Immaculate Conception
Which is defined as - the Immaculate Conception of Mary by her mother-- Mary born sinless like Christ.
Assumption of Mary into heaven
Mary taken bodily to heaven without dying --or--- Mary resurrected at her death then bodily assumed into heaven.
I don't find any NT author commenting/admitting/stating the above.
I don't find any mention of this in Christian documents for more than 200 years after Christ.
Question:
Without any scripture support and without any early church documents in first or second century showing that Christians all believed in it - how did it come about?
On what basis could either of these teachings be considered mandatory, required or even true??
Good Day, BobRyan
"Raymond E. Brown, S.S., born in 1928 and ordained in 1953, has been recognized by universities in the U.S.A. and Europe by some twenty honorary doctoral degrees. He was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the Roman Pontifical Biblical Commission, and with church approval he has served for many years on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Time magazine once described him as 'probably the premier Catholic scripture scholar in the U.S.,' and he is the only person to have served as president of all three of these distinguished societies: the Catholic Biblical Association, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Society of New Testament Studies."
He teaches on the 2 dogmas with in His denomination.
Raymond E. Brown: Some Roman Catholics may have expected me to include a discussion of the historicity of
the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. But these Marian doctrines, which are not mentioned in Scripture, clearly lie outside my topic which was the quest for historical knowledge of Mary in the NT. Moreover, I would stress the ambiguity of the term “historicity” when applied to these two doctrines.
A Roman Catholic must accept the two dogmas as true upon the authority of the teaching Church, but he does not have to hold that the dogmas are derived from a chain of historical information. There is no evidence that Mary (or anyone else in NT times) knew that she was conceived free of original sin, especially since the concept of original sin did not fully exist in the first century. The dogma is not based upon information passed down by Mary or by the apostles; it is based on the Church’s insight that the sinlessness of Jesus should have affected his origins, and hence his mother, as well. Nor does a Catholic have to think that the people gathered for her funeral saw Mary assumed into heaven—there is no reliable historical tradition to that effect, and the dogma does not even specify that Mary died.
Once again the doctrine stems from the Church’s insight about the application of the fruits of redemption to the leading disciple: Mary has gone before us, anticipating our common fate. Raymond E. Brown,
Biblical Reflections on Crises facing the Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), p. 105, fn. 103.
In Him,
Bill