Today’s Trivia Question – Which One Is It

[Anonymous]

Often our religion is called The Restoration – The idea being that everything now is not new, it has all been done before. Yesterday, in preparing to be a good GD student I was reading Making Sense of the New Testament by BYU Profs – Holzapfel and Wayment. They kept saying Joseph Smith restored the New Testament church that Christ built. I have heard many church lessons that tie our temple’s back to Old Testament temples. I even taught it in Seminary. The Givens’ seem to hint that Joseph restored the gospel that was practiced in Enoch. Which I have no idea how to figure that one out.

Anyway – Which is it?

A. Old Testament

B. New Testament

C. Enoch

D. None of the Above.

What think you?

[Anonymous]

My answer is D. None of the above or E. All of the above.

Let me explain.

JS seems to have incorporated many things into the new religion of Mormonism. I believe that this initially was significant portions of Protestantism. Later ideas were incorporated from places as diverse as Masonic ritual and possibly Emanuel Swedenborg. Through it all the chief catalyst for Joseph’s innovations was the Bible.

In trying to make the case for anchient origins of Mormonism I have seen a quote here and there from early Christian fathers. We make a big deal if we find an anchient Judeo/Christian sect with a practice at all similar to our own and yet completely ignore their other beliefs and practices that we would find bizare and possibly offensive. Often we use this to bolster our argument that truths remained in the splintered apostate church even when mixed with the teachings of men. In essence I believe that in trying to make the case for the restoration of an anchient church we have cherry picked examples from across history. I in particular find it silly that we define the biblical term of evangelist to be patriarch when the terms evangelist, evangelism, and the spanish word “evangelio” or “gospel” are well established outside the LDS church in a completely different context. IMO it would make more sense to call missionaries to the priesthood office of “evangelist” for the term of their service rather than argue that we alone know the true meaning of the word evangelist.

I believe it would be difficult for someone trained in the anchient Judeo/Christian history to believe that the LDS church was a copy/mirror image of the earlier church. Perhaps a reorganization with the same authority but in a different structure – I could buy that. Thus the LDS Church could be a Pheonix of the old dispensational churches, reborn from the ashes, having the same power and spirit of the old but none of the old forms.

[Anonymous]

I’ll go with D. I did a thread a few months back about whether our modern church is really like the one “Jesus organized.” I’m not sure He organized a church – his apostles may have but I’m not sure this church is like that one, either. I don’t think there is anything really wrong with the modern church organization (although there are certainly things I would like to see done differently and there are some things that I think aren’t right). I do not believe Jesus directly organized the modern church.

In the presentation I heard by the Givens last month they intimated that Joseph didn’t see himself as a restorer of truth as much as he saw himself as a seeker of truth. In other words, he thought the truths were here and he sought to find them and bring them to the church. I can buy that, and in particular I buy it because I see truth in Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism, as well as Buddhism, Islam, and other non Judeo-Christian ideals. Likewise, the Givens believe that Joseph was trying to build Zion, like Enoch, yet they point out that we have several scriptural examples of others who tried to do so but Enoch was the only one successful at it. I confess that I have not read the story of Enoch of late, but what I recall of it gives us little insight into the organization that existed at the time (and, of course, I also don’t see the story as literal).

Really I think Joseph and his successors have done the best they can with what they have. I don’t think God very often told them how to do what he wanted – just that he wanted it. Or perhaps it isn’t even that clear – maybe they just felt good about it (in other words they wanted it and didn’t see anything wrong with it). I’m not so sure the “church as Jesus organized it” was a specific idea of Joseph and may be a more modern teaching. I have picked up RSR again, and maybe I will gain more insight in the next few weeks, but I currently believe the “church as Jesus organized it” or the “church organized like it was in Jesus’s time” is more of a McConkie era teaching.

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