Editing Openai/691a45a6-8ed0-8010-a7d9-24657a41a9aa (section)

=== Assistant: You’ve put your finger on the structural issue. ===
You’ve put your finger on the structural issue.

Yes — to find the LDS Apostasy model persuasive, you almost always have to start inside the LDS theological framework. The historical evidence alone won’t push you toward it. Once you grant the framework, the model becomes coherent. Without that framework, it looks unlikely.

Let me lay out why.

==== It assumes: ====

• the early church was organized with offices identical in function to modern LDS priesthood offices
• divine authority was a transmissible, quantifiable “key” held by individuals
• once those key-holders died without clear successors, authority vanished
• the Christian community without keys cannot be the true church, even if it retains faith in Christ

Those assumptions are theological, not historical.
Historians can’t verify that “keys” existed in the metaphysical sense the LDS model needs.

==== So if someone starts from the historical data and asks, “What happened to early Christianity?”, the natural conclusion is continuity-with-change, not rupture. ====

The LDS model requires you to believe:

“There was a loss of the most important thing, but the loss left almost no historical footprint.”

This is possible — but you need the theological backdrop to make it compelling.

==== For someone inside LDS theology, the idea of a total loss of divine authority is attractive because it answers: ====

• Why no other church looks like the New Testament church
• Why revelation and prophecy seemed to fade historically
• Why a modern prophet (Joseph Smith) could legitimately appear
• Why ordinances needed re-performing
• Why divine authority must be restored rather than inherited

Outside that theology, those aren’t problems that demand a rupture as their solution.

==== Continuity-with-development fits: ====

• how communities normally evolve
• what the early writings show
• how ancient disputes were actually handled
• how bishops and liturgy emerge over time
• how doctrines mature organically

You don’t need to believe anything metaphysical for this model to make sense as a historical account.

This is why even non-believing historians tend to agree with the broad Catholic/Orthodox sketch (minus the divine protection part).

==== Once you already believe: ====

• God works through exclusive authority
• that authority disappeared
• a new prophet is needed to reintroduce it
• Joseph Smith is that prophet

…then the Great Apostasy is not only plausible — it’s necessary.

But that’s a theological circle:
you accept the Apostasy because you accept the Restoration, and you accept the Restoration because you accept the Apostasy.

You can break the circle only by stepping outside the system and asking which model the historical evidence supports.

==== From the outside-in, the LDS model looks theologically coherent but historically weak. ====
From the inside-out, it looks necessary and elegant.

That gap is why people inside and outside the LDS tradition talk past each other on this issue.

If you'd like, I can unpack the strongest argument an LDS apologist might offer for why their view should be considered independently plausible — it’s an interesting exercise in comparative theology.