Truth Unites - The Assumption of Mary: Protestant Critique

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

The Bodily Assumption of Mary is an infallible dogma of the Roman  Catholic Church. Many of the Eastern traditions hold to a similar view.  In this video I offer a historical critique of the assumption from a  Protestant perspective. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

One of the issues I've given a lot of attention to in my dialogue with non-Protestant traditions is Maryology, which is the theological study of Mary. I want to make this video about the bodily assumption of Mary, which is the most recent dogma in the Roman Catholic Church. It's the dogma that, the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-vurgeon Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. So I'll be specifically focusing on the Catholic view, though it's very similar, to views in some of the Eastern traditions, for example.

And I've come to believe this is a really important area. I think every person who's involved in these conversations should give very careful review and attention to this area, both the assumption and more broadly, Mariology. And I've come to believe, and I'll explain why these issues alone are a good reason to be a Protestant Christian. Let me explain why I say that. So we'll have four sections to this video.

First, I want to explain three reasons. reasons why I think this is so important and why it's kind of a flashpoint in these dialogues and debates. Secondly, I want to give a summary of the scholarship because, unfortunately, sometimes the scholarship is misrepresented on this point. Thirdly, I'll make a historical argument. Fourthly, I'll briefly deal with some of the biblical passages that are sometimes said to be in support of the assumption of Mary. So, let me explain, first of all, kind of why this issue is so important. A lot of people say, oh, you know, the Marian dogmas, they're not at the center of the Catholic system. You should really focus first on issues like the papacy, the Eucharist, other issues you might see

is more central. But I think it's totally fitting to give a very careful study of the Marian dogmas. And let me give three reasons why. The most obvious is the importance attached to them by the Roman Catholic Church. Immediately after the definition of the bodily assumption in Pius the 12th Apostolic Constitution, munificentissimus dais. Whoever can pronounce that should immediately just win the debate. So I do it because it's seven syllables, so you break it down into four and three. You've got to love Latin. Latin is the coolest language. Munificent isthmus. Four syllables, three syllables. That's how you can pronounce it.

Munificentissimus deus. So immediately after the definition of the assumption is this consequence attached. If anyone which God should bid should dare willfully to deny or call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith. Just after that, there's another warning added. It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition, or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it, if any man should presume to make such an attempt,

let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. And there's a similar consequence attached to any sort of willful rejection of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. I can't remember the name of that apostolic constitution from Pius the 9th. Similar thing. It's about shipwrecking your faith. So now here's the thing. Catholics will want to qualify those statements in various ways and they want to say, well, what precisely is a willful rejection, what constitutes a rashful attempt of opposition and that kind of thing. So, okay, fine, you know, you want to try to leave reasonable wiggle room.

But nonetheless, I think those words stand for themselves to show this is not an option. This is not like at the buffet you can choose to take the Marian dogmas or not. These are declared to be infallible dogma and therefore obligatory upon Christians to accept. That's the first reason these are so important to work through. The second is that beyond the dogmas, the role of Mary in Roman Catholic piety and theology, more generally, is very significant. John Henry Newman wrote a famous letter where he's sort of qualifying the role of Mary in the idea of doctrinal development. He's basically saying, here's why I chose Mary as a way to make my point about doctrinal development. And he says the reason is

that vast system as to the Blessed Virgin to all of us has been the special crux of the Roman system. That's a remarkable statement when you think about it. He's saying, you know, And I've heard other people say this, too, that Mariology is not this kind of sidebar. It's interwoven throughout the whole of the Catholic system. The third reason why I think the bodily assumption in particular is so important to think through is that it's the most recent dogma. It's the only one since papal infallibility was defined. So when it came out, it was very controversial.

