Patristic And Medieval Beliefs Are More Complicated Than Often Suggested

When discussing the history of beliefs, people often underestimate the diversity of views that have been held. I'm focused on patristic and medieval sources, since those come up so prominently in the sort of discussions I've been having lately about the claims of groups like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We shouldn't just count up how many people were for or against a particular view. For example, sometimes a source was agnostic on an issue or held a position on it, but qualified that position with an expression of hesitation about it.

I've been posting a lot about the Assumption of Mary lately, and that's a good example of a belief that's relevant in this context. It's not as though every source was ignorant of the assumption claim, favored it, or opposed it. There are more categories than those three, and we should be taking more of the details involved in each category into account. There were some patristic and medieval sources who were agnostic about whether Mary was assumed or expressed a view, but accompanied that expression with significant qualifiers, such as by commenting on how hesitant they were about their conclusion. That's relevant to the claims Pope Pius XII and other Catholics and non-Catholics have made about an assumption of Mary. If somebody says that he thinks it seems fitting that God would assume Mary to heaven, but that he's hesitant about it, that other Christians are free to not accept her assumption, or something like that, that's significantly different than saying that Mary's assumption is an apostolic tradition always held by the church. It's important to make distinctions like these. And though I've used the Assumption of Mary as an example, we need to take these issues into account across the board, whatever the issue is that's being considered.