On his Website, Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong wrote the following:
At the time the Marian doctrines were developing, so were things like the canon of Scripture and Christology and the Trinity. If those things could develop many centuries after Christ, why is it objectionable for the Marian doctrines or eucharistic theology to also do so? The Church decided what was a true development and what wasn’t.
Tim Staples, in his dreadful book on Mary, raised a similar "objection" to the critic of the Assumption of Mary:
The Church existed for decades before the Gospels were written, but that did not mean the Christians of these early years did not have the Faith. (Behold your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines [El Cajon, Calif.: Catholic Answers, 2014], 217)
Ignoring the a priori assumption that modern Catholicism is one to one equivalent to the ancient Church (it is not), is the canon and the development of the Marian dogmas really the same? They are not. How so? While it is true that the canon of the New Testament was debated (e.g., the book of Revelation's "canonicity" was debated for many centuries in certain quarters), we actually have manuscript evidence of the books of the New Testament; to see a listing of the earliest NT texts, see Philip Comfort and David P. Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (2d ed.; Tyndale House Publishers, 2001). However, with respect to beliefs such as the Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption, we have --NOTHING-- in the earliest centuries of these beliefs (see here for a discussion of the Immaculate Conception; on the Assumption, see Stephen Shoemaker, The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption [Oxford, 2003]).
This "apologetic" is a complete failure and really shows how bankrupt Catholic apologetics are with respect to the Marian dogmas.
