Evidence Against The Assumption Of Mary In Acacius And Other Sources

I discussed Jerome's Letter 119 in my last post. I was focused on the subject of eternal security, but the letter also has some significant material on another topic, including in the same section of the letter (7). So, what I said in my last post regarding whether Jerome was presenting his own views in that section of the letter is relevant to what I'm addressing in this post as well. For reasons explained in my last post, I think section 7 of the letter is presenting the views of Acacius of Caesarea, not Jerome. But either way, here's the relevant portion of that section of the letter:

Optional Belief In Mary's Assumption

"Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254) counted the Assumption an opinion that could be held or not held, for the Church had not yet decided." (Eamon Carroll, in Juniper Carol, ed., Mariology, Vol. 1 [Post Falls, Idaho: Mediatrix Press, 2018], approximate Kindle location 710)

Recent Claims About Evidence For Mary's Assumption

In an earlier post, I mentioned a debate on her assumption that TurretinFan and Dan Chapa participated in. They've been producing a lot of videos since then addressing the debate and some claims that have been circulating about alleged evidence for an assumption of Mary (what Jacob of Serug wrote on the subject, what modern scholars who specialize in the Assumption have said about the history of belief in Mary's assumption, etc.). There's a lot of valuable material in the videos. You can watch them here.

More Patristic Opposition To The Assumption Of Mary

TurretinFan and Dan Chapa recently debated William Albrecht and Sam Shamoun on Mary's assumption. During the debate, TurretinFan brought up some examples of patristic passages that imply that Mary wasn't assumed and patristic discussions of subjects related to an assumption of Mary in which other relevant figures are mentioned (Enoch, Elijah, etc.), but Mary isn't. He included some examples I haven't brought up before. See here for the text of a passage in Ambrose that refers to how Jesus is the only person who's been permanently resurrected. And see here for the text of a passage in which Caesarius of Arles comments that none of Jesus' followers will ascend to the clouds until the time of Jesus' second coming. For some other examples of individuals before the Reformation who denied Mary's assumption, see here.

Trent Horn's Recent Video On Mary's Assumption

You can watch the video here. I replied to a previous video he produced on the topic last year, and some of what could be said in response to his recent video was said in last year's context. You can go here for my response to that previous video. I want to reiterate or expand upon several points:

More Early Contexts In Which An Assumption Of Mary Isn't Mentioned

During the earliest centuries of church history, many subjects that are relevant to an assumption of Mary are discussed without any mention of her being assumed. There are discussions about people who were resurrected and people who were bodily taken up to heaven, for example. Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, and other figures are mentioned when the relevant topics come up, and there are even occasional references to lesser figures we don't normally think about in these contexts, like Habakkuk and the two witnesses in Revelation 11. See here, here, here, and here, among other posts in our archives, for more about the background to this post.

Here are a few other relevant sources, which I don't think I've posted here before:

Cyprian (Treatises, 7, On The Mortality, 23), citing Enoch and the righteous in Wisdom 4:11

Didymus the Blind (in Robert Hill, trans., Commentary On Genesis [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2016], 5, pp. 138-40), citing Enoch and Elijah

Ambrose (On The Death Of Satyrus, 2:94), citing Enoch and Elijah

John Chrysostom (Commentary On The Acts Of The Apostles, 2), citing Elijah and Jesus

The Gospel Of Nicodemus, 2:9, citing Enoch and Elijah as the two witnesses of Revelation 11

Other Ways To Evaluate The Assumption Of Mary

I've mentioned some of the contexts in which the early Christians could have discussed an assumption of Mary, if they thought she was assumed. See here, for example. Even lesser figures who were assumed to heaven, supernaturally transported from one location to another, or some such thing get mentioned in the early literature, like Habakkuk in Bel And The Dragon and the witnesses in Revelation 11:12. Figures like Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus get mentioned frequently (Luke 24:51; Hebrews 11:5; First Clement 9; Aristides, Apology, 2; etc.). From the second century onward, there are many discussions of Paul's being taken up to heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2 (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2:30:7, 5:5:1; Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 1:6; etc.). I've come across several discussions of that incident in Paul's life in the writings of Origen alone. Eusebius, in his Church History, sometimes discusses events reminiscent of what's supposed to have happened at the end of Mary's life, such as Quadratus' reference to people who had survived down to his day who had been raised from the dead by Jesus (4:3:2) and a bishop and his wife who went missing and whose bodies were never found (6:42:3).

One of the Biblical passages to keep in mind in these contexts is 1 Corinthians 15:20. The early Christians sometimes discuss how Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection and write about the implications for later resurrections that will occur (e.g., First Clement 24-26). They could have used Mary as an illustration, if they thought she'd already been resurrected in that manner.

Another context to consider is the earliest Christian art. Eventually, there were depictions of Mary being assumed. But I don't know of any examples in the earliest years when Christians were producing artwork that's extant. The early Christian opposition to the use of images in some contexts complicates the situation. (And offers more contradictions of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox claims about church history, apostolic tradition, and so on.) Frederick Norris referred to a couple of depictions of Elijah being assumed in a chariot, one before the time of Constantine and the other in the fourth century (in Everett Ferguson, ed., Encyclopedia Of Early Christianity [New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999], 368). I know that there are some depictions of Jesus' resurrection and ascension in the early artwork (sometimes indirectly, it seems, such as by showing scenes from Jonah and the whale to represent Jesus' resurrection). There are depictions of the raising of various individuals from the gospels. The raising of Lazarus was a popular subject in early Christian art. I'm not aware of any depiction of a resurrection or assumption of Mary in the earliest centuries. By contrast, Mary does appear in other artistic contexts during that timeframe.

Patristic And Medieval Beliefs Are More Complicated Than Often Suggested

When discussing the history of beliefs, people often underestimate the diversity of views that have been held. I'm focused on patristic and medieval sources, since those come up so prominently in the sort of discussions I've been having lately about the claims of groups like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We shouldn't just count up how many people were for or against a particular view. For example, sometimes a source was agnostic on an issue or held a position on it, but qualified that position with an expression of hesitation about it.

I've been posting a lot about the Assumption of Mary lately, and that's a good example of a belief that's relevant in this context. It's not as though every source was ignorant of the assumption claim, favored it, or opposed it. There are more categories than those three, and we should be taking more of the details involved in each category into account. There were some patristic and medieval sources who were agnostic about whether Mary was assumed or expressed a view, but accompanied that expression with significant qualifiers, such as by commenting on how hesitant they were about their conclusion. That's relevant to the claims Pope Pius XII and other Catholics and non-Catholics have made about an assumption of Mary. If somebody says that he thinks it seems fitting that God would assume Mary to heaven, but that he's hesitant about it, that other Christians are free to not accept her assumption, or something like that, that's significantly different than saying that Mary's assumption is an apostolic tradition always held by the church. It's important to make distinctions like these. And though I've used the Assumption of Mary as an example, we need to take these issues into account across the board, whatever the issue is that's being considered.

Trent Horn's Video On Mary's Assumption

Trent Horn recently produced a video on the Assumption of Mary in response to Gavin Ortlund. I've written a response to it in the comments section of a recent thread.

A Lot Of Problems With The Assumption Of Mary

Cameron Bertuzzi just interviewed Gavin Ortlund about the Assumption of Mary. It's a good overview of the number, variety, and depth of problems with the claim that Mary was bodily assumed.

Some of the comments below the video bring up comparisons to sola scriptura, rejection of baptismal regeneration, or whatever other belief Catholics or those who sympathize with them allege to be comparable to or worse than an assumption of Mary. We have posts in our archives about those issues (e.g., here). And see here regarding the false reasoning about doctrinal development that often accompanies those kinds of comments.

In the video and in the comments below it, there are occasional references to how one or more of the documents referring to an assumption of Mary date or might date prior to the fourth century. Gavin addresses the subject in the video, but I want to add some other points. The New Testament authors address various false beliefs that existed in their day. Earliness is one of the factors we take into account when evaluating something, but it isn't the only factor. Gavin gave many examples of figures Catholics (and others) consider orthodox who rejected the assumption of Mary or discussed issues significantly relevant to an assumption of Mary without mentioning that she was assumed (e.g., church fathers referring to figures who were assumed into heaven without including Mary). Even if we were to accept the earliest dating being proposed for the earliest document to mention an assumption of Mary, we'd still have to take into account that the belief is coming from such a dubious source, it seems to be reflecting a view only held by a small minority at the time, and belief in an assumption seems to be absent and sometimes even contradicted in such a larger number and variety of sources who are of a more credible nature. Arguing for an earlier date for some highly problematic heretical or apocryphal documents doesn't do much to advance the argument for an assumption of Mary. As Gavin explains in the video, the problems with the belief are of such a nature that assigning an earlier date to something like a Gnostic document mentioning the assumption wouldn't do much to improve the Catholic argument. Remember, Catholicism has dogmatized the Assumption of Mary, and the Catholic Church claims to be the one true church founded by Christ, which allegedly is infallible and has maintained all apostolic teaching throughout church history. Catholics claim Mary is God's greatest creation, superior to all angels and other humans, the mother of the church, and so on. Pope Pius XII claimed that Mary's assumption is a belief "based on the Sacred Writings, which is thoroughly rooted in the minds of the faithful, which has been approved in ecclesiastical worship from the most remote times" (Munificentissimus Deus, 41). He refers to the assumption as "a matter of such great moment and of such importance" (11) and claims that the arguments for the doctrine are so good that it "seems impossible" (38) to avoid the conclusion that Mary was bodily assumed.

An Assumption Of Habakkuk, But No Assumption Of Mary

I've often made the point that many sources in the early centuries of Christianity discuss bodily assumptions, people who never died, people who were resurrected, and other topics relevant to an assumption of Mary without mentioning her. See here for a list of examples. That list is far from exhaustive. Later in this post, I'll be discussing some of the many other examples that could be mentioned. The cumulative effect of these examples has to be kept in mind, since Catholics (and others who agree with them or sympathize with them on this issue) can keep objecting to individual passages that are cited or a subset of the overall evidence. There's some evidential significance to the larger pattern of the absence of an assumption of Mary and related concepts while so much other material of the same or a similar nature keeps getting mentioned.

Epiphanius Did Not Affirm The Assumption Of Mary

It's become popular in some Roman Catholic circles to cite Epiphanius out of context in order to make it look as though he affirmed the Assumption of Mary. Somebody in the comments thread following Gavin Ortlund's recent video on the Assumption cited Epiphanius that way. You can click the link just provided to read his comments. Here's the response I posted there:

If you read the larger context, Epiphanius isn't claiming that Mary was assumed to heaven. He goes on, just after what you quoted, to compare Mary to the apostle John, even though she wasn't the same as John in every characteristic of John he mentions (Frank Williams, trans., The Panarion Of Epiphanius Of Salamis, Books II And III; De Fide [Leiden, The Netherlands: SBL Press, 2013], 641). He goes on to say "Elijah is not to be worshiped, even though he is alive. And John is not to be worshiped, even though by his own prayer - or rather, by receiving the grace from God - he made an awesome thing of his falling asleep." (ibid.) Epiphanius also mentions Thecla, a martyr, in this context. It seems that he's comparing Mary to three different figures - Elijah, John, and Thecla - whose lives ended in three different ways, the same three ways he mentions elsewhere when he says that nobody knows how Mary's life ended (ibid., 635). He's not claiming, in the passage you've cited, to know that Mary remained alive and was taken up as Elijah was, which would contradict what he said earlier about how nobody knows what happened at the end of her life. Rather, he's repeating what he said earlier about our ignorance of the end of her life. That's why he goes on to compare Mary to John and Thecla, just after what you misleadingly quoted. Just as his comparing Mary to John and Thecla doesn't require that Epiphanius believed that Mary died, his comparing Mary to Elijah doesn't require that Epiphanius believed she didn't die. Rather, he's repeating his earlier point that Mary's end could have been like the end of any of those three individuals.

Furthermore, his earlier statement about how nobody knows what happened at the end of Mary's life goes beyond merely whether she died. He also discusses other matters related to the end of her life, like whether she died as a martyr and whether she was buried. In an earlier passage, he writes of how in scripture we "neither find Mary's death, nor whether or not she died, nor whether or not she was buried", and he goes on to refer to how scripture is silent about the details of her living with John (ibid., 624). So, Epiphanius seems to be addressing the end of her life in general, not just whether she died. Thus, Epiphanius' statement that nobody knows what happened at the end of Mary's life seems to be a contradiction of Roman Catholicism's claim that Mary's assumption at the end of her life is an apostolic tradition always held by the church.

Historical Problems With The Assumption Of Mary

Gavin Ortlund just put out a video on the subject that makes a lot of good points. One of the things he brings up is that ancient sources often discussed assumptions and similar events among other figures (e.g., Enoch) without mentioning Mary in the process. He cites some material from Tertullian as an illustration. I've gathered many such examples over the years, and you can find discussions of them in the posts linked here, for example. The nature of the argument is such that it gains significantly more force when more sources are cited, so it's important to address a larger number of sources. We've also discussed some other evidence Gavin doesn't address much or at all in his video, like in the post here on Marian relics. You can find an archive of our posts on the Assumption of Mary here.

