Theological Assumptions Vs. The Historical Record

In my last two articles, I described my journey to Catholicism and challenged Protestant readers to show me where I overlooked Protestantism in the historical record before the sixteenth century (aside from places where it already agrees with Catholicism). In my exchanges with Protestants and others—including Mormons (LDS)—I frequently encounter theological assumptions that I cannot reconcile with the historical record.

Perhaps my interlocutors place little value on history and view the historical record as inconsequential. Or perhaps they begin with theological assumptions and then read history through those assumptions. The latter approach, however, only creates more questions than it answers.

Consider two popular religious doctrines that shape how millions of people interpret Christian history despite the available historical evidence:

Protestantism assumes the perspicuity of Scripture.
Mormonism (LDS) assumes a Great Apostasy immediately after the apostles.

Both doctrines function less as conclusions drawn from history and more as assumptions brought to the historical record in advance.

The Protestant Assumption: The Perspicuity of Scripture

Let’s begin with one of Protestantism’s foundational claims: the perspicuity of Scripture. Perspicuity affirms that Scripture is sufficiently clear, meaning that individual believers can understand the essentials of the faith contained within its pages. Because Scripture is perspicuous, it requires no infallible interpretive authority to function as the normative rule for salvation, morality, and the governance of the Church.

Or, as The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) puts it in Chapter 1, Section 7:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

To reiterate: according to The Westminster Confession of Faith, the essential doctrines of salvation appear so clearly in Scripture that even “the unlearned… may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” The historical question, however, is whether the historical conditions of Christianity actually support this assumption.

What Does the Historical Record Show?

Unfortunately for this theological assumption, the historical record proves troublesome. History shows that most Christians lacked direct access to Scripture for the majority of Church history. Until fairly recently, literacy remained a luxury most people could not afford. Historians generally estimate that literacy in medieval Western Europe remained well below twenty percent of the population, with many regions likely closer to ten percent. As a result, most Christians encountered Scripture through preaching, liturgy, and catechesis rather than through private reading.

Another historical challenge to perspicuity appears in the scarcity of manuscripts. Before the printing press, scribes copied all books—including the Bible—by hand. This process required skilled labor, and producing a complete Bible could take months or even years. Handcrafted books therefore remained expensive and highly prized. Even after the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, books remained costly and accessible only to the relatively small number of people who could read them. In fact, widespread personal ownership of Bibles did not occur for centuries.

For most of its existence, therefore, the Church functioned without universal personal access to Scripture. This historical reality raises an obvious question: if Scripture was meant to serve as the Church’s primary interpretive authority for every believer, why did God permit most Christians to lack direct access to it for nearly eighteen centuries—until the modern era of mass literacy?

The Protestant Appeal to Tradition

Some confessional Protestants may object that I misrepresent them as overly individualistic. They would argue that they do not interpret Scripture in an individual vacuum but within a tradition. For example, the aforementioned Westminster Confession of Faith guides the Reformed tradition, while Lutherans and Anglicans interpret Scripture within their own confessional frameworks.

While it is true that Lutherans, Reformed Christians, and Anglicans seek guidance from their respective traditions, a deeper issue lies just beneath the surface. These traditions emerged after the Reformation and therefore exist outside the continuous interpretive Tradition of the historic Church.

As a result, these interpretive traditions operate in competition rather than in doctrinal unity. This competition appears in the different conclusions each tradition reaches on doctrines such as baptism, the Eucharist, church authority, salvation, and moral teaching. Protestant traditions therefore reflect the consequences of “perspicuity” rather than resolving its interpretive difficulties.

The Mormon Assumption: The Great Apostasy

Mormonism makes a similar historical assumption in its doctrine of the “Great Apostasy.” Joseph Smith claimed that Christ told him the existing Christian churches “were all wrong… [and] all their creeds were an abomination in my sight.” Later LDS leaders reinforced this claim. As LDS historian B. H. Roberts stated, “Nothing less than a complete apostasy from the Christian religion would warrant the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

In short, Mormon teaching holds that God removed apostolic authority from the Church shortly after the death of the last apostle and eventually restored that authority through Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century.

LDS writers often point to early schisms—such as those associated with Marcion or Arius—as evidence of doctrinal corruption in early Christianity, arguing that such divisions reflect the loss of apostolic authority.

What Does History Show?

Fortunately for anyone willing to look, early Christians continued writing beyond the apostolic age—and even during it. For example, Clement of Rome wrote a letter to the Corinthians around A.D. 96, much like Paul the Apostle had done decades earlier. In this letter, Clement states the following concerning the apostles and those who would succeed them:

Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those already mentioned and afterward gave instructions that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.

Moreover, most historians believe that John the Apostle died around A.D. 100, only a few years after Clement wrote this letter. This raises an obvious question: if Clement were inventing authority for himself or others after the apostles had died, why would he make such a claim while an apostle still lived?

Furthermore, even if one accepts the LDS claim of a Great Apostasy, another difficulty arises. After Joseph Smith’s death, the movement fragmented almost immediately.

Examples include:

Community of Christ
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
numerous other restorationist groups

This raises an uncomfortable question: if fragmentation proves that apostolic authority had disappeared in early Christianity, why does similar fragmentation not suggest that authority disappeared again after the Restoration? Which set of “restored apostles” should we follow?

What the Early Church Actually Shows

By this point, the reader should recognize the pattern. Both Protestants and Mormons begin with theological assumptions and then read history through those lenses. Protestants assume the perspicuity of Scripture yet overlook the accessibility and fragmentation problems reflected in the historical record. Likewise, Latter-day Saints assume that the Church fell into apostasy while disregarding the clear evidence of continuity and apostolic succession in the early Church. They also ignore the fragmentation that followed the death of Joseph Smith—a fragmentation that persists to this day.

Final Thoughts…Reading the Sources as They Are

The early centuries of Christianity reveal neither a self-interpreting book nor a vanished Church. Instead, the historical record shows a visible community that preserved Scripture, interpreted it, and maintained continuity with the apostles through identifiable leadership and succession.

When Protestants assume the perspicuity of Scripture, they must explain why most Christians lacked access to Scripture for most of Christian history and why competing traditions now reach conflicting conclusions about its meaning. When Latter-day Saints assume a Great Apostasy, they must explain why the historical record shows continuity in Christian teaching and leadership and why fragmentation appeared immediately after the supposed restoration of apostolic authority.

Neither perspicuity nor apostasy naturally emerges from the historical record itself. Readers must impose both assumptions on the sources rather than derive them from a straightforward reading of the evidence.

The historical evidence instead points toward a different conclusion: from the beginning, Christianity operated as a Church that preserved apostolic teaching, interpreted Scripture within a living tradition, and maintained continuity through apostolic succession.