Review
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Title: 8 Myths of the Great Apostasy
Author: Gregor McHardy
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Devotional/Religious
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages:105
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-56085-452-2
Price: $14.95
Reviewed by Doug Christensen for the Association for Mormon Letters
For a long time, I have been unsatisfied by the standard Latter-day Saint account of “The Great Apostasy.” Essays from the relatively recent book, Standing Apart[1] show how the narrative we offer in missionary lessons and in our own quorums and classes uses a very broad brush and assumes a simplistic story where it should recognize more complexity. I am reminded of a landmark essay that I read in the early 2000s called “A Textbook Case Revisited: Knowledge as a Mode of Existence” by Bruno Latour[2]. I won’t provide an exhaustive account of his argument, but only say that Latour reflects on the evolution of horses exhibit at the Natural History Museum in NYC and he shows the reader something the curators of the exhibit show the world: that the evolution of horses is no longer “whiggish” (a belief in inevitable progress, and tending to evaluate the past by the standards of the present) and, according to Bruno, “the only whiggishness that remains . . . is that the more recent conception of science has led us from a rigid exhibition of the final fact of paleontology to a more complex, interesting and heterogeneous one. From the ‘Classic’ version, we have moved to the what? ‘Romantic’? ‘Postmodern’? ‘Reflexive’? ‘Constructivist’?” (Latour 4). Latour makes it clear that just as there are these different bushy accounts of horse evolution (accounts going off in lots of different directions, as opposed to one branch-like and linear), there are likewise demonstrated in the exhibit, a bushy evolution of scientific explanations. In other words, as the horse itself evolves in a complex way, so do the scientific explanations of horse evolution.
This seems like an appropriate introduction for Gregor McHardy’s 8 Myths of the Great Apostasy. McHardy has done his reader a great service by showing not only a more complex history of this “event” in the history of Great Apostasy, but also how and perhaps why our explanations for it usually come up short. The most obvious thing he shows us is that “The Great Apostasy” is not an event. It is, perhaps, a way of seeing a very slow-moving, diverse, and complex galaxy of moving parts that should never be reduced to an oversimplified problem that needs solving. McHardy shows how our explanations of The Great Apostasy are whiggish, especially in the sense that the events in question are evaluated by the standards of the present. When we teach it, as missionaries or lay teachers (and even as professional Church educators), we have this objective in mind of the need for a restoration of Christ’s church and so our account of what led to the “falling away” receives explanations that McHardy shows to be simplistic at best and at their worst, false (see 2 Thessalonians 2:3). It becomes clear after finishing each chapter that there is a good reason for the tradition of oversimplification, history is always difficult, messy, and complicated, full of as many paradoxes as clear truths. People are usually not prepared to tackle the challenging nuances that will lead to a more honorable account. McHardy’s book is a reasonable solution to this dilemma, but it also reminds the reader at every turn that a grasp of the complexity of history comes at a high price.
The most familiar aspect of the book is the recognizable myths themselves. McHardy thinks through the standard explanations of The Great Apostasy, ones that most readers will remember to have given in a Sunday School or missionary lesson, myths like: “The Priesthood was Taken from the Earth” (Myth 4); The [true] Church Broke Up into Many Pieces (Myth 5) or The World Was Plunged into the Dark Ages (Myth 7). The first four myths share categorical space and McHardy threads them together in an accessible way, while also providing a thorough account of their shared complexity. It is likely, according to McHardy, that the average Church member remembers as much of the deaths of the original 12 Apostles, as they remember the names of the original 12. Most people know that Peter was crucified upside down. Most people will remember that Judas Iscariot commits suicide by hanging himself, though there are conflicting accounts of this in the extra-Biblical literature. Beyond that, lay readers will only be able to gloss over what happens to the others. McHardy makes this information available one apostle at a time, and his account includes the messiness surrounding the death and burial of John the Beloved, of whom Latter-day Saints believe it was prophesied that he would not taste death. The first and longest chapter: “Myth 1: The Apostles Were All Martyrs,” serves at least two purposes. McHardy accounts for the probable deaths of each disciple, but he also helps the reader remember a little bit of history about each man and how to distinguish him from others with his same name or from disciples called by more than one name, like Simon Peter or Thaddeus-Judas.
In the second chapter, McHardy disabuses his readers of something I (as a professional Church educator) am guilty of. In Matthew 16, Jesus checks in on the faith of his disciples, with particular attention to Peter:
“Whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (verses 15-18).
I have assumed and taught that Peter is not this rock that Jesus will build upon but rather upon the rock of revelation. McHardy writes:
B.H. Roberts, quoting Joseph Smith, is insistent that if Jesus meant that Peter was the intended foundation stone, he would have said, ‘upon thee’ and not “upon this rock.” He claims that by saying ‘rock,’ Jesus was referring to the principle of revelation. There are, however, a couple of prickly problems with this idea. The first is that Joseph Smith never said it (35).
McHardy claims that the idea gets coined and popularized 30 years after Smith by George Q. Cannon (35). Additionally, McHardy tries to sort out the contradictions in Christian history that favor the rock=Peter argument, ultimately suggesting that by accepting the rock=revelation argument we align ourselves with the Protestant tradition versus the Catholic one, but possibly at the contradiction of our Latter-day Saint belief that Peter actually did receive priesthood keys and served in a role not unlike our current chief apostle, as President of the early Christian church. McHardy wants his readers to recognize that it is not the end of the world if we see Peter holding the priesthood keys and Catholics view him as the first Pope. He provides several additional reasons that justify Jesus commending to Peter the keys of the kingdom, and regardless of our title for him at that time, we should at least accept that he led the Church in Rome and was called by Christ to do so.
McHardy is not offering a two-dimensional, black-and-white account of anything. Even though he challenges the oversimplifications Latter-day Saints are prone to, he doesn’t dismiss out of hand the eventual dilution of priesthood power over time, resulting in a need for its restoration, or the breaking apart of Christ’s established kingdom. Instead, he addresses each myth carefully, from several angles, providing context and thoughtful cross-examination in each case. In his chapter on the Dark Ages, McHardy’s goal is to help his readers reconsider or redefine the implications of this label. Reminding us that historians now prefer the term medieval, he points to the incredible inventiveness in art, architecture, and music during the medieval period, suggesting finally that “The Lord’s work did not suddenly cease in 95 CE. God was not silent for 1725 years. God’s intelligence was pouring down endlessly in many, many places” (95). The benefit of Eight Myths for any interested reader will be to complicate their general, sometimes whiggish approach to Christian history and to do it in a clear, concise space so that the ideas can be accessed easily and returned to often. At the very least, readers will likely not take anything for granted next time they consider what Latter-day Saints mean by the Great Apostasy.
[1] Edited by Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young, Oxford University Press, 2014
[2] Available on his website at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/99-HANDBOOK-GB.pdf