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Joe Heschmeyer addresses common objections to the Assumption of Mary, showing why they ultimately fail.
Transcription:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer. So the assumption of Mary, that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven was not declared a dog bomb the Catholic church until 1950. Some of you watching or listening to this were literally alive when that happened. So I completely understand when Protestants are dubious and say, I don’t think there’s a good biblical or historical case for that dogma. What I want to do today is explore what I think of as some of the better Protestant arguments against the assumption of Mary, and then show you why I think that they ultimately fail and in fact, why I think one of them ends up being a bette r argument for Mary’s assumption. And then I’m going to lay out a positive case for why I think biblically historically, theologically, we should believe Mary was assumed into heaven, including there are some arguments you probably haven’t heard of before.
So as we begin, let’s just say this, I don’t know that there’s a silver bullet argument in either direction. I think if there were, we would’ve found it by now and the argument would be over. Instead, you have to do a little bit of weighing of the evidence. I’ll get to what I think is the closest to a silver bullet argument at the end of this episode. But until then be thinking about, okay, how much weight do I give each of these individual arguments? I’m going to start with the strongest Protestant arguments, and these are going to be the arguments from silence. I think there are three of them. The first one is that scripture is silent, that the New Testament does not include any explicit passage that says Mary died and then was taken up body and soul into heaven. And that’s true enough, right?
I don’t think we’re going to find, you can’t cite chapter and verse. Here is an explicit, undeniable piece of evidence. If that existed, Protestants wouldn’t be protesting this. Now the people making this argument fall into two categories. One group is arguing, assuming Sola scriptura to be true, and they’re assuming in other words, that all doctrines to be true have to be derived from the New Testament. And I would just say if that’s the argument, that’s number one kind of an argument for a different day that’s more about solos scriptura than N is about Mary. And number two, I think it’s ultimately a self refuting argument if that’s your understanding of solos scriptura, and please, I know in the comments other people interpret solos scriptura differently, but if you think solo S script means that you as a Protestant have to find all doctrines in scripture, I would only suggest the doctrine itself of solo s scriptura does not exist in scripture.
And in fact, in two Thessalonians two 15, we see it’s clearly contradicted by scripture where St. Paul tells us not to hold to scripture alone, but to those traditions taught both orally and in writing. Nevertheless, a lot of Protestants make the assumption isn’t found in scripture argument, not because they’re presupposing solo scriptura, but just because they’re assuming, well, look, if this really happened, why don’t we get any written account of it? Now, this is at the outset an argument from silence, but I want to be clear. I don’t think an argument from silence is necessarily bad, but an argument from silence to be convincing has to meet a particular threshold. Number one, if X occurred in this case, the assumption of Mary, we should expect Y to report about it. Y in this case is the New Testament, but it could be the early church or whoever.
We’ll get into that. That’s the first premise that has to be true for the argument from silence to work. Because if you wouldn’t expect them to report about it, oh, there was a world event and ESPN didn’t report about it, well, you wouldn’t expect them to. They cover sports. They don’t cover world news, so their silence doesn’t mean anything. So if X occurred, we should expect Y to report about it. If the assumption of Mary happened, we should expect the New Testament to talk about it. We’re going to analyze whether that’s true or not. In a second here, number two, Y does not report about it. That then leads you to the third, which is the conclusion. Therefore, it’s unlikely that X occurred. So that’s the format of the argument. That first premise is what I really want to investigate. The first thing to think about here is chronologically many of the New Testament texts, and there’s a wide debate about when the writings of the New Testament are from.
So I don’t want to commit to any one position there, but only to suggest that historically Christians have believed that a lot of the New Testament documents were written relatively early in the life of the church, including in most cases probably before Mary even died. It’s not particularly surprising that Matthew, mark, Luke, and John wouldn’t write about the death of Mary when that’s not in the time period that they’re covering and maybe chronologically had not happened yet, so we wouldn’t expect that. In other words, so that argument from silent suddenly becomes kind of unconvincing in the same way that you wouldn’t expect Old Testament texts to give you a detailed account about the birth of Jesus. They might refer to it prophetically, but they’re not going to refer to it historically. It hadn’t happened yet. So two is something like the assumption of Mary. The New Testament text might refer to it prophetically, but they’re not going to describe it historically if it hasn’t happened yet.
That’s the first thing I’d say. One of the reasons I don’t expect a lot of the New Testament to talk about the assumption of Mary is because it hadn’t occurred yet. The second reason though is because there were a lot of events that we know happened or had to have happened that weren’t talked about. I’m going to give you a couple examples because I think this premise that if a miracle occurred, like the assumption of Mary that the New Testament authors would write about it is contradicted pretty clearly by the New Testament itself. I’ll give you two examples. First one is one Corinthians chapter 15. This is the famous Corinthian Crete St. Paul is listing all of the resurrection appearances of Jesus that were in this early creed that the Christians had one of those. In verses six to seven, he talks about how Jesus appeared to James and then to the apostles.
Now think about this. This is important enough to make it into the earliest statement of the Christians, and yet it makes a single line in one Corinthians and Paul doesn’t explain it and what’s more, as David Edwards points out, Matthew, mark, Luke and John never talk about it. This is a resurrection appearance. This is of obviously more important than just about anything in Christianity, and yet Matthew, mark, Luke, and John give it zero words. Paul gives it a single verse. Now Edward suggests it’s possible that James is one of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and so we do know about it, but we don’t know about it as James because the funny thing is we don’t actually know for sure which James is even in view here. If it’s James the brother of our Lord, then it could be that this is Jesus’s cousin and the named disciple on the road to Emmaus is Cleopas.
