The true irony here is that you decry Father Starbuck’s pretense of being able to read the minds of Mormons and Gnostics (and thus ending with an assertion that defies any sense of logic), but to come to that conclusion, you do precisely the same thing to him (and then get indignant about his silly assertion).

All I am saying is that “from genuine Christianity” is a prepositional qualifier of the verb depart, which is part of a part of a possessive property attribution of “distinct conciousness”, which is used to describe the intent of the establishers of a three different sects, with a contrast between the validity of the assertion between Catholicism and Mormonism and Gnosticism.

So far, so good.

In other words “from genuine Christianity” is bracketed inside the conciousness of the various sects founders.

Yes and no. Yes, the sect founders know that they depart from what Father Starbuck, and I, believes is “genuine Christianity”. There is nothing whatsoever to indicate that they accept Father Starbuck’s “genuine Christianity” as a true faith.

One cannot make an argument that it should be lifted out to be the authors perspective or sense of the term, because the grammar of the sentence places it explicitly in the knowing belief of the sect founders.

“Distinct consciousness” applies to the “departure”, which is from “genuine Christianity”. So far so good. But he has to use the phrase “genuine Christianity” or some other phrase to be specific. That is because the Protestant claim against Catholics was that while they use similar scriptures and Christian-sounding doctrines, they still departed from true faith in specific, heretical ways. To simply say we Catholics departed from “Christianity” would be met, even within a like-minded audience, by an index finger pointing to the crucifix behind the altar, or some other evidence of its authentic Christian heritage. The adjective “genuine” is required to acknowledge that the sect may be Christian-like, even though it is not the true faith of Christianity. From the Catholic perspective, that applies to Mormons and Gnostics.

When writing anything, it is important to be understood by the audience. Being understood by the subjects is of no importance.

“Bracket” means schema change. A schema is a collection of beliefs about the world. “intent”, “belief”, “conciousness” are schema identifiers. We have shifted from the author’s schema to the sect founder’s schema – that is the purpose of all the prepositions. After the phase “in the distinct conciousness of”, the rest of that sentence refers to the founder’s schema and belief, not the author’s schema and belief.

That’s simply not true. This is his assertion, so he doesn’t divorce himself or his biases from his own statement. The departure is from Christianity, of which the adjective “genuine” applies. The term “genuine” qualifies “Christianity”, thus defining a specific belief system which his intended audience clearly understands. That’s all it does. It does not create a ridiculous leap that is inexplicable, thus allowing you to discredit him for the inexplicability of his statement. Were he to say what you believe he intended to say, he would have done so with explicit language to convey that intent.

To switch between the two without explicit warning is dishonest.

No warning need be given to an audience that understands what “genuine Christianity” means. And his intended audience understood him perfectly. He did not intend to address someone who would first be offended by the fact that his faith was specifically excluded from “genuine Christianity”. I do hope that this is not the motive for which you strain to find an absent grammatical technicality to ascribe a false assertion to his plain language.

We have officially come to an impasse.

Next time, I promise to immediately repost.

Isn’t it obvious what is wrong with making that assertion without any evidence, and why it is a presumption in the first place?

And wouldn’t it be bizarre for me to claim that what I really intended to say was that you believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet of a false god, one that he only thought was true and living?

One cannot just schema change like that willy nilly.

I can’t exactly diagram the sentence here, nor am I an expert in all the grammatical terminology. All I am saying is that “from genuine Christianity” is a prepositional qualifier of the verb depart, which is part of a part of a possessive property attribution of “distinct conciousness”, which is used to describe the intent of the establishers of a three different sects, with a contrast between the validity of the assertion between Catholicism and Mormonism and Gnosticism.

In other words “from genuine Christianity” is bracketed inside the conciousness of the various sects founders. One cannot make an argument that it should be lifted out to be the authors perspective or sense of the term, because the grammar of the sentence places it explicitly in the knowing belief of the sect founders.

“Bracket” means schema change. A schema is a collection of beliefs about the world. “intent”, “belief”, “conciousness” are schema identifiers. We have shifted from the author’s schema to the sect founder’s schema – that is the purpose of all the prepositions. After the phase “in the distinct conciousness of”, the rest of that sentence refers to the founder’s schema and belief, not the author’s schema and belief.

To switch between the two without explicit warning is dishonest. I doubt Rev. Starbuck was particularly dishonest, but I think he must have been horribly misinformed, and I find it most amusing that he did not realize the strong irony of what he was saying.

By the way, how does he know that Gnosticism, as such, was established with the clear intent of departing from genuine Christianity. It was so broad a phenomenon that I wonder how he considers it a sect at all. Which Gnostics went around preaching that they were not genuine Christians or that the Apostles were all wrong?