The Daily DeseretWas There a Great Apostasy? Jacob Hansen and Joe Heschmeyer Debate
A Latter-day Saint apologist and a Catholic apologist argue over whether Christ’s institutional church was lost after the apostles.
Video: “The Great Apostasy Debate | Joe Heschmeyer vs Jacob Hansen (Full Debate)” — Thoughtful Faith, published January 17, 2026 (about 2h 20m). Moderated by Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity at St. John the Baptist Parish in Utah.
Few questions sit closer to the heart of the Restoration than this one: did the authority Christ gave his apostles survive them, or was it lost? In this in-person debate, Jacob Hansen (host of Thoughtful Faith and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) took the affirmative, and Joe Heschmeyer (staff apologist at Catholic Answers and host of Shameless Popery) took the negative. Both opened with warm words for one another, and the format ran through opening statements, rebuttals, cross-examination, audience Q&A and closings.
How each side framed the question
Hansen distinguished the church as a body of believers—which he said Latter-day Saints do not claim ever disappeared—from the church as an institution with authority to receive ongoing, binding public revelation for all believers. He defined the Great Apostasy as the doctrinal and institutional corruption that followed the loss of that authority. He argued that Peter held a revelatory authority that today’s popes do not claim, citing the Catechism’s teaching that no new public revelation is to be expected, and pointing to a remark Heschmeyer had made in an earlier conversation that early bishops did not have the same role as the apostles. He also argued that early Christianity after the apostles was led by local bishops without a clear central authority.
Heschmeyer said the debate was about the Great Apostasy, not about the papacy, noting that many Orthodox and Protestant Christians reject both. He argued that the Restoration claim depends on a universal apostasy—citing the missionary manual Preach My Gospel—and that if no apostasy happened, Latter-day Saint claims fail, while if it did, Catholic claims fail. He compared Joseph Smith’s 1832 account (in which Joseph says he concluded from searching the scriptures that the churches had apostatized) with the later canonized account, and pointed to what he saw as two differing explanations in Church materials of whether corruption caused the loss of authority or the reverse.
Closing arguments
In closing, Hansen pointed to the good fruits of Latter-day Saint communities and bore his testimony of Jesus Christ. Heschmeyer argued that even if every uniquely Catholic doctrine were wrong, a shared tradition among Catholics, Orthodox and Copts would still count against a total apostasy. He cited creation out of nothing as an early Jewish and Christian belief at odds with Latter-day Saint teaching, appealed to prophecies such as Daniel 2 of a kingdom that would not be destroyed, and argued that no early writings describe the kind of apostasy Latter-day Saints teach.
Why it matters
The two debaters disagreed about what the debate was about: Hansen focused on papal claims and the history of church authority, and Heschmeyer focused on whether the specifically Latter-day Saint idea of a universal apostasy holds up. Viewers will likely judge it by which framing they find fairer. In the video description, Hansen also posted a correction: a quotation he attributed to the Ravenna Document actually came from a commentary on it. He called it an honest mistake and said he did not consider the document critical to his argument.
How we wrote this: this recap paraphrases the video’s description and its YouTube auto-generated transcript. We avoid direct quotes because auto-captions can be inaccurate. Please watch the full debate before relying on any summary of a speaker’s position. The views summarized here belong to the participants.