Jesus has an uncle according to his second century author by the name of pus named K CLOs. So maybe lop and Cleopas are the same person and it’s a father and son walking together. It’s Jesus’s uncle and cousin, but we sure don’t know that for sure. All we know for sure is there is a single verse suggesting Jesus appeared to James and nobody in the New Testament bothered to tell us about it in any clear direct way. What makes this even more striking is that St. Paul met with Peter and James, he talks about this, and so assuming this is the same James, it seems very unlikely that Paul wouldn’t know the details of this resurrection appearance and yet he doesn’t talk about them. Now, Edward suggests maybe the Corinthians already knew about them, but the point there is you can hardly build a strong argument from silence on the basis that if X miracle happened, the New Testament writers would write about it when we know of at least one very clear case, a resurrection appearance where that didn’t happen.
But what’s more, and this is the second example, John tells us that there are a lot of other things that Jesus did that he’s not going to take the time to write about. He tells us that in John 2030 to 31 and then at the end of John 21, he suggested if we wrote all those things, we wouldn’t have enough books. Bear in mind in the first century you couldn’t type. You had to write by hand and it was often a laborious and even expensive process, particularly if you had to hire someone who could write for you. And so as a result, first century authors are often pretty conservative in the details that they include and that includes the New Testament authors. So you can hardly build a convincing argument from silence on the fact that among the various other things, Matthew, mark, Luke, John, Paul, and the others leave out, they leave out the assumption of Mary an event that may not have happened at the time. Most of them are writing. Alright? That’s the first argument. I’ll be clear. I think that’s the strongest arguments Protestants have. I just don’t think it’s particularly strong. The second argument is that the early Christians were silent. Now here’s James White presenting a version of that argument. What you have as dogma
CLIP:
Today in regards to bodily assumption of Mary utterly absolutely unknown to the early church unknown, but they simply have to assume it. Well, because Rome has said so because Rome has said so.
Joe:
You’ll find that argument a lot by Protestant authors and it’s simply not true. It’s true that we don’t have a ton, but to say it’s unknown or that we have nothing in the early church is flatly untrue. Now, when I lay out the positive case, we’ll see that in depth, but for not wanting you to hold onto this idea, think about the way they’re using arguments from silence here because we’re going to come back to that and show that actually the early Christian arguments from silence point exactly in the opposite direction. The third argument against the assumption of Mary is another argument from silence. This is the argument that the doctrine wasn’t defined until 1950, as I mentioned at the top of the episode. Now, here’s John MacArthur making some kind of argument based on that,
CLIP:
The doctrine of the assumption. You may have heard of that, the assumption or the ascension. This doctrine didn’t find a place in the actual cannon of Catholic theology until 1950. It was in November the first 1950. Pope Pius the 12th made it official that Mary ascended into heaven.
Joe:
So first of all, that’s completely wrong. He’s conflating the ascension, which is what Jesus did where he goes into heaven by his own power and the assumption where Mary is taken up by the power of Christ into heaven. When we talk about our resurrection the last day, when we will God willing be body and soul with Jesus in heaven, we’re not claiming to have the power to ascend by our own divine authority like Jesus does. So the fact that he got something that basic wrong is a huge red flag. If you don’t know the difference between the ascension and the assumption, don’t preach on it. But second, as MacArthur himself is going to admit, the roots of the assumption are much deeper than 1950. Now, I’d say two things here. Number one, this past summer the Southern Baptist Convention tried unsuccessfully to add language that only men can be pastors at the Southern Baptist Convention like the gathering of the SBC.
Now, someone who knew nothing about Southern Baptist the way MacArthur knows nothing about early Christianity might assume aha, the idea that only men can be pastors must be some new idea in the 21st century and that’s why they’re trying to define it. But of course, anyone who knows at all what they’re talking about would know no, no. The only reason they’re trying to define it is now this thing that had been taken for granted is now being disputed, right? Sometimes you don’t define a thing until it’s under attack. That’s mostly how Christian history works. So any argument based on what year a thing was dogmatize or defined is almost by definition of that argument. So Steven Schumacher, who is himself skeptical of the early history of the assumption and Dormish acknowledges that we find feasts even in Jerusalem from probably no later than around the beginning of the sixth century, like the early five hundreds.
So the idea that 1950 being the when it’s defined tells us something important, it just doesn’t. This is part of the rosary. Catholics had been praying in the glorious mysteries about the assumption and the coronation of Mary in the fourth and fifth glorious mystery the entire time the rosary’s been around. This is not something new to the 20th century as we’re going to see Catholic Orthodox and Coptic Christians who have not been in union with each other since the four hundreds all believe in this dogma. So as we’re weighing, as I say, these are the three strongest arguments, these are all arguments from silence and I would suggest that while they may give us some indication, they don’t actually tell us a whole lot and they’re not as strong as the Protestants presenting them, pretend that they are. So let’s turn now to three arguments against the assumption.
What I mean is those first three arguments don’t tell us the assumption of Mary is bad or contrary to the New Testament. They just say, I’m not convinced it’s found in the New Testament. I’m not convinced it’s found in early Christianity. Those are arguments that you haven’t proved your case well enough Catholic, but the next three arguments are going to be people arguing. No, it’s actually wrong to believe in the assumption of Mary. For some reason, the first of these negative arguments, these arguments against the assumption is that Christ doesn’t share his royal authority. Now, this is from God questions. Unfortunately, I can only find it in text form, so you’re going to have to deal with a robot talking to you for a second.
CLIP:
There is no queen of heaven. There has never been a queen of heaven. There is most certainly a king of heaven, the Lord of hosts, he alone rules in heaven. He does not share his rule or his throne or his authority with anyone. The idea that Mary, the mother of Jesus is the queen of heaven has no scriptural basis whatsoever. Instead, the idea of Mary as the queen of heaven stems from proclamations of priests and popes of the Roman Catholic church.
