Monday, February 26, 2018

Dwight Longenecker on the Bodily Assumption of Mary

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.