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?
The Assumption of the Theotokos occurred in same way the miraculous conversion of the Syrians in Edessa, Nineveh, Seleucia-Cstesiphon (sometimes referred to as Babylon but in practice a newer city) and Kerala India, by St. Thomas the Apostle, who was martyred in Kerala in 53 AD came about. These were significant events but were not recorded in canonical scripture. Also there is a book more likely than not originating in the second century, and no later than the third century, concerning the Dormition of the Theotokos, the Liber Requiel Mariae, so frankly that half of your question is misleading.
If there were no documents of potential second century provenance reporting the Dormition, your argument would still be fallacious, since nearly the entire history of the Christian Church (including the life of Ellen G. White) is not mentioned explictly in the New Testament, but since there is actually a document widely regarded as being of second century provenance that documents this incident, it is misleading.
I would also note that just as there are various scriptures that the Adventists interpret as presaging the career of Ellen G. White, there are likewise scriptures that the Orthodox, Assyrians and Roman Catholics regard as prophecies of the Dormition, or Assumption as the Roman Catholics and Oriental Orthodox and also the many High Church Anglicans and other high church Protestants who believe in this doctrine regard as prophetic of it, and also scriptures that the Roman Catholics use to defend the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Would I be correct in assuming that Ellen G. White objected to the doctrine of the Dormition?
On what basis could either of these teachings be considered mandatory, required or even true??
In addition to the same reasons that your denomination requires of its clergy, and probably its laity, a mandatory belief in the authenticity of the writings of Ellen G. White and certain other documents, which is to say, ecclesiastical authority, which Rome posesses, the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Churches possess, and which your church posesses, there are several very compelling reasons to believe in the Dormition of the Theotokos. Two of the most compelling are that unlike every other important figure in the New Testament, we have no bodily relics of her, which is extremely unusual, considering we have the head of St. John the Baptist, the body of St. Peter the Apostle, and many other relics, such as the body of St. Mark the Evangelist, which the Venetians stole from the Coptic Orthodox Church, but recently the Roman Catholic Church did return his head. However, even more compelling than the lack of relics is the extreme holiness of the Theotokos, who did literally give birth to God Himself in the person of the Son, and as such had a far more intimate relationship with God than even Moses or Adam or King David, of whom the Theotokos is an ancestor. It is for this reason that she is worthy of hyperdoulia, or extreme veneration, but she is not worshipped by the Orthodox nor would she desire or accept worship, and any apparition claiming to be the Blessed Virgin Mary who demands worship is not really the Blessed Virgin Mary but a demonic imposter. This is not to say she has not appeared to the faithful; her appearance to an Aztec who painted the famed icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe resulted in the miraculous conversion of the Mexicans and the demise of the wicked, vile and filthy Mesoamerican human sacrifice cult which had resulted in the death of millions of Mexicans and other Central Americans from its Mayan origins to its decadent Aztec successors.’
Bearing this in mind, considering that the holy prophets Enoch and Elijah were taken up, and considering that Moses was also assumed bodily after his repose, it would be inconsistent and strange if the literal Mother of God were not also taken up on the occasion of her repose.
Now the reason why the Roman Catholics and some Anglicans and Lutherans believe in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is because St. Augustine’s approach to Original Sin developed in refutation of the Pelagian heresy, which was initially rejected by Rome and the Eastern churches in favor of the model of Hereditary or Ancestral Sin proposed by St. John Cassian, but later adopted by the Roman church, but not the three Eastern churches (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East). St. Augustine proposes that Original Sin is transmitted through concupiscience in reproductive intercourse, requiring, in order to uphold the ancient belief of the church that the Blessed Virgin was in one form or another sinless, a belief held by the majority of Christians even today, the Roman church required the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in order to declare her conception free from the transmission of her sin. It is the belief of the Orthodox churches, the Assyrians, and myself, that this doctrine is superfluous, because St. Augustine was in error, and the refutation of Pelagius by St. John Cassian, in which an inclination to sin is inherited as well as a guilt, thus requiring the action of the Holy Spirit to guide us to salvation, is correct, and in this model there is no need for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and insofar as it makes the Theotokos less like an ordinary human mother, it is undesirable, as we want to stress the complete humanity and concurrent deity of Christ the Son of God and the Son of Man, our Messiah and Savior and the very Word of God in whom is the source of all truth and reason, as decreed by the Father and conveyed to us through the uncreated Grace of the Holy Spirit.
The doctrine of the Dormition however is uncontroversial among the ancient churches, being agreed to by all of them, and by many Protestants as well, about 20-25% of Anglicans I would estimate, and Anglicanism is of course the largest Protestant denomination and denominational grouping, followed by the various Lutheran communities and the various Calvinist communities.
