Jumping in here (and your list of Prot beliefs will be dealt with in a separate post), unless you insist Mary did not die, which is not official Rc belief, and EOs believe she did, then this is a distinction without a difference: one is bodily resurrected and assumed (taking possession of by God) up to Heaven by the power of God.
And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. (1 Corinthians 6:14)
You own (assuming you are a RC) CCC states,
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians. (966)
This should refer to teaching the Assumption of Mary as a doctrine. For while there is Biblical foundation for bodily resurrection and assumption into Heaven, what God can do simply does not mean that He has or will, otherwise you could teach that Mary parted the Red Sea, or one or more of the believes Catholics have in Mary, such as that she is the omnipotent dispenser of all grace, having "authority over the angels and the blessed in heaven," and that "the Holy Spirit acts only by the Most Blessed Virgin, his Spouse." who "had to suffer, as He did, all the consequences of sin," and that “sometimes salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked the name of the Lord Jesus," that saints have "but one advocate," and that is Mary, who "alone art truly loving and solicitous for our salvation," etc. and who (obviously) cannot "be honored to excess," (but not worshiped, by playing
word games for this). [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]
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Bible Prots (evangelicals) should have no objection to the Assumption of Mary IF it was promised or recorded in Scripture, but as binding belief it is to be rejected, along with the
hyper exaltation of Mary that is far far "above that which is written." (cf. 1Co. 4:6)
Believing the Bible means trusting what it says, which is not that the bodily assumption of Enoch and Elijah means Mary also was, or that what God can do means He must have for Mary. And thus the "assumption" here is a specious one, that since God did something for Enoch then He must have for Mary, but nowhere is this promised or substantiated, nor is the sinlessness of Mary, or that she was the greatest saint, having successfully endured and labored more than Paul etc. for Christ etc.
This assumes that Mary is the Ark (a masculine noun), and which is
not what Scripture teachers,
including by typology, versus Christ.
Which was likely Paul Himself, and thus you could teach a later Assumption of Paul with more warrant than for Mary, but besides it not being known whether this was "in the body or out of the body," once again, the fact that God can and has done something simply does not warrant belief that He did so to Mary being doctrine.
As above, the fact that God can and has done something simply does not warrant belief that He did so to Mary being doctrine. Unlike bodily assumptions and resurrections in Scripture, belief in that of Mary is not manifestly one that the NT church believed in, but was a later development.
But that the catching away of all believers which 1 Thess. 4:17 speaks of (after the Trib) is not a matter of interpretation, and then shall believers ever be with the Lord, no in Purgatory first.
That this refers to Mary is not even official RC doctrine, and why believe you over your NAB Bible and The New Catholic Answer Bible commentary and other RC sources?
The woman adorned with the sun, the moon, and the stars (images taken from Genesis 37:9-10) symbolizes God's people in the Old and the New Testament. The Israel of old gave birth to the Messiah (Rev 12:5) and then became the new Israel, the church, which suffers persecution by the dragon (Rev 12:6, 13-17); cf Isaiah 50:1; 66:7; Jeremiah 50:12. This corresponds to a widespread myth throughout the ancient world that a goddess pregnant with a savior was pursued by a horrible monster; by miraculous intervention, she bore a son who then killed the monster. ; http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/. . P12V.HTM#$54O
Raymond Brown interprets Revelation 12 as, “The woman clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet and on her head the crown of twelve stars, represents Israel, echoing the dream of Joseph in Gen. 37:9 where these symbols represent his father (Jacob/Israel), his mother, and his brothers (the sons of Jacob who were looked on as ancestors of the twelve tribes)” [Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p.790].
Roman Catholic theologian Father Hubert J. Richards agrees that the Revelation 12 woman refers to Israel. In his book, “What The Spirit Says to the Churches: A Key to the Apocalypse of John,” (Nihil obstat and Imprimatur), Richards writes:
The vision proper, then, begins with the figure of a Woman clothed with the sun and the stars. We think naturally enough of our Lady, to whom this description has traditionally been applied. After all, we say, of whom else could John be thinking when he speaks of the mother of the Messiah? However it is clear from the rest of the chapter that this interpretation will stand only if the verse is isolated: what follows has very little relevance to our Lady. Nor is it any honor to Mary to apply any and every text to her without thought.
Who then is she? The source to which John has turned for his imagery throughout this book is the Old Testament. There, the Woman, the bride of God which brings forth the Messiah is Israel, the true Israel, the chosen people of God. It is quite certain that this is what is in John's mind when he begins his description with a quotation from Gen. 37:9-10 where the sun and the moon and the twelve stars represent the twelve-fold of Israel.
