The Restoration Of Priesthood Authority

Authority is important to Mormons, more so than perhaps for any other Christian religion. Probably few non-Mormons understand what it means to us or how it operates for us, so the chances for misunderstanding are huge. Those chances are increased by the fact that we ourselves often don't really understand how or when it is working, so we sometimes explain ourselves clumsily.

In an important sense, our understanding of authority is at the foundation of our self-understanding as a religion, and central to the social structure of the LDS Church as a community. Yet it is so much part of who we are that we may not even notice it.

To understand what authority means to us, starting with the way we understand authority when we talk with one another, our explanation of why authority is needed: Jesus gave his authority to the first apostles, and that authority was necessary for the ritual life of the Church, as in baptism. But after the death of Christ there was an apostasy, in other words, the loss of that authority.

Perhaps the best explanation of our claim of a wide apostasy is that for many reasons (difficulty of travel and communication, for example) as the first apostles died it became more and more difficult for there to be someone with the authority to continue to confer that authority on someone else. Authoritative ordinations became more and more difficult, and the Church "fled into the wilderness" ( Rev. 12:6 ).

Of course ordinations continued, but they continued without the necessary authority. This wasn't the consequence of any plot by evil persons. It was the natural consequence of good people trying to maintain the Christian Church. They needed a new bishop in a city but no longer had the authority to ordain one. So they did what needed to be done to keep the Church going.

By Mormon lights, however, they didn't have the divinely authorized authority to do so. We can ask why our Heavenly Father would allow the Church to lose its priesthood, but we don't have an answer to that question. We believe that scripture foretold the fall of the early Church, as in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 . But we don't know why it happened.

What, then, did the early Church lose? As Mormons understand divine authority, it is at least partly a matter of delegation. Without the permission of someone at the head of the Church, those with authority cannot confer it on others. So, with the death of the apostles came the eventual loss of priesthood authority. Apostles were necessary to the continued bestowal of that priesthood, but they were gone.

That isn't the only explanation of the apostasy that you'll hear from Mormons, but I think it is one that impugns the early Church the least, if at all. I'm skeptical of explanations that don't assume that the members of the first-century Church as well as those of the next centuries were at least as righteous (as well as unrighteous) as members of the contemporary Church.

Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught that because of the apostasy, the early Church needed to be restored. (As a result, sometimes Mormons refer to the LDS Church broadly as "the Restoration," a restoration marked by the suffix "of Latter-day Saints.") As much as anything else, the Restoration was a restoration of priesthood authority. Worthy Mormon males 12 years of age and older are eligible to have that authority. Almost all do, including me.

We have been delegated the power of God. The sheriff of a county delegates his authority to others; he deputizes them so that they can do what he has authority to do. Mormons understand priesthood authority in an analogous way: God has delegated his authority to the prophet of the Church; in turn, the prophet delegates it to others. We can baptize, for example, because having received authority from God, the prophet has delegated others (through ordination) and they have delegated still others (also through ordination) to perform baptisms.

Having been given the authority to baptize, I am God's deputy. In itself, that is a privilege difficult to comprehend. But though I do not fully understand why God would deputize me or any other human being to act in his name, I do understand authority as delegation, and I have priesthood authority because it has been delegated to me.

But what do I have in having that? The common formula among Mormons is that I have "the power to act in the name of God." Through the priesthood things happen, things get done that are beyond my mortal powers. I've seen the reality of that power, both when it has been manifest through others and when it has come as part of what I have done, for example in giving a blessing.

That power is real, but it doesn't fit into my late 20th- and early 21st-century world. Nor is it something that I can control like a comic book superhero. It is not something I can will, though I can make it less likely that God's power will manifest itself through me by denying my relationship with and dependence on him through sin.

There is nothing to which I can compare priesthood power. It isn't magic or occult, but it also isn't something that empirical science can investigate. We don't have a category available into which I can put it, so I am unable to say what it is without simply restating that it is the power of God delegated to human beings.

But thinking about the power of the priesthood makes me think there is a better way to talk about it: it isn't so much that the person ordained to the priesthood receives power, as that he is designated as a person through whom the power of God can work. Delegation of authority and priesthood power go hand-in-hand.

The founding prophet of the LDS Church, Joseph Smith, taught that priesthood power is eternal, existing "with God from eternity, and . . . to eternity" (Alma P. Burton, Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith , 48). It makes sense to say that God's power is co-eternal with him. Given that, we can revise the standard formula: to a Mormon the power of the priesthood is not only the power to act in the name of God, it is also the power of God acting through the person ordained and set apart to use that power.

Of course non-Mormons will find the Mormon belief in priesthood power at least wrong, if not irrational. The non-Mormon religious will find it not only wrong but incredibly presumptuous: we say that God has delegated his authority to us and not to others; we say that certain works done by Mormon deacons, priests, elders, and others are different than the same works or similar works done by others because Mormons have priesthood given them by God. An LDS priesthood holder can do things—rites ("ordinances" in Mormon terms)—that others cannot. Through him comes a power to bind and loose on earth that non-Mormons do not have (Mt. 18:18).

I easily understand all three accusations by non-Mormons: wrong, irrational, presumptuous. I am sympathetic to the charges. Were I not a believer, I would almost certainly agree. But I cannot deny my experience. I trust what has happened through me and what has happened in my presence as well as the spiritual witness I have received. So I understand the charges well, but deny them. I have seen and felt the power of the priesthood.

Most other Latter-day Saints feel the same way, and because of that, not only is authority central to the LDS Church's self-understanding, it is central to the social fabric of Mormonism. Each local unit (a ward ) is led by a bishop, called without ecclesiastical or theological training to serve without pay as the leader of the congregation for five years or so.

The bishop is called by the leadership at the wider level (the stake, roughly equivalent to a Catholic diocese). His calling is ratified by the members of his congregation, but they are not asked for input on that decision. They do not make suggestions to the stake president. They do not interview candidates to decide their suitableness for the congregation. They do not vote on a slate of candidates. (Something very similar is true of the stake president and for each leader up the ecclesiastical chain.)

Whatever the prior social or church position of the person called to be bishop, once he is called, members of his ward will show him considerable deference for the duration of his calling, and often beyond. We believe that he has been called by God to do the work of a bishop, and we honor that calling. Most members of the congregation will begin to call him "Bishop X" rather than by his first name or "Brother X," even if they have been on a first-name basis for a long time.

We don't often believe that the bishop was called by a direct revelation from God to the stake president. Most often, the stake president and his counselors make their decision (a decision that they submit to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for approval) a matter of prayer, thought, and discussion. They are likely to try to find out more about the person under consideration if they do not already know him well. They will consider the alternative candidates available. But in the end, they choose someone whom they feel they have been inspired to call.

The result of this priesthood structure is that Mormons almost universally are deferential to those who lead them, hopefully not as persons themselves, but as representatives of God's power on earth.

Of course at times that deference can be inappropriate. We sometimes treat those who lead us as if they have some special quality of holiness about them. We sometimes treat them as if they are infallible by virtue of their leadership position. Sometimes a leader will even think of himself in these inappropriate terms. Like others, Mormons are human beings subject to human frailties. It is easy to forget that these are God's human servants, chosen for a particular work for whatever reasons God has, but not necessarily chosen because they are the most exemplary Christians.

Much more often than not, even considering human frailties, priesthood authority for Mormonism not only gives the LDS Church its ecclesiastical structure, it also gives Mormons the strong social bond that most members find in their wards.

The Restoration of Priesthood Authority