Argument from the General Apostasy Dilemma
Another Unorganized Argument
This is one I would flag as very important. Mormonism has a doctrine called “The Great Apostasy.” The LDS official website summarizes it this way:
Following the death of Jesus Christ, wicked people persecuted and killed many Church members. Other Church members drifted from the principles taught by Jesus Christ and His Apostles. The Apostles were killed, and priesthood authority—including the keys to direct and receive revelation for the Church—was taken from the earth. Because the Church was no longer led by priesthood authority, error crept into Church teachings. Good people and much truth remained, but the gospel as established by Jesus Christ was lost. This period is called the Great Apostasy.
According to Mormon teaching, the true Gospel was not restored until 1830, when the Apostle John (who had been alive since the time of Christ—it is not clear to me how the priesthood was lost if he was alive the whole while, but that is for another time) restored it to Joseph Smith. This doctrine should be unacceptable to Christians; as far as I know, it is unique to Mormonism. Or is it?
During my theology major, I began to wonder: when did Christians who looked anything like me first show up? I knew the early Church would have a hard time recognizing my Sunday mornings. I also knew that the early Church very quickly settled into recognizably Catholic structures. So, the dilemma. Protestants must choose between one of the following:
First, maintain that there was a general apostasy. The saints, icons, the veneration of Mary, indulgences, purgatory, transubstantiation, and a thousand other Catholic teachings add up to something that is no longer Christianity. In this case, the Reformation will be fully justified. But it comes with a price none of us, I think, are willing to pay. Even if we very conservatively assume that the Catholic Church in a recognizable form only came about at the death of Augustine (which is just not true—Augustine fully recognized the papacy), then for about 1000 years there were no Christians in Europe. Are we really, seriously prepared to bite that bullet? I propose a rule: any view that puts Thomas Aquinas out of the Christian fold should be automatically rejected. Even a cursory understanding of Church history makes the claim untenable: what of Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich and John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and the other titans of Christian spirituality? Before you double down here, a warning: these have influenced all the great Protestant thinkers. Lewis liberally quotes them, as does Tim Keller, R.C. Sproul, and anyone else at all interested in serious theology. You would part company not only with Catholic but Protestant history. You would be forced to maintain that Christianity did not come back until you, or at best your specific sect, entered the world. I hope I need say no more to discourage this view.
Second, you might admit that Catholic teachings did not blot out the true Faith. But then it becomes very difficult to justify the Reformation. Say that veneration of the saints is not idolatry, and Luther’s decisions suddenly seem wildly out of proportion. What short of a full corruption of the Faith could be worth tearing Christendom apart at the seams? Consider especially the primacy of Rome. It is either a brash denial of the right to each man’s private judgment, thus an infernal lie, or it is the truth. It is too grand a claim to be neutral. If it was not sufficient to constitute a Great Apostasy, neither is it sufficient to warrant rebellion.
So, either there were no Christians for at least a thousand years, and God is incompetent to guard His Church, or the corruption plaguing the Church of 1500 AD was not so great as to make schism permissible. The only solution I see is to accept the second horn and admit that the faith of the early Church is the faith of the medieval Church is the faith of the Church today. It was and is protected by the office of St. Peter in Rome.
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"So, either there were no Christians for at least a thousand years, and God is incompetent to guard His Church, or the corruption plaguing the Church of 1500 AD was not so great as to make schism permissible.”
This is called a false dilemma, a logical fallacy. Your argument is “either you throw the baby out with the bathwater or you accept Catholic doctrine wholesale.” I don't need to do either and I don't subscribe to either view. Catholicism is not all that unique in that it's riddled with errors. The council of Trent which launched the counter-reformation asserted that Catholic traditions were of equal authority to Scripture, and that is the persistent mainstream view of Catholicism going back many centuries before that as well.
If you study The Word, you might see the problem with this view. That is pretty much why Jesus condemned the Pharisees: they held up their man-made traditions as being equal or greater than God's word. Rabbinical Judaism still holds to their Talmud over the Tanakh to this day. God condemned many Israelites before Christ for much the same reason: departing from His word. That being said, it's not that a Catholic can't be saved or a true believer, I'm down with some renegade Catholics myself, but they are saved in spite of the very twisted Catholic doctrine rather than because of it.