This Woman will later be contrasted with the Harlot (the collective personality of Rome, opposed to the true Israel) and will be specified at the end of the book, again appearing in the light and splendour for her marriage with the Lamb as the twelve-gated Jerusalem which forms the new Israel. In fact the number twelve occurs so frequently in the Apocalypse in reference to Israel that it cannot have a different meaning here. All the early fathers of the church interpreted these verses as about the Israel of God. - http://www.eternal-productions.org/PDFS/Revelation12Woman.pdf
..It is not until the fifth century (in Quodvultdeus) and the sixth century (in Oecumenius) that we find positive evidence for seeing, respectively, Mary as a secondary referent unintended by the author of the Revelation and Mary as the primary referent in the interpretation of this text. In any case, the Marian interpretation was never the majority opinion in the early church. The majority viewed the 'woman' as the people of God, both the ancient church and the New Covenant church." (Eric Svendsen, Who Is My Mother? [Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001], pp. 231-232)
That Christ is the is the child who is to rule with an iron rod" is clear, but which does not make Mary to be the women, and the typology fits Israel.
And he [Joseph] dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? (Genesis 37:9,10)
As said, the sun represented Jacob (Israel) and the moon Rachel, and the 12 stars on the woman’s head represents the 12 patriarchs, “and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” (
Rm. 9:5) And which was and will be persecuted, but God keeps her through it. And Israel is likened to being a women and mother:
For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers. (Jeremiah 4:31)
Now why dost thou cry out aloud? is there no king in thee? is thy counsellor perished? for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail. Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies. (Micah 4:9-10)
I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman. (Jeremiah 6:2)
The women of
Rv. 12 travailed (ōdinō: (cf.
Gal. 4:19,
4:27) in birth and tormented (basanizō: cf.
Mat. 8:6;
Rev. 9:5;
Rev. 20:10;
Mat. 8:29;
Mar. 5:7;
Luk. 8:28;
Mar. 6:48;
Mat. 14:24;
2Pe. 2:8) to be delivered of her child, which was Christ, but which women cannot be the Mary of Rome, as it teaches that since she was sinless,
just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted manner did Jesus Christ come forth from His mother's womb without injury to her maternal virginity...To Eve it was said: In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate she brought forth Jesus the Son of God without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain. - CATECHISM OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT PART 1: THE CREED; Article III. THE CATECHISM OF TRENT: The Creed - Article III
In the preface of the votive Mass in honor of Mary at the foot of the cross, we read the words: “She who had given Him birth without the pains of childbirth was to endure the greatest of pains in bringing forth to new life the family of the Church.” cst-phl.com - This website is for sale! - cst-phl Resources and Information.
“In conceiving you were all pure, in giving birth y ou were without pain.” (St. Augustine, Sermone de Nativitate )
Thus to take this as the women literally giving birth then you must contradict RC teaching that Mary had no anguish and pain of birth. In addition, no where is Mary said to uniquely be the mother of all Christians, but as said, Christ makes all such disciples
In addition, while the women can be seen to be Israel and thus consequently, the church,
Rev. 7:4-8; cf.
14:1-4 also shows John's focus is on Israel, that of the remaining descendants of Abraham during the tribulation which turn to the Lord, whose coming the CCC teaches awaits his recognition by all Israel, whose acceptance means life from the dead, and that this full inclusion of the Jews will be in the wake of the full number of the Gentiles being saved.
Scripture clearly teaches that,
For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Romans 11:25-27)
Thus
Rev. 7:14 speaks of a remnant of these in the tribulation period, and to which other prophecies relate:
And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant: (Ezekiel 20:34-37)
And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your fathers. And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord God. (Ezekiel 20:42-44)
The nations that persecute the remnant of Jews who turn to Christ are led by the devil, and which God protects by providing a place in the wilderness for 3.5 years, while in the end the Lord wuill destroy these persecuting peoples.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. (Zechariah 12:9-10)
And even if we allowed this as a possible mention of Mary, it does not present the Mary of Catholicism, and it remains that there is only one manifest mention of her the inspired record of the NT church, (Acts 1) in stark contrast to her hyper exaltation and centrality in Catholic devotion, thinking of her far far above that which is written.
Finally we have the actual source for this belief, yet the veracity for this belief as being Apostolic tradition rests upon the tradition of the ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome, which is unseen and unnecessary in Scripture. But Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
Do you believe that an assuredly (if conditionally) infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth (including writings and men being of God) and to fulfill promises of Divine presence, providence of Truth, and preservation of faith, and authority?
And that being the historical instruments and stewards of Divine revelation (oral and written) means that Rome is that assuredly infallible magisterium. Thus any who knowingly dissent from the latter must be in rebellion to God?