Joe:
Before we even talk about Mary, let’s just acknowledge how bad of an argument that is. When you look at the book of Revelation, for instance, John sees elders on 24 Thrones and then he tells us in Revelation 20 verse four that he saw thrones and seated on them or those to whom judgment was committed. You’re going to tell me that Christ doesn’t share his throne in his royal authority with his people. Have you read the Bible in Matthew 19? Jesus tells the 12 tells to the 12 that they are the ones who followed him and that they will sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. This imagery of sharing in the judgment of Christ by sharing the throne with him is all over the New Testament, and it’s not just for the 24 elders, it’s not just for the 12 apostles in two Timothy St.
Paul quotes a saying that if we have died with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure, we shall also reign with him and we’re to believe Christ doesn’t share his authority again. Have you read the New Testament? First, Peter tells us that we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. So before we even get into the verses about Mary in heaven in revelation, let’s just acknowledge this is built on theological nonsense. Of course, Christ shares his royal authority. So this argument that the assumption of Mary is bad because it would mean Christ is sharing his royal authority is an argument not against the assumption of Mary, but an argument against Christianity and the promises he makes to his people that we are a royal priesthood in a holy nation. Alright? The next argument is that this whole idea of the queen of heaven is pagan because in the Old Testament, couple times in Jeremiah we hear about a queen of heaven who is a pagan idol.
CLIP:
Queen of heaven was actually a common pagan title given to a number of ancient sky goddesses which were worshiped thousands of years ago in the ancient world in the Mediterranean near East cultures and even the Roman Catholic church borrowed from paganism by calling Mary the queen of heaven. This is not biblical and this is totally opposed to the one true in living God who is our father.
Joe:
Now, he doesn’t bother to sighting sources, but if he did, the two that usually get cited here are Jeremiah seven and Jeremiah 44 and Jeremiah seven were told about how the children gather wood, the father’s Kindle fire and the women need dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. They’re making sacrificial grain offerings to a goddess called the queen of heaven, and God is clearly unhappy with this and in Jeremiah 44, the people tell Jeremiah they’re not going to listen to God and instead they’re going to keep doing that. They’re going to continue to burn incense to the queen of heaven, pour out Ians to her as they and their fathers had done. Now, the question I have is, is this a good argument at all? And the answer is no. I think there’s a very clear way of showing this. One of the major idols that the Israelites faced off against was ball.
You may remember numerous times where we’re being exhorted to follow God rather than ball, but if you ask what his name means, it doesn’t mean like a round rubber thing you bounce but all means Lord. And you might remember that we regularly say Jesus is Lord. In fact, in one Corinthians 12 we’re told no one can say Jesus’s Lord except by the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t mean that Jesus and Ball are the same person just because both names are linked to Lord, right? This etymological game of, oh, well you said queen of heaven and there’s a pagan named queen of heaven, therefore you must be referring to the pagan could just as easily be used against Jesus by saying, oh, you said Jesus is Lord and Lord is ball and ball’s a pagan. This is a bad argument, but what’s more it’s directly unbiblical again, because in Revelation 12, and like I say we’re going to get into this, John sees a sign in heaven, a woman clothed the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars.
Now, what is a crown? A sign of royal authority that tells us both God is happy to share his royal authority with somebody, and two, this is a vision of a heavenly queen. Sure, she’s not named queen of heaven because you don’t have to say queen of heaven to understand the crowned person in heaven who’s a woman is queen because that’s what that’s referring to. So I mentioned this to say any argument based on the phrase queen of heaven, as if it’s inherently pagan to say Queen of heaven is absurd, just like it’s not inherently pagan to say, Lord, the sixth and final Protestant argument is the idea, the assumption is itself somehow pagan and idolatrous. So I’m going to go back to John MacArthur where he’s going to admit that the roots of the assumption are much older than 1950, but then tell us a very bizarre version of history.
CLIP:
Now, this idea about Mary though it really wasn’t formally dogmatize until 20th century goes way, way back and you start to read about this in the fifth century as paganism and pagan goddess worship at the very earliest gets mingled. Remember the Holy Roman empire as it was called the Holy Roman empire, was really not holy. It was Roman for sure, but the emperor in the 3 25 decided that the best thing to do to unify the great empire was to make everybody automatically a Christian. And since the place that the empire was rife with paganism, they just married a kind of Christianity with paganism and all of this came very early.
Joe:
It kills me that John MacArthur doesn’t just butcher history there, he butchers a joke. The joke is that the Holy Roman empire is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire because the Holy Roman empire is a different thing than the Roman Empire, even though he conflates them, the Holy Roman empire is founded in 800. It didn’t do anything in three 50, didn’t do anything in 3 25. He has no idea what he’s talking about. The joke is the Holy Roman empire is basically modern day Germany and some of the surrounding area, so it’s not really the Roman empire. That’s the joke. I hate having to explain a joke, but MacArthur’s history here is really bad. No, it’s just not true that in 3 25 there was any kind of law passed that everybody automatically became a Christian. That did not happen. He’s making that up where he’s getting it from somewhere.
I have no idea where, and it doesn’t make any sense that pagans are the one who gave us the idea of the assumption of Mary because remember, the assumption isn’t an ascension and how would that make any sense with a goddess religion, the idea that Christians go to heaven is not something we’re getting from paganism. It’s something we’re getting from Christianity. The idea that we’re going to be body and soul in heaven is again not something we’re getting from paganism, something we’re getting from Christianity. What goddess has that story where she’s the mother of a God and then is raised into heaven and becomes a goddess? That is what version of Roman paganism is teaching this. You can’t just throw out this nonsensical fake history and expect people to believe it because it’s, I mean I don’t doubt people do believe it, but it’s completely untrue.
David Mills back when he was editor first sings made a point that I’ve found very insightful. He talks about how there’s some Protestants who are dubious of the assumption. Those are the first three arguments I mentioned and then there are Protestants who think that the idea that Jesus’s mother was assumed into heaven is somehow itself bad and he says, I don’t understand why because he says it’s a radically humanistic statement, an affirmation of men in Christ what God wants to do for all of us and will do for many at the end of time. It seems fitting and theologically sensible. This bias explains that if God will do this for someone in history, he will have done it for the immaculately conceived woman who bore the son of God. Let’s unpack what he’s saying there. The point there is no one should object to the idea that God wants us body and soul in heaven.
No one should object to the idea that God wants us to reign with Christ. That is just plainly New Testament. And if that’s your objection to the assumption of Mary, you need to read the New Testament again because you’ve radically misunderstood the whole point of Christianity. If you’re offended by any of that, as Pop Pius 12 points out in the document when she declares the assumption of Mary, he says, it is our hope that belief in Mary’s bodily assumption to heaven will make our belief in our resurrection stronger and render it more effective. Like this is why we need the assumption of Mary, that Christians have butchered the idea of the afterlife so much that they’re worried that if somebody dies and goes to heaven, body and soul, that somehow paganism no brothers and sisters. That’s Christianity. So as we’re weighing it, those first three arguments, I think they’re weak, but at least they’re coherent arguments.
The last three arguments, arguments four, five and six, there are arguments against Christianity. It’s baffling that there are still Protestants who make these arguments because it reveals a profound misunderstandings of even the most basic aspect of what we believe about what happens when we die. Now cola, in all things made new the reformation is legacy, points out that even some of the reformers weren’t convinced by the arguments against Mary’s assumption. In particular, he cites Henrik Bollinger, the protege of Z winging the Swiss reformer, and he points out that unlike Z winging, Bollinger seemed completely satisfied with the idea that Mary assumed into heaven on the basis that well, Enoch and Elijah were so that makes sense in his language. He says, for this reason indeed we believe the sacred body of Mary, the most pure home and temple of the Holy Spirit to have been carried by angels up to heaven very clearly, he believes that Mary was bodily taken up into heaven.
Why? Because she was the home and temple of the Holy Spirit. It seems fitting that she should be united with God in heaven in the heavenly Jerusalem. Now it’s probably also striking though that in a later edition this line gets scrubbed from bollinger’s theological explanation. Whether that means he moved away from it is not entirely clear. We never see him actually deny Mary’s assumption. He may have just realized he was a little bit out on a limb as a Protestant reformer believing in the assumption of Mary. I mentioned all this just to say the case against the assumption of Mary’s actually a lot weaker than many Protestants realize that it is. What about the case? For Mary’s assumption, I want to start with the historical arguments. The first of these is one you may be familiar with, say EPIs on Mary’s assumption. Now, epiphanies is one of the earliest reliable witnesses you’ll understand in minute why I include that caveat like reliable and he’s writing about 3 77 or 3 78 and in what’s called the parian, he says the virgin Mary May have died and been buried.
Her falling asleep was with honor her death and purity her crown and virginity or she may have been put to death because there was an early tradition that she might’ve been martyred or she may have remained alive. For God is not incapable of doing whatever he wills. No one knows her end. Now I want to be clear about something. The dogma of the assumption does not say Mary did or didn’t die. It says at the end of her life when her life is over, she’s taken a body and the soul into heaven intentionally Pius 12 leaves room to believe she did or didn’t die because early Christians, they disagreed about this. Stephen Schumacher writing about this says that doesn’t mean he is not saying nobody has any traditions about the Virgin Mary’s death. On the other hand, he’s quite clear that he doesn’t know which of these traditions is right, but there’s three different traditions.
One that she died and was buried another, she was martyred another that she was assumed without having been like she remained immortal. And he says his indecisive reflections themselves suggests that some difference of opinion had already arisen among Christians as to whether Mary actually died or remained immortal. A difference he couldn’t resolve either through biblical or church tradition. And I think that’s a fair careful place to end up where he is saying these are the three possibilities. She died and was buried. This is consistent with the assumption she’s martyred, unlikely, but would still be consistent with the assumption or she didn’t die at all. Certainly consistent with the assumption. In fact would seemingly necessitate that epiphany. S nevertheless gives strong hints that he thinks that she was in fact assumed into heaven. He says, if anything I’m mistaken, moreover, let them search through the scriptures and neither find Mary’s death nor whether or not she died nor whether or not she was buried even though John Shirley traveled throughout Asia.
So we don’t hear about Mary being buried anywhere. We don’t hear about her remaining in the grave certainly and yet nowhere does he say that he took the holy virgin with him. Scripture simply kept silence because of the overwhelming wonder. Wonder not to throw men’s minds into consternation. Epiphanies is pretty clear. He thinks what happened was something miraculous and it’s out of a sort of deference for that miracle that scripture doesn’t lay this out explicitly. He says, I dare not say though I have my suspicions. I keep silent perhaps just as her death is not to be found. So I may have found some traces of the holy and blessed virgin. Now what does he see as the traces, the evidentiary lines that might hint biblically at what happened to Mary? The first is that a sword will pierce through her own soul that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed and elsewhere talks about in Revelation 12 here the dragon hastened after the woman who’d born the man child and she was given the wings of an eagle and was taken to the wilderness that the dragon may not seize her.
He sees in that rightly or wrongly that Mary’s taken up into heaven that she’s supernaturally protected from evil and taken up. Now you might agree or disagree with that, but the point is to make the claim that this idea is completely unheard of in the early church is clearly false. EPIs gives this as one of the options and seems pretty clearly leaned towards that. Now, I don’t think it’s a slam dunk home run silver bullet argument. He doesn’t tell us in the case of the first or second theory, whether Mary be bodily assumed or just remaining in the tomb somewhere. We’ll get back to that, but it certainly does give us some evidence if we’re just weighing the evidence, this is some evidence. The second are the things I’m calling flex of gold in a muddy scream and I’m stealing that from Father Winger who looked into these ancient Arian legends.
