So, the condemnation of the Transitus writing of the Assumption of Mary (reaffirmed by Pope Hormisdas) is not really a condemnation of the Transitus writing about the Assumption of Mary. Okaaaay. Now, if in that era there were already an established doctrine in place that rather counterintuitive hypothesis might serve as a plausible explanation, but such is not the case. The only way to believe that the condemnation of the Transitus writing of the Assumption of Mary is not really a condemnation of the Transitus writing about the Assumption of Mary is to presuppose the very thing in question.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, de Transitu was a theologically redacted version of the traditions in the Liber Requiei Mariae:
The earliest narrative is the so-called Liber Requiei Mariae (The Book of Mary's Repose), a narrative which survives intact only in an Ethiopic translation.[4] Probably composed by the fourth century, this early Christian apocryphal narrative may be as old as the third century. Also quite early are the very different traditions of the Six Books Dormition Narratives. The earliest versions of this apocrypha are preserved by several Syriac manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries, although the text itself probably belongs to the fourth century.[5]Later apocrypha based on these earlier texts include the De Obitu S. Dominae, attributed to St. John, a work probably from around the turn of the 6th century that is a summary of the "Six Books" narrative. The story also appears in De Transitu Virginis, a late 5th century work ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis that presents a theologically redacted summary of the traditions in the Liber Requiei Mariae. The Transitus Mariae tells the story of the apostles being transported by white clouds to the deathbed of Mary, each from the town where he was preaching at the hour.
You have, at the earliest, stories from the 3rd or 4th century. So where did the teaching originate? "Oral traditions"? Epiphanius of Salamis, who lived near Palestine and thus would have been in a position to know of such purported traditions, in AD 377 stated that no one knew of the eventual fate of Mary. It is an incontrovertible fact that no one within the church taught this doctrine for six centuries, and those who did first teach it within the church borrowed it directly from the book condemned by Pope Gelasius as heretical. Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, was the first, and the second was Gregory of Tours, A.D. 590. As referenced earlier, after quoting from Gregroy, Smith states,
"...The Abbe' Migne points out in a note that " what Gregory here relates of the death of the Blessed Virgin and its attendant circumstances he un- doubtedly drew (procul dxbio hausit) from the Pseudo-Melito's Liber de Transitu B. Mariae, which is classed among apocryphal books bj pope Gelasius." He adds that this account, with the circumstances related by Gregory, were soon after introduced into the Gallican Liturgy."
So to say that there is no evidence at all that de Transitu was condemned because it taught the Assumption of Mary, but in spite of it, is to assume the very thing in question, and to gloss over the fact that the Transitus literature of that era that is the ONLY KNOWN EXTANT SOURCE of a teaching purporting to relate to an actual historical event consists of heretical writings that are regarded by historians as complete fabrication and worthless as history. Since the dogma of the Assumption entails positive historical claims about an actual event, pleading an absence of evidence that de Transitu was condemned because it taught the Assumption of Mary ignores six centuries of silence from the Church, and cannot obscure the historical fact that the ONLY known historical source of the dogma is spurious heretical writings condemned by two Popes. The real absence of historical evidence to support the dogma is that of individuals who were personally present, or else were in contact with the events through unimpeachable sources.
The bottom line is that the Assumption is not taught on the basis of historical evidence, but in spite of it, for theological reasons. There is not a shred of historical evidence that this dogma was taught within the church for six centuries. The only known sources of a dogma purported to relate to an actual event,are spurious, pious forgeries and outright fabrication containing admitted absurdities written by heretics.
These and the like, what Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus and Bonosus, who suffered from similar error, also Montanus with his detestable followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus the Manichaean, Faustus the African, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Novatus, Sabbatius, Calistus, Donatus, Eustasius, Iovianus, Pelagius, Iulianus of ERclanum, Caelestius, Maximian, Priscillian from Spain, Nestorius of Constantinople, Maximus the Cynic, Lampetius,Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and the other Peter, of whom one besmirched Alexandria and the other Antioch, Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and what also all disciples of heresy and of the heretics and schismatics, whose names we have scarcely preserved, have taught or compiled, we acknowledge is to be not merely rejected but excluded from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and with its authors and the adherents of its authors to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever (New Testament Apocrypha, Wilhelm Schneemelcher, Ed., (Cambridge: James Clark, 1991).
Cordially,
Yawn. Your argument in tatters you warble. Sad.
I don't think so.
First, like a lot of apocryphal NT stuff, the book is HIGHLY fantastic! Magic Palm branches and people's arms withering and Peter like some wonder-worker far beyond anything in Acts!
There's another fine and fantastic book called the Acts of Pilate. It makes a fine theological point, that Jesus "harrowed" hell. But it makes it with entirely incredible details. It is also rightly excluded from the canon, but few think IHS did not harrow hell or cite the exclusion of the Acts of the Apostles as evidence for that claim.
In general, though, while all along there were adversaries both within and without the Church, the Church does not view the establishment of Dogma as a prosecutorial proceeding in a United States courtroom. So the arguments which pick at the case won't necessarily strike us as conclusive or dispositive.
It's as if we were playing two different games. You're asking for a proof beyond reasonable doubt. And I think that approach may lead to errors. For example, you say:
Now, if in that era there were already an established doctrine in place that rather counterintuitive hypothesis might serve as a plausible explanation, but such is not the case.
What if it were not "an established doctrine" (don't see how it could have been, since it wasn't defined until the last century) but a proposition gradually gaining adherents and waiting for an 'account' which did not involved floating biers and withered arms, but careful thought.
To me, one of the interesting seams between Catholics and Protestants is how we think about God, time, and eternity. That difference leads me to think that the following assertion, though necessarily vague, is not at all counter-intuitive: The Dogma of the Assumption of Mary comes down to: Mary "now" or "currently" enjoys what all the saints will enjoy after the last judgment.
It's not all that dissimilar to the sort of "conceptual surround" of the Immaculate Conception,which is that the effects of Our Lord's atoning work reach throughout all time. They reached His mother in a unique way so that -- unlike us who are saved from sin after we fall in -- she was saved BEFORE she fell in.
(None of this is meant to be persuasive or argumentative. It's meant to give a taste of our thinking.)
So Mary is, among other things, as eschatological figure to us. She can be viewed as the "already having come true" of the promises made to all the saints who one day will be sinless and united with their resurrected and spiritual bodies.
To me, once my very calvinist seminary made clear the notion of proleptic eschatology and once I immersed my thought in that notion, what is said about Mary quickly became less and less "counter-intuitive" and much more of a "why not?" (I'm a great disappointment to my professors. heh heh heh.)
Another difference inn attitude is thaT SOME Protestants SEEM to me to have a view that the Church was at its spiritual and dogmatic best in the early days, and that the challenge of subsequent years is to cling to that archaic purity.
The view we have, I think, is that the promise that the Spirit will lead the Apostles into all truth, works against the sort of "inevitable decline of the Dharma: view which is, I think, more Buddhist than Christian. It's no shock to us that a strand of thought back then, would be contemplated, debated, worked over, refined, and then finally be fit for promulgation.