Ben Merritt of Cleave to Antiquity recently produced a video in which he interviewed an eyewitness of the Zeitoun Marian apparitions and concluded that he accepts the apparitions as appearances of Mary. In the comments section, Sean Luke of Anglican Aesthetics said that he holds a similar view. Other commenters also said that they're Protestant and accept the apparitions as appearances of Mary. In another recent video, Myles Christian of Canon & Creed provided "a historical survey of giants in Protestant history who held Mary in high esteem". He cites their belief in concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, her becoming sinless after conception, and her assumption. Elsewhere in the video, he refers to a problem with Protestants "overcorrecting" errors about Mary. He asks at another point, "Are we possibly missing something that they [earlier Protestants] saw from scripture?" One portion of the video refers to an argument for Mary's assumption based on fetal microchimerism, but doesn't explain how it allegedly leads to the conclusion that Mary was assumed. He ends the video by commenting, "But if men like the reformers, who were radically committed to sola scriptura, sola fide, and the purity of the gospel, if they could hold Mary in high esteem without compromising their convictions, then maybe we can too."
Zeitoun is a highly significant paranormal case, and it was good to see Ben's interview with an eyewitness. I agree with Ben and Sean that Zeitoun is genuinely paranormal and that it's likely not demonic. But it probably isn't Marian either. It's probably human psi. The apparitions exhibited a lot of weaknesses that would be unlikely in appearances of Mary, and those weaknesses make more sense coming from a human source than a demonic one. There's a lot of overlap between Zeitoun and other paranormal phenomena that seem to be best explained as human psi. Here's a post where I've gone into some of the relevant details. You can find other posts on Zeitoun in our archives, such as by going to the Zeitoun Marian Apparitions post label here. Some older threads addressing the case don't have that label, and you might be able to find those with something like a Google search.
Myles is right that we often find a higher Mariology among Protestants of earlier generations than among more recent Protestants. And many Protestants haven't done much research on Marian issues and are ignorant, misinformed, and immature in other ways in how they handle these subjects. The same can be said of how they handle a lot of other topics as well.
Myles would agree with me that we should not only give more consideration to what earlier Protestants believed about Mary, but also give more consideration to what was believed by medieval, patristic, and, most importantly, Biblical sources. And those pre- and post-Reformation sources sometimes disagree with each other, which means we can't agree with all of them.
As I discussed in a recent post, we have evidence pertaining to the perpetual virginity of Mary not only from the language most often discussed in the early Biblical and extrabiblical sources (Matthew 1:25, etc.), but also from the activities of people like Jesus' brothers. There's more evidence, both in terms of language and activities, than people typically suggest, and the evidence favors the conclusion that Mary had other children after Jesus' birth. I'll probably be discussing more of the evidence that Irenaeus rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary later this year, but, for now, you can find discussions of the evidence that Irenaeus and other patristic and medieval sources rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary in posts like the ones here and here. You can go here for a list of our posts under the Perpetual Virginity label.
There are multiple Biblical passages that seem to refer to sins Mary committed after the incarnation, and the early extrabiblical Christian sources frequently refer directly or indirectly to Mary as sinful in her behavior, sometimes even naming sins they think she committed. There are too many relevant posts in our archives for me to cite all of them, but go here concerning the Biblical and earliest extrabiblical sources and here and here for more extrabiblical ones.
I've written a lot about the assumption of Mary over the years. There are multiple contexts in which an assumption could have been mentioned, such as discussions of people who have been resurrected and discussions of people who are currently in heaven in an embodied state (in contrast to the disembodied state of the large majority of the people there). Such topics frequently come up in the early literature and elsewhere, and it looks like the earliest Christians had no concept of an assumption of Mary. See here for an overview of the subject and links to other relevant posts. On the lack of reference to an assumption of Mary in early Christian artwork, see here. For some examples of people denying that Mary was assumed or expressing agnosticism on the subject, including well into the medieval era, see here and the entries on Aelred of Rievaulx, Isaac of Stella, and Peter of Celle, among others, in Michael O'Carroll's Theotokos (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988). And here's a list of our posts under the Assumption of Mary label.
Regarding other Marian beliefs among the pre-Reformation sources, see the relevant links here.
What's the significance of the Protestant sources Myles has highlighted? They don't have the Divine inspiration the Biblical authors had. They don't have the evidential significance of an early source like Papias or Justin Martyr. The Protestants under consideration were writing at a time when the Marian doctrines in question had been popularized to one extent or another for a long time. There isn't much difficulty in explaining some Protestant acceptance of those doctrines under a scenario in which the doctrines are wrong. We should agree with the early Protestants on issues where the evidence favors their position and disagree with them where the evidence is against them. Anybody who accepts a doctrine like the perpetual virginity of Mary, her sinlessness, or her assumption is going against the evidence.
Myles' video focuses on the early Protestants' positive comments about Marian doctrines widely rejected by Protestants today. For some examples of the negative comments the early Protestants made about Roman Catholic Mariology, including on some of the issues brought up by Myles, see here.
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