What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church

by Gavin Ortlund

All of this combines to make the notion of an oral tradition of Mary’s assumption within the early church, tracing back to the apostles, credible only if one exerts a kind of Herculean effort. Why should anyone accept Mary’s assumption as apostolic when it (1) is completely absent in the church for several centuries, even when one would expect it to come up (for example, in Epiphanius’s search, in lists of those bodily assumed, etc.), (2) seems to originate in heterodox contexts, like The Book of Mary’s Repose, (3) is recognized as tardy when it does finally arise, and (4) comes into view simultaneously with seemingly countless alternative accounts of Mary’s end? The bodily assumption of Mary gives every impression of being a postapostolic accretion that only gradually wormed its way into the piety and imagination of the church.