A date for the "Great Apostasy"

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While rummaging through my books, I cam across one entitled:“570: Early Christianity from the Apostles to the Apostasty.” The author is a one R.Ben Madison, M.A. Mr. Madison is a RLDS “Restorationist” To explain briefly, the RLDS (Community of Christ) suffered from fracturings in the 1980’s with the ordination of women. These “Restorationists” if you will, are those who will not join any of the new groups (Such as the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in hopes that one day, the Lord will purify the so-called “Community of Christ” and restore the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to her former glory.(as an aside, the Mormons use Latter-day Saints. The rest use all caps and no hyphen) Mr Madison proffers that starting in 411 AD, until the fall of the Donatists in 570 AD, in which the Pope of Rome finally dominated the entire Christian Church. Mr. Madion quotes from The Times and Seasons( A Mormon magazine) "The Power and Priesthood after the Son of God… was taken from her in the year 570, and the church fell into the hands of the Pope of Rome (Times and Seasons, 1845)

He also puts a quote he attributes to John Wesley from 1756:“What the Donatists were, I do not know. But I suspect they were the real Christians of that age.”
Another thing of note, Mr. Madison offers that Peter, James, and John, were the so-called “First Presidency” of the early church, and that the church was established while Christ was still alive, and that James, not Peter, (James being the brother of our Lord) was the true Bishop of the Church.
There’s a lot in this book. I don’t agree with anything in it, but, I thought it interesting to share.
 
TexanKnight said:
hard to have a date for something that never happened.
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Oh I completely agree. There was no great apostasy. However, there are those who believe there was. I just thought this would be an interesting share is all
 
Thanks for sharing. I have heard others by Mormons in the past that it happened with the death of the last apostle…they keep changing.
 
KathleenGee said:
Thanks for sharing. I have heard others by Mormons in the past that it happened with the death of the last apostle…they keep changing.
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I said that it was occuring during the life of the apostles as they continually needed to correct them. Since the apostles who were sent out to spread the gospel did not write anything down and it was oral traditions that was being told and told over again until it was written down years after the fact.
 
Another tidbit: “In a famous passage, the Donatist (The Church in Africa) writer Tyconius wrote ‘What Daniel said is now going on in Africa’ When did the Apostasy begin? If we could ask a fourth century African peasant, he would have told us:’ It was when Constantine’s government imposed the homicidal Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage upon us, broke communion whith those of us who witnessed for Christ under persecution, and it was consummated at the council of Arles which officially denied the need for Christians to be baptized by authority. The Catholic Church went into apostasy on 1 August, 314”
 
batman1973 said:
While rummaging through my books, I cam across one entitled:“570: Early Christianity from the Apostles to the Apostasty.” The author is a one R.Ben Madison, M.A. Mr. Madison is a RLDS “Restorationist” To explain briefly, the RLDS (Community of Christ) suffered from fracturings in the 1980’s with the ordination of women. These “Restorationists” if you will, are those who will not join any of the new groups (Such as the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in hopes that one day, the Lord will purify the so-called “Community of Christ” and restore the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to her former glory.(as an aside, the Mormons use Latter-day Saints. The rest use all caps and no hyphen) Mr Madison proffers that starting in 411 AD, until the fall of the Donatists in 570 AD, in which the Pope of Rome finally dominated the entire Christian Church. Mr. Madion quotes from The Times and Seasons( A Mormon magazine) "The Power and Priesthood after the Son of God… was taken from her in the year 570, and the church fell into the hands of the Pope of Rome (Times and Seasons, 1845)

He also puts a quote he attributes to John Wesley from 1756:“What the Donatists were, I do not know. But I suspect they were the real Christians of that age.”
Another thing of note, Mr. Madison offers that Peter, James, and John, were the so-called “First Presidency” of the early church, and that the church was established while Christ was still alive, and that James, not Peter, (James being the brother of our Lord) was the true Bishop of the Church.
There’s a lot in this book. I don’t agree with anything in it, but, I thought it interesting to share.
Click to expand...
It would have been a worthless church then, for if that was true then Jesus was a liar which I doubt they can reconcile with those rubbish and baseless claims.

Yeah John Wesley surely knew his “stuff” so the true church was run over, again liar liar Jesus! May the Lord have mercy on his poor lost soul.
How can an apostate church prevail from the gates of hell if Jesus had let that happen.
:rolleyes:

Grasping at straws they are :cool:
 
I am currently reading “Institutes of Ecclesiastical History” by John Laurence Mosheim, a very anti-Catholic Lutheran theologian (available at Google books). It is a history of Christianity from the time of Jesus. The edition I am working on was published in 1841, and Joseph Smith had a copy during the Nauvoo years.

Moshiem believed, as do many of today’s Protestants, that any apostasy happened with Emperor Constantine’s decision to make Christianity the state religion. As I believe in separation of church and state, I agree that many abuses were introduced at that time. St. Augustine was concerned, and Mosheim quotes St. Augustine’s concern as evidence of the apostasy. Wait-- that does not compute-- the Church, in essence, continued on, and eventually backed off from getting too involved in things which are of Cesar.

With that refuted, the Mormons (using Mosheim, again) backed up to the deaths of the last of the apostles, and the sorting out of the heresies from the True Church, primarily Gnosticism. Since Mormonism is a Gnostic religion, they believe that the Church made the wrong decisions in that sorting process and thus apostatized. However, Gnosticism integrates theological speculation on issues that are of no practical significance in leading an ethical life, or, in fact, leads people astray from living ethical lives. What I call “pragmatic theology” says Catholicism (on a concrete level) is what is tried and true, while Mormonism fails, because it is based on idle, illogical, and fallacious speculation (plenty of evidence for that).

At least, that is the direction in which I am headed. Open to corrections at any time.
 
It is interesting that you mentioned that Mormonism is a gnostic religion. The writer of this book that I’m using refers to the Utah Mormons as “Mormongnostics”
 
Barry Robert Bickmore wrote a proof that Mormonism is a Gnostic religion, from a Mormon point of view, in “Restoring the Ancient Church.” Probably the best Mormon apologetic work ever written.

Mike Quinn wrote “Socio-religious Radicalism of the Mormon Church: A Parallel to the Anabaptists” before he got into trouble. He mentions Mosheim-- and I had already run across mentions of his work in reference to Campbell and his theorization of an apostasy.

Mike at the time he wrote the Anabaptist paper was concerned about the fact that the Anabaptists eventually worked out something that works pretty well, but only because they never had a set hierarchy-- they splintered at will, and could therefore easily abandon teachings. Mormons, however, are stuck with a rigid hierarchy, and therefore cannot easily abandon teachings that do not prove out-- which is why he has since gotten into studies of the structure of the corporate organization.
 
We can’t even get a reference for Fat’s 99% claim, what makes you think we can get one for the so called “Apostasy”? 😃
 
The pope of rome dominated the entire church? Is that why the pope failed many times to try and correct some errors in the east? These people that make these claims know nothing.
 
I don’t believe either in Mormonism or in the Great Apostasy, but I don’t see how disagreement over when the apostasy is said to have occur is supposed to be a smoking gun argument against them.

After all, an apostasy is hardly something that would occur in one day, it would probably be something that gradually develops and overtakes the Church over time. You wouldn’t be able to pin it down to one day or year.

I think there’s too much focus on Mormonism on these forums.
 
I don’t see how disagreement over when the apostasy is said to have occur is supposed to be a smoking gun argument against them.
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It is not necessarily a smoking gun against them. It is our defense against their accusations.

For example, we can call Mormons Gnostics, and they can say–
“Well, yes, we are-- so what?”

Or we can say, “You can keep those heresies which we rejected so long ago, if that will make you happy.”
And they will say-- “Why, thank you.”

A proud Papist.
 
Fatboys,

I am not referring to you. I am referring to past Mormon posters going back the past several years, where death of the last apostle was time marking apostasy.

Primarily, it is a branch of the Baptists as well as the Restorationists of the various new religions coming out of America in the 1800’s.

Constantine signed the Edict of Milan to simply state Christianity could be legally practiced publicly. He was not endorsing it as the state religion. But in gratitude to the vision he had in defeating the most destructive Roman emperors in relation to Christianity, he helped the Church rebuild many churches and helped in providing candidates to the episcopal.

Practically all his life, Constantine was not a Christian, even after winning the war against the pagan Roman empire. Constantine, like all successful emperors in the battlefield, was likewise ruthless. He became a Christian only a few days before his death.

It is best people read documented and objective early history and not the spins out there.
 
Thank you, Kathleen. Can you give me an authoritative source on the Constantine issue? I would appreciate it.
 
I wanted to offer this, but I am in the middle of another thread:
Towards finding the apostasy, I recommend to Catholic and non-Catholic Robert Eno’s The Rise of the Papacy AND From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church by Father Francis Sullivan. If one is not allergic to reading non-Catholic books, Nibley’s Apostles and Bishops in the Early Church and Barker’s Apostasy of the Divine Church is a good companion to the two Catholic books above and presents many of the same facts with of course a different interpretation of their meaning.

Ultimately, either the Catholic authority developed from a seed (originating with Christ and Peter) guided by God’s authority and some form of divine guidance OR the Apostolic authority did not promulgate beyond the early 2nd century. It is the necessity to choose one of these two options (and a few other things that are clear in my warped mind) that leads me to believe that one cannot be a Protestant (at least not a remotely conservative Protestant) “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

I do not believe that Catholic Answers does well dealing with the evidence that Sullivan, Eno, Nibley, and Barker address in their books. This is one of the reasons that Protestants like James White beat on Catholics with Eno’s book. If Catholics would just embrace what Cardinal Newman demanded, some of these beatings could be avoided. Of course Jesus, Peter & the Keys: A Scriptural Handbook on the Papacy were it the complete picture would make it harder for LDS to claim the authority of Peter was not passed to the Bishops of Rome. But, this is not IMO (nor it would seem in the opinion of Eno or Father Sullivan) a complete picture.
Charity, TOm

This is just from here:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=278065&highlight=sullivan&page=4
 
Hi Jerusha,

As the anti-Catholic sources are now becoming academic and studying the early church fathers, again cherry picking as we have seen so many times on CAF, I asked my pastor for a good early church history book.

The one he recommended was the first book for seminarians, ‘A Concise History of the Catholic Church’, by Thomas Bokkenkotter. It is an overview and will not cover details that will redirect non-Catholics’ focus, if they are open.

I just came across a new history book and will review it with my pastoral team.
 
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