And it raises questions of trajectory. A lot of people do want, if there's a movement for, I'm not trying to exaggerate that. I don't know how strong the movement is, but you do hear talk of people who want a fifth. Marian dogma. And I would say Mariology to me represents an area where Protestants and Catholics are getting further apart. In some areas we've made progress since the 16th century. In our dialogue, ecumenical works about, say, you know, the Eucharist or justification. It's arguable, I think, true, that we've made some progress in some areas. I would see Mariology as an area where the divide is getting deeper. Okay. So this really important,

to work through this, and I would just say it's entirely appropriate for people to give careful critical analysis to these dogma. It's not this sidebar off to the side that's not worth thinking about. I want to say one last thing before I go further, and that's that in my study of these issues, there's one thing I think we can all agree upon, and that is Mary should be honored. Mary should be held in high esteem. I mean, if there's anything that's filled my heart, as I study these things, it's the sense of what an incredible woman of God, and a unique vessel of the Lord in bringing to bear the incarnation. It's amazing. So that's not where we differ, but the requirement of these dogmas, man, this is a real sticking point. And we've got to talk

this through. So first of all, let me give an overview of this scholar. Because my basic concern with this is I don't think it's true. I don't think there's any reason whatsoever on planet earth to think that Mary was bodily assumed to heaven. I just, you know, I've studied this a fair amount a year and a half ago and then over the last several weeks again, and I would like to give an overview of what the scholarship is, not looking to people who are anti-Catholic scholars, okay? Because sometimes there's two reasons for just giving an overview of the scholarship. The first is what I mentioned. People often, unfortunately, misrepresent the scholarship. So it's just, I just want this to be out there, people to be aware. Some of these books,

are like $60 or $100 or more, and so people don't always get them. But then they're just taking someone at their word when it's misrepresented. The other reason is it's really hard to do your own private research in this area because some of the texts in question don't have their own critical addition or are not even translated in some cases. And there's some really good scholars working in this area, so it's totally appropriate to just give an overview of what some of the scholarship is saying. when the bodily assumption was proclaimed in 1950, it was controversial among Catholics and among

those outside the Catholic Church. For a lot of people, it was the confirmation of the fears of what would happen with papal infallibility. If you're going to start getting dogmas that start to extend further and further out from what is clearly attested in Scripture or the early church. And there were Catholics who had that concern. Here's how Eamund Duffy, who's a Catholic historian, puts it in his book on the history of the popes. He says, the definition, that's of the bodily assumption, embarrassed many Catholic theologians since it was unsupported in Scripture and unknown in the early

church. And this is what many Catholic scholars will admit, that there's just no evidence for it whatsoever. In his book on Mary, Duffy puts it pretty much like that. He says, quote, there is clearly no historical evidence whatever for it, unless one counts the negative evidence of the lack of post-mortem relics of the Virgin. Now, a lot of, you know, One of the things I've learned is I don't know which Catholic scholars people like and don't like, but you quote some Catholic scholars and they really, people freak out and don't like that. So let me just give some of kind of mainstream, some of the top scholars working on this question, of kind of the history behind these Dormission narratives that come in,

start popping up in the late 5th century, and try to explain why, someone like Duffy, who I regard as an honest scholar, being fair to the evidence, summarizes it like he does. So here's, and this is why the best of the defenses of the assumption, in my opinion, are those that appeal to dogmatic considerations, not to the historical evidence. So here's Stephen Shoemaker's summary. He may be the top scholar working in this area. He's, and I've just given a very careful review of his 2016 book, and I'm currently looking into some of his other books. Here's his summary, quote, there is no evidence of any tradition concerning Mary's Dormition and assumption from before the 5th century. The only exception to this is Epiphanius's unsuccessful

attempt to uncover a tradition of the end of Mary's life towards the end of the 4th century, and his failure confirms the otherwise deafening silence. The 5th century itself also has very little to offer, until the very end, when the first fragments of a Dormission narrative appear, as well as limited indications from a few independent sources that confirm a sudden interest at this time in the end of Mary's life. I'll have more to say about Shoemaker as we go. Here's how Brian Daly, who's another leading scholar in this area, puts it. The origins and original intent of the story of Mary's death and entry into glory,

which seems to have taken shape in Antioch, Palestine, and Egypt during the course, during the century or so after the Council of Chalcedon, that's 451, so same time frame as Shoemaker there, late 5th century, undoubtedly remain embedded in the Christological debates of the time. He goes on a little bit, and he's basically, and I'll quote daily more later, he's basically saying it emerges from the anti-Chalcedonians, the non-Chalcedonian Christians. So those are some of the more recent top scholars. Here's some of the older Catholic scholars.

Here's Ludwig Ott. He has an older work that sometimes considered the definitive work summarizing Catholic dogma. He says, quote, The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitous narratives of the 5th and 6th centuries. The first church author to speak of the bodily assumption of Mary, in association with an apocryphal transitous BMV is St. Gregory of Tours. The BMV is the transidus, Beatai, Mary-Eye, which is an apocryphal text that Gregory accepted.

So I've got other quotes, the book on Maryology edited by Juniper Carol. That's another big text in this, similar sentiment. We could stack up lots of quotes like this, okay? That's the time frame we're talking about, from between 450 and 550. Okay. Late 5th century, early 6th century, that rough time frame, all of a sudden you start to see discussion of Mary's assumption. Not before then. Couple points.

Number one, none of the, you can't accuse these scholars I've just cited of an anti-Catholic bias. Most of them are Catholic themselves. Daly is Catholic. Ott is Catholic. I don't know Shoemaker what his ecclesial. position is, if any, but one of the themes of his book is not allowing dogmatic prejudice to influence historical research. And he frequently throughout the book, he actually concludes the whole book, criticizing

someone for prejudice against the Catholic dogma. Okay. No one who reads his book, I've got it right here, just finished it about a week ago. one who reads this book can see he's got an axe to grind against the Catholic position. So that's just a summary. You don't have to agree with that, but I think it's helpful to people know that that's kind of general position among the scholarship. So that reason is the obvious question.

Why the 400 plus years of total silence? And there's a couple of ways people respond to that. One is people try to read the assumption back into texts like Revelation 12. We'll talk about that at the end of this video. Another is people will try to claim there is earlier written attestation. I've heard people claim all the way back to the second century. But that has not been received in the scholarship. There really is, and the best Catholic theologians working in this area resist those attempts.

The biggest thing is people say, well, it was just an oral tradition. So there was an apostolic oral tradition about the assumption of Mary, and we may not have any evidence. of it, but evidence of absence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And so this is where we meet the appeal. Well, you're making an argument from silence. The fact that nobody's talking about the assumption of Mary for 400 years doesn't mean no one believed in it. So what I want to do is work through the historical data we do have and show why that's extremely implausible. And what I like to do is give somebody wiggle room to say, hey, if you want to believe that, more power to you. But see my dilemma here for why this looks extremely. It's just honestly, in my honest conscience, I just can't

accept that. And I'll explain why. The first is the particular kind of silence we are dealing with. It's not a total silence. We have people talking about Mary's ultimate fate in this world. And given the amount of time and given the particular things that are said, it gives every indication that there's not an oral tradition that is generally known about Mary's ultimate end in this world. So the first thing to talk through is Epiphanius, who is the Bishop of Salamis in the end of the 4th century. Think a tiny bit into the 5th. And he's often cited in these discussions, and my treatment of him is going to be consistent with what the scholars say about him as well.

Here's the thing about him. He lives near Palestine and has contacts there, and he conducts a careful research into the question of what, because he's opposing this heresy about, that had too much devotion to Mary, the Coloridians. And so he talks about investigating what happened to Mary at the end of her life. And he comes up, so the very fact that he needs to investigate that already raises, again, these plausibility questions of if there's an oral tradition that Mary was assumed to heaven, why would he need to investigate it? Why doesn't he know of that? But then why doesn't he hear about it in the context of his investigation? Here's what he says in Panerian.

Either the Holy Virgin died and was buried, then her falling asleep was with honor, her death chased, her crowned that of virginity, or she was killed, as it is written, and your own soul a sword shall pierce. Then her glory is among the martyrs and her holy body amid blessings, she through whom light rose over the world, or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God, and he can do whatever he desires for her end. No one knows. So belief in Mary as a martyr is also testified to in Ambrose in the 4th century, and then later on by Isidore of Seville, both of whom opposed the idea.

