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<\/a>Yesterday on social media, I noticed an attack by a former Latter-day Saint on the idea of a \u201cgreat apostasy\u201d of the early Christian church. \u00a0I didn\u2019t spend much time reading what he had to say, and I\u2019m not specifically engaging with him here \u2014 I may or may not yet do so \u2014 but I thought that I might make a general comment affirming my confidence that there was, indeed, such a universal falling away.<\/p>\n
To me, the most obvious single pointer to the reality of a great apostasy is the Restoration itself, which would not have been necessary had there not been a comprehensive falling away. \u00a0And, although there is an abundance of such evidence, the most obvious single class of evidence that God effected<\/em> a restoration seems to me to be the testimonies of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon \u2014 to which, as some readers may have noticed, I\u2019ve devoted a fair amount of time and effort over the past several years (notably including, but not limited to, the films Witnesses<\/em> and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon<\/em><\/a>) and on which a substantial and solid body of scholarship has been produced (notably including, but not limited to, Richard L. Anderson\u2019s classic 1989 study Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n But a fundamental ancient transformation of early Christianity and of the early Christian movement \u2014 that is, a great apostasy \u2014 seems to me apparent beyond reasonable dispute. \u00a0One facet of that transformation is picked up in a couple of introductory passages from the classic Hibbert lectures that were delivered by the Oxford scholar Edwin Hatch in 1888. \u00a0With reference to the history of the early Church, Hatch argued that \u201cthe change in the centre of gravity from conduct to belief is coincident with the transference of Christianity from a Semitic to a Greek soil.\u201d (Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity <\/em>[New York: Harper and Row, 1957], 2.<\/p>\n It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a new law of con\u00adduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theo\u00adlogical conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philoso\u00adphers. The contrast is patent . . . \u00a0[T]he question why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation. (Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity,<\/em> 1.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, indeed, so it does. \u00a0For some of the first serious Latter-day Saint scholarship on the idea of an apostasy, I recommend Hugh Nibley\u2019s book The World and the Prophets<\/em>, which originated as a series of radio addresses on KSL, as well as three of his academic articles:<\/p>\n The World and Prophets<\/em> is available in several printings. \u00a0The three academic articles have been republished several times in various forms and should be easily available online.<\/p>\n Newly published on the blog of the Interpreter Foundation: \u00a0The Heartland Versus Mesoamerica Part 11: \u201cWhat Evidence Will We Accept? Faith and Forgeries,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0written by Brant A. Gardner<\/a><\/p>\n For all of my adult life, I\u2019ve had a difficult time winding down at night. \u00a0I am a living, breathing, and frequently remorseful violation of the admonition of Doctrine and Covenants 88:124 to \u201cretire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary.\u201d \u00a0Late every evening, I get a \u201csecond wind\u201d and, if I\u2019m working on something serious, I can stay up to absurd hours of the morning. \u00a0(In the past, on occasions when I\u2019ve been home alone, I\u2019ve done just that.)<\/p>\n It may seem counterintuitive, but I\u2019ve found in recent years that it can be helpful to me to have something to look forward to reading in the evening, something that\u2019s radically discontinuous with my daily work and that, accordingly, won\u2019t stimulate me into thinking along academic lines or beginning to write an article. \u00a0So I\u2019ve tried reading light books that I restrict myself to looking at only after I\u2019m in bed. \u00a0Last year, for instance, I read every single one of the Jack Reacher novels, in their order of publication. \u00a0I don\u2019t entirely approve of their protagonist, but they\u2019re quick reads and compulsively readable. \u00a0(Compulsive readability wouldn\u2019t be an especially good aid to nodding off, you might think, but they worked for me, and they also helped to pass the time on long international flights when I was too tired to do anything of value but not yet so tired that I could only watch in-flight action movies.)<\/p>\n Lately, I\u2019ve read three novels by the Scottish author \u201cJosephine Tey.\u201d \u00a0Her real name was Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952), and, for whatever it may be worth, her\u00a01951 novel The Daughter of Time<\/a><\/i>, a detective work that investigated the death of the famous \u201cPrinces in the Tower\u201d<\/a>, was declared the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers\u2019 Association in 1990. \u00a0(For that posthumous honor, she beat out such titans as Agatha Christie.) \u00a0Oddly, I\u2019m not sure that I was aware of her until one of my sons called her to my wife\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n Thus far, of Josephine Tey\u2019s novels, I\u2019ve finished The Man in the Queue<\/em> (1929), A Shilling for Candles<\/em> (1936, which Alfred Hitchcock made into Young and Innocent<\/em> in 1937), and The Franchise Affair<\/em> (1948, filmed in 1950). \u00a0I\u2019ve liked all of them but, thus far, I think that I\u2019m somewhat partial to The Franchise Affair<\/em>. \u00a0Enticingly, The Daughter of Time<\/em> remains in my future, yet to be enjoyed.<\/p>\n Sic et Non<\/em>: \u00a0Your one-stop shop for unsolicited theater reviews, unsought restaurant recommendations, and uninvited mystery-novel suggestions!<\/p>\n \u201cWorkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!\u201d \u00a0It seems very possible that a Democratic Socialist may become the next mayor of New York City. \u00a0This is an important development. \u00a0Socialism has, of course, never really been tried before, so we need to experiment upon a human population in order to see how well it turns out. \u00a0As somebody who grew up and lives far away in the West, who strongly dislikes the Yankees, who doesn\u2019t think highly of the place, and who objects to the smug assumption that it\u2019s the capital of the universe and that the rest of us are merely benighted provincial rubes, I regard New York City \u2014 if this step really must be taken in <\/span>America<\/em> \u2014 as the ideal location for the experiment. \u00a0When the then-incumbent mayor of New York, Ed <\/span>Koch, narrowly lost the <\/span>1989<\/span> Democratic primary to his eventual successor, <\/span>David Dinkins, he famously quipped that <\/span>\u201cThe people have spoken . . . \u00a0and they must be punished.\u201d \u00a0Or, to borrow a helpful definition from the great H. L. Mencken, \u201cDemocracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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