Did Jesus found the Catholic Church?

One of the regularly reoccurring topics in apologetic debate is the idea that Jesus founded an earthly church that is contiguous with today's Roman Catholic Church. The historical evidence we have almost completely contradicts any possibility of this theory being true and it worth assembling a short list of samples that demonstrates this. In general it is important to understand the arguments below are evidence. Each in isolation does not absolutely disprove the possibility of Jesus having established a material church in Palestine which became today's Roman Catholic Church. But each does make it unlikely and since they are often quite independent of one another in the aggregate they do make it at the very least statistically impossible.

Bible:

The first piece of evidence is the bible itself. Starting with the synoptic gospels. In Catholic lore Mark was a secretary for Peter, the first Bishop of Rome. Matthew was an apostle who composed his gospel independently. Luke was a late companion of Paul who wrote Luke/Acts shortly before Paul's death independently of either Mark or Matthew. As soon as literary analysis was performed it was concluded that there was clear dependency. Luke and Matthew were dependent on Mark and some other not independently existing source text. Mark itself uses literary forms not common in Catholic writing but very common in Jewish and Gnostic writings, moreover forms totally unlike those found in the Petrine corpus which makes the Petrine Catholic authorship unlikely. If the Catholic church wrote the synoptic corpus then how come they don't know how these books were authored?

Similarly, Catholic theology was that an apostle of Jesus named John wrote the Gospel of John, internally literally analysis indicates that Canonical John is a heavy redaction of a smaller work whose order has been scrambled. Which demonstrates that the Catholic church is either ignorant of the origins of the gospels, dishonest about the origins of the gospels or both. If they are ignorant than as an institution they didn't write them. If dishonest then what are they covering up?

1st and 2nd Corinthians demonstrate this sort of redacted structure indicating multiple authors. Colossians has a decided non-Catholic theology of Jesus as the greatest among the aions. There is some literary dependence between Colossians and Ephesians. The internal structure of Romans is a morass of layers between groups with different theologies. The pastoral epistles have language bearing almost no resemblance to the rest of the Pauline corpus. On the other hand they bear striking resemblance to later Catholic works. Indicating they likely were written after the primary Pauline corpus was regularly used. Incidentally the Catholic Church used to attribute Hebrews which has both entirely different literary structure and theology to Paul. Under Catholic theology all of these books were written by the same 1st century Apostle who was influential in the church from early on. If the Catholic Church wrote these books how come they don't know how they were authored?

Let's move beyond the bible's structure to the core theological debates. During the writing of the bible we see the Paul character as well as other epistles like Hebrews and John making an appeal to scripture to justify their theological point. They see their opponents as peers. These authors seem completely unaware they are living in an monarchical episcopate run by Peter in Rome. How could they be unaware of this? How could later church writers like Justin Martyr be similarly unaware in their arguments?

Biblical History:

Then let's move to the bible's history. Peter is the central figure in 1st century Roman Catholic theology, the first Bishop of Rome. In  Catholic history Bishop Serapion of Antioch has a congregation in Rhossus which is using the Gospel of Peter. Other churches in the area believe Gospel of Peter is Marcionic and complain. Serapion contacts a Rhossus Docetic church to get a timeline, believing they predate Marcion. Evidently the Catholics and the docetic church are on friendly terms even though Serapion is not docetic. He gets from the entire Petrine corpus and kicks it up the chain of command. How could the Catholic church not have had the Petrine corpus until almost the 3rd century if it were founded by Peter? Why would the status of Peter's writings not be known? Why does Bishop Serapion need to go to docetic Christians to get the history of Catholic church's founders?

