Sunday, July 7, 2019

Timothy Ware: Eastern Orthodox *DO* Believe in the Bodily Assumption


In his 2017 debate with Peter D. Williams, James White, during the cross-examination, questioned Peter who (correctly) noted that the Eastern Orthodox believe in the Bodily Assumption of Mary (albeit, not as a dogma). As one Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian wrote:

But Orthodoxy, while for the most part denying the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary firmly believe in her Bodily Assumption. Like the rest of humankind, Our Lady underwent physical death, but in her case the Resurrection of the Body has been anticipated: after death her body was taken up or ‘assumed’ into heaven and her tomb was found to be empty. She has passed beyond death and judgement and lives already in the Age to Come. Yet she is not thereby separated from the rest of humanity, for that some bodily glory which Mary enjoys now, all of us hope one day to share.

Belief in the Assumption of the Mother of God is clearly and unambiguously affirmed in the hymns sung by the Church on 15 August, the Feast of the ‘Dormition’ or ‘Falling Asleep’. But Orthodoxy, unlike Rome, has never proclaimed the Assumption as a dogma, nor would it ever wish to do so. (Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church [rev ed.; London: Penguin Group, 1997], 260, emphasis added)

In a footnote for the above, Ware adds the following:

Immediately after the Pope proclaimed the Assumption as a dogma in 1950, a few Orthodox (by way of reaction against the Roman Catholic Church) began to express doubts about the Bodily Assumption and even explicitly to deny it; but they are certainly not representative of the Orthodox Church as a whole. (Ibid., 270 n. 1, emphasis in original)

 For those who wish to delve into the Bodily Assumption, see Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption and See also Chapter 5: The Bodily Assumption of Mary, pp. 139-56 of my book, Behold the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology