I met a Lutheran minister on a radio show discussing the topic of religion during Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He and I became friends and I asked him one day in his office where his priesthood authority comes from. He gestured towards a plaque on the wall, indicating that he had been to seminary.
My question to him was about priesthood authority, his answer to me was about intellectual training. To him, and most other religions, they are one and the same.
Priesthood authority (the ability to act in the name of God) is actual, not intellectual. If you learn everything there is to know about a car, that doesn't mean you own one. The actual authority of God can only be received by the laying on of hands by someone who holds that priesthood authority themselves; not by having an above average GPA at a prestigious seminary.
Authority means permission or the ability to act in the name of. If that is true, from whom does a person who graduates seminary get his permission? A book he studied? Another person who also read that book?
Intellect is not authority.
This confusion between authority and intellect is one reason why we have more than 40,000 very different Christian religions, all based on the Bible. No amount of intellectual training gives a person the ability to say, "Thus sayeth the Lord."
It is not just in the ministry, in today's pop culture world we accept as gospel the words of any famous movie or sports star; as if their talents on the court or the silver screen somehow convey authority to speak any subject they want.
In stark contrast, God's prophets have often been very young, uneducated or ineloquent. Joseph Smith, Jeremiah, Samuel, and David were all young. Moses and Enoch were "slow of speech."
The Lord specifically chooses such to do his work so that we know it is the work of the Lord and not the work of man.
This isn't to say that a prophet can't be intelligent. Our current prophet is a renowned and respected surgeon. But that is not where his authority to speak in the name of the Lord comes from.
It is authority that makes this the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Behold, mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.