Now these are less reliable the pro is. Some of these are older. The con is, these are stories where we saw Epiphanys being a careful theologian kind of saying, I’ve got my hunches but I don’t want to say anything. I can’t kind of back up the storytellers, the people telling legends or just telling versions of history. They don’t have that same caution and some of them say things that are clearly wrong. Nevertheless, winger suggests that these are streams from murky waters, but occasionally they bear in their muddy waters, flex of gold, they’ll never be tarnished. In other words, when we look at all of these different traditions often contradicting each other, all these different stories, the early Christians are telling about how Mary was taken up into heaven. That’s pretty interesting evidence. Why are they talking about this as if this is a thing that happened?
They’re trying to fill in the details of an event. They seem to know of something but not a lot about. And so for instance, I’m just going to give one of those, these are what are sometimes called the palm narratives as Stevens Shoemaker explains the palm narratives, they begin by Mary being on Mount of Olives and an angel tells her she’s going to die and gives her a palm from the tree of life and there’s a whole lengthy set of events and then she dies and several days later Jesus returns and he takes her body along with the apostles to paradise where the virgin’s body and soul rejoined. And then that’s basically the argument. This is the basics right? Now I’m not saying this argument is where this story is right in all of its details. I’m just saying this is an early story and Shoemaker makes the argument pretty convincingly that these stories like the palm narratives themselves date from the third or fourth century, if not earlier, so the two to three hundreds or earlier.
Now, what makes them problematic is that they seem to be from people who’ve taken in too much gnostic Christianity because many of them speak of angel Christology where they’ll speak of Christ as an angel. And so that’s one of the reasons that we think it couldn’t be after the fourth century because gnosticism and that kind of angel Christology pretty much disappears by after the three hundredths. So the language they use to describe Christ seems to date back earlier. Now I will say there are early Christians who are completely Orthodox who also speak of angel Christologies. Saint Justin Martyr for instance, describes Jesus as both God and a messenger, an angel of God, nevertheless, because that becomes associated with gnosticism. Christians move away from the language of speaking of Christ as an angel because it sounds like we’re just saying he’s a created being. There’s a whole lot there.
All I’m saying is you have these different groups, some of them mainstream Christians, some of them not, who clearly believe that Mary was assumed into heaven. You could just write all of them off or you could say what is it that they know that they’re trying to explain? That’s what the flex of gold kind of argument wants to take seriously. By the way, occasionally it’ll heal. People claim that the dorm mission narratives as they’re called, are from people who oppose the Council of Calon 4 51, but a shoemaker points out that just does not appear to be true. There’s no real evidence for that. And in fact when you read the narratives themselves, they contradict that hypothesis. So if you’ve heard that it’s not true, the stories are stories. We don’t know how true they are, but the fact that there are so many different stories from different origins, these are not just versions of the same story.
There are a lot of different stories, some of them completely contradictory that are nevertheless quite old and may suggest that Christians knew Mary was assumed into heaven, knew very little else, and then strove to fill in the details themselves. So again, not a slam dunk ment, I acknowledge that, but it’s pretty intriguing and it certainly contradicts the lie that this was unknown in early Christianity. Alright? The third argument is that the Christians who had her tomb didn’t have her body. Now this is where I think we have a very strong argument that I’m sort of surprised more Christians don’t focus on. So I mentioned 4 51, the Council of Caledon, and while there the emperors asked juvenile of Jerusalem to surrender the coffin of Mary and its winding sheet like the sheet Mary was wrapped in to the Capitol Constantinople, and as we’re told, so the only account of this we still have, remember most written records are no longer existent. We have a copy of what’s called the Eutheric history, which is from maybe a hundred years later. That’s recounting what happened. So it’s from the five hundreds talking about the events in the four hundreds.
John Wortley, I believe he’s an Anglican priest, says the text has gained notoriety for being the earliest known assertion of what later can be known in the West as the doctrine of the corporeal assumption of the Virgin Mary to heaven. I’m not sure notoriety is the word I would use for that, but it’s certainly an important bit of history. So this is an early source describing the events of the 400. So context here is the folks in Jerusalem have what they believe to be the tomb of Mary and they have good reason to believe they have the tomb of Mary, right? I’ve actually been to this tomb and it’s striking because you have Catholics and Orthodox and Coptic Christians and Muslims, all of who believe that Mary is taken up into heaven. And the shocking sadness of it is Protestants don’t get this thing that Muslims do that here they are venerating the tomb of Mary because they realize God has done something miraculous here.
I’m getting ahead of myself, but as Wortley points out the context here is 4 51, they’re having great ecumenical counsel and they’d really like to have the relics of Mary and so they address him in these words. We hear that in Jerusalem at the first and laudable church of the all holy theotokos and ever Virgin Mary in a village called Gethsemane, her life bearing body was deposited in a casket. It is our wish to bring that relic here now as a preservative for this imperial city, right? One of the things they’re trying to do here is have a great ecumenical council. It’d be great to have this relic of Mary and juvenile. Jerusalem responds embarrassed. He says, there’s no corpse of the theotokos on earth. The only relics of her were the grave close. So he’s very clear, Mary is not here on earth. This is one of the reasons that after 4 51, you start to see the spread of these stories about the assumption of Mary because people in the west may not have known this reality that in the east they had her tomb, but not her body.
They had her grave clothes, but no corpse. When the emperors heard this, they asked him to send the casket of the holy mother together with her clothing, which it contained apparently the winding sheet juvenile obliges the casket, the Soros arrived and was duly deposited the new church. So they build a church for this relic. So that’s a striking sort of thing that the people who would be in the best position to know whether Mary was assumed into heaven or not clearly believe that she was. They don’t just say we don’t have her body, they say her body is not on earth. That’s striking positive evidence from quite early on in the life of the church that we don’t hesitate to take the Caledonian Christology and say this is good ancient, reliable Christianity. Well, here at the same event we have this bit about the assumption of Mary.
