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

=== 1. Jacob’s Opening Offensive ===

Jacob begins not by defending LDS history but by attacking the Catholic epistemic model:

Jacob:
“Catholicism relies on an unbroken line of bishops, but the historical record of the first- and second-century episcopacy is patchy. You don’t have hard documentation of Peter appointing a line of bishops with modern Catholic theology. You infer continuity from incomplete evidence. But LDS claims rely on the same inference process: that God maintains real authority through revelation rather than through a preserved paper trail.”

He’ll reinforce this with examples:

• No surviving documents showing Peter explicitly creating the office of Pope.
• Early bishops in Rome are ambiguous (Linus? Cletus? Clement? Different lists).
• Early Christians did not articulate the modern Catholic doctrine of priesthood or sacramental authority in a systematic way.
• The Didache and Clement show local leadership, not a Rome-centered hierarchy.

Strategic goal:
Flatten the playing field so LDS claims don't look uniquely “ahistorical.”