Great Apostasy

In Christianity, the Great Apostasy is the notion that mainstream Christian Churches have fallen away from the faith founded by Jesus and promulgated through his Twelve Apostles.

A belief in a Great Apostasy has been characteristic of the Restorationist tradition of Christianity, which includes unrelated groups emerging after the Second Great Awakening, such as the Christadelphians, Swedenborgians, Non-Denominational, Latter Day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Iglesia ni Cristo. These groups hold that traditional Christianity, represented by Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy, has fallen into error and thus, the true faith needs to be restored.

The term has been used to describe the perceived fallen state of traditional Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, sometimes claiming that it changed the doctrines of the early church and allowed traditional Greco-Roman culture (i.e., Greco-Roman mysteries, deities of solar monism such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, pagan festivals and Mithraic sun worship and idol worship) into the Church on its own perception of authority. Because it made these changes using claims of tradition and not from scripture, the Church – in the opinion of those adhering to this concept – has fallen into apostasy. A major thread of this perception is the suggestion that, to attract and convert people to Christianity, the Church in Rome incorporated pagan beliefs and practices within the Christian religion, mostly Graeco-Roman rituals, mysteries, and festivals.

The term is derived from the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which the Apostle Paul informs the Christians of Thessalonica that a great apostasy must occur before the return of Christ, when "the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction" (chapter 2:1–12). The Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches have interpreted this chapter as referring to a future falling-away, during the reign of the Antichrist at the end of time.

Some modern scholars believe that the Christian Church in the early stages picked up pagan oral teachings from Jewish and Hellenistic sources, which formed the basis of a secret oral tradition, which in the 4th century came to be called the disciplina arcani. Mainstream theologians believe it contained liturgical details and certain other pagan traditions which remain a part of some branches of mainstream Christianity (for example, some Catholic theologians thought that the doctrine of transubstantiation was a part of this). Important esoteric influences on the church were the Christian theologians Clement of Alexandria and Origen, the main figures of the Catechetical School of Alexandria.

Restorationists teach that the Papacy slowly became corrupted as it strove to attain great dominion and authority, both civil and ecclesiastical. For example, they say, it reinstated the pagan ceremonies and obligations of the Collegium Pontificum and the position of Pontifex Maximus and created Christian religious orders to replace the ancient Roman ones such as the Vestal Virgins and the flamines. It brought into the church the ancient pagan festivals and made them 'Holy Days'. Catholics as well as the Reformers pointed to the office of the Papacy as responsible for the fallen state of the church as they considered the conduct of those in power had grown so spiritually or morally corrupt that it was called the Antichrist power by those within as well as outside of the church.

Reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin and others disagreed with the papacy's claim of temporal power over all secular governments and the autocratic character of the papal office, and challenged papal authority as a corruption from the early church and questioned the Catholic Church's ability to define Christian practice.

The defenses of the right belief and worship of the church resided in the bishops, and Protestants theorize that the process of unifying the doctrine of the church also concentrated power into their own hands (see also Ignatius of Antioch, who advocated a powerful bishop), and made their office an instrument of power coveted by ambitious men. They charge that, through ambition and jealousy, the church has been at times, and not very subtly, subverted from carrying out its sacred aim. For the Reformers, the culmination of this gradual corruption was typified, in a concentrated way, in the office of the pope who took on ancient titles such as Pontifex Maximus and supreme power in the church.