Now I’m not saying the council officially defines it, but I’m saying if you think these people are heretics who believe in a goddess and you’re still a caledonian Christian, I don’t think you have thought through your Christology or your church history. This then leads to a forced argument, an argument from silence that I think is a good argument from silence because wortley points out that people who read this with kind of a critical eye think that juvenile just invented the assumption of Mary to explain why he didn’t want to give up the relics of Mary’s body. And this is, I’m just going to say at the outset a very silly argument to claim these relics don’t exist. To preserve your relics is silly. Nevertheless, warley adds, although it has to be added, that there is not so much as a whisper of any corporeal remains of the virgin before or after 4 51.
Now that is actually striking. That is something that should tell us a great deal because we know this. As Alexander Walsham points out, the early Christians liked to collect relics and we’re really big into this idea of collecting relics and the fact that neither Jesus nor Mary were believed to have bodies on earth, didn’t even stop people from wanting relics. They just realized they couldn’t have bodily relics. Instead, they would have secondary relics of the virgin and the passion, maternal milk, the crown of thorns, splinters of the cross and drops of the savior’s blood. Now my point there is not to say these relics were true or false. I don’t doubt that there were plenty of both. I don’t doubt there were people who had inauthentic relics that they either knew or should have known were fake. I also don’t doubt that they had real relics.
They would gather the relics of those who had died. So for instance, when you hear about early martyr dims, we often hear about them gathering the relics of the saints were martyred. The point here is really simple. If the virgin Mary died or even if Christians thought she had died, we would expect people to have relics of Mary all over the place. Remember the way a good argument from silence works, number one, if X occurred, we should expect Y to report about it. In this case, if Mary was bodily on earth, we should expect people to be saying, I’ve got a relic of Mary’s body. This is what the emperor wanted, right? He wanted relics of her body. And Worley’s argument at first is like, well, maybe he’s lying to protect this amazing relic, Mary’s body. If that existed, this would be a hugely important, very significant relic for the early Christians.
In fact, even if it didn’t existed, if Christians in the early church thought Mary was dead and buried somewhere, someone would come along and for a Bach pretend to have Mary’s relic. And yet we don’t find that. We find people claiming to have relics of milk from Mary nursing Jesus. We find anything you can possibly think of that isn’t her body. We don’t find relics of her body. We find relics of all the other apostles. Now in response to this Gavin Orland I’ve heard say, well, we also don’t find relics of St. Joseph, but obviously we don’t find relics of St. Joseph. Joseph is out of the scene. By the time Jesus is doing his public ministry, the last we hear of Joseph, Jesus is like 12 years old. How could anyone possibly claim to have relics of Joseph if by the time Jesus is preaching no one knows where he’s even buried?
None of the early Christians are saying, here’s the tomb of Joseph and here’s his relative. Yeah, that’s not surprising. In contrast, it’s very surprising that Mary who he’s accompanying John for at least some of his life when she dies, it’s quite surprising no one gets those relics or pretends to get those relics. So that’s the argument in a nutshell. I think that’s a much stronger argument. I find it pretty convincing that it points to the fact that the early Christians don’t have relics. They have a bunch of stories about how Mary went to heaven. Whether you think those relics are real, whether you think those stories are real, it at least points to the fact that the early Christians don’t believe the same thing about the assumption of Mary, that modern Protestants believe. Those are the historical arguments in a nutshell. Let’s turn to the biblical and theological arguments.
So first is argument number five. If your Cuban a consecutive count is it marries the ark of the new Covenant. I want to story the Bible verse in Psalm 1 32 verse eight. It says, arise a Lord and go to thy resting place thou and the ark of thy might. Now historically, one of the things it’s referred to was going up to Jerusalem, but it was also seen by the early Christians as theologically referring to Christ going up into heaven. So Saint Augustine points this out. He sayeth unto the Lord sleeping a rise already who slept and who rose again. So it’s about the resurrection, but then it’s also about of course going up not just from the grave to earth but from the earth to the sky. Lord, I lift your name on high if you’re familiar with the song, you were probably singing that already.
Now, Augustine says, well, what do we mean by the ark then? Well, he says, the ark is the church. He rose first. The church will arise also. Right? This is something we want to affirm here. Whatever we’re saying about the assumption of Mary is prefiguring what will happen to the entire church. The body would not dare to promise itself. Resurrection save the head arose first. The body of Christ that was born of Mary. I’ve been understood by some to be the arc of sanctification so that the words mean arise with thy body, the thou who believe not may handle. So
In this passage we see prophetically, remember I said we’re not going to see a lot of historical accounts. We might see prophetic accounts because it hadn’t happened. When most of the Bible is being written, you’re going to see things looking forward. This is one of those forward looking places that God is going to go up. And so is his arc. His arc in one sense is the church in the other sense is very clearly married. Now, how can I say very clearly? Second Samuel chapter six, I’m going to run through something that deserves a lot more careful attention. Just give you the highlights because I’ve mentioned this elsewhere. In Second Samuel chapter six, David is moving the ark from the hill country of Judah to Jerusalem, the new capital. We’re told that he arose and went in verse two and Arosen went from bald Judah, this is the hill country of Judah.
And then in verse nine, he’s stymied here because the arks in the hill country, the ark is stopped because he’s not moving it properly and USA reaches out, touches the ark and is struck dead. And so he’s stuck in the household of Obum and he says, how can the ark of the Lord come to me? He’s trying to plot how he can get the ark of the Lord and the ark remains in the house of Obum for three months and finally he’s able to bring it into Jerusalem. And David wears the priestly garments, the linen od in dances before the Lord. So just bear those details in mind. Contrast them with the visitation. In Luke chapter one, Maria Rosen went same language, and where does she go? Same place the hill country of Judah. She goes in the household of Zacharia and the babe leaps in his mother’s womb.
