A Saint Who Denied the Assumption?

Gavin Ortlund says so. But what is the real story here?

By Suan Sonna

Gavin Ortlund insists that St. Epiphanius of Salamis (fourth century) did not affirm the assumption of Mary. Rather, the saint condemned the Collyridians, a group that venerated Mary and affirmed her assumption.

Epiphanius was, according to Ortlund, thoroughly agnostic about Mary’s fate, as the saint admitted, “No one knows her end” (Panarion 78, 23, 9). However, Epiphanius did write the following:

And if I should say anything more in her praise, [she is] like Elijah, who was virgin from his mother’s womb, always remained so, and was taken up and has not seen death. She is like John who leaned on the Lord’s breast, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” She is like St. Thecla; and Mary is still more honored than she, because of the providence vouchsafed for her” (79, 5, 2).

One could argue that Epiphanius affirmed Mary’s assumption here.

But Ortlund rejects this interpretation. He even says that “such an effort seems to reflect the contemporary dogmatic need, not a fair-minded interest in Epiphanius’s meaning.”

He has two reasons.

First, Epiphanius clearly affirms that no one knows what happened to Mary, and so it would not make sense for him to abruptly land on a position. Second, Ortlund argues that Elijah, John, and Thecla are likened to Mary in terms of their common holiness but not in what is specifically attributed to each of them. Sure, Elijah was a perpetual virgin and assumed into heaven, but that doesn’t mean Epiphanius is applying that to Mary.

Ortlund uses this clever parody to illustrate his interpretation: “George W. Bush was a president who served with honor, just like his father, who presided over the final years of the Cold War; and Ronald Reagan, who oversaw a resilient economy; and Jimmy Carter, who fought for disease prevention and human rights abroad.”

Ortlund has constructed a string of presidents and relative clauses where “no one could insist from such a sentence that George W. Bush must have presided over the final years of the Cold War (particularly when they don’t interpret the subsequent two relative clauses this way).” He says that his reading “makes sense since an assumption is not the common thread between the three figures (Thecla, for example, was not assumed); instead, the common thread is honor and godliness.”

This is easy to answer. Consider first this counter-parody: “John F. Kennedy was like Abraham Lincoln, who was married to one wife and assassinated in a tragic fashion (true of both men); he was like Theodore Roosevelt, a true athlete and soldier (true of both); he was like James Garfield (both died in their forties).” This “counter-parody” is closer to what Epiphanius was intending and runs into none of the problems that Ortlund raises for the Assumption interpretation.

For instance, there is no danger of attributing an assumption to Thecla, as Ortlund complained. Thecla is not like Mary in being assumed, because that’s not how Epiphanius is likening her to Mary. Any good student of early Christian texts (Acts of Paul and Thecla) should know that Thecla (like Mary) was betrothed and chose to remain a perpetual virgin instead. The connection is obvious, since Epiphanius defended Mary’s perpetual virginity. Indeed, no one is claiming that the Assumption is the link that all three (Elijah, John, and Thecla) share with Mary.

Rather, the relative clauses (who . . . ) are specifying how Elijah, John, and Thecla are specifically like Mary. The same holds true in my counter-parody: here is how Roosevelt is like Kennedy, but the way that Roosevelt is like Kennedy is not automatically the same as how Garfield is like Kennedy (but I could rewrite the parody so that is the case).

I mention this technical point, because Epiphanius does teach that an assumption event connects Elijah and John to Mary.

Consider how Elijah was a perpetual virgin, as Epiphanius taught of Mary. Why would Epiphanius pick a similarity between them, and then randomly sever the connection right before “and was taken up and has not seen death”? This is unnatural.

Moreover, non-Catholics scholars like Stephen J. Shoemaker, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on Mary in early Christianity today, agree that Epiphanius affirmed the assumption of Mary, as “here he rather unambiguously proclaims that Mary, like Elijah, ‘was assumed and has not seen death.’” It is unambiguous.

The same holds true between John and Mary. Aside from the fact that Mary could have leaned on Christ’s breast (as John did), since mothers tend to show affection to their sons, Epiphanius says not long afterward that John too “by his own prayer— or rather, by receiving the grace from God—he made an awesome thing of his falling asleep” (Panarion 79, 5, 3).

Remember that the assumption of Mary is preceded by her own dormition, or falling asleep (or dying?). Shoemaker writes, “Here Epiphanius refers to the various traditions of John’s ‘metastasis’ and the miraculous removal of his body from this world at death that had already begun to circulate by this time.” Since Epiphanius affirms the dormition and assumption of John as well, the connection between John and Mary is much more specific than mere common holiness.

Admittedly, Ortlund acknowledges that he differs from Shoemaker, but (to my knowledge) I have not seen Ortlund address Shoemaker’s well-researched arguments.

Thus, Epiphanius deliberately chose Elijah, John, and Thecla, because each of them shares similarities with Mary. Epiphanius is uncertain about how exactly Mary died (although Panarion 78 can be read as only concerning the manner of Mary’s death), but it seems to me he made an educated guess that Mary was assumed into heaven like Elijah (and John). Just as we might say that “nobody knows what happened, but I think this is what happened,” and this is not incoherent, we can see with fair eyes that Epiphanius found the Assumption to be most sensible explanation of Mary’s fate.

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Suan Sonna serves as the director of apologetics for the Diocese of Bridgeport under Bishop Frank J. Caggiano.

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