So apparently this comes up in the 4th century. In the 4th century, there's lots of interest in martyrs and also in virgins and other classes of Christian who are seen to be especially godly. But whenever you see this, it's being opposed. but that's one of the ideas out there. Now here's the thing. So people will say, ah, epiphanius is not inconsistent with the bodily assumption because the Catholic dogma doesn't tell us whether Mary died or not before she was assumed to heaven. And that's true. The dogma leaves that open. Problem is you have to, so in other words, they're saying, oh, Epiphanius is just admitting

uncertainty about whether Mary died before she was assumed to heaven. The problem is that's not he says. He doesn't say, well, everybody knows there's an oral tradition that Mary was assumed to heaven, but nobody just knows whether she died first. He says no one knows her end, and these three options he gives, burial, martyrdom, or remaining alive for nothing is impossible with God, he just never mentions anything about an assumption, a bodily assumption to heaven. So it is also with Isidore Seville in the 7th century. I won't read this full, quote. He's talking about the same thing. He's opposing the idea that she died as a martyr, and he says, in any case, no particular historical narrative tells us that Mary was killed by the stroke of a sword,

since one reads nothing about it and nothing about her death either. And then he says, some say that her tomb is found in the Valley of Jossopet. So that's near Jerusalem. So, you know, it's like, here's the point. It doesn't sound like there's an oral tradition that people can appeal to when they're trying to figure out information about Mary's end. It doesn't sound like, oh, we just don't have any written evidence of it, but there's an oral tradition because when people do investigate it, they seem to not be able to find any information about her death. And if you want to say, oh, all that Isidore and Epiphanius are talking about is whether she died before her assumption, you have to read that into these quotes. They never talk anything about her assumption. Going a little further,

someone could say, yeah, but still, it doesn't absolutely rule it out. Okay, well, let's go a little further. We have lots of people who do talk about Mary's death, and the things that they say are problematic for those who think that she was assumed to have in. Augustine is the clear example here. Augustine has a number of passages where he talks about Mary dying. He seems to assume Mary died. He never mentions anything about an assumption. And more than that, the reason for Mary's death is original sin. Augustine thinks Mary is sinless, but not because, but not without original sin. And in my point of that, I'm consistent with Shoemaker and also Juniper Carroll. Juniper Carroll was the one who pointed this out. He's an older, deceased Catholic, Mariologist.

And he points it out from this passage in the Psalms I'll read. Shoemaker points it out from another passage in his commentary on John, but I couldn't find that passage. but here's the one that Carol directed me to Augustine is writing. I was just reading through this section of the exposition. He says, for to speak more briefly, Mary, who was of Adam, died for sin. Adam died for sin, and the flesh of the Lord, which was of Mary, died to put sin away. He's contrasting the rationale for Jesus' death with Mary's death and Adam's death. And again, the assumption is Mary died.

there's just, you know, in other words, it's not as though we have a lack of discussion of Mary's end, it's just that it never comes up anywhere that she was bodily assumed to heaven. It's also not the case that we have a lack of discussion of translations to heaven. Turtullian has a book on the resurrection of the flesh where he recounts Enoch, Elijah, Paul, all the people who are translated to heaven never brings up Mary. Okay, someone could say, yeah, but maybe there's an oral tradition of Mary's assumption that people just did never mention, and all of these passages,

they're just not bringing it up for whatever reason. Okay, fine. Here's another problem. This is going to start to seem less and less plausible as we keep going. Here's the problem here, is a lot of the texts that do come up in the 5th century express concern about the late arrival of this tradition. That's true in pseudo-Milito. That's one of the early apocryphal texts.

That's true in the Dormition homily of John of Thessalonica. And then there's one other text. I can't remember which one that Shoemaker is talking about. Here's how he summarized, because basically he's pointing out how these texts talk about how this tradition doesn't have historical attestation among Orthodox groups, and they kind of apologizing for that. And he says the primary value of these candid admissions, that is of what he calls apologies for the late appearance of Dormition traditions,

lies in their confirmation of modern scholarship's inability to identify any significant traditions concerning the end of Mary's life from before the 5th century. The Christian writers of late antiquity themselves warn us that we should not expect to find very much on this subject from earlier Christian centuries. He also talks about how some of the Orthodox writers are trying to sanitize these texts from the heterodox ideas within them. So that, you know, again, you're raising the question, okay, if there's an oral tradition of Mary's assumption to heaven, why would these texts be apologizing?

for the late arrival when you do finally have attestation of it. Here's another problem. How do we account for the astonishing diversity of the stories of Mary's assumption, some of which don't have an assumption? So once you start seeing these Dormition narratives coming up in the late 5th century, they differ on nearly all the details. Even the city of Mary's death is usually, It's Jerusalem, but sometimes it's Ephesus.

Sometimes she's making in one sort of set of texts, she's making a trip to Bethlehem and she's doing miracles there. The only real common, I've been reading a lot of these narratives. They're really interesting. The only real common features that I can detect are that there's some kind of conflict between Mary and the Jewish leadership. Usually the apostles are involved in some way, and then Christ takes Mary's soul and sometimes also her body to heaven at the end of her life

to kind of conclude the narrative. So, but all the other details are different, okay? And one of the points they're different on is whether there's a bodily assumption. So in some of the narratives, there's a Dormition homily, one of the earlier ones from Jacob of Sirrug. I don't know how to pronounce that, S-E-R-U-G. I never heard of him before this, but it's like late, like 480s, late maybe like 490, something like that.

He's, and it's a good example of one sort of theme here, and that's, there's a mention of Christ's reception of Mary's soul, and it simply never mentions her body. In other texts, like the Gospel of Bartholomew, late text, it will, the idea is Mary's body is taken to a special place. And this is a common idea, too, to await reunion with her soul in heaven at the Judgment Day. And in this text, Christ is speaking to Mary, and he says, I will place your body under the tree of life where a cherub with a sword of fire will watch over it until the day of my kingdom. And then in other texts, you get a bodily assumption as well. So in there, and with these ones, there's often an interval of time between her burial and then

her resurrection and assumption to heaven. So in some of them, you know, the apostles are having conflict with the Jewish leadership and they'll bury Mary's body and wait for Christ's return outside of her tomb and several days will go by. And then she'll be resurrected, assumed to heaven with the apostles. In other narratives, there's two. 206 days where they're guarding the tomb and there's continual conflict with the Jewish leadership, and then they witness her resurrection and assumption. In some of the later traditions, one of the disciples, sometimes Thomas, will be late to the burial of Mary. And so when he gets there, they open up the tomb and lo and behold, her body's gone.

It's been assumed to heaven. So there's all these different kinds of stories. Some of them have a bodily assumption, and many of them her body is taken to a special place to await resurrection at the final day, and in others it doesn't say anything. It's just her soul and her body is buried. So it takes a while before you finally get a settled narrative on the bodily assumption. Daily summarizes the timeline like this. He says it is not until the end of the sixth century that the narrative of Mary's death

and entry into glory seems to have become fixed in its general outline and accepted by all the major churches of the Eastern Mediterranean world. So here's the problem. if there's an oral tradition of Mary's assumption to heaven, why does written evidence of it only emerge at the same time as these alternative ideas that it only slowly eclipses? See how implausible this seems? Some people will try to argue that no, no, no, the narratives that are talking about the bodily assumption are the earlier ones, and the ones that don't have a bodily assumption are the later

ones, but the evidence doesn't support that. Here's how Shoemaker puts it. There is simply no historical evidence for any sort of typological or theological evolution. Each type of narrative in all manner of opinions regarding Mary's ultimate fate are evident simultaneously when these narratives first appear at the end of the fifth century. Thus, the literary history of these traditions affords no evidence of any narrative type or theological position antedating the others. Rather, they attest to synchronic coexistence of a variety of traditions. Another problem on top of this is that many of the texts, the earliest ones especially, seem to come from a heterodox context. So the book of Mary's repose, for example, is a Gnostic narrative that's commonly seen as one of the earlier

texts. Daly argues that it's from the anti-Chalcedonians in that context that Mary's assumption is first circulated. He talks about the fifth century as a time of meteoric rise for the figure of Mary and says the story of Mary's remarkable death and her almost immediate entry into the transformed condition of Christ's risen body seems first to have been circulated among anti-Chalcedonian Christians in the late 5th century. And later on he specifies further that he thinks it's in monastic communities in Syria and around Jerusalem that you first see that idea coming in. Lots of of other people pointed this out that a lot of the earliest texts appear to be heterodox and even some, in some cases, Gnostic. Here's how Shoemaker puts it. The earliest evidence for the veneration

to Mary appears to come from markedly heterodox theological milieu, suggesting that the cult of the Virgin had its origins somewhere outside of the proto-Orthodox stream of early Christianity. Elsewhere, he speaks of widespread agreement that the earliest accounts, come from outside of the proto-Orthodox stream of Christianity. And again, he points to how you can see the later text trying to sanitize the earlier texts of their heterodox ideas. All of that gets to the point where you say. I mean, I was trying to think through and praying through,

how should I cast this video in a way that won't be unhelpfully provocative, but will still convey sufficiently the depth of my concern about this topic. Because I believe this issue alone is enough to make someone a Protestant. Honestly, all it takes is one dogma if the dogma is claimed to be infallible. That's why it's so important not to yoke the consciences of Christians to believe things that are beyond what the gospel would require of us. That's one of the things I think through all the time as a pastor of a church, as our statement of faith needs to not be too bare bones and minimalistic,

but it also needs to not have all these extra things that we're requiring people to believe just to join our church. And so I put it personally, can you see the bind you put us in when your church requires on pain of the wrath of Peter and Paul and God? Acceptance of this dogma that gives every indication of being a later accretion. The only attestation for it is late into church history, 400 years into church history, diverse when it does come in and seemingly from heterodox sources. So why would anyone believe this?

Unless you had to, unless it had been declared. So some people want to get to Revelation 12. They want to see this in Revelation 12 as a way around this problem. And there are two problems here. One is that it's not Mary and the other is it's not a bodily assumption in Revelation 12. I'll put up the early portion of the passage as well as Genesis 37. 9 where you can see that the woman here represents the church, that this is the imagery of the sun, moon, and stars, which is drawn from Joseph's dream in Genesis 37.

And that is why it's universal to my awareness early on in the church before you get to anything like a bodily assumption of Mary, to see the woman not as Mary or Mary and the church, but just the church. Again, here's how Shoemaker puts it. quote, although this exegesis, that is, interpreting the woman as Mary, would subsequently become quite popular and has endured even to this day, there is no evidence of its existence before Epiphanius. On the contrary, the early church unanimously identified this apocalyptic woman with the church. And he quotes various other scholars to support that point.

There's lots of reasons for that. There's lots of oddities of, you know, Mary gives birth, or the woman gives birth to the Messiah in heaven. and she's in labor pains and then she's sent away for 1260 days and there's lots of things where it's like that just doesn't really seem to fit with Mary giving birth to Jesus in this world but the biggest thing is

even it's like the way I have these conversations I say fine if you want to say the woman in Revelation 12 was Mary more power to you where do you get a bodily assumption in Revelation 12 because of the whole passage there's no hint of a whisper of such a thing. It's just pure isogesis.

It's just jamming something down the throat of the passage because you want to see it. The way I often make my appeal on things like this is if you gave, I'll go a bigger number, not 100. If you gave 10,000 people who'd never heard of the bodily assumption of Mary, Revelation 12, and the rest of Scripture. And you had them, and they never heard of the assumption of Mary,

and they had to read through Revelation 12 to you what it meant, and they could use the rest of the Bible to cross-reference, would one out of 10,000 come up with a bodily assumption to Mary? I don't think so. There's no bodily assumption there in the text. You have to read it into the passage. So I'm trying to convey the depth of my concern about this, not in a way that is jab at those who believe in the assumption of Mary,

but as a way to try to say, hey, it's totally legitimate for us to bring our concerns about this topic. your church is making as an infallible dogma this teaching that gives every indication of being a later post-apostolic accretion and we all want to honor mary as though amazing mother of god but to require at the level of an infallible dogma adherence to this in light of the historical evidence behind it and the lack of lack thereof and biblical as well is a major concern. And I would say that alone is enough of a reason not to reject the dogma. And I'll end it there because my kids are back.

Come on in, buddy. Bye, everybody.