The Long and Winding Road (To Ruin) or Eight Days a Week (Of Woe): Mormon Apostle Blames the Beatles for Society's Ills

[huckelberry]

Dale Broadhurst presented the below information several years ago here. I probably won’t be able to do it the justice it deserves or as well as Dale did it, but it stuck with me.

Regarding the “fullness of the gospel” and doctrinal views, the Book of Mormon follows Jesus and Paul relatively closely, but introduces two Restoration-era distinctions: 1) It merges Jesus’ “baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit” with water baptism; and 2) It introduces a category for the “not baptized,” which Paul never uses and Jesus only implies.

Jesus implies a “not baptized” category in Luke 7 when He contrasts people who accepted John’s baptism with those who rejected it, but He never turns it into doctrine—Paul never uses the category at all, while the Book of Mormon turns it into a central principle.

The Book of Mormon adds the category “not baptized” In 3 Nephi 11 and 27, by including the statement “he that is not baptized” (3 Nephi 11:34).

Jesus in the Gospels doesn’t specify this as a doctrinal category, and Paul explicitly avoids mandating baptism as a requirement.

In the New Testament, there is John’s baptism and Jesus’ baptism. Paul distinguishes them, but the Book of Mormon fuses them. Water baptism plus Holy Ghost equals the doctrine of Christ (2 Nephi 31).

But this theological construct directly reflects 19th-century Protestant revivalism (Alexander Campbell’s movement and Rigdon’s preaching).

In the late 1820s, Walter Scott (in the same Restorationist circle as Sidney Rigdon) took Acts 2:38 and turned it into a rigid five-step “ancient gospel”: faith, repentance, baptism, remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Instead of the older Protestant idea that the Spirit regenerates you and baptism is just a symbol, Scott explained that if you moved through those human steps, God was bound to give you both forgiveness and the Spirit through water baptism.

That exact linear pattern—faith; repentance; baptism; Holy Ghost as a single conversion event—shows up in the Book of Mormon’s “doctrine of Christ” passages, which is why some see 1828 Western Reserve theology oddly showing up directly into a supposedly ancient Nephite record.

In Pittsburgh in the early 1820s, Rigdon and Scott were working in the same Baptist arena, including a union of congregations where Scott was one of the key leaders. Scott presented his innovation as the “gospel restored”—the true ancient apostolic order modern churches had lost.

So while the Book of Mormon introduces those subtle doctrinal twists, they actually expose, along with other examples, the book’s 19th-century origins.

Limnor, you have some interesting particulars here. It is easy to see general protestant ideas in the Book of Mormon. This Walter Scott concept focuses it much more. The pattern is standard Mormon to my memory but you are highlighting the source. I think you are highlighting how Book of Mormon Idea of the fullness of the gospel is not my proposal of essential foundation but a larger mechanism. It is more disjointed to add to with Joseph Smith later elaboration though believers are happy to allow the additions. I do not think to argue their acceptance is as useful as highlighting the steps of creation of as you are doing.

[Limnor]

Limnor, you have some interesting particulars here. It is easy to see general protestant ideas in the Book of Mormon. This Walter Scott concept focuses it much more. The pattern is standard Mormon to my memory but you are highlighting the source. I think you are highlighting how Book of Mormon Idea of the fullness of the gospel is not my proposal of essential foundation but a larger mechanism. It is more disjointed to add to with Joseph Smith later elaboration though believers are happy to allow the additions. I do not think to argue their acceptance is as useful as highlighting the steps of creation of as you are doing.

Right, there are a couple of distinct deviations within the book that set up a “man-in-the-loop” hierarchical structure designed to assert and affirm baptismal authority claims that would not exist as clearly without the supposed ancient aspect of the book—those claims add and adjust what Jesus and Paul were recorded to have said. The book makes the same claims that Scott and Rigdon defined as the “ancient order” right before the Book of Mormon appeared.

I’d almost call it a second witness of those 19th century interpretive claims more so than a second witness of the Bible.

Joseph’s later “revelations” continue to add to and adjust what had been previously captured even in the Book of Mormon. Believers seem to be comfortable lumping all of that together, but analytically it’s more revealing—and intellectually satisfying, to me—to align and describe how those adjustments were created. That’s all I’m doing—following the developmental steps instead of assuming the book contains the same “fullness” as described biblically.

[Limnor]

It was quite interesting to read his assessment. If you're interested, I'll see if I can find the thread.

I am interested, yes please.

I conducted a search and found some interesting discussions about board sock puppets but didn’t see this assessment—did you find it?

[Shulem]

Help Jesus save the world from the bloody Mormons.

[Shulem]

I met a Mormon girl once.

[Shulem]

If Joe can bang 14 year old girls, so can I. Kiss my ass, u Mormons.

[Marcus]

I am interested, yes please.

I conducted a search and found some interesting discussions about board sock puppets but didn’t see this assessment—did you find it?

I looked also, but my apologies, I was not able to find the one I was referring to--he probably posted about it before the board crash that resulted in this iteration, and searching those years is extremely difficult. Honor still posts occasionally, maybe he would respond to a PM about it.

[MG 2.0]

the fullness of the gospel could be simple. Yes I think the Lord's Prayer and his death and resurrection contains the fullness. I admit that is the smallest container I could think of. I am happy that there are more larger containers.

I think we might agree on the basic idea of “fullness,” but maybe not on what counts as the core container.

If we go by Jesus and Paul, the “fullness of the gospel” really is very small—almost shockingly so: Jesus reduces the law and prophets to two commands. He gives the Lord’s Prayer as the model of Christian life. Paul defines “the gospel” very specifically as Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection and then spends the rest of his letters essentially explaining how that one event reconciles us to God.

That’s the tiny container: Christ’s self-giving love, death, and resurrection—received by faith. Everything else flows from that. Where things get interesting is when people expand the container.

So I suppose the issue is whether that smallest container is already enough—and everything beyond that is interpretation, tradition, or (in the case of Mormonism) later innovation added onto a very small original gospel.

Joseph Smith would essentially agree:

"The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it".

Everything else the church does or teaches are appendages to these fundamental principles. Some see these appendages as having been attached by Joseph Smith and Co., period. Others see it as the gospel being fleshed out into its fullness of restoration through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith by Jesus Christ and God the Father.

It's one or the other.

The first option even the naturalists/materialists/secularists/humanists can agree with. The second takes a leap of reasoned faith beyond traditional Christianity.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

"The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it".

Everything else the church does or teaches are appendages to these fundamental principles. Some see these appendages as having been attached by Joseph Smith and Co., period. Others see it as the gospel being fleshed out into its fullness of restoration through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith by Jesus Christ and God the Father.

It's one or the other.

No, it isn’t a choice between one or the other. Other conclusions are available. It could, for instance, be people making things up on the hoof in order to aggrandise themselves or to further their own personal agenda.

[Limnor]

Others see it as the gospel being fleshed out into its fullness of restoration through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith by Jesus Christ and God the Father.

…

The second takes a leap of reasoned faith beyond traditional Christianity.

Regards,
MG

Could you please describe the reasoning that leads you to believe that a restoration of ancient doctrines—appendages, as Joseph admits they are—was required?

Because I don’t understand how you come to that conclusion—if those appendages were really ancient doctrines lost and in need of restoration then the Book of Mormon itself should be the one place they appear.

Instead it denies the legitimacy of adding them at all. The book says the gospel is complete and unchangeable as delivered by Christ, and that adding “more or less” to His doctrine “cometh of evil”.