The Contexts In Which An Assumption Of Mary Could Have Been Mentioned

I've often mentioned that sources in the earliest centuries of Christianity who discuss assumptions to heaven and related topics keep citing examples other than Mary, but never cite Mary as an example. (See here and here, for example, and the other posts linked within those ones.) It's helpful to think of the number and variety of categories involved, so that we know how significant the lack of reference to Mary is. Since Roman Catholics have disagreed about whether Mary died prior to being assumed to heaven, the contexts in which Mary could be mentioned will vary somewhat depending on what view of whether she died is held. If we combine both views, think of the contexts in which Mary could be mentioned:

- People who didn't die.
- People who have been raised from the dead.
- People who have experienced resurrection to an immortal body rather than just being raised in the sense of resuscitation.
- People who were bodily taken up to heaven.
- People who are currently living in the afterlife in a bodily state, prior to the general resurrection in the future.

We find these topics discussed in scripture and the patristic literature, frequently in some cases. So, it's not just that Mary's alleged assumption goes unmentioned in one context or on some small handful of occasions. Rather, it's unmentioned across a large number and variety of contexts and occasions for hundreds of years while other figures keep getting mentioned over and over again (e.g., Enoch, Elijah, Paul). And we're often told by Catholics that Mary was held in such high regard by the earliest Christians, that she's the greatest being after God, etc. You'd think an assumption of Mary would have been prominent in their thinking accordingly if they'd believed in her assumption.

Luke Against Roman Catholic Mariology

I've written a lot of material over the years about inconsistencies between Luke's writings and a Roman Catholic view of Mary. I thought I'd post a collection of some of that material and add some further comments. Since the posts I'll be linking address other subjects as well, you'll have to look for the relevant content, such as by doing a Ctrl F search. And these are just posts with relevant material, not exhaustive treatments of each subject.

Why weren't the early Christians thinking of an assumption of Mary?

I've written some posts over the years about various historical problems with the claim that Mary was bodily assumed to heaven. See here, here, and here. While reading Stephen Carlson's book on Papias, I was reminded of a passage in Irenaeus that ought to be highlighted in this context. While discussing individuals who have been "translated" or "assumed" to heaven, Irenaeus cites the examples of Enoch, Elijah, and Paul. As I document in the articles linked above, we see the same pattern with other patristic sources for hundreds of years. They keep citing Enoch, Elijah, and Paul as individuals who were assumed to heaven, but never use Mary as an example. Irenaeus isn't just citing Enoch, Elijah, and Paul because they didn't die, as the surrounding context demonstrates. For example, he refers to "the translation of the just" and "the assumption of those who are spiritual" in general, regardless of whether those individuals had died. So, the disagreement among Catholics about whether Mary died prior to her assumption doesn't seem relevant here. And it's noteworthy that Irenaeus refers to how "the elders who were disciples of the apostles" passed down information on the subject Irenaeus is discussing (Against Heresies, 5:5:1). So, those disciples of the apostles Irenaeus refers to can be added to the list of sources who made relevant comments.

Bodily Marian Relics And The Assumption Of Mary

In his decree dogmatizing the assumption of Mary, Pope Pius XII commented, "Finally, since the Church has never looked for the bodily relics of the Blessed Virgin nor proposed them for the veneration of the people, we have a proof on the order of a sensible experience." The alleged lack of interest in and lack of claims of possession of bodily relics of Mary has been made much of by Roman Catholics as evidence for Mary's assumption. As I've mentioned before, though, the lack of interest in bodily relics of Mary and lack of claims of possessing them can easily be explained without recourse to a bodily assumption (a lack of interest in relics in general among some of the relevant sources, a lack of interest in Marian relics in particular without believing that she had been assumed, agnosticism about whether such relics existed, etc.). And, as I documented in the post linked above and in another one here, the lack of discussion of Marian bodily relics is accompanied by evidence of a widespread absence of belief in her assumption.

But more should be said about the alleged lack of discussion of bodily relics. In 1957, the Roman Catholic scholar Walter Burghardt published an article on Mary's death in patristic sources. You can read it here. There's a lot of significant information in the article, but what I want to highlight here is a few references to sources of the patristic era who seem to have denied the Roman Catholic view of what happened to Mary's body.

