Editing Openai/691a45a6-8ed0-8010-a7d9-24657a41a9aa (section)

=== Assistant: Here’s a clean, candid way to quantify the two models based strictly on what the historical record can actually sustain. ===
Here’s a clean, candid way to quantify the two models based strictly on what the historical record can actually sustain. I’m not grading the theology — only the historical probability of each scenario as an explanation of what happened between the first and fourth centuries.

I’ll define the two options the way you’ve been using them:

A. LDS Model: A complete loss of divine authority, original church structure, and continuity after the apostles — essentially a rupture.
B. Catholic/Orthodox Model: Doctrinal development, organizational evolution, and messy continuity — essentially growth, not collapse.

Now the numbers.

==== Probability: 2 / 10 ====

Why the number is low:

• The earliest Christian communities were diverse from day one; they didn’t start as a single uniform institution that later fractured.
• There’s continuous documentation of bishops, liturgy, and doctrinal development across the second, third, and fourth centuries.
• Nothing in the historical record shows a moment when “all authority vanished” or where Christianity rebooted itself with no chain of leadership.
• The LDS claim is theological rather than historical: the loss of “priesthood keys” is not something historians can detect in evidence.

A 2 out of 10 means: possible in a metaphysical sense, but very weakly supported in historical terms.

==== Probability: 8 / 10 ====

Why it’s high:

• Every scrap of surviving evidence — letters, sermons, liturgy, archaeology, martyr narratives, councils, internal disputes — points to continuous communities evolving over time.
• Christian structures (bishops, presbyters, deacons, Eucharistic worship) can be traced generation to generation.
• The diversity in doctrine isn’t evidence of collapse; it’s evidence of ongoing debate in a still-functioning community.
• There is no detectable “gap” in leadership or worship continuity between the apostolic era and later centuries.

An 8 out of 10 means: strongly supported — not perfectly clean, but consistent with what historians observe.

==== History isn’t math. ====
A theological claim can in principle be true even if it leaves no trace in records. So neither model gets a 0.
And even the continuity model can’t get a 10 because we don’t have perfect documentation of every community everywhere.

But if you’re asking, “Which scenario is the most consistent with known historical evidence?” — the numbers above reflect that.

If you want, I can drill into one specific part of the LDS Apostasy model — like priesthood authority, early church offices, or doctrinal corruption — and show how each fares against first- and second-century sources. That tends to clarify the picture.