In their debate book on Mary, Dwight Longenecker (former Anglican who
converted to Catholicism) and David Gustafson (Protestant) had an interesting
exchange on the “apostolicity” of the Bodily Assumption of Mary:
What It Means to Be “Apostolic”
Dwight: This reveals a
different understanding of what it means to be an apostolic church. We
believe that the apostolic deposit of
faith is just that—a deposit or down payment. It is the essential core from
which the full understanding of the faith may grow. It’s true that the Assumption isn’t taught by Jesus or the apostles,
but then neither is the idea that there would one day be such a thing as a New
Testament. That the apostles’ teaching should be gathered into a fixed canon
that was actually on the same level as the Old Testament was a valid
development by the apostolic church.
David: You
have chosen a very illuminating point of comparison: the Assumption compared to
the existence of an inspired New Testament canon. For the latter notion, we can
cite Jesus’ promises that the apostles would be supernaturally guided into the
truth by the Holy Spirit (John 14:26, 16:12-13), the apostles’ claims to having
received that promised Spirit (in passages too numerous to cite), the
importance that the apostles attached to their own writings (e.g., Col. 4:16; 1
Thess. 5:27; 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:14; Rev. 22:7, 18-19), and Peter’s express
characterization of Paul’s writings as “Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16). One who
interprets these passages (as we do) to indicate that apostolic writings are
divinely inspired Scriptures might conceivably be wrongly interpreting them, but he is definitely interpreting them. Which apostolic teachings are being interpreted (rightly or wrongly) to
yield the doctrine of the Assumption? None.
Dwight: On the contrary. The Assumption develops naturally
from the apostolic teachings on the true nature of Jesus Christ the God-man,
the subsequent fullness of grace that his mother enjoyed, and her status as the
second Eve. It also develops from the apostolic teachings on eschatology,
especially the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a
crown of twelve stars on her head” in Revelation 12. The queenly glory of Mary
indicates the royal glory of Christ that is shared with all the redeemed (Rom.
8:17; James 2:5). (Dwight Longenecker and David Gustafson, Mary: A Catholic-Evangelical Debate [Herefordshire, U.K.:
Gracewing, 2003], 130-31, emphasis added)
Longenecker is simply dead-wrong in his attempt to read a Marian
interpretation into the “woman” in Rev 12. For more, see, for example:
Gustafson did a good job at also refuting
Longenecker’s attempt to parallel the New Testament canon with the Bodily
Assumption of Mary. Such is a desperate attempt to find any shred of plausibility
to this man-made dogma, although it is popular. For example, 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, poorly-researched 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]).
Furthermore,
there are hints in the Gospel that Jesus expected at least some of his actions
and teachings would be committed to writing. In Matt 26:13, speaking of the
woman who anointed Him, Jesus Himself said:
Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel
shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman
hath done, be told for a memorial of her.
It seems
strange that Jesus would expect the apostles to preach this anointing as part
of their oral proclamation of the Gospel; it would seem to be more realistic to
interpret this verse as teaching that Jesus understood that the record of this
anointing would be made available as part of a larger written volume discussing
various incidents in His life.
With that
being said, Longenecker and I agree completely in that Jesus and the apostles
did not teach the Bodily Assumption of Mary. Alongside the Shoemaker volume
referenced above, I would also suggest one pursue chapter 5, “The Bodily
Assumption of Mary” (pp. 139-56) of my book on Mary, Behold the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology.
