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Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Trent Horn's Recent Video On Mary's Assumption

You can watch the video here. I replied to a previous video he produced on the topic last year, and some of what could be said in response to his recent video was said in last year's context. You can go here for my response to that previous video. I want to reiterate or expand upon several points:

- The appeal to the silence of early sources regarding an assumption of Mary is a cumulative case. A knowledgeable individual using that appeal to silence won't deny that Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, and other sources are insufficient when considered in isolation or in small numbers. The best form of the argument Trent is addressing involves an appeal to a large number of sources spanning a large range of contexts and a large amount of time. As I mentioned in my response to Trent last year, we all, including Catholics, make such appeals to silence in many contexts.

- The argument can be made from the church fathers, but it can take on a broader form as well. If you include the Biblical documents, apocryphal literature, artwork, and other sources outside the church fathers, the argument is more significant accordingly.

- A Catholic could argue, as Trent does in his latest video, for one or more references to an assumption of Mary in an apocryphal document, a group of people thought to be behind an apocryphal document, or some other such source in the third century, the fourth century, or whenever. That would be evidence against a claim that nobody believed in the assumption at that time. But an appeal to silence among a large majority or among particular subcategories, such as Biblical sources or the church fathers, would still be significant. I agree with Trent that citing something like an apocryphal document that reflects belief in the assumption in the third century has some value. But it has far less significance than the evidence on the other side. Remember, Roman Catholicism claims that Mary's assumption is a historical event, and Pope Pius XII claimed that Mary's assumption is a belief "based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times" (Munificentissimus Deus, 41). He refers to the assumption as "a matter of such great moment and of such importance" (11) and claims that the arguments for the doctrine are so good that it "seems impossible" (38) to avoid the conclusion that Mary was bodily assumed. If so many sources over so many centuries explicitly and frequently discuss a wide variety of people other than Mary when addressing assumptions, resurrections, and other relevant issues, but don't cite Mary as an example, it's insufficient to respond by appealing to things like the possibility that people would be silent about an assumption of Mary they believed in or some third-century support for the assumption reflected in apocryphal literature. There are extant first-century and second-century apocryphal documents, along with other sources in that timeframe, that make claims that both Protestants and Catholics reject. What Trent and others are citing in support of Mary's assumption is far less than we should be seeing if Catholic claims about the doctrine are true.

- Since Catholics have held different positions concerning whether Mary died, a Protestant who's addressing Catholicism as a whole could respond to more than one position (the position that Mary died, the position that she didn't, or agnosticism on the issue). Trent is right that a patristic passage about people who didn't die wouldn't be relevant to Catholics who think Mary did die. And patristic passages about people who were resurrected wouldn't be relevant to Catholics who think Mary didn't die. A knowledgeable Protestant who's citing patristic passages relevant to both positions will be aware that not every patristic passage is applicable to all Catholics. But these passages don't have to be relevant to every Catholic in order to be relevant to some Catholics and, therefore, be worth citing.

- Trent sometimes brings up what a church father said about people who never died without mentioning that the same father discusses people who did die elsewhere, sometimes in the same passage Trent appealed to. He brings up section 50 of Tertullian's A Treatise On The Soul, where Enoch and Elijah are mentioned as examples of people who didn't die. That passage is relevant to Catholics who think Mary didn't die. But Trent doesn't address the other passages in Tertullian that discuss many examples of resurrected people or people taken up to heaven after death without including Mary as an example (e.g., the large amount of relevant material in Tertullian's treatise On The Resurrection Of The Flesh). Trent quotes a small portion of section 5:7 of the Apostolic Constitutions, where Enoch and Elijah are cited as examples of individuals who never died. But the remainder of that section of the document, just before and just after what Trent quotes, refers to the resurrection of all humans and mentions many individual examples, like Jesus, the individuals raised by Elijah and Elisha, Lazarus, and Jairus' daughter. Trent cites what Jerome wrote about Enoch and Elijah in section 29 of To Pammachius Against John Of Jerusalem. But the same section of that document also discusses resurrections and mentions Jesus' resurrection and some resurrection material in Isaiah and Ezekiel. Furthermore, he cites Enoch and Elijah as examples of individuals who "are not dead", a category that all Catholics would assign Mary to, regardless of whether they think she died. Section 32 of this document by Jerome refers to how Enoch and Elijah "abide all this time in the same state in which they were carried away", which would be true of Mary if she was assumed, regardless of whether she died. Elsewhere in the document, Jerome cites Lazarus, the resurrected saints in Matthew 27:52, etc.

