be even a slightly equal choice. Do you really believe Cyprian was wrong and Mormons are right?

-David M.

PS- Nothing here is meant in a bad spirit or to upset anyone, If I offend, please correct me and forgive, thx

Do we really want to start that on the tail end of a thread that’s close to two years old?

I just ask because I’m aware that some blogs don’t appreciate “necro-posting” and stuff like that.

Alternatively, I could just point you to some Mormon sources and let the matter drop.

““Do you believe your narrative is actually what happened or just the best story that makes the most sense to your tradition?”

“A bit of both Brent. I don’t claim to be unbiased here.”"

God bless you Seth. I love your honesty. And like I said before, I love that Mormons see the need for real apostolic authority. And being loyal to the home team is a commendable thing. But we can all think of people that we wish would question things a bit more. (Muslims for instance) We can’t help what we are born into, but I often wondered how much traction that excuse will give me on judgment day. It scares me. Setting down team loyalties for an objective look at things became a must for me. It was hard, because I had to set things “on the table” to get that hard look. I set everything on the table, including theism, and in the end, I found that I was able to keep what I really wanted (Christ), but had to give up some things that I could see were just man’s wisdom like sola scriptura. It stings the pride, but just like the spring rain outside my window right now, it is a very clean feeling to put everything on the line, to do whatever it takes to follow the Lord. Even when it means forcing (as much as possible) an unbiased look at my tradition.
And for all the confusion you mention after the death of the apostles, there sure was a lot of agreement about succession in theory and in practice. They didn’t seem too confused about how and if authority is passed down. And nobody complains to them that they are getting the whole “apostolic succession” thing all wrong. Not a peep.

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/02/the-chair-of-st-peter/

2000 years later, the same list of succession given in the generation after the apostles leads to a Church of 1.2 Billion people with one faith and doctrine. They could be wrong, or they could be a mustard tree. When I set down my team affiliations, it became clear as glass to me which one it was.

What do you do with the piles of references in the early church fathers to succession which go unquestioned? As someone outside your tradition, this fact seems to not square with Mormonisms claim that things fell apart… not even a little.

-David Meyer

A bit of both Brent. I don’t claim to be unbiased here.

“Isn’t there something about that story outside of the Mormon tradition that seems a little odd?”

More than one or two things. It’s an odd faith tradition. But you get used to it after a while.

“She has survived 2,000 years of rebellion, infighting, schism, heresy, revolt, and yet hell has not prevailed against her.”

Duly noted. And I salute both the Roman and Eastern Orthodox traditions for the monumental work they have done in preserving the Gospel of Jesus Christ for so long.

Do you believe your narrative is actually what happened or just the best story that makes the most sense to your tradition? Also, why would the apostles be ignorant/nieve of their mission and 1,800 years later in north America appear to a guy from Ohio and say “we kind of screwed up, but here’s our chance to get it right”? Isn’t there something about that story outside of the Mormon tradition that seems a little odd? Ohio has a lot of great football coaches, my mother is from there, but the site of restoring the universal Church? (plus the whole more + mon (egyptian for good) thing seems a little random).

Just wondering how someone inside that tradition reconciles these issues. As a Catholic, the historical continuity and preservation of the Church in spite of schism and heresy is consistent with the a New Covenant that is greater than the old. How could God hold together a fragile nomadic people (and still does by the way) yet had no plan for preserving his new covenant people? David Anders has made a comment about this here. The historical evidence for the fragmentation of the pre-Nicene Christians cannot be conflated with the idea that the Church wasn’t progressing in her apostolic unity. It wasn’t “spinning out of control” although society as a whole in the Roman empire certainly was. If you read the beginning of the history of the United States you get anything but a united front. Whigs were watching colonists fight while eating tea and crumpets. However, you have to keep reading the story to find out how it develops.

Even more, unlike the USA, the Church was not established by a group of forward thinkers but by the God-man Christ. She has survived 2,000 years of rebellion, infighting, schism, heresy, revolt, and yet hell has not prevailed against her. This narrative is available to all those within and without Her tradition to judge, and although one may not come to the same conclusion, there is no historical or mental trampoline needed to jump from one era to the next. From Pentecost until today, She has been with us: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.

Peace to you on your journey.

The official Mormon line is simply that it was lost with the death of the apostles, and leaves it at that.

That said, Mormon scholars have their own ideas on the matter. Based on my own reading of them, my own feeling is simply that the apostles didn’t pass the authority along out of a combination of disorganization, logistical limitations, and naive neglect.

This is an unorthodox “Mormon” view. I doubt most of the people I go to church with would suggest such a thing. But it’s the conclusion I’ve been moving toward.

My sense is that the original apostles had little idea that the church they were founding was going to have to last as long as 2000 years, or even 200 years. They seem to have felt that the “Second Coming” of Jesus Christ was right around the corner. So did many early Christians – as evidenced by the Christian reactions to the apocalyptic events during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, and the stunned confusion of the primitive Christian community when Christ did NOT show up. I think the apostles (especially Paul) were gearing their ministry more for rapid expansion than for real consolidation of a lasting Church.

As a result, the apostles wound up scattered to the four corners of the Mediterranean rather than consolidating power bases in key locations. The early Church was, therefore, fragmented and disorganized. You get a bit of a sense of this from Paul’s desperate epistles in the Bible attempting to correct for a church-wide drift that was probably already completely out of his hands at that point. Nothing Peter or Paul could do at that point could correct for the inevitable dissolution.

And who would they have passed the authority to? The bishops were already consolidating their own localized spheres of influence. But that did not necessarily make them worthy to receive the keys for guiding the entire Church. Some congregations had completely gone astray – even Roman Catholic versions of the historical narrative will admit that much.

Everything was in confusion, the Church was falling apart without any likely candidates to reverse the inevitable, and the apostles themselves were scattered to the four winds, imprisoned, persecuted, hounded, and killed (or exiled).

That’s the narrative I’ve come to. It sheds the common Mormon starry-eyed view of 1st century Christianity as some sort of utopian ideal, but it makes sense to me.

Not knowing much about the LDS Church (other than some sci fi novels by Orson Scott Card), why do you believe the apostles did not pass on their authority to the bishops they ordained?

Another way of asking this – why wouldn’t the apostles have passed on their authority?