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I don’t have the time or focus tonight to give this as thorough a reply as I’d like, particularly to the biblical references, but I will write what I can and try to pick out the most important points.
Ah, I see where your reservations about Paul come from. Interestingly, while no biblical figure matches the idea of apostleship you lay out below, including Jesus’ twelve disciples, St. Paul comes closest in other respects.
This explanation is very helpful, and I think it’s a very important difference between Mormonism and Christianity.
Hebrews is saying something almost the opposite of that. It’s about how the high priesthood of Christ is the ultimate reality toward which the Levitical priesthood pointed. Christ having accomplished his sacrifice once for all, the Old Testament priesthood is now unnecessary.
I don’t see how you get that from 2 Timothy at all. Particularly if you look at the whole passage starting in verse ten, Paul is saying that the Scripture itself is edifying, that it gives knowledge of salvation, and that it lets one discern false teachers. Verse 16 discusses its use between Christians in a way that applies to church leaders, but there is no sign of an expectation of ongoing revelation to those leaders.
No problem, still appreciate the reply. Hope it's been interesting for you as it has in return. Or maybe I have too much time on my hands.
Paul's definitely an interesting case. Of course we all must acknowledge to some extent that the NT after the gospels is not really a comprehensive look at everything going on in the church, there's some "selection bias" so to speak. A lot of the leadership seems to have viewed him as the go-to guy for Gentile stuff, despite not even being a Gentile himself (though his Roman citizenship and language proficiency certainly made him better suited for the job than many of the 12), but the exact extent of his authority and his position isn't spelled out very clearly, though we do have hints. And on top of that, although the LDS position is that the 12 apostles are special, the word "apostle" is used a bit more freely in the NT, and Christian vocabulary is just getting defined anyways, somewhat haphazardly. With that said, I'll freely admit that at some point, I and others choose to make plausible inferences about Paul. This "backwards" reasoning is not load-bearing despite that, I still think it's decently supported. For example, although the laying on of hands isn't strictly mandatory for some stuff, I choose to believe that at some point he was given some sort of special dispensation to fill the role he filled in the early church, and definitely people perceived him as such beyond just respect for the man that brought them the gospel of eternal life. Regardless, I do not think he was operating as a rogue preacher or anything, rather he
You're definitely correct that Hebrews has a very particular audience and goal. Aside from the wide belief that it's not actual by Paul, it's directed toward Jews and their questions about, among other things, how Jesus was from Judah, in hopes of keeping them in the church -- a big issue for the Jews who have believed for centuries that Levites are the only ones who can do priesthood rites! The letter talks about how Christianity is superior to Judaism in various ways, for example Jesus is better than angels, and also discusses how Levite priesthood isn't actually the only game in town. There's this Melchezidek guy who Abraham paid tithes to, kind of implies he's higher up, the author say, right? And Jesus is a Melchezidek-like figure. See, it's Biblical for non-Levites to do priesthood things! (And in fact the LDS theology takes this even farther and to this day has two separate priesthood lines reflecting this, a lesser Aaronic one that does baptism and communion and the Melchezidek one that does eternal marriage and is a prerequisite to be a bishop and such, which is an interesting detail but more of a modern application)
Note however that at no point here is there the implication that it's open season, anyone perform ordinances and covenants and rituals, the somewhat spontaneous and sporadic callings of OT prophets notwithstanding. And 5:4 emphasizes this same point, that because many rituals (e.g. the day of atonement ritual on Yom Kippur) have the priest literally as a stand-in for God or Christ, not just anyone can decide to step up and play the role (v4). Jesus also didn't do this of his own accord, but in fact (v5-6) "Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him... You are a priest forever, after the order of Melcheizedek" (emphasis mine) . You are correct that in some places in Hebrews and elsewhere in the NT we are taught very specifically that the whole point of the Levite rituals (especially the scapegoat of the above ritual) was to symbolize Christ and prepare them for him, and as far as we know the Levites didn't have a particularly special role in the early Christian church, but when talking about authority more generally, Christians including Jewish converts still would have implicitly understood that authority in general is a more fundamental principle. Moreover, in v11-14 we learn that the audience has, broadly speaking, been doing a pretty bad job with the "basic principles". Foreshadowing, in my book. Far from the only time, too.
