Singularly Unimpressive

"This book carefully, meticulously examines the writings of the Early Christians and Ante-Nicean Fathers and examines the doctrines embraced by them throughout the centuries after Christ."

A moderately-sized "select" bibliography proves to be a mixed bag of (often outdated) sources, with nothing like the depth and comprehension needed to truly address the subject. Most of Bickmore's conclusions are naive and/or drawn hastily from the quote of a single source that would disagree with what he is trying to prove, or else drawn from sources that are themselves questionable in some of their conclusions (for example, Ehrman's Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). There is much in the way of uncritical use of ancient sources as well: Quotes from Church Fathers that refer to heresy, for example, are automatically presumed to be referring to "the" apostasy that Bickmore contends the current Christian church represents, even though specifics of the heresy are not given at all. These are not the hallmarks of someone who uses sources competently or critically.

On the other hand, if you suppose that Bickmore has contended with the orthodox Christian point of view, you will be sadly mistaken. There is very, very little interaction with serious evangelical scholarship. The most usual tactic of this work is to assume a thesis and then read into whatever text is quoted whatever is needed to prove the thesis. Specifics? We'll look at those one at a time in our articles. Suffice to say that Bickmore's repeated confessions that X doctrine is "not explicitly taught in the New Testament", followed by a reliance upon quotes from Church Fathers (who were just as much out of touch with their faith's Jewish roots as many modern Christians) who happened to hold doctrines that were similar, tells us enough about Bickmore's heavy-handed methodology. (Bickmore also seems to think it proof of Joseph Smith's prophetic status that he preached doctrines that were similar to those of the Fathers' extra-biblical speculations. Those of us who think critically recognize this as much more likely being a case of Smith happening upon an inevitable variation on a theme: That is, for example, a doctrine of pre-existent souls, as opposed to souls being created on an "as-needed" basis, is a quite natural variation to come up with just on speculation, and indeed, is just about the only variation that one might expect to come up with! It hardly requires any special revelation to think of pink as a variation upon red. At the same time, Bickmore's argument means very little unless he shows that Smith's "revelations" were somehow unique in history: To use our example, Bickmore's case would have had some strength if no one else in history had ever come up with the idea of pre-existent souls independently of the teachings of the Church Fathers. However, the fact that it was believed even earlier, and by Plato in particular, not only weakens Bickmore's argument for a special restoration of the doctrine, but also runs counter to the general arguments from this quarter that the "apostasy" was the result of an infusion of Hellenized thinking!)

This is one of those works that I will have a great deal of fun dissecting in the future. It represents exactly the sort of populist LDS apologetic work that forms the counterpart to popular "anti-Mormon" literature by Decker and Hunt.