Problems With Appealing To Doctrinal Development In Support Of The Assumption Of Mary

One approach advocates of her assumption could take is to argue that the earliest Christians weren't aware of Mary's assumption, but that an understanding of it developed over time. It wasn't a new revelation, but rather is an implication of one or more aspects of the apostolic faith, an implication that wasn't recognized until sometime after the apostles.

There are some problems with that sort of approach, some of which I've discussed before. I want to repeat some points I've brought up in other discussions and add some that I don't think I've mentioned in the past.

The first point to be made is that an assumption of Mary isn't an implication of anything in the apostolic faith. An argument that an assumption of her seems fitting, is an implication of one or more passages in Revelation 11-12, or some such thing has to involve a demonstration that the assumption is a probability, not just a possibility. That's never been done, and it can't be done. We've addressed some of the relevant issues elsewhere on this blog, such as in my discussion of the material in Revelation here.

Another factor to take into account is the nature of the event under consideration. If Mary was assumed, people should have known about it and should have discussed it in our extant records, even if nobody other than Mary had been present when the assumption occurred. It shouldn't have taken decades or centuries for people to have developed an understanding of her assumption.

I'll discuss a few potential scenarios in which Mary could have been assumed:

- She was assumed without dying. If so, people should have noticed that she was missing. They also should have noticed that she wasn't ever found after a search was made for her. Dionysius of Alexandria wrote in the third century:

"Chaeremon, who was very old, was bishop of the city called Nilus. He fled with his wife to the Arabian mountain and did not return. And though the brethren searched diligently they could not find either them or their bodies." (cited in Eusebius, Church History 6:42:3)

And notice that Eusebius had enough interest in Dionysius' account to include it in his church history. Both men were interested in the account and expected their readers to be interested in it. Yet, nothing of the sort is said about Mary by any source of the earliest centuries or by any mainstream source after the claim of an assumption of Mary began appearing in apocryphal literature several generations into church history. Given how significant groups like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy claim Mary is and how significant they claim her assumption is, you'd think there would be far more interest shown in her disappearance than that of a little-known bishop like Chaeremon.

Even if you put forward a scenario in which Mary was alone when her assumption occurred, her going missing and never being found should have gotten a significant amount of attention. It didn't. Instead, the belief that she died seems to be the view held by the large majority of sources throughout church history, including in the earliest centuries.

- She died, then was resurrected and assumed. Notice that the addition of a resurrection makes Mary's alleged experience even more unusual. There are two miracles to account for rather than just one, which affects things like the prior probability and the number and variety of contexts in which the events could have been discussed by the early sources (e.g., people writing about resurrection, as many did, could include Mary in the discussion).

If there was a resurrection, we'd expect the grave to be disturbed ("the tombs were opened" in Matthew 27:52; "the stone had been rolled away" in Mark 16:4; "remove the stone" in John 11:39). And Catholics and other advocates of Mary's assumption frequently tell us that the early Christians thought highly of Mary, would have had a lot of interest in her gravesite, would have sought relics of her, etc. So, shouldn't the disturbance of her gravesite and the fact that the grave was empty have been discovered early on?

Somebody might try to get around this problem by speculating that the gravesite wasn't disturbed.

- She died, was resurrected, was assumed, and teleported through the grave in the process, which left the grave undisturbed. Notice, first, that we now have three miracles (resurrection, assumption, and teleportation) rather than one or two. See my earlier comments about the implications of increasing the number and variety of miracles involved.

And we should ask why God would assume Mary in such a manner. It's suspicious to try to explain a lack of evidence for an assumption by positing that Mary was teleported through the grave. Was God trying to avoid having the sort of evidence that would usually accompany such an event? That's unlikely.

It's also contrary to precedent. See my citations of Matthew 27, Mark 16, and John 11 above. God didn't avoid leaving behind evidence on those other occasions.

It would also be problematic in that it would go against the popular argument that Mary was sharing in Jesus' experiences (dying as he did, being resurrected as he was, going up to heaven as he did). Jesus left a disturbed gravesite, so wouldn't the typical paralleling of Jesus and Mary suggest that Mary would likewise leave her gravesite disturbed?

And even under a teleportation scenario, aren't we supposed to think Christians would be highly interested in going to Mary's grave, venerating her, seeking her relics, etc.? So, shouldn't they have discovered early on that the grave was empty, even if it wasn't disturbed?

It could be argued that such interests (visiting Mary's grave, getting relics of her, etc.) didn't develop until later in church history. But then you're having to revise the claims that have usually been made about those other subjects in order to accommodate the lack of early belief in an assumption of Mary. And that concession would only explain a portion of the evidence against her assumption, not all of it. You'd still have to demonstrate that her assumption is implied by the apostolic faith, which it isn't, you'd still have to argue for an unlikely scenario in which God does something like teleport Mary's body through her grave, etc.

Any scenario an advocate of Mary's assumption proposes would face multiple problems. Addressing one of those problems doesn't address all of them. You have to examine the situation as a whole and ask how well the entirety of the evidence is being addressed. Mary's not being assumed best explains the evidence as a whole. If she died and remained in her grave, that best explains the lack of early discussions about the end of her life (because of the ordinary manner in which her life ended) and her absence in early discussions of subjects like people who never died, resurrections, assumptions, and people who are in a bodily state in the afterlife. Topics like those are frequently discussed in the early sources, and Mary's absence in those discussions, while such a large number and variety of other individuals are mentioned and mentioned multiple times by multiple sources, is conspicuous.