On page 65 in Burghardt's article (going by the original page numbering), he cites Severian of Gabala's comments on how Mary was called blessed when she was living in the flesh. The most natural way to interpret his comments seems to be that he didn't think Mary was in the flesh any longer.

Burghardt also cites a passage in Pseudo-Antoninus Placentinus in which Mary is referred to as being "taken up out of the body" (92), an apparent reference to her death. It's unlikely that he'd refer to Mary's experience surrounding death that way, without any accompanying reference to a bodily assumption, if he believed in an assumption.

On page 94, Burghardt cites Adamnan referring to how nobody knows where Mary's body was taken, and he refers to how her body is awaiting resurrection. Contrast that to Pope Pius XII's decree, in which the Pope claims to know where Mary's body is and cites Paul's comments in 1 Corinthians 15:54 as having already been fulfilled in Mary.

On the same page, Burghardt cites some comments in Bede that are similar to Adamnan's.

Burghardt goes on to cite an account of some government officials going to the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century and asking to have Mary's remains relocated to Constantinople (94-95). They're then told that there are no remains, since she was assumed to heaven. But notice that the account, however unhistorical it is, allows for such significant ignorance of Mary's assumption and people seeking her relics as late as the fifth century.

Michael O'Carroll, a Roman Catholic scholar who specialized in the history of Marian beliefs, refers to some of the same material Burghardt cites and similar material in other sources. He refers, for example, to how Paschasius Radbert believed in an assumption "of the soul only" (Theotokos [Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988], 278). O'Carroll refers to how Paschasius' influence "arrested development of thought on the Assumption for two-and-a-half centuries" (57). See the same page for a discussion of other sources by whom "doubt was expressed" about the assumption.

Notice that there's no need for people to have expressed interest in parts of Mary's body, such as a finger or legbone, in order to have expressed interest in her body as a whole and to have been agnostic about or denied the Catholic view of what happened to her body. It's misleading to frame these issues in terms of seeking or claiming to have a portion of Mary's body, since references to her body as a whole can likewise be inconsistent with the Catholic view of what happened to her.

Once belief in an assumption had become popular enough, it was in the interest of those involved in promoting relics to use ones ambiguous enough to accommodate both views without much difficulty, the view that Mary was assumed and the view that she wasn't. We see widespread claims about having something like a portion of her hair or clothing.

In his article, Burghardt explains why it's likely that there was widespread belief in Mary's death in the earliest centuries of Christianity (in contrast to the notion that she was assumed to heaven without dying or some such thing). If you combine that evidence with the evidence addressed in my articles linked earlier (here and here) to the effect that there was a widespread lack of belief in an assumption of Mary in the earliest centuries, it seems that the earliest view was that Mary died and wasn't assumed.

Early Ignorance Of The Assumption Of Mary

Today is the Feast of the Assumption, commemorating Mary's alleged bodily assumption to heaven. There's a significant line of evidence that's seldom discussed that suggests the early Christians had no concept of an assumption of Mary. Many early patristic sources cite Enoch, Elijah, and Paul as examples of people who didn't die, were translated to heaven, etc., yet they never say any such thing about Mary or include her as an example (e.g., Clement of Rome, First Clement, 9; Tertullian, A Treatise On The Soul, 50; Tertullian, On The Resurrection Of The Flesh, 58; Tertullian, Against Marcion, 5:12; Origen, in Thomas Scheck, trans., Origen: Commentary On The Epistle To The Romans, Books 1-5 [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2001], 5:4:3, p. 340; Methodius, From The Discourse On The Resurrection, 3:2:14; Apostolic Constitutions, 5:7; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 3:6; John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 75; Jerome, To Pammachius Against John Of Jerusalem, 29, 32; Faustus, cited in Augustine, Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 26:1; Augustine, On The Grace Of Christ, And On Original Sin, 2:27). Irenaeus, for instance, writes about the power of God to deliver people from death, and he cites Enoch, Elijah, and Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2) as illustrations of people who were "assumed" and "translated", but he says nothing of Mary (Against Heresies, 5:5). How likely is it that all of these sources, commenting in so many different contexts, would all refrain from mentioning Mary's assumption, even though they knew of it? They're sometimes describing Christian beliefs in general, not just their own, which makes their failure to mention Mary even more significant. If these early Christians held as high a view of Mary as Roman Catholicism does, or even close to so high a view, you'd expect them to cite her more than anybody else. Instead, they don't cite her at all.