This is John the Baptist, the son of Zacharia, the priest. Remember David dancing in the linen? Here is John the Baptist leaping before the Lord and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and just as David remained in the hill country of Judah for three months. So Luke 1 56 tells us Mary remains in the hill country of Judah for three months. These are not coincidences. But then let’s really get to the striking parallel. What does Elizabeth say to Mary? She says, why is this granted me? The mother of my Lord should come to me. That is so clearly an echo of David’s line. How can the arc of the Lord come to me? But now the arc of the Lord is being fulfilled by the mother of my Lord, that here you have these three months in the hill country of Judah that you arise and go to and you’re carrying the resting place of the glory of the Lord.
And in one case it’s the Ark and in the other it’s Mary. The early Christians were not oblivious to these incredible parallels. St. John Dames, one of the later church fathers, he’s right in the eighth century. So he’s born in the six hundreds. He dies in the seven hundreds and one of his sermons on the dorm mission of the version he proclaims today, the Sacred and Living Ark of the Living God who conceived her creator himself takes up her abode in the temple of God, not made by hands. I love that. I think that’s very rich theology. If Mary’s the Ark of the Covenant, which I think she is, and if the Psalm says that the Lord and his ark will go up, and this is a reference to not just ascending to Jerusalem on earth but ascending to the heavenly Jerusalem, which I think it clearly is, it’s a pretty good biblical case for the idea that God is in heaven with Mary and that this actually prefigures the church in a broad sense as the ark going to be with our Lord as well.
Alright, the sixth argument I want to make is that Mary’s also the heavenly temple. This is going to be an important kind of detail. Now here you have to know a little bit about the last nine chapters of the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 40 to 48. Yes, that’s nine chapters, not eight. I give that math wrong all the time. Ezekiel sees vision of a grand and glorious temple, and at the time the first temple has been destroyed, the second temple hasn’t been built yet. And so you might imagine that the great and glorious temple is going to be the second temple, but then they build the second temple and it’s inferior to the first temple. So Ezra chapter three points out that when it’s being built, the young people are super excited. They’ve never had a temple, but the old men are weeping because they realize it’s inferior to the first temple.
And in fact, God acknowledges this through the prophet Haggai and Haggai two verse three, when he asks, who is left among you that saw this house in his former glory, how do you see it now? Is it not near sight as nothing that the Ezekiel promises are not fulfilled in the second temple? At least not right away. One of the promises, I’m not going to go through all of the temple prophecies in Ezekiel, but one of them is in Ezekiel 47 in which there’s water flowing from the side of the temple, and this is water with miraculous properties. It’s fresh water that turns salt water fresh. It’s living water. What is this referring to? Well, it’s not referring to the second temple. There’s no feature that in the temple. Jesus is pretty clear in John chapter two when he says, destroy this temple in three days, I’ll rebuild it.
And we’re told he refers to the temple of his body. Because think about it. The temple is a place of two things. Divine presence is where God is and divine sacrifices where sacrifices made to God. Jesus in his body is both. This is the place of divine and dwelling par excellence. He’s present in the body more than he’s present in the temple. And two, he’s going through the body to offer the greatest sacrifice in human history. So this is literally a temple. If you understand what a temple is, the two features of the temple are fulfilled in Jesus’ body. Again, this could be a whole other episode, but it’s important to get that kind of ready so we have that in mind because Jesus is going to take these Ezekiel prophecies and we’re going to see them fulfilled in two ways. Number one, when his sight is pierced and blood and water flow out, that’s the living water flowing from the side of the temple, John 19.
But then he also refers to the church as his body and says, he who believes in me as the scriptures have said out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. Well, that line doesn’t appear in that way in the Old Testament, out of his heart shuffle rivers of living water. No, it’s out of the eastern side of the temple. What he’s saying is you are to be a temple of the Lord. And so the Holy Spirit should be flowing from you as a fulfillment of the Ezekiel prophecy. Why do I mention all of this? Because if Jesus’s body both in the broad sense of the body of Christ, but more specifically Jesus’s literal physical body is the temple, what do we make of the prophecy in Ezekiel 44? What is that prophecy that there will be a temple gate facing east and the gate shall remain shut, it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it for the Lord, the God of Israel is entered by it, therefore it shall remain shut. Well, the early Christians were quite clear, and we find this in several different places, that Mary is the temple gate. That if Jesus is the temple, the one who’s literally around the temple when Jesus is in the womb is Mary. And this is a reference to her perpetual virginity. This is one of the first places we see Ezekiel 44 talked about by the early Christians that the temple gate remains shut because God himself entered the world through the womb of Mary. And so it remains shut and no one ever entered that womb again.
Pro of Constantinople, same pro of Constantinople makes this point about 4 28 or 4 29 in response to historians, he says, behold the holy theotokos, Mary is bodily shown forth here. He’s referring to Ezekiel 44. Therefore, let us let go of all contrary arguments that you might know the illuminated sense of scripture in order that we might meet the king of heaven and Christ to whom His glory forever and ever. So he’s just taking it for granted. Ezekiel 44, that’s what this is about. And in fact, many Protestant reformers, I mentioned Bollinger earlier, but Z lingley as well, and Thomas Kraner and others believed that Ezekiel 44 verse two was in fact about Mary’s perpetual virginity. What does all of this mean for the assumption though? Well, the temple like the ark is depicted as being in heaven, and there’s this incredible trifecta here. The first two parts of the trifecta are the very last verse of Revelation 11.
Revelation 1119 says, God’s temple in heaven was opened and the arc of his covenant was seen within his temple. So John is going to have a vision of three things. Number one, the temple, number two, the arc. What’s number three? The woman of Revelation 12. Now I mention it in this way to say the temple and ark imagery is Marian imagery because she’s the temple gate, she’s the Ark of the New Covenant, and the very next thing he sees, it’s a new chapter in modern Bibles, those chapter divisions are not original, right? So if you’re just reading this, before chapter divisions are introduced, you see three things in very rapid succession. You see the temple, you see the arc, and then you see a woman andron in heaven. Now, I’ve already introduced you to her earlier in this episode, but she’s ent thrown in heaven with a crown of 12 stars. Here again, I’m not going to do a super deep dive. I want to give you a few features. This woman is pregnant and she gives birth in verse five to a male child who’s to rule the nations with a rod of iron.
What’s that about? Well, that’s a messianic prophecy from Psalm two verse nine. And in revelation, we see that verse applied in two ways. In Revelation 19, it’s applied to Jesus and this is going to be the most directly applicable. And then in Revelation two, I have Psalm two there, but I should say Revelation two, it’s applied to the conquering saints. So in both cases, the rod of iron prophecy refers to both Jesus in the first sense and the saints in the second sense. So the heavenly Queen, the woman enthroned in heaven with a crown of 12 stars, she’s given birth to somebody Jesus slash the Saints. She is at war with the dragon, and this dragon we’re explicitly told is the serpent from Genesis three. It’s the devil. He is unable to harm her. She’s supernaturally protected. This woman is, and he pursues her. He’s at war with her.
He’s unable to get her. And so in verse 17, angry at the woman, he goes off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. So if you’re a person who keeps the commandments of God and bears testimony to Jesus, which I hope you are, you have a mother in heaven who is a queen. Now you can read this as a reference to Mary or as a reference to the church, and I would suggest it’s both that just as the one who’s going to rule the nations of the rod of iron refers both to Jesus and the church. So too the reference to the mother refers both to Mary, the mother of Jesus and the church as our mother. And so we can talk about Mother church and Mother Mary, and we don’t have to choose between those two.
They’re both biblically supported from this depiction in Revelation chapter 12. But if that’s right, that certainly points to the idea that Mary’s been taken up into heaven, doesn’t it? And it certainly points to that when you combine that with the connected images of the ark and the temple. Alright? The eighth argument is that Mary is the embodiment of the church. This is why you don’t have to choose that Mary goes before us as a sign of where we are to go, right? This is why Pius 12 can say that her being assumed into heaven should give us greater hope for our bodily resurrection because we are going to follow. She’s kind of the model Christian. This is not some newfangled Catholic thing. St. Ambrose, the great preacher of Milan who converted St. Augustine talks about how Mary is a wife and virgin and she’s spotless because she’s an image of the church without staying and yet a spouse as virgin.
She’s conceived by the spirit as virgin. She brings us forth without the pangs of labor that we can talk with the church’s virgin mother and Mary’s virgin mother. So what we say about the one we can say about the other, so therefore, as I say, Pius says, it is our hope that belief in Mary’s bodily assumption to heaven will make our belief in our resurrection stronger and render it more effective. So anyone who hears this as somehow idolatrous or blasphemous doesn’t take seriously the good promises God has in store for us. This is she’s getting to experience early what we’ll experience a version of on the last day. Alright? The ninth argument is the witness of the apostolic churches. This is not just some weird Catholic thing. The Orthodox believe this. The Coptic Christians believe this as well. All that’s to say is everyone who’s been around longer than the 15 hundreds believes this.
Now, that’s not just an argument from history, that’s that’s not just an argument from authority. This is an argument that theologically we need to take very seriously. At the last supper, Jesus says, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. Now, who’s that you? Well, probably the church. Now I understand if you say, I don’t trust the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, whatever, but if you are going to say not just that the Catholic church got this wrong, but the Catholic Church and the Orthodox and the Coptic so that no church on Earth got something as important as the assumption of Mary, right? Because they all agree on this until the Reformation, if your position is that nobody got an important Christian doctrine, right? In what sense is John 1613 true? And what sense is the spirit of truth leading us into the fullness of truth?
If we can all be wrong, whatever you think John 16, 13 means, surely it at least means we are not all wrong on the doctrines of Christianity. And yet if you’re to deny the assumption of Mary, you’d have to say for centuries, everybody got this doctrine wrong until the Reformation. And if that’s true, I mean I’ve mentioned this before, but imagine, look, if you came along and said, I’m a Muslim, but I think all Muslims before me have misunderstood the Quran, it actually means something radically different. Someone would reasonably look at you and say, I don’t know what you mean when you say you’re a Muslim. Likewise, if you’re a Christian, you say all the Christians until the 15 hundreds got Christianity wrong. I don’t know what you mean by calling yourself Christian because you’re cutting yourself off from the historical continuity of Christianity. You’re a follower of Christ fine, but you’ve reinterpreted that to mean something radically different than what anyone before you took that to mean. I don’t say that to attack anybody, but to say, if you’re going to say the entire Christian Church got all these things wrong, that’s a serious problem. That then leads to the final point, which I actually think is the ultimate argument, which is that Pope Pius 12 by his authority as Pope declared that Mary was assumed into heaven.
He did this for our good because here’s the thing. In the early church when controversies arose, what did the church do? The church would assemble together and would settle the question. There’d be some kind of statement in which the authority of the church would be invoked to settle a dispute. So I totally understand when you’re weighing the evidence, two Christians weighing the evidence might come to opposite conclusions. And that’s exactly the reason why the church needs to step in. And in 1950, the church did just that through papaya 12 after consultation with the world’s bishops. So just like in Acts 15, when Christians are reading the evidence differently on whether or not new Christians need to get circumcised, the church steps in speaks on behalf of the Holy Spirit and settles the question In the Council of Nicea, when there’s questions about the Trinity or in Caldon when there’s questions about the natures of Christ, the church repeatedly steps in and settles these disputes when they come up.
Because the point is it ultimately shouldn’t be left to us to have to weigh all of this historical evidence much, which I bet you didn’t even know about until today. It would be unreasonable to assume every Christian can or should have to do all that weighing themselves. And this is why God gave us the church. This is how the church operates in Acts 15 and throughout the centuries. And this is how the church continues to act today. So how do we know we have more than a probabilistic belief in the assumption of Mary? Because it’s true. At the end of the day, the church acted and spoke clearly and settled a question that had been disputed. That’s the role of the church and that’s why we can trust that the church continues to get this right. For Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you and happy feast of the Assumption of Mary.