By Januarius Asongu, PhD
Every August 15, Catholics celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the most beautiful feasts of the liturgical year. The doctrine holds that, at the completion of her earthly life, Mary was taken body and soul into heavenly glory. Theologically, the teaching is rich. It connects Mary with the resurrection of Christ, affirms the dignity of the human body, and presents her as an anticipation of humanity's ultimate destiny. Yet the history of the doctrine raises an important question: was the Church justified in declaring the Assumption an infallible dogma?
The difficulty is not necessarily with believing that the Assumption occurred. It may very well have happened. The difficulty concerns the degree of certainty with which we can claim to know that it happened. The New Testament gives no account of Mary's Assumption. After mentioning her among the disciples gathered following Christ's Ascension (Acts 1:14), Scripture says virtually nothing about the remainder of her life. There is no biblical description of her death, burