In an
attempt to support the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura, Marvin Cowan wrote:
To claim that the Bible is insufficient is
not consistent with an all powerful, all knowing, and all caring God who gave
mankind His message of eternal life. If God cared enough to give His Word to
one generation, surely He would care enough to preserve it for later
generations! (Marvin Cowan, What Every
Mormon Should Ask [Eugene, Oreg.: Harvest House Publishers, 2000], 20)
This is, to
put it mildly, a stupid argument. Why? As proponents of Sola Scriptura will
admit, for Sola Scriptura to be operative, there must first be tota scriptura, that is, all of scripture must have been
inscripturated for the Bible to function as the sole infallible rule of faith.
This could not have been the case until the final New Testament book was
inscripturated, therefore, Cowan would have to admit that God failed in giving the people of the Old
Testament as well as the earliest followers of Jesus and even the apostles
insufficient scripture. For more, see the section "Falling at the First
Hurdle: Why Sola Scriptura is an exegetical impossibility" in my
book-length essay
I also
exegete the texts Cowan in his booklet appeals to, such as Luke 16:16 and Heb
1:1-2 (Ibid., 18) in the above essay.
As for the preservation of the text of the Bible, Cowan appeals to
1 Pet 1:23, 25 and Matt 24:35 (ibid., 5) as if such texts support the textual preservation of “the Bible.” However,
as is common in his writings on “Mormonism,” such is nothing but eisegesis. Cowan
should give heed to the following from a fellow proponent
of Sola Scriptura who refuted
the common eisegetical approach to these and other texts such as Isa 40:8:
[T]here is a
difference between the Word of God, which is eternal (Psalm 119:89, 152, 160),
and the Bible, which is not. The Bible is the Word of God written. If one were
to destroy one paper Bible, or all paper Bibles, he would not have
destroyed the eternal Word of God. One such example is given in Jeremiah 36.
The prophet was told by God to write His words in a book, and to read
it to the people. Wicked king Jehoiakim, not comfortable with what had been
written, had the written Word destroyed. God then told the prophet to write the
Word down again. The king had destroyed the written Word, but he had not
destroyed God's Word. God's Word is eternal propositions that find expression
in written statements. (W. Gary Crampton, By Scripture Alone: The
Sufficiency of Scripture [Unicoi, Tenn.: The Trinity Foundation,
2002], 156)
In an
attempt to attack Latter-day Saint ecclesiology, Cowan blunders along the way,
too. For instance, he writes:
[LDS] believe there can only be one prophet
on earth at a time, the president of the LDS Church. He becomes LDS president
by serving longer than anyone else in the LDS Quorum of Twelve Apostles.
(Ibid., 17-18)
This is
incorrect. For Latter-day Saints, all members of the First Presidency and
Quorum of the Twelve are “prophets, seers, and revelators,” so the claim we
believe there to be only one prophet on earth in this dispensation to be a non
sequitur. Furthermore, what distinguishes Joseph Smith and his successors is
not the spirit of prophecy, or being a Prophet, but the apostleship and their
being the senior apostle. Wilford
Woodruff explained that "anybody is a prophet who has a testimony of Jesus
Christ, for that is the spirit of prophecy. The Elders of Israel are prophets.
A prophet is not so great as an Apostle." (JOD 13:165)
Brigham
Young explained the differences between the titles "prophet,"
"apostle," and "president." In a conference address
delivered April 6, 1853, he said:
Perhaps it may make some of you stumble, were
I to ask you a question. Does a man's being a Prophet in this Church prove that
he shall be the President of it? I answer, No! A man may be a Prophet, Seer,
and Revelator, and it may have nothing to do with his being the President of
the Church. Suffice to say, that Joseph was the President of the Church, as
long as he lived; the people chose to have it so. He always filled that responsible
station by the voice of the people. Can you find any revelation appointing the
President of the Church? The keys of the Priesthood were committed to Joseph,
to build up the Kingdom of God on the earth, and were not to be taken from him
in time or in eternity, but when he was called to preside over the Church, it
was by the voice of the people; though he held the keys of the Priesthood,
independent of their voice. (JOD 1:113).
To Brigham
Young, being a prophet was secondary to being an apostle and having keys from
God. He explained the difference in these words:
Many persons think if they see a Prophet they
see one possessing all the keys of the Kingdom of God on the earth. This is not
so; many persons have prophesied without having any Priesthood on them at all .
. . To be a prophet is simply to be a foreteller of future events; but an
Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ has the keys of the Holy Priesthood, and the
power thereof is sealed upon his dead, and by this he is authorized to proclaim
the truth to the people, and if they receive it, well; if not, the sin be upon
their own heads. (JOD 13:144).
For those
interested in such issues, be sure to check out my book:
But Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah and
Jeremiah became prophets because they prophesied. (Ibid.)
This is
wrong. Isaiah and Jeremiah became prophets because they received a prophetic
call; in the case of Jeremiah, he was ordained even before he was born (Jer
1:5) and Isaiah received his call in Isaiah 6 and his being in the midst of the
Divine Council and received his commission by Yahweh Himself. Nothing in these texts teach they became prophets by prophesying (though they
did prophesy of then-future events) but because they were commissioned by God.
There are
many prophets in the Old Testament that did not
prophesy. A classical example is the unnamed prophet in 1 Kings 13. Also:
where does James in the epistle he wrote prophecies of the future (to give a
New Testament example)?
What is
interesting is that these two examples, on
their own, single-handedly refutes Cowan when he writes the following (and
also where he speaks from both sides of his mouth):
A prophet doesn’t always have to prophesy in
order to be a prophet, but surely me must prophesy sometime, or why call him a
prophet? (Ibid.)
Cowan then
tries to impute the charge of a false prophecy to Joseph Smith via D&C
84:4-5. Unsurprisingly, he seems unaware of informed LDS responses thereto. For
a discussion, see:
As with so many Protestant attempts to support Sola Scriptura, Cowan's arguments are a complete and utter failure, based on fallacious reasoning and eisegesis; the same applies for his attempt to critique LDS ecclesiology. What is revealing is that Cowan is a former Latter-day Saint, so he really should know better. As I wrote above, however, the booklet is clearly aimed at Protestants wishing to engage in "boundary control" as opposed to engaging with informed members of the LDS Church. I can guarantee, if Cowan or a like-minded Protestant were to engage someone such as myself in a moderated debate, they would lose--badly. And for good reason: Protestantism is a man-made religion and relies on (albeit, often-times slick looking) eisegesis of the Bible.
For articles responding to Marvin Cowan's book, Mormon Claims Answered, another publication by Cowan against the Restored Gospel, see the following from Russell Ashdown:
Response to Marvin Cowan's "Mormon Claims Answered" Chapter 1 "ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF MORMONISM"
Response to Marvin Cowan's "Mormon Claims Answered Chapter 3--The Bible"
For articles responding to Marvin Cowan's book, Mormon Claims Answered, another publication by Cowan against the Restored Gospel, see the following from Russell Ashdown:
Response to Marvin Cowan's "Mormon Claims Answered" Chapter 1 "ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF MORMONISM"
Response to Marvin Cowan's "Mormon Claims Answered Chapter 3--The Bible"
And from Benjamin McGuire:
