There
are two basis for Mormonism as the succession to Christianity. According to
Mormons...
- The
Bible has been translated and copied so many times the original teachings have
become too distorted and thus we need the book of Mormon to show us how we
should interpret the Bible
- Apostolic
authority was lost after the deaths of the original apostles and now Joseph
Smith has reinstated that authority through himself and the head prophets of the
Mormon church
In
this short argument, I will debunk both of these points using both New Testament
scholarship and logic.
Firstly,
have we lost the original content, meaning and teachings of the original NT
canon? While it is true we do not have the original manuscripts it would be
foolish to make such a claim as we truly
can discover their content within reasonable
assurance thanks to the work of
textual
criticism. By gathering and appropriately judging the NT manuscripts we
have, we can come within 99 percent of knowing what the NT Bible originally
said. So what about that last percentage? Couldn't there be some major doctrine
distorted in there? In short – no. Of the suspect variants within the
manuscripts, there are no major doctrines up for questioning...and of these
we
do know which reading it could be in the
original, we're just not sure on which one it is.
Given
we can trust the Bible as we have it, all that's left on the first bullet point
of Mormonism is to compare the teachings it purports with that of the Bible.
With careful study we can see there are conflicts between the two (e.g. The
Trinity, marriage in heaven, etc.). Now we have a problem. Since the NT is the
source of our teachings on Jesus it has the priority on orthodoxy and
can be trusted to reflect what it originally did and since the book of Mormon has been shown
to be in conflict with it, we have no choice but to conclude the book of Mormon
is not an authoritative or reliable source on
matters of faith and practice.
Now
let's turn our attention to Joseph Smith, the suggested receiver and source of
this information. Since his authority is linked to the trustworthiness of the
book of Mormon which is supposed to be a complementary book of the Bible, yet has been shown to be
in disagreement with the NT canon, we have to say that this
authority is not authentic. Therefore, the teachings of Mormonism have no validity in regards to the Christian faith
or the historical Jesus of Nazareth and therefore no authority at all.
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