 Non-Catholics claim that Marcion invented the concept of a New Testament and brought the Pauline corpus to the attention of the wider Christian community including Catholics. The early church fathers are ignorant of Paul. Clement (1Clement 47:1) seems to believe there is only a single epistle a form of 1Corinthians. Ignatius (Ephesians 12:2) believed that Paul was exclusively associated with Ephesus. Polycarp (Philippians 3:2) has Paul writing to them. How is that level of ignorance possible for early Catholics if Paul is a central founder of Catholicism? Given that the earliest commentaries we have are from Basilides and Hereacleon isn't it more likely that Paul and early Paulism has no association with Catholicism at all during his life? That the Catholic story of his central role is pure fabrication?

Non-Catholic Christianity Record:

Then there is the evidence from the Gnostics, both Jewish and Christian. With the recent archeology men like John Turner and Birger Pearson have been able to reconstruct timelines for Gnostic sects and regions. And they have shown quite decisively that Christian Gnosticism developed from Jewish Gnosticism not Catholic Christianity. If Catholicism was around during the early 2nd century why doesn't it know how Christian Gnosticism developed? Why did it present over and over a theory of an origin from Catholicism?

In addition to documents we have archeological evidence.

Ignorance of Judaism:

Finally,  there is the issue of the breathtaking ignorance of Judaism one finds in Catholic literature. The Catholic theory is that the Catholic church emerged directly from Judaism. Yet early Catholic writers makes statements about Judaism which are simply so far from realities of first or second century Judaism that they must have emerged from groups who had no or little contact with the Jewish religion.   A perfect example being the role of "priest" in Catholicism and the apologetic for it based on "priests" in Judaism.  In the Judaism of the 1st century priests were primarily involved in the sacrificial cult, it was not a governing office, outside Jerusalem, nor was it a teaching office a role primarily occupied by the Pharisees.  Catholic Priests, while certainly performing ritual, are also responsible for teaching and governing, the three are united.  Far from embracing the Jewish priestly system typologically, this is an outright rejection of it.  Which would be fine were it not for the fact that the Catholic authors are ignorant of the Jewish system, a system which at least for the Ignatius letters was still in effect during his life.  This sort of ignorance couldn't have happened if Catholicism had emerged directly from Judaism. Christian Gnosticism, as an aside, might quite often despise Judaism and the Jewish God but it shows extensive knowledge of the religion. The difference between an x-wife and someone pretending to know a man she's never met.

Conclusion:

Almost every piece of evidence we have is consistent with Christianity having emerged organically from 1st century Judaism primarily Jewish Gnosticism and later developing towards Logos Christianity and Encratite forms of Christianity. If Jesus founded the Catholic church why is it the case that almost all the evidence we have is supports Catholicism having evolved came from these sects and contradicts Catholicism originating from a foundation in the Palestine of the 30s?

Thoughts about Adam-God

Sara Clugage's
Adam Kadmon

There is an Evangelical myth which comes up frequently when there is a discussion of Mormonism that is probably worth dispelling.  The myth goes something like this: in 1852 Brigham Young started teaching that God the Father and the Adam from Genesis were the same person.  Adam was an exalted mortal man who came with one of his wives Eve to earth, ate of the tree of knowledge to become mortal and begat human children.  This Adam later returned to earth to have sex with Mary and become the father of Jesus.  In the Evangelical timeline version of the story, Orson Pratt objected to this teaching and Brigham continued to teach it throughout his life, with most Mormons of the 1850-1870s believing this.  Later the church covered it up, and denied this doctrine had every been taught.   This incident proves that Brigham was a false prophet, and the LDS a false church.  To prove this rather substantial theory they present two pieces of evidence: a few second hand paragraphs with some scattered quotes from sermon records of the time spread over two decades, and the fact there are also several fundamentalist Mormon sects that still hold to a view that Adam was Elohim and physically impregnated Eve to start creation. And that is the extent of the evidence.