As an aside, despite my church's love for the KJV, I'm a bit of an NRSV man myself. The 2 Timothy passage starts by talking about Paul's good example worthy of emulation, but also the inevitability of persecution. Then, however...
To me it seems quite clear that the whole passage emphasizes that the source of teaching (i.e. the person(s) doing so) is very important, and is paramount in assessing its reliability. And that Scripture assists in maintaining those teachings. Thus I draw the conclusion, supported elsewhere, that the person of the teacher matters a lot when assessing doctrinal purity. Obviously, there are many passages of the scriptures encouraging teaching each other more generally, but as a few of the other passages (among others that exist too) suggest, the congregations themselves seem to have perennially done a poor job at policing their own doctrine. That's what I take away from many of the (especially Pauline) epistles, at least.
In fact there are vanishingly few people teaching fellow members who don't have some line of authority. Apollos (Acts 18) was among these odd-man-out examples, a convert to the baptism of John who is doing missionary work and who knows the scriptures really well, he gets corrected by another missionary couple ("coworkers" of Paul, elsewhere) in private, and then goes back to missionary work in the synagogue. Interestingly, no mention of internal teaching, and in fact he is later the cause of a schism in 1 Cor 1:12 (though plausibly this is not his fault)! I'm not aware of any other cases. And actually his case is illustrative - he had a pretty good, scripturally grounded understanding, he was even immediately receptive to the truth, but was still unable to independently come to the proper conclusion with scripture alone. Thus my earlier point about how despite having some major sympathy and Sola Scriptura roots the end result was clear that at some point extra revelation is needed.
It was James 1:5 after all, encouraging those who have gotten stuck to seek revelation, that was according to his account, the prompt for Joseph Smith to pray for guidance in the first place. He later found good company with many people who read things like Eph 2:20 or Eph 4:11-13 and felt that a Christian church needed apostles and prophets as a key attribute, or were dissatisfied with the Protestant status quo in other ways. It was largely these people, as far as I know, who initially converted, and honestly the church has never attracted large numbers of Catholic converts specifically. Part of the early LDS appeal was precisely to this audience of people who had gotten deep into the scriptures, and didn't see its reflection in contemporary Protestant groups.
I respect and appreciate the enthusiasm.
To be frank, my ADHD makes it hard for me to handle all the subjects of discussion in our exchange and consistently organize my replies in a useful way. As a younger man perhaps I would have made it work by hyperfocusing on the thread to the exclusion of all else, but that’s rare these days. Since it’s the best I can do tonight, rather than leave you hanging I am going to summarize a couple of partial thoughts.
I agree that Hebrews was probably not written by Paul but by someone in his circle. In the absence of internal attribution I am partial to the Barnabas theory, but that’s really underinformed speculation on my part.
I somehow did not predict that the Mormon view of Hebrews would be so different, but in retrospect it would have to be to correspond to the Mormon view of priesthood. I think that view bakes in some assumptions about what the Levitical priesthood is for, though, that I want to dispute. The primary function of the Old Testament priesthood was to present offerings to God, particularly sacrifices. That’s why the author of Hebrews presents it as being not only surpassed but replaced by Christ’s role as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (e.g., Heb. 10:8–14).
That phrase, “after the order of Melchizedek,” is a reference to Psalm 110, which is a royal psalm. The phrase applied to David as king in Jerusalem, so David is being treated as a type and Christ the antitype. Christ is priest-king in a way that David only foreshadowed, and he is a priest forever unlike Aaron or (metaphorically) David. He made his one sacrifice, himself, and sat down at the right hand of God. But the office of priest-king is unique; since Jesus lives forever, he can have no successor. There cannot be another priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7–10, more or less).
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