Mormon Restoration, Christian Reformation? What is the difference?
The tired old trope about post-apostolic Christians, without prophets and apostles, struggling to work out exactly what they believed, Nicaea, the cobbling together of a Bible, and the ‘invention’ of the Trinity, really has outstayed its welcome, yet Mormons still trot it out at every opportunity.
Mormon missionaries come with a message of restoration, and at breathtaking speed (just four short paragraphs in their teaching manual), use this idea of apostasy to bring you quickly from Jesus to Joseph Smith. Two thousand years of church history is overlooked. I wrote about this in an earlier newsletter.
It is the favourite apologetic of the cults, of every cultic church determined to establish their own ‘restoration’ narrative, restored authority, their own ‘ground floor’ from which they will build a movement more in keeping with their own understanding of things, and which will finally prove very wide of the mark.
The Mormon Church is very comfortable with the apostasy narrative. It has to be because if there was no apostasy there can be nothing to restore. Since the Mormon church is built on the claim of early apostasy and recent restoration it won’t be in a hurry to drop such a fiction. There are so many movements today that base their work on this idea, even within the Christian Church. It is worthwhile asking, where do we end up if our theological and ecclesiastical understanding is based on a narrative of apostasy and restoration?
Journal of Discourses; Restoration ‘Open Canon’?
One of the claims of Mormonism is the claim to have restored the correct ecclesiastical order, based on Paul’s letter to the church n Ephesus:
‘And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ Ephesian 4:11-13
The claim is made that apostles and prophets should have always been there in every age of the church, and should be there today, to give revelation, God’s word for today. It is worth reflecting on the implications of this claim.
First, this looks like a singular failure on God’s part, that his purposes should be so thwarted as to not have his representatives on the earth for the best part of 1,900 years.
Secondly, the prophets and apostles of the Bible wrote Scripture. Do Mormon apostles and prophets write Scripture today? It is claimed that Mormon leaders function in exactly the same way as first century leaders, speaking with the same authority, their pronouncements as good as Scripture, the church operating from an open canon. Consequently, the Mormon Church makes a distinction between their ‘restored gospel’ and what they call ‘creedal Christianity.’
If Mormon restoration presents the world with an open canon where might that open canon be found? What might it contain? Added to the Bible, Mormons have the Book of Mormon, purported to be an ancient document recording the hidden history of Native Americans; the Doctrine and Covenants, the recorded revelations of Joseph Smith; the Pearl of Great Price, an odd collection of stories and documents written or translated by Joseph Smith. Together with the Bible, these are known officially as, The Standard Works of the Church, their official Scripture of the Restoration.
The Journal of Discourses is a good example of what happens as a cult claiming exclusive authority to speak for God grows and comes under closer scrutiny. The Journal was endorsed by a ‘prophet,’ Brigham Young, who claimed all his sermons were as good as Scripture. The preface to the eighth volume reads, in part:
‘The Journal of Discourses deservedly ranks as one of the standard works of the Church, and every rightminded Saint will certainly welcome with joy every number (issue) as it comes forth.’(George Q. Cannon, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles)
With this endorsement in mind, the publishers can, in the eighth volume, confidently claim for the work the status of Standard Works. Standard Works is code in the Mormon Church for Scripture. Clearly, in the early church, the Journal was considered an example of an open canon, containing what we might reasonably expect it to contain, the words of the prophets.
The official statement of the church on the question of the journal’s authority today can be found here. Today Mormons dismiss the 26 volume Journal of Discourses as nothing more than of its time, an historical curiosity, but no longer relevant. In which case Mormons don’t have an open canon, since modern prophets have not, for generations, added to the canon of the church, the Standard Works.
The answer to this point, and I hear it often enough, is that modern prophets deliver their words at the annual and semi-annual conferences of the church. That simply means their words are published in the church magazines, which, themselves, soon enough become the Journal of Discourses of the next generation.
Of course, in dismissing the Journal, Mormons are dismissing teachings that, at one time, were regarded as ‘eternal truths,’ delivered by living prophets. I find it curious that each generation buries its past on the pretext there are ‘living prophets,’ today, when the Mormon past was also occupied by ‘living prophets.’ This seems inevitable with any and every ‘Restorationist’ movement. Time proves prophesies and pronouncements, teachings and practices wrong (sometimes outright bizarre), and usually followers are scapegoated; just ask a Jehovah’s Witness about date setting.
Christian ‘Standard Works’
The Bible, the standard works of the Christian Church for 2,000 years, on the other hand, doesn’t work that way. We know how it works, what is civil law and applies to the Israel of history, what is cultic and applies to the Old Testament temple, and what are eternal principles. There are three law codes in the Old Testament
1. The civil law, the law of Israeli society, bearing in mind God’s people then were a nation. An example would be, ‘If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.’ Exodus 22:1
2. The laws governing the cult of the temple, such as the sacrifice laws given in Leviticus 1-7
3. Eternal laws, encapsulated in the ten commandments, dealing with our relationship to God (1-4) and our relationships with each other (5-10)
All together, these constitute the Torah, the story of God making a people for himself and teaching them how to live.
The civil laws are redundant because they were for a particular nation at a particular time, although our own civil laws are Bible-based. The laws governing animal sacrifices are now redundant. I attended the Mormon temple many times, and no animals were sacrificed. Of course, nothing that goes on in the Mormon temple today bears any resemblance or relation to what went on in the temple in Jerusalem, but I am sure you get my point. What we are left with are the eternal laws, which we are still bound to obey – ‘Do not murder’ has not been rescinded, nor has ‘do not steal,’ along with many others.
We know about the covenants and their significance because ‘the Bible tells us so,’ and it still has absolute authority for Christians. We know Christ fulfils the Law, because we understand the Law he fulfils and the promise of fulfilment delivered by ancient prophets. Those prophets we read are as relevant, essential to our understanding, today as they were when they first spoke.
If Mormonism is a restoration of Christianity, why are its prophets barely cold in their graves before they become irrelevant? What, barely 200 years? Many, including Mormons, misunderstand how prophets are supposed to work. Prophets do a lot more forth-telling than foretelling, which means that, far from dismissing what went before, they brought God’s people back to all that was taught before.
Entrust to Faithful Men
In the last book in our Old Testament, Malachi, God says to his people, ‘Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.’ Malachi 4:4
Paul’s last letter, to Timothy his ‘son in the faith,’ charges Timothy, ‘What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.’ 2 Timothy 2:2 Jesus came to fulfil the Law, he didn’t come to abolish it, those who came after him passed on what they were taught, they didn’t pass over it.
Surely, the counsel of every prophet is relevant and must be studied. That is how it works in the Christian Church, we read the whole counsel of God from the whole Word of God.
There are seven covenants in the Bible, each building on the last, so it is as important to know what God promised Abraham as it is to know what God achieved in Christ, especially so here. If you don’t know the former you will never understand the latter.
Restoration vs Reformation
The problem here is that every restorationist group has an unrealistic picture of church. If we could only get back to the New Testament model, it is said, we could get things right. This is restorationism at its core.
Where the Reformers’ cry was, ‘ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbi dei,’ (‘reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God.’) the cry of these cults is, typically, ‘Christendom is astray,’ (Christadelphians); ‘Plain and precious Bible truths are lost,’ (Mormons); ‘God’s name has been eradicated,’ (Jehovah’s Witnesses) – and we alone have these ‘restored’ truths, principles practices, and authority.
The Reformers valued what they had inherited and went back to first principles and reformed it. This is soundly biblical. Hezekiah King of Judah reformed the priesthood, purified and repaired the Temple, and destroyed idols (2 Kings 18); Jehoash King of Judah restored the Temple to its original condition (2 Kings 14); Josiah King of Judah (a great example for us today) led a religious reform during his reign. The discovery of the Book of the Law during the restoration of the Temple led to the reform (2 Kings 22) You might say Josiah followed the counsel of Jeremiah:
‘This is what the Lord says: stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’ Jeremiah 6:16
The good way already exists, we simply need to find and walk in it. Unfortunately, Jeremiah goes on, ‘But you will not walk in it.’ The same is happening today. The good way is still there, but those with itching ears seek after another way.
For Restorationists all that was good in the earliest days and through the history of the Christian Church was lost, or so corrupted there is nothing there to reform; established ways are rejected. Notably, what is first to be ‘restored’ is authority to re-establish what was always God’s purpose from the beginning. This is why cults so readily see themselves as ‘the only true’ representatives of God.
The ‘man of God,’ who has been up the mountain, out in the desert, in the secret place, is recognised in his prophetic or apostolic office and we are all to understand God’s purposes through his teaching. Think Muhammad, think Joseph Smith, think every guest on the Sid Roth Show.
Mormonisms history of staging pageants illustrates the alternative narrative favoured by Restorationist groups. Here the baseline for their faith is Joseph Smith, the events surrounding their Restoration narrative.
Scene from the British Pageant
None of the Reformers claimed they alone had God’s ear, none declared theirs the ‘true church,’ the correct model, the new baseline, all went back to ‘the good way.’
The Church: Reformed and Always Reforming
The New Testament church is, as Mormons paint it, in constant need of correction, and has been for 2,000 years. The restorationist story of apostasy is one of falling from a great height of correct faith and praxis. The problem with that story is that God’s people have always proved stubborn and rebellious.
Both Israel under the old covenant, and the church under the new covenant, follow the same pattern. This pattern hasn’t disappeared, neither is it total apostasy, it is life among the covenant people of God. This is not yet God’s fulfilled purpose, but it is not so aberrant as to be fully apostate. It is God working out his purposes, while the saints of God work out our salvation. Philip. 2:12
Neither does the Mormon picture of ‘total’ apostasy fit the New Testament model. There can be no doubt there has been apostasy from the beginning, but Jesus himself said, ‘I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ (Mt.16:18) What does that look like?
It looks like the worldly church in Corinth, like the foolish church in Galatia, like the churches in Revelation: the church in Ephesus, faithful but falling short in abandoning its first love; the church in Smyrna, faithful through tribulation and poverty, facing persecution; the church in Pergamum, holding fast to the Name, but holding to the teaching of Balaam, some to the teaching of the Nicolaitans; the church in Thyatira, whose endurance and great works are commended, but who are chastised for tolerating a Jezebel; the church in Sardis, so busy it has forgotten to live!; the church in Philadelphia, who have kept Christ’s word, not denying his name; the church in Laodicea, lukewarm, tepid, and in danger of rejection.
The church was warned of apostasy, early church leaders urging Christians to faithfulness, and to faithful apologia for the gospel of the Way (1 Peter 3:15). This is normal in every age and generation of God’s people. Restorationism suggests that, following the death of the apostles, the church fell off a cliff, that if we restore it with the right leaders, the correct model, the ‘man of God’ up front to tell us what to do, we can return to that New Testament church. That pristine model of the early church doesn’t exist, not in history, not today. Christ has built his church and hell’s gates have not prevailed. It’s messy, but it’s church.