As for 2Thes. 2:15, even SS preachers enjoin submission to oral teaching, under the premise that it is Scriptural, being subject to testing by Scripture as apostolic teaching was and not vice versa. (Acts 17:11) However, men such as the apostles could also speak as wholly inspired of God (thus revealing truths that may have passed on) and also provide new public Divine revelation, neither of which even Rome claims to do in making her papal pronouncements. Thus her declaration of oral teaching cannot be equal to Scripture, which has God as its formal author, unlike papal declaration, and as the assured word of God Scripture is not only correct, but has a special supernatural anointing. (Heb. 4:12)
In reality, while there is Biblical foundation for being bodily assumed into heaven without dying or after death (though believing that Mary did not die is not required in Catholicism), that simply does not warrant making make the belief that Mary to be doctrine. That Mary was bodily resurrected is not in Scripture, nor promised to her as an exception - before the resurrection. Instead this doctrine flows out of Catholic "oral tradition," out of which she can make legends into being "apostolic doctrine."
Yet that this was so lacking in testimony even from early tradition (where it would be manifestly celebrated) that Roman scholars opposed it as being apostolic doctrine, as Ratzinger himself testified (emp. mine:
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative . What here became evident was the one-sidedness, not only of the historical, but of the historicist method in theology. “Tradition” was identified with what could be proved on the basis of texts. Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg…had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared.
However, Rome can claim to later "remember"
what early historical testimony "forgot:" for as as Ratzinger went on to say,
But...subsequent "remembering" (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously." (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), pp. 58-59; emp. mine).
But which explanation is specious sophistry, for it abuses John 16:4 which refers to remembering what Christ had told them on earth ("these things have I told you"), into remembering a future event that the NT did not manifestly believe, and turns this wannabe historical event into something that was too hard to understand - "what previously we could still not grasp."
And then this explanation turns John 16:4,12-13, which refers to the Spirit guiding us into all Truth, into a kind of carte blanche provision to effectively call things that were not evidenced as early belief by the NT church as if they were, making a tradition that progressively developed into a something that a RC is mandated to believe, over 1700 years after it allegedly occurred!
Assumption supporter RC Lawrence P. Everett, (C.Ss.R., S.T.D.) confessed:
In the first three centuries there are absolutely no references in the authentic works of the Fathers or ecclesiastical writers to the death or bodily immortality of Mary. Nor is there any mention of a tomb of Mary in the first centuries of Christianity. The veneration of the tomb of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem began about the middle of the fifth century; and even here there is no agreement as to whether its locality was in the Garden of Olives or in the Valley of Josaphat. Nor is any mention made in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (431) of the fact that the Council, convened to defend the Divine Maternity of the Mother of God, is being held in the very city selected by God for her final resting place. Only after the Council did the tradition begin which placed her tomb in that city.
The earliest known (non-Apocryphal) mention concerning the end of Mary's life appears in the writings of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia,.. in his Panarion or Medicine Chest (of remedies for all heresies), written in c. 377: "Whether she died or was buried we know not."
...And with the exception of a so-called contemporary of Epiphanius, Timothy of Jerusalem, who said: "Wherefore the Virgin is immortal up to now, because He who dwelt in her took her to the regions of the Ascension,"9(After a very thorough and scholarly investigation the author concludes that Timothy is an unknown author who lived between the sixth and seventh centuries (p. 23). no early writer ever doubted the fact of her death....
In the Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII quotes but three Fathers of the Church, all Orientals. St. John Damascene (d. 749)...St. Germanus of Constantinople (d. 733) ...St. Modestus of Jerusalem (d. 634)...
Apart from the Apocrypha, there is no authentic witness to the Assumption among the Fathers of either the East or the West prior to the end of the fifth century.
The first remote testimony to which Pope Pius XII turns in order to indicate the fact that our present belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Mother was likewise the belief of the Church from the earliest times is the Sacred Liturgy...
...The feast of the Assumption began in the East as did many of the older Marian feasts... However, due to the fact that neither Sacred Scripture nor early Tradition speaks explicitly of the last days of our Blessed Mother on earth and of her Assumption into heaven, the liturgy of this feast did not mention them either. Later, when the apocryphal Transitus Mariae ” in which the death and Assumption of Mary are described in detail ” became popular among the faithful, the facts of her death and Assumption were inserted into the feast... - https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=469
Also, Roman Catholic theologian, Ludwig Ott, states:
The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus–narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they were written despite their legendary clothing. The first Church author to speak of the bodily ascension of Mary, in association with an apocryphal transitus B.M.V., is St. Gregory of Tours’ (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford: Tan, 1974), pp. 209–210).
Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission), also finds,
"Furthermore, the notion of Mary's assumption into heaven has left no trace in the literature of the third, much less of the second century. M. Jugie, the foremost authority on this question, concluded in his monumental study: 'The patristic tradition prior to the Council of Nicaea does not furnish us with any witness about the Assumption.'" (Raymond Brown, et al., Mary In The New Testament [Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1978], p. 266)
William Webster states,
Prior to the seventh and eighth centuries there is complete patristic silence on the doctrine of the Assumption. But gradually, through the influence of numerous forgeries which were believed to be genuine, coupled with the misguided enthusiasm of popular devotion, the doctrine gained a foothold in the Church. The Dictionary of Christian Antiquities gives the following history of the doctrine:...
1)The Liber de Transitu, though classed by Gelasius with the known productions of heretics came to be attributed by one...to Melito, an orthodox bishop of Sardis, in the 2nd century, and by another to St. John the Apostle.
2) A letter suggesting the possibility of the Assumption was written and attributed to St. Jerome (ad Paulam et Eustochium de Assumptione B. Virginis, Op. tom. v. p. 82, Paris, 1706).
3) A treatise to prove it not impossible was composed and attributed to St. Augustine (Op. tom. vi. p. 1142, ed. Migne).
4) Two sermons supporting the belief were written and attributed to St. Athanasius (Op. tom. ii. pp. 393, 416, ed., Ben. Paris, 1698).
5) An insertion was made in Eusebius's Chronicle that ˜in the year 48 Mary the Virgin was taken up into heaven, as some wrote that they had had it revealed to them.' - Christian Resources
What then is the basis for such required belief? Not the weight of evidential warrant like as with the resurrection of Christ and His life, (cf. Lk. 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-3; 2:22; 17:31; 1Co. 15:1-8), but the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility:
“Still, fundamentalists ask, where is the proof from Scripture? Strictly, there is none. It was the Catholic Church that was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” — Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
For unlike NT beliefs, including the resurrection of Christ which had over 500 witnesses, in Catholicism Scripture and Tradition only consists of and means what she says, as no less than "Cardnal" Manning essentially argued:
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine...
I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
And if the bones of Mary cannot be found means she was assumed, then it means many others were as well, for the absence of bones is not that uncommon.
Even John Chrysostom (c. 349 – 407) stated,
"Tell me, are not the bones of Moses himself laid in a strange land? And those of Aaron, of Daniel, of Jeremiah? And as to those of the Apostles we do not know where those of most of them are laid. For of Peter indeed, and Paul, and John, and Thomas, the sepulchers are well known; but those of the rest, being so many, have nowhere become known. Let us not therefore lament at all about this, nor be so little-minded. For where-ever we may be buried, 'the earth is the Lord's and all that therein is.'[Psalm 24:1]" (Homilies On Hebrews, 26:2, v. 22)
Jason Engwer
comments,
Dionysius of Alexandria, a bishop of the third century, wrote:
"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)
This passage illustrates some points relevant to an assumption of Mary. First, it's an illustration of the absurdity of the idea that Christians for hundreds of years would have known about a bodily assumption of Mary, yet would never have said anything about it in their extant writings, even when they're commenting on Mary. If both Dionysius and Eusebius thought it significant that this bishop and his wife couldn't be found, that their bodies were missing, don't you think a bodily assumption of Mary would have seemed even more significant to them? Don't you think it would be mentioned sometime in these early centuries?
Secondly, this passage from Dionysius illustrates the absurdity of concluding that a bodily assumption has occurred just because the whereabouts of a person's body aren't known. What if we were to conclude that Mary's remains weren't kept by the early Christians, that her tomb was empty, etc.? Would such evidence, by itself, prove that an assumption occurred? No. It would be consistent with an assumption, but it wouldn't, by itself, prove an assumption.
The church fathers of the earliest centuries repeatedly cite Enoch and Elijah as examples of people who didn’t die, were translated to Heaven, etc. (Clement of Rome, First Clement, 9; Tertullian, A Treatise On The Soul, 50; Tertullian, On The Resurrection Of The Flesh, 58; Tertullian, Against Marcion, 5:12; Methodius, From The Discourse On The Resurrection, 14), yet they never say any such thing about Mary or include her as an example. Irenaeus, for instance, writes about the power of God to deliver people from death, and he cites Enoch, Elijah, and Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2) as illustrations of people who were "assumed" and "translated", but he says nothing of Mary (Against Heresies, 5:5).
People claim to see references to an assumption of Mary in Biblical passages like Revelation 12. Yet, Hippolytus, Methodius, and other early fathers comment on such passages without saying anything of an assumption.
How likely is it that all of these writers, commenting in so many different contexts, would all refrain from mentioning Mary’s assumption, even though they knew of it? Though Roman Catholics give Mary so much attention and claim that Mary is God’s greatest creation, the apocryphal assumption of Moses receives more attention among the ante-Nicene fathers than Mary’s assumption (which isn’t mentioned at all).
Thus what you have for the Assumption is manifold assumptions. Why no admit the claim to the veracity of this event rests upon the the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility?