The Assumption of Mary—the belief that, at the end of her earthly life, Mary was taken body and soul into heavenly glory—has become an important doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet this belief has a long and complex history. In this article we will briefly trace its historical development, examine the biblical and traditional basis offered in its support, and consider some of its theological implications.
Our purpose is to honour Mary by seeking to understand the truth about her as faithfully as possible. Scripture itself calls her blessed and presents her as a humble and faithful servant of the Lord. Genuine respect for Mary rests in the truth God has revealed about her and ultimately leads us to a deeper appreciation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Historical Development
For the first several centuries of Christian history, there was no established doctrine concerning the bodily assumption of Mary. The earliest narratives describing the end of Mary’s life are found not in the New Testament or in the early Christian writers, but in later apocryphal works commonly known as the Transitus Mariae (“Passing of Mary”). These writings circulated in various forms and gradually contributed to traditions concerning Mary’s death, burial, and subsequent translation to heaven.
By the sixth century, a feast commemorating Mary’s Dormition (“falling asleep”) had become established in the Eastern Church, where it was celebrated on 15 August. The celebration gradually developed from a commemoration of Mary’s death into a celebration of her heavenly glorification. From the East, the feast spread westward, and by around the beginning of the eighth century it was being celebrated at Rome. In the West it eventually became known as the Feast of the Assumption, likewise observed on 15 August.
During the seventh and eighth centuries, influential Eastern theologians gave increasingly explicit expression to belief in Mary’s bodily assumption. In the medieval West the belief continued to gain acceptance, and by the fourteenth century it was broadly accepted throughout the Catholic Church.
The Assumption remained a widely held belief rather than a formally defined dogma for many centuries. After growing calls for an official definition, Pope Pius XII consulted the world’s Catholic bishops in 1946, receiving overwhelming support. Finally, on 1 November 1950, almost nineteen centuries after the apostolic age, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined the Assumption as a dogma of the Catholic faith in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” (1)
Not Taught in Scripture
Catholic authors readily acknowledge that the Assumption is not explicitly taught in Scripture. As one Catholic writer concedes, “There is no explicit biblical evidence for Mary’s Assumption.” (2) In the biblical narrative, Mary is last mentioned in Acts 1, where she is found praying with the disciples before Pentecost. Thereafter, Scripture is silent about the remainder of her life, including the circumstances of her death.
Nevertheless, Catholic writers appeal to various passages of Scripture to argue that the Assumption is consistent with biblical teaching and that it was “fitting” for Mary to be assumed into heaven. Yet these arguments fall short of establishing the doctrine from Scripture itself. Consider a few examples:
Genesis 3:15 — “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Pope Pius XII argues that Mary was “most intimately associated with him (Christ) in that struggle against the infernal foe which, as foretold in the protoevangelium, would finally result in that most complete victory over sin and death.” We should notice, however, that in Genesis 3:15 it is the woman’s offspring—Jesus Christ—rather than the woman herself, who strikes the serpent’s head. Christ’s resurrection is the decisive sign of the Messiah’s triumph over the Devil, sin, and death. Mary, together with all who belong to Christ, certainly shares in the benefits of his victory. Yet according to the Bible, the bodily glorification of believers awaits the “resurrection of life” (John 5:29). That is a future event.
Luke 1:28 — “And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!’”
Mary’s being highly favoured, or “full of grace,” is presented as supporting the fittingness of her bodily Assumption. Yet the Greek verb used here, charitoō, is also used in Ephesians 1:6 of God’s gracious favour toward all believers. Although the grammatical forms differ, nothing in the meaning of the verb itself implies an immediate bodily glorification—neither for Mary nor believers in general. According to the biblical order of salvation, the bodily glorification of those whom God favours remains a future hope, to be realised at the resurrection.
Revelation 12:1 — “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
A Catholic author writes, “Mary’s coronation implies her preceding bodily assumption.” (3) Yet the woman in this vision is best understood as the covenant people of God. The imagery of the sun, moon, and twelve stars recalls Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37:9–10, where the sun, moon, and the stars symbolise Jacob, Rachel, and the tribes of Israel. Revelation 12 develops this corporate imagery further by portraying the woman as persecuted by the dragon, yet protected and preserved by God (Revelation 12:17). Mary is certainly included within this picture, and in a unique way: she was the faithful daughter of Israel through whom the Messiah was born. Like the rest of God’s people, she also lived under the hostility of the evil one and shared in the sufferings that accompany faithfulness to God. But the vision does not single her out as already bodily glorified in heaven. Rather, it portrays the destiny of the whole covenant people: those who suffer with the Messiah will finally share in his victory and glory. Mary shares that hope with all the redeemed.
None of these and similar passages provide direct proof for the bodily Assumption. In fact, when Pope Pius XII defined the dogma, he acknowledged that preachers and theologians throughout history were “rather free in their use of events and expressions taken from Sacred Scripture” to explain their belief in the Assumption. That is a remarkably candid admission. Yet by grounding his case in those very writings, the Pope effectively conceded the obvious: explicit biblical proof of the Assumption simply does not exist.
Not Taught by the Church Fathers
The silence is not limited to Scripture. For several centuries, the major Church Fathers give us no clear testimony that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven. The Catholic Encyclopaedia acknowledges that the first explicit witnesses in genuine patristic writings are comparatively late:
“If we consult genuine writings in the East, it is mentioned in the sermons of St. Andrew of Crete, St. John Damascene, St. Modestus of Jerusalem and others. In the West, St. Gregory of Tours (De gloria mart., I, iv) mentions it first.” (4)
Gregory of Tours lived in the sixth century, while Andrew of Crete and John of Damascus belong to the seventh and eighth centuries. Earlier Fathers such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine say nothing about Mary being bodily assumed into heaven. Especially striking is the testimony of Epiphanius of Salamis, writing in the late fourth century. After considering several possibilities concerning Mary’s end, he concludes simply, “No one knows her end.”
If the bodily Assumption had truly been an apostolic teaching handed down from the beginning, we would expect to find it clearly attested among the early Fathers. Instead, we find silence—and, in Epiphanius, an explicit admission that Mary’s final earthly fate was unknown.
First Taught in Apocryphal Writings
If the Assumption is not taught in Scripture and is not found in the early Church Fathers, where did the belief come from? The earliest written accounts appear in later apocryphal works—writings that falsely claimed the authority of apostles or other early Christian figures. The Catholic Encyclopaedia acknowledges this:
“The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book De Transitu Virginis, falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite.” (4)
The apocryphal accounts of Mary’s end are highly legendary and often inconsistent with one another. In one version, for example, the apostles are miraculously gathered from different parts of the world to her deathbed. Some apostles, who had already died, are temporarily raised from their graves, while the living are transported to Mary on clouds of light.
Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, was among the first recognised Church authors to affirm Mary’s Assumption, and his narrative bears clear similarities to the Transitus tradition. Significantly, however, the Transitus, or Assumption of Holy Mary, appears in the Gelasian Decree among the apocryphal writings to be rejected and eliminated. (5) Gregory may not have been aware of the spurious character of such writings; nevertheless, the apocryphal stories concerning the Assumption had found their way into the teaching of the Church.
The historical development is striking. The bodily Assumption is not taught in Scripture, is not attested by the earliest Church Fathers, and first appears in apocryphal or spurious writings.
What is at Stake?
The doctrine of the Assumption is not merely a question about what happened to Mary at the end of her earthly life. It raises much broader questions about the authority of the Church, the source of Christian doctrine, and ultimately where believers should place their faith and devotion.
A Departure from the Apostolic Faith
The Roman Church solemnly warns that anyone who “should dare wilfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined” concerning the Assumption “has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.” (1) There is a striking irony in this warning. How can rejection of the Assumption amount to apostasy since the doctrine is absent from Holy Scripture and was unknown to the earliest generations of Christians? The charge may therefore be turned around. The departure from the apostolic faith lies not with those who refuse to accept a later innovation, but with those who have added a novel doctrine to the faith once delivered to the saints. Those who hold fast to the teaching of the New Testament stand, together with the Christians of the early centuries, upon the solid rock of God’s Word.
Has the Magisterium Gone Beyond Its Authority?
The Roman Catholic Church insists that the Magisterium does not create new revelation. Its task, according to the Catechism, is to guard and faithfully interpret the Word of God entrusted to the Church in Scripture and Tradition. It “teaches only what has been handed on to it.” (6)
Yet the dogma of the Assumption raises a serious difficulty for that very principle. How was this teaching handed down? It is not found in the New Testament, and there is no trace of it in the first centuries of the church. The earliest Christian writers, though they wrote extensively on Mary and on many other doctrines, do not present her bodily Assumption as part of the apostolic faith.
That is the central problem. The question is not whether the Church has authority to teach, but whether it has authority to declare as divinely revealed something that cannot be shown to belong to the original deposit of faith. In doing so, the Magisterium has moved from interpreting revelation to adding to it.
If you are a Catholic, this deserves careful thought. Is unquestioning confidence in the Magisterium justified when it can demand belief in doctrines that cannot be traced to the apostolic faith? Christ calls us to build upon the sure foundation of God’s Word, not upon teachings that arose centuries later.
The Sufficiency of Christ
Catholic theology places Mary in an exalted heavenly role, making it natural for Catholics to look to her for spiritual help. St. Alphonsus Liguori illustrates this perspective:
“O most sweet Lady and our Mother, thou hast already left the earth and reached thy kingdom, where, as Queen, thou art enthroned … From the high throne, then, to which thou art exalted, turn, O Mary, thy compassionate eyes upon us, and pity us.” (7)
Despite sincere explanations to the contrary, such intense Marian devotion inevitably overshadows the simple trust and wholehearted devotion that Scripture asks us to place in Jesus. All our hope rests in Christ; all our blessings are found in him. For he is the eternal Son of God, sent by the Father for our salvation. He became man, lived a sinless life, offered himself as a sacrifice for sin, was buried and raised from the dead, and after forty days he ascended into heaven, where he now reigns in glory and intercedes for his people. What else do we possibly need?
“Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Hebrews 7:25–26, ESV).
Let us therefore believe what God has spoken and draw near to him through Christ alone. Mary herself lived by faith in the promised Messiah, and if we share that same faith in Christ, we too have the glorious hope that one day our lowly bodies will be transformed into glorified bodies, and we shall be caught up to meet the Lord and be with him, rejoicing in his presence forever.
References
(1) St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, The Glories of Mary, Of the Assumption of Mary.
(2) Pope Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus: Defining the Dogma of the Assumption, Apostolic Constitution, 1 November 1950, The Holy See, Vatican.va.
(3) David J. Palm, “Oral Tradition in the New Testament,” Catholic Answers Magazine, 1 May 1995.
(4) Mark I. Miravalle, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion (Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship Publishing, 1993).
(5) The Feast of the Assumption, The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent.
(6) The Gelasian Decree (Decretum Gelasianum) is a Latin document that lists accepted and rejected Christian writings. It was traditionally attributed to Pope Gelasius I (492–496), but scholars generally regard the surviving form as a later compilation, probably drawing on earlier Roman material and reaching its present shape in the sixth century.
(7) Catechism of the Catholic Church, 84–86; Vatican II, Dei Verbum, 10.