I just renewed my Dialogue subscription and decided I should work a little harder to, you know, actually read it when it comes. Then I got ambitious and decided I should start at the beginning. Below is a quotation from page 77-78 of Mario S. De Pillis, “The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 1 No. 1 (1966): 68–88 (bold font and formatting added). The entire issue is available at the Dialogue archive.
To oversimplify, it may be said that there are three modes of establishing a theological claim to being the one true teaching church: apostolic succession, miracles and "gifts" (as signs of divine approbation), and special revelations. With certain modifications the Prophet used all three methods. (1) Since apostolic succession was Roman and alien, he turned to a more familiar source of Protestant tradition, the Old Testament: he claimed a prophetic succession through a dual priesthood that allegedly existed among the Hebrews. (2) Miracles and gifts he used discreetly and sparingly; ambitious miracles, such as his attempt to raise a dead infant, were likely to fail. (3) As for special revelations, they were central to the establishment of authority and Joseph adopted them even before the Church was organized (1830); his mother, with her antinomian predilections for special inspiration, encouraged him to see visions and revelations. Joseph believed that his additions to orthodox Christian-Jewish scripture — his revelations, the Book of Mormon, "lost books" like the Book of Enoch, and his revision of the King James Bible — constituted the "fulness of the Gospel." In short, while using some of its doctrines, Joseph rejected Protestantism as well as Calvinism: he claimed to bring an entirely "new dispensation."
Comments