- A passage like First Clement 9 isn't as significant as ones like those I just mentioned, but it doesn't have to be as significant in order to be worth citing. Whether a Protestant's use of the passage is inappropriate depends on why he's bringing it up. I've cited it in the past as an example of how events like assumptions are often considered significant enough to be worth mentioning and as part of a cumulative case for such events being discussed by sources who don't mention an assumption of Mary. I've never thought, and I wouldn't suggest, that something like First Clement 9 disproves Mary's assumption by itself or that Clement of Rome should be expected to mention Mary's assumption if it occurred, for example. Rather, I've cited it to make some lesser points and as part of a cumulative case.

- Trent refers to how older sources were often valued above more recent ones, so that appealing to examples like Enoch and Elijah without mentioning Mary would make sense in such contexts. But the inclusion of older sources doesn't require the exclusion of more recent ones. And more recent examples are frequently cited. For instance, from the second century onward, there are many discussions of Paul's being taken up to heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2, sometimes mentioned by itself and sometimes mentioned along with similar events in the lives of other individuals (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2:30:7, 5:5:1; Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 1:6; etc.). I've come across several discussions of that incident in Paul's life in the writings of Origen alone. Another example is Jesus, whose ascension is mentioned repeatedly from the first century onward. The oldness of a source is one of the factors involved, but not the only one. If Mary was viewed as having the significance Catholicism assigns to her, and if her assumption was considered as important as Catholics claim it is, we wouldn't expect individuals like Enoch, Habakkuk, and Paul to keep coming up while Mary isn't mentioned.

- It needs to be kept in mind that there's a vast number and variety of contexts in which an assumption of Mary has significant relevance to something discussed in the sources under consideration. The topic of resurrection alone, which Mary would have experienced if she died before being assumed, is frequently addressed in scripture, in patristic documents, in the apocryphal literature, in early Christian artwork, etc.

- Trent claims that critics of the assumption have to show that it's "necessary" that the church fathers in question would mention Mary's assumption or that they "absolutely" would mention it. No, we can make an appeal to probability, which doesn't have to meet a standard like what's "necessary" or what would "absolutely" occur. Or we could just say that the patristic evidence (and other evidence) in question furthers our argument, even if it doesn't make our argument probable in isolation. And the historicity of Mary's assumption isn't all that's involved here. We should also be asking about the credibility of Catholicism's claims about the history of the doctrine within the church, like what I've quoted from Pope Pius XII above. If Mary is as important as Catholics claim, if her assumption is as important as Catholics claim it is, if it's an apostolic tradition always held by the church, and so on, should we be seeing what we see in the historical record? Is what we see better explained by the Catholic view or a Protestant view? (Keep in mind that a Protestant could take a position as modest as agnosticism, for example, maintaining that there's not enough evidence to warrant belief in Mary's assumption without denying that she was assumed.)

- On the issue of Marian relics, see here. There were people who thought Mary's body remained dead on earth or elsewhere or were agnostic on whether she was assumed not only during the patristic era, but into the medieval era as well.

- Trent mentions an alleged lack of patristic support for beliefs like eternal security and the rejection of baptismal regeneration. But Protestants don't make claims about those beliefs that are comparable to the claims Catholics make about Mary's assumption. Different claims involve different burdens of proof. And Protestants don't just object to a lack of support for the assumption of Mary among the church fathers. They also appeal to a lack of support in the Biblical documents, in early Christian artwork, etc. By contrast, they argue for Biblical and extrabiblical support for beliefs like eternal security and justification apart from baptism. See, for example, here on eternal security and here on the rejection of baptismal regeneration. (To his credit, Trent acknowledged in another recent video that some pre-Reformation sources held some form of eternal security. I disagree with him about the extent to which it's found in pre-Reformation sources, but that's too far from the focus of this post for me to get into it here.)

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