Paul held a singular, unique position in that he was appointed by Jesus himself to preach to the gentiles. He also witnessed the resurrected Christ.
Modern day Apostles are also appointed by Jesus Himself; and how do you know that they have not “witnessed the resurrected Christ”?
I don’t recall the other twelve (or eleven) actually appointing Paul as an Apostle. This was done by Jesus and they recognized that he held a special place among the disciples.
There is no direct evidence that Paul was appointed by Jesus either. After Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, He told him to go into the city, and he would be
told what to do. And the person who
told him what to do was a disciple by the name of Ananias. But there is no record of when he was appointed to be an Apostle, or by whom. You are just guessing; and who is to say that your guess is better than mine? It is more reasonable to assume that his appointment to the Apostleship came through the original Apostles (as the appointment of Matthias had been), than to believe otherwise—especially given the fact that his initial instruction had come from another disciple too.
Zerinus, this is where we always part company. Christ did not depend on human beings for the success of his Church. This was HIS Church, not Peter’s or Paul’s or any of the other Apostles. It seems to me that one would have no choice but to conclude that Jesus was a complete failure at founding a Church, if, in fact, he did not foresee that the office of Apostle could not be carried forward simply because of logistics.
I didn’t say that was the only reason. The main reason was the apostasy of the early Christian Church. What you call the “logistics” factor was not itself a determine factor, but indicative of a more serious problem—that the world itself was not able to contain the Twelve Apostles. What would have been the point of ordaining more Apostles if they were all going to be killed off faster than they were being ordained? These were the two factors that prevented the Twelve Apostles from continuing at that time: (1) Apostasy from within the Church; and (2) persecution from without.
You are proposing that the all important office, which would transmit priestly authority, would die out if the Apostles could not all meet together and choose a successor.
That is not exactly what I said. Only Apostles had the authority to ordain other Apostles—as they did Matthias and, we believe, Paul. Now if the Apostles were being killed off faster than they were being ordained, you don’t need to be a mathematical genius to realize that they could not have survived very long.
No, they had individual authority to appoint bishops who would succeed them without any loss of authority.
And I explained before why bishops could not be successors to the Apostles.
The office of bishop, within the Mormon church, is not like the office of bishop in the Catholic Church. Your bishops come and go like holding the office of vice-president in a private company. One day you are, the next day you aren’t.
LOL! That actually is not true. When a Mormon bishop is ordained a bishop, he remains a bishop for life. He may be released from
serving as a bishop of a particular ward, but that does not mean that he loses his priestly ordination as a bishop too. You got that completely wrong I am afraid.
The office of bishop, however, in the early Church, as well as today, was a permanent office which they received from the Apostles themselves through ordination.
Once a bishop, always a bishop, agreed; but bishop of what? You not only need to receive the
ordination to act as a bishop; but also be
appointed to act as bishop of a particular congregation. Without that appointment, your ordination to the bishopric alone does not entitle you to do a lot.
The bishops received the apostolic authority of the Apostles.
Hardly! No such luck I am afraid.
And that is all you have. A claim. What is to stop me from making that same claim. How do you prove I was not visited by an angel or even Christ himself last night?
All religious belief at its root is ultimately nothing more than a claim. A non-Christian could level the same accusation against you, and you would have no better answer to give him than I can give you. So let’s not waste any time on that.
The CC on the other hand can demonstrate apostolic succession with real historical documents. We do not just claim that we can. We can actually prove it.
What real historical documents? Do you have a letter signed by Peter stating that he is ordaining the bishop of Rome to be his successor with the Apostolic office conferred? Of course not. We have better historical documents affirming succession to the Apostleship going back to Joseph Smith, who received it by angelic ministration from Peter, James, and John. Is that incredible to you? Well, some people find the whole of virgin birth, or Jesus being the Son of God, or His resurrection etc. more incredible. So you are not in any better shape than us from that point of view. All religious belief is founded on pure faith at some point. If you start questioning the faith basis of another religion, you undermine your own.
There are many Mormons whose eyes are not yet opened that they do not see, and their ears are not opened that they do not hear. See Revelation 3:18–19; Mosiah 2:9–11.
Where’s the Beef?