Top 3 reasons I became Catholic

I recently watched John Bergsma's testimony about his conversion to Catholicism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06F4i4TtS1c

He's a theology prof. at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. I'd just note in passing that his father was a Navy chaplain. So he probably suffered from a certain amount of paternal neglect as a boy due to family separation when his dad was on tours of duty. That can impact a boy's social and psychological maturation. 

Bergsma gives three reason for his conversion:

1. Jas 5:14-16

Several problems:

i) If that's a legitimate prooftext for Catholicism, then why aren't healing miracles a regular occurrence when Last Rites is administered?

He reinterprets that verse in terms of "spiritual healing" or "victory" over sin. Yet in context it clearly includes physical healing.

ii) It doesn't say confess your sins to a priest.

iii) He says he didn't have a Protestant way to obey that verse. Here's an idea: what about confessing your sin to the person you wronged? 

iv) He says confessing your sins to a priest is confessing to the whole church through him. That's so sophistical. A convenient way to evade your duty to confess your sin to the individual you actually sinned against.  

He says the priest represents Christ. That begs the question. 

v) He says auricular confession sidesteps confidentiality issues. But confessing your sin to the person you wronged is confidential, too. And in many cases, they already know you wronged them. 

vi) He mentions that pastors need someone they can confide in. Sure. But that confuses confession with friendship 

2. At Notre Dame, he was exposed to Rev 12 as a Marian prooftext. Despite already having an MA in Scripture as well as an MDiv., this was the first time he became aware of the fact that Rev 12 is a Marian prooftext. That shows you how deficient his seminary education was. And it illustrates the fact that it's easier to convert the uninformed. 

There are several problems with viewing Rev 12 as a Marian prooftext, but for now I'll focus on two:

i) In terms of Catholic Mariology, the chronology is backwards. Mary is assumed to heaven at the end of her life. But in Rev 12, the woman is up there at the outset, then comes down to earth. In Catholic theology, Mary is not a celestial being who originates in heaven. Rather, she's an earthling to ascends to heaven. But the imagery and sequence of Rev 12 are just the opposite.

ii) Although "sky" and "heaven" are sometimes synonymous, at other times they represent two essentially different domains. The sky contains the sun, moon, stars, and clouds–whereas heaven contains God, saints, and angels. 

That's not the same place, but two different places. "Heaven", in the sense of God's abode, doesn't have day and night, sunshine or lunar phases. Heaven doesn't have rainclouds, hailstorms or blizzards. The saints and angels don't need umbrellas. Heaven isn't outer space. It's not a vacuum at near absolute zero. 

Rev 12 doesn't depict a woman in heaven, but a woman in the sky. So using Rev 12 to prooftext Mary's role as Queen of Heaven is vitiated by fatal equivocation. 

3. Finally, it was at Notre Dame that he first learned about the existence of the apostolic fathers. He never knew there were any Christian writers before Nicea. Once more, that shows you how deficient his seminary education was. And it again illustrates the fact that it's easier to convert the uninformed. 

He then infers that whatever the apostolic fathers teach reflects the original intention of the apostles, since they were in living contact with the apostles. That includes belief in the real presence. But that's a very slippery inference:

i) For one thing, you have to consider the age of an apostolic father at the time he may have encountered an apostle. How much did they remember at that age?

You can't presume that the apostolic fathers were personally mentored by the apostles, just because they may have heard them speak on one occasion or another. Consider large crowds that gathered to hear the apostle John in old age. Not much opportunity for individualized tutorials. 

ii) To take a comparison, I knew my maternal grandmother as well as some aunts and uncles. But what I know about them is pretty limited because I was young and I didn't think to ask many questions. Many of us wish we'd asked our elderly relatives more questions when they were still alive, but it didn't occur to us at the time. 

iii) Catholic appeal to the apostolic fathers is usually quite careless, but the appeal needs to be far more discriminating: 

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-apostolic-fathers.html

Does The Assumption Of Mary Assume Too Much?

Today is the Feast of the Assumption in Roman Catholicism. The absence of the concept of an assumption of Mary in early Christian sources is often discussed. But the case against the assumption can be made much more forcefully than it usually is. See here and here. And here's a review I wrote of a debate on the assumption between James White and Robert Sungenis.