Conversely the LDS church's version of events initially appears less convincing.  What they argue is that Brigham Young gave several sermons on the divinity of Adam,  a popular doctrine called "Adam-God" developed from these sermons as a misunderstanding.  The mainstream church starting with Joseph F. Smith became aware of this folk Mormon heresy and tried to surpress it.  This folk Mormon theology did however pass onto splinter sects that broke off from the LDS like the FLDS and Apostolic United Brethren.   I intend to argue the LDS church's version is correct, they are telling the truth.  And not only do I intend to prove that but to further present evidence that what Brigham was actually teaching was neither terribly controversial nor original, rather mainstream Hermeticism.

The first thing that happens if one begins to examine evangelical theory is that the very words of Brigham Young in his quotes about Adam-God contradict the fundamentalist doctrine.  For example:

1. If Adam is Elohim why does Brigham speak of “revelation given to Adam” revelation from whom?
2. Why does Elohim refer to “my son Adam” in Brigham’s sermons?
3. Why does he in these reports of the sermons say of Adam and Eve “they are the children of our Heavenly Father” and refer to us as their children which contradicts the entire supposed point?

Even thinking of Elohim as a plurality of God's doesn't resolve these issues and I have yet to hear an evangelical define an Adam-God doctrine that is consistent with their theory and consistent with Brigham's quotes on the topic.  This in and of itself disproves the theory that the FLDS / AUB version of Adam-God represents the "authentic Brigham".  Brigham either contradicted himself and there was no consistent doctrine, or the fundamentalist version doesn't match his teaching.

But if the Mormon fundamentalist view is not what Brigham was preaching that leaves unanswered the crucial question; if Brigham didn't mean that Adam was Elohim what did he mean?  Brigham gives a crucial clue in those few paragraphs where he tells us he learned this doctrine from Joseph Smith.  Now we do know a lot about Joseph Smith's theology near the end of his life (see Mormonism as Hermetic Christianity part 3), he was a lifetime member of the Free Masons, studying Kabbalah and delving into Hermetic Christianity all three of which have a doctrine called "Adam Kadmon" that does fit with the Brigham quotes.

The story of creation in the Hebrew is extremely poetic.  Joseph Smith was aware of this, and in sermons of his he frequently complained about the poor quality of the English translation of his day (the King James Version) in capturing the nuances of the Hebrew for the introductory chapters of Genesis.  The issue for any translator is that various word plays in the Hebrew are impossible to translate into English.  For example when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit they discover they are naked in English.  In Hebrew they ambiguously discover they are naked and/or cunning.  There is simply no way to be ambiguous in English between naked and cunning, the translator into English is forced into making an interpretation and suppressing the ambiguity.

In the same way there are problems with the tradition language regarding Adam. Adam is literally "the man", it also used by convention as a name of a specific person (Adam).  This convention breaks down in several places, for example in Genesis 1

26 And God said, Let us make man (adam) in our image, after our likeness (order is reversed from what is normally gramatical.  The word for image here is literally statue) and let them have dominion (verb tense indicates purpose) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

 27 So God created man (this time ha'adam literally  "the aforementioned man" ) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female he created (created is in the singular, refers to a singular entity) them (them in English makes "created" plural which isn't capturing the Hebrew.  "It" would be standard English for singular so something like "it/them" would be needed here to capture the Hebrew).

Adam Kadmon
with 10 Sephirot

etc...  In Hebrew there is a lot more going on that isn't in your English translation.   Hellenistic Judaism, which after all saw its mission as to reconcile Judaism with Platonic philosophy, dealt with this language by introducing the idea of a spiritual Adam, Adam Kadmon.  This spiritual Adam is an image of the ten sephirot (attributes of God).  The image to the right has thse marked off and associated with body parts.  A configuration of the sephirot (Partzufim) is in a platonic / Hellenistic Jewish sense a particular image of God, a conception like an avatar.  So Adam Kadmon is a way of talking about a will of God, the same way God's wisdom is made manifest in works like: Sir 1:1-18; 4:11-19; 6:18-31; 14:20-15:10; 24:1-31; 51:13-30; Wis 7-9; Baruch 3:9-38.    This spiritual Adam, doesn't have material properties like sex, so if you look at the image of Adam Kadmon at the top of the post, you'll notice that the model (Brittany Spears) is female. As such Adam Kadmon is the perfect image of the Logos.   The material Adam, the one in the garden, as well as Eve would both be a reflection of Adam Kadmon, in keeping with the Hermetic "as above so below".  So God -> Logos -> Adam Kadmon -> material Adam / mythic Adam.  

This theology was fully developed by Philo and has remained part of Jewish mysticism since. It passed directly into primitive Christianity. Paul uses it casually in 1 Cor 15:45-50.  The idea is explicated in the Clementine literature, Jesus is the incarnation of the heavenly image, Adam Kadmon i.e. a materialization of the Logos.  Historically this idea becomes popular with the Elkasaites and other Gnostic Jewish groups and thus makes its way into Manichaeism where the 7 incarnation of Adam Kadmon are: Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus.  From here no particular order it gets incorporated into Druze and Islamic Gnosticism where it makes its way back into Christian Hermeticism, which acts as an indirect base for Free Masonry.

This doctrine did not however make it into mainstream Christianity.  Saint Augustine, wrote the definitive interpretation of those early chapters of Genesis.  That interpretation was based on the Greek bible (the Septuagint) which does not have the poetic ambiguity of the Hebrew, though it contains hints of it like the English.  His interpretation is the classic view: original sin and the fall, both of which Joseph Smith rejected.  While he is familiar with the Adam Kadmon view, being a former Manichean himself, he rejects it.

Joseph in teaching Adam Kadmon would have been teaching a lost doctrine of early Christianity (at least of some major sects) that is engaging in Christian restoration.  His belief in this doctrine would be fully consistent with the "bible is true in so far as it is translated correctly" as this is a doctrine which comes directly from a good understanding of the originals.   This doctrine justifies many of his other theological shifts.  And the doctrine isn't even much of a stretch since, the idea of a heavenly Adam can easily be thought of as the "spirit child Adam".

I think it not just possible but likely that Brigham was preaching this, but being a bit loose on a few occasions about distinguishing between Adam Kadmon and material Adam.   What's more Adam Kadmon in Judaism is the father of all human souls, which is Elohim's role in traditional Mormonism.  As mentioned above Adam Kadmon is seen as either the father of the earthly Jesus, or earthly Jesus is an incarnation of Adam Kadmon.  And equally material Adam is either the son or an incarnation of Adam Kadmon.  So I can easily see how the roles in a few paragraph summary of Brigham's sermons got muddled.      For example in the December 28 1845,  Adam-God sermon Brigham talks about how Adam got his name from the "more ancient Adam", which would be confusing to anyone not familiar with this doctrine.

So for example:

• Adam and Eve were the names of the first man and woman of every earth that was ever organized and that Adam and Eve were the natural father and mother of every spirit that comes to this planet
• When you see your Mother that bear your spirit, you will see mother Eve

And so I propose:

a)  That Joseph Smith ran across a very mainstream Hermetic Christian doctrine in his studies.
b)  That Joseph Smith taught this theory to Brigham.
c)  That Brigham gave a few lectures on it over a period of decades, but did not cite the Hebrew.  Rather he used terms like "father Adam" for Adam Kadmon and Adam/"our father Adam" for material Adam.
d)  Because he did a bad job explicating this theory, the roles got muddled in the reports of these lectures and a folk Mormonism developed with these muddled roles / theology.
e)  The muddled roles got passed on to fundamentalist sects and codified.

Is all you have to believe to fully believe the LDS church's version of events.  What I would suggest is go back and read Brigham's reported sermons with this doctrine in mind, and you'll see how they suddenly make sense.

The next question is, why the opposition from Orson Pratt at the time?  Well the primary argument the two had was their respective theologies of exaltation.  Brigham saw it as progressing in quality, while Orson saw it as progressing in terms of quantity.  That is for Brigham God continues to progress in what he knows while for Orson the progression is in terms of his domain.    Adam Kadmon himself is timeless, eternal, non material. He is a divine creator of human life but unquestionably subordinate to the Logos and from there to Elohim.  In other words the doctrine of Adam Kadmon from a Mormon standpoint requires belief in Brigham's not Orson's theory of eternal progression.

Consistent with this, Orson was the primary advocate of Mormon Materialism (post on this topic), the doctrine that everything including the spiritual was matter that was simply re-organized by God.  The Adam Kadmon theory posits a non material Adam, cutting out the heart of Mormon metaphysics for Orson.    Moreover a non material image of Adam, certainly leads to returning to a "God without passions or parts".  Mormonism is an incarnational theology, Adam Kadmon is inherently adoptionistic.  Orson could have been concerned about the difficulties of reconciling adoptionistic view of Adam with a material view of the Godhead.    This view of Adam would have presented no problem for early Christians that supported adoptionism.  Moreover, religions like Judaism, Islam, Druze and Hermetic Christianity are adoptionistic in their view of all prophets strongly disbelieving in even the possibility of an incarnational theology in the orthodox Christian sense.  So Orson's objection is understandable.

_______

See also:

• Wikipedia article on Adam-God (link)
• Article in Dialogue on the History of Adam-God (link)
• Geoff Dennis article on Adam Kadmon: part1 part2
• Chabad article, wikipedia article on Adam Kadmon
• Adam-God on Mormonwiki (link) (hostile)
• Adam-God on MRM (link), this page links to additional resources

The Rock-paper-scissors of Apologetics

So I tried another round of Catholic apologetics and yet again I'm discovering that the Catholic apologetic falls completely apart in the face of typical Baptist counter arguments. On the other hand I can't help but notice how quickly your more traditional Protestants, with a poorly thought out position on sola scriptura get tied in knots by the Catholic apologetic.

So I've come up with this theory based that apologetics have a big circle similar to rock-paper-scissors.

• Catholic apologetics tie Calvinism in knots.
• Calvinism biblically refutes Arminian credobaptists.
• Arminian credobaptists doesn't let Catholic apologetics get off the ground.  

Most modern Catholic apologetics came from the continent, they aren't American and don't deal with the sorts of claims that a Baptist would make. I've tried again and again to see if Catholics have refutations to basic Baptist theology and so far it appears they don't.

There really are about 5 principle arguments in Catholic apologetic.

1. Sola scriptura is not taught in the bible, in fact the bible teaches a historic church.
2. Protestants have to accept tradition on the question of canon and quite often on creed.  
3. The Reformation failed to produce a robust orthodoxy.  That is sola scriptura doesn't produce a unified belief and any basis for a true church i.e. the "there are hundreds of Protestant denominations..."  
4. The key arguments some reformers had with the Catholic church: physical presence,  Marian rites, infant baptism, special authority of bishops/pope go back very early.  So the apostasy could not have been near the time of the reformation.   
5. Church authority is non-severable, the church cannot fall into apostasy.  The  gates of hell shall not prevail....    

To see how these arguments work consider them against, say a  Presbyterian.  The Presbyterian wants to tie himself tightly to historic Christianity.  He doesn't want to put himself in the same boat as fundamentalists, Mormons and Adventists.  So he ends up having to argue all sorts of subtle and disprovable theories. He wants there to be some absolute sense in which he is Christian and a Jehovah's Witnesses is not even though the Jehovah's Witnesses is at least as committed to an accurate read of scripture.  Which means he has to grant historic creeds authority, but the creeds are far later than many other doctrines he would reject and he's off to the races of slitting his own throat.  

The Baptist response to those arguments is easy.  In order:

1. References to the church in the bible only apply to a local church.  There is no further entity, thus no broad ecclesiology.   The only church Jesus founded was the Jerusalem church, the one church he destroyed, to prevent the idolatry of tying a material church to God.  
2. Baptists reject the idea that canon comes from tradition.  Rather they believe God raises up a bible for his faithful in their languages.  So for example, the Wulfila, the Gothic bible, doesn't have the book of Acts yet most Baptists believe the Wulfila to have been the legitimate scriptures for that community.  
3. Baptists believe in a regenerate church.  There will never be a broadly believed orthodoxy. 
4. They grant that the errant theology was early, but because they aren't tied to any churches beyond the 1st century they are able to clearly look at the history and see the origins accurately.  Baptists, believe that the apostasy started early, almost always by the 2nd century.     The Reformation didn't reconstruct the church, the Protestant churches are just as bad, rather it created the room for further reform.   
5. Many Baptists do believe that the Catholic church fell into a deep apostasy.  They often believe in a faithful remnant existing inside or outside the church and quite often a restoration in the last 500 years.  

The big difference is that the Baptist makes no claim to be in a qualitatively different situation than the Adventist or Jehovah's Witnesses; they believe themselves to be in a quantitatively different situation.   Salvation comes from asking for Jesus's intercession.  What exact level of understanding is needed, is unclear.  

I suspect ultimately this is a short term phenomena, mostly having to do with English speakers and the internet.  Most of the internet Catholics spend their time debating the internet Protestant apologists that are reformed, James White types.  So this analysis may already be dead in the Spanish speaking community.  In Latin America the real battle is between Pentecostalism and Western Rite Catholicism, the traditional apologetic won't work for the reasons above.  Pentecostals also believe in "Landmarism-lite".  

So... my question to the internet is... does anyone know what's happening in the Latin American apologetics community?  What's happening in Spanish?  

_________

See also:

• A direct Baptist / Catholic debate: Campbell / Purcell debate.
• In terms of addressing the argument of government, which is the core of the Neumann apologetic: Mell's book on church government and  Savage's book on church government. More books of this type can be found on the Baptist History Homepage.
• Remember Lot's Wife, an example of the Baptist apologetic in response to an article lementing the disunity of the reformation.  
• For a Baptist understanding of church history an easy to read and famous presentation to familiarize yourself with the Baptist mindset is Ellen White's Conflict of the Ages Volume 5 The Great Controversy. For material about the early church, Acts of the apostles (Vol 4) which discusses the early church. Especially her last few chapters of this volume address Catholic claims.  As an aside these books are well written and a good read so, this would be where I'd start. 
• A short introduction which contrast baptist theology with liturgical churches: Why be Baptist.

Historical / critical method in 8 rules

April DeConick over at The Forbidden Gospels Blog is establishing 8 rules for historical study in these two posts:
Creating Jesus Ground Rules
We must say "no" to the miraculous

Essentially she is trying to answer the question of how did the early Christians come to believe Jesus was God. While the series isn't finished I suspect she is going in the direction of the typical mainstream scholarship: Jesus died, the apostles were bummed they try and make sense of it so they attach importance to his death as a center piece of their theology it gets tied to savior god myths.... I'll keep reading because Dr. DeConick is sharp.

But I thought the rules pretty good. So I'm going to repeat them here in my own words

1. No apologetics. Study this history the way you would any other.
2. No miracles or supernatural events.
   
3. No heresy. We treat all ancient authors equally, not giving weight to the eventual winners.
4. Religions develop in religious communities they don't fall out of the sky.
5. All sources have human authorship.
6. The sources were written by people in the midst of events, the authors don't understand how events will turn out.
7. The authors are not neutral. They are writing apology and polemic and propaganda, and they need to be deconstructed as those.
8. Our sources are dependent on the human being: physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, socially.
   

Open challenge on presuppositional apologietic

I don't think the presuppositional apologetic will hold up to a simple empiricist argument. Are there any advocates out there that would like to try and run one through about a dozen back and fourths to give it a shot? If so post (non anonymously please).