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ERose
Guest
Rev 11:19 And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail.
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Good_Fella
Guest
Bishop St. Epiphanius never stated such a thing. Nor did he ever question whether the Assumption had ever occurred. Originally he came from Palestine before he became the Bishop of Salamis. So he was fully aware of the private tradition of the Assumption that had arisen in Palestine. What he did clearly state was that there is no record of the manner of our Blessed Mother’s death or what happened to her after in the New Testament, which is natural since the Apostles never witnessed the Assumption first hand as they did the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord. In any event, he was aware of the tradition of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven, which couldn’t be explicitly confirmed in Scripture, and never questioned its veracity. He questioned how Mary could have died, but believed she was bodily resurrected in glory notwithstanding the manner in which she departed from this life. In the Bishop’s own words:
“Say she died a natural death. In that case she fell asleep in glory, and departed in purity and received the crown of virginity. Or say she was slain with the sword according to Simeon’s prophecy. There her glory is with the martyrs, and she through whom the Divine Light shone upon this world is in the place of bliss with her sacred body. Or say she left this world without dying for God can do what he wills. Then she was simply transferred to eternal glory.”
Panarion, Haer. lxxix, 11 (A.D. 377)
Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3, 20-21
“Be faithful even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
Revelation 2, 10
We have evidence that the tradition of the Assumption of Mary had existed by the fourth century. Only it never was as prevalent as it had been in the 6th century.
As She accepted Him in the privacy of her womb,
So He welcomed Her in the privacy of her tomb.
Pax Christu :harp:
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Steel_Arrow_1
Guest
It is my understanding that Mary was shot to death outside to walls of Jerusalem by arrows. Is this a myth or based on fact? If fact, where is the information located, what book, etc…?
In the picture at the beginning of this forum, it shows mary on a cloud, surrounded by baby angels and many other flesh and blood people looking up at her. Was she alive or was she raised from the dead and transformed? Where in Scripture is this magnificent event told? If it is not in Scripture, where then do you get the evidence that she ascended into Heaven just as her son Jesus did?
I read the Scriptures given and a lot of credence is being given to several that show where various men were taken by God before they died, or went to Heaven in a fiery chariot. Please note that Enoch was translated (changed into a spiritual being). This apparently was done prior to his enterning into Heaven with God.
The Scriptures given mention a woman in Revelation 12:1. I see twelve stars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. But, why the moon? Is this woman who is assumed to be Mary, flesh or spirit standing on the moon? Did God grant a piece of His universe to mary, and if so, where is that found? I believe the assumption that this is Mary, is rebuked by 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and John 1:1-3.
I don’t dispute Enoch being taken by God without Enoch having to taste death first. I also don’t dispute Elijah (not Elisha) being taken into heaven by a whirlwind. But, unless the Catholic Church can substantuate their teaching on the subject, it should be treated as a myth created for the masses.:tiphat:
In the picture at the beginning of this forum, it shows mary on a cloud, surrounded by baby angels and many other flesh and blood people looking up at her. Was she alive or was she raised from the dead and transformed? Where in Scripture is this magnificent event told? If it is not in Scripture, where then do you get the evidence that she ascended into Heaven just as her son Jesus did?
I read the Scriptures given and a lot of credence is being given to several that show where various men were taken by God before they died, or went to Heaven in a fiery chariot. Please note that Enoch was translated (changed into a spiritual being). This apparently was done prior to his enterning into Heaven with God.
The Scriptures given mention a woman in Revelation 12:1. I see twelve stars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. But, why the moon? Is this woman who is assumed to be Mary, flesh or spirit standing on the moon? Did God grant a piece of His universe to mary, and if so, where is that found? I believe the assumption that this is Mary, is rebuked by 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and John 1:1-3.
I don’t dispute Enoch being taken by God without Enoch having to taste death first. I also don’t dispute Elijah (not Elisha) being taken into heaven by a whirlwind. But, unless the Catholic Church can substantuate their teaching on the subject, it should be treated as a myth created for the masses.:tiphat:
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GaryTaylor
Guest
You are looking for one line answers for long thought out questions. Yet in fact Luke 1-30-33 clearly gives the foretold future from a Supernatural standpoint. Revelations confirms it.
The short answer to you question. When anyone bears a child who is King. What does that make his mother?
If it is “your” understanding that Mary was shot with Arrows outside the walls of a Holy City? Then why would you expect anyone here to prove this speculation for you? Sounds like a question you should have asked the storyteller you heard this from.
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Good_Fella
Guest
We Catholics have never heard of this myth, if it in fact exists. What we do know is that Stephen was stoned to death for publicly professing his faith in Jerusalem c.A.D. 35.
Arise, Lord, come to your resting place, you and your majestic ark.
Psalm 132, 8
Catholics do not believe that Mary ascended into Heaven by her own power in the manner that her divine Son had.
“From now on will all ages call me blessed.
The Mighty one has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.”
Luke 1, 48-49
Catholics have been joyfully and hopefully celebrating God’s gracious favour towards the Mother of His divine Son since apostolic time.
Enoch and Elijah, for instance, exist in a terrestial paradise of beatitude. They do not gloriously exist in the third heaven body and soul. Nor do their souls reign with Christ in glory as those of the saints and martyrs who sleep in Christ,having been blessed with the first resurrection. Only Mary gloriously reigns with Christ in Heaven body and soul by virtue of her Divine Maternity and the spiritual gifts she has received on account of this unique privilege in the order of grace. For her there is neither a first resurrection nor a second one on the general day of judgment at the last day. Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection of the dead in heavenly glory,and all those who belong to him follow after him. Mary is his mother, so it is becoming that she precedes us all (cf. 1 Cor 15: 22-23; Rev 20: 4-5).
By alluding to the woman as Mary, Daughter Zion and Mother of the Church, the twelve stars symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. The moon represents all changeable things of this corrupt, fallen world. It is placed under Mary’s feet because she transcends fallen nature by her Immaculate Conception. When God created Mary, he placed her at enmity with the serpent and its offspring (Gen 3:15). In his justice and mercy, God granted Mary the unique favour of being spared the corruption of death because she was not subject to the universal law of sin and death. The woman also symbolizes Israel and the Church in some aspects and not others, but even if John hadn’t actually envisioned the person of Mary, what she represents in the personification of Daughter Zion presupposes her Assumption into Heaven.
Mary was redeemed and saved at the first instant of her conception by God’s sanctifying grace. For like us she was an offspring of Adam (mankind), dependent on divine grace for her justification and sanctification. All this has been made possible by the power and authority of Christ, her divine Son.
“It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us.”
Acts 15, 28
“And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.”
1 Corinthians 2, 13
PAX :tiphat:
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SemperReformada
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Good Fella,
This is one of two reasons why I have an issue with a church, yours in this case, making dogma out of the bodiliy assumption of Mary.
There is no evidence that this belief existed for centuries after the apostles and there is no explicit scriptural warrant for the assumption either… None of these two facts disproves the assumption but I find it hard to believe that the apostles handed on this tradition to the church.
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SemperReformada
Guest
Good Fella,
Thanks for your post. I do understand what typology is but there still are no discernible rules as to how far one should take a particular type. Do you believe the actual ark is physically present in heaven (not Mary but the actual ark)? If you do, is this an official church teaching? I know this is a sidebar but I am curioius.
Also, did you listen to the debate between Sungenis and White on this issue? If you haven’t it’s pretty good. I thought both sides did well in presenting their perspective sides on this issue.
I am reading a little more on the connection between the immaculate conception and the assumption so thanks for makng that connection again.
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SemperReformada
Guest
I don’t know how else to say it orther than there are no rules to typology. How far do you carry a type? As one poster mentioned, no one could physically touch the ark of the covenant, does this mean that no one could touch Mary without being struck dead?
I find typology to be very interesting but not compelling.
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Steel_Arrow_1
Guest
Are you a theologian or priest? Or, did your comments come from the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church i.e. the Teachings of the Catholic Church?
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Good_Fella
Guest
A church dogma is an explicitly revealed objective truth from God which he wants us to know and believe in, transmitted to us from the Apostles. By assenting to what God has revealed to us by his pleasure, we pay him homage. It is the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church which has accurately and formally defined the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Assumption. Scripture alone does not explicitly reveal the fullness of these truths. Christ founded his Church and established an ecclesial hierarchy knowing that the fullness of divine truth can never be mediated by the private judgment of individuals alone.
Protestantism - a 16th century religious phenomenon started by renegade Catholics - is a divided house in the matters of faith and morals because of the rationalizations and skepticism of private individuals who presume to be the authority on Scripture, thereby forming different traditions of their own (i.e. dispensationalism and baptism) based on human wisdom. But Jesus never wrote a book, he founded his one universal Church because he does not want us to believe only what we want to believe - as if the divine truth were subjective. Without the Magisterium of the Church, His truth can never honestly be accepted as something objective. We are expected to give our sacred assent to all the dogmatic teachings of the Church regardless of how we feel about them, and these include teachings on morals as well.
Modern intellectual and moral relativism has plagued Protestantism ever since the dawn of the Age of Reason. I have met many Protestants who believe in the Assumption. Apparently they find this teaching appealing to their spiritual sensibilities and compatible with God’s word in spite of the lack of explicit “evidence” in Scripture. But the deposit of faith consists of both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. This, too, is a truth handed down to us by the Apostles.
Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.
2 Thessalonians 2, 15
There is no explicit scriptural warrant for the dogma of the Trinity and the Incarnation either, but there is implicit scriptural warrant. You are aware of the numerous Trinitarian and Christological heresies that arose in the centuries because of private individuals, notably clerics, who decided to authoritatively interpret the Scriptures for themselves apart from the Apostolic Tradition of the Catholic Church as proposed by the ecclesial authority arent you? Many of these ancient heresies have resurfaced in some variant form in the Protestant traditions of modern time, which is more excusable considering how far removed they are in time from the traditional beliefs of the early Church and the original preaching of the Gospel by word of mouth.
The Apostles believed that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant, and so did the early Church Fathers. Not everything the Apostles orally preached was explicitly put down in writing. Neither did they believe that they knew everything God had preordained from eternity in its full scope. Divine revelation was regarded by them as an unfolding mysterious plan that would eventually come to light in time through the episcopal teaching office of the Church: not the Bible alone (cf. Acts 8: 26-40).
To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ, and to bring to light to all what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.
Ephesians 3, 8-10
Pax Christu :heaven:
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Good_Fella
Guest
My pleasure. It isn’t a question of laying down a set of fixed rules or criteria. Rationalists rely heavily on criteria that can be used to measure the validity of a claim. And they establish fixed rules to help them understand something. If our Lord intended that we take the purely rational approach, he wouldn’t have sent us the Paraclete. Without Him Divine supernatural revelation could not exist. We’d have nothing but theory. Typology isn’t strictly an invention of ours, although it serves a practical function by helping us understand something that is hidden, but a device that we rely on in our finite intelligence employed by God in his divine authorship so that we can eventually grasp his ineffable truth. For some reason God never gave Abraham the full details of the coming of the Messiah. So if the scribes and Pharisees hadn’t denied what Isaiah and David unknowingly wrote about Jesus, they wouldn’t have asked Pilate to crucify him. If only they hadn’t contested an obvious truth by snubbing the prophets. Thus, their sin remains. It all boils down to faith in God’s wisdom and knowledge.God desires that we discover his truth first and foremost through our hearts - not our minds.
www.justinangel.stblogs.com/a-wild-assumption
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. He will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said to you.”
John 14, 16-17, 26
Nobody really knows in which cave the ark of the Old covenant was buried. But it cannot be in Heaven, since Jesus is the embodiment of the relics that were kept inside the ark. The Old Covenant has been fulfilled in the New. The ark John envisioned to be in Heaven is the Ark of the New Covenant, she who held the Word of God become flesh, the High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, and the true manna come down from Heaven: the Bread of Life.
No, this is not official Church teaching, but a theologumen: a private theological opinion. Many Church Fathers independently shared this opinion. The contents of the Apocalypse are often too elaborate to define. I doubt we will ever know for sure whether John saw Mary herself until we hopefully get to Heaven and fully understand the truth when we intuitively see God face to Face.
No, I didn’t. I’ll check it out. But the difference between Sungenis and White is that the latter is merely giving a private theological opinion. The doctrine of the Assumption could have passed that phase once the feast was celebrated in Palestine before the 6th century, not that there is any record of any leading theologians or Doctors of the Church disputing this doctrine among themselves as far as I know.
You’re welcome. It might be a good idea to read the Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, by Pope Pius Xll. You can find it here. Just click “Popes” and scroll down the list of encyclicals.
www.papalencyclicals.net
PAX :tanning:
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Jimmy_B
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Volodymyr
Guest
I am not sure if anyone has answered your question.
Pseudo-Meliton (Псевдо Мелитон) is name given to authorship of some documents of Ancient Christianity which are believed to be by Meliton, Bishop of Sardia (around 190 A.D.) but not sure so said to be by Pseudo Meliton. Meliton Sardijskij is famous apologist - his writings and those of Pseudo Meliton can be found (in English collections also I am sure) in such commendia of writings of early Christians as ancient Christianity, Sources, published by Aleteyia publishers (in Russian). Wheter are two or only one person is not now too obvious.
St. Timothy of Jerusalem (святитель Тимофей иерусалимский) was 4th century bishop of Holy city Jerusalem. He has written such as conversations on Encounter with Lord. Also available in such compilations of Ancient Christiantity Sources - or other similar English translation of ancient Christian writers.
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Good_Fella
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We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.
1 John 4:6
By “We” and “us” John means the episcopacy of the one universal Church founded on Peter and the Apostles.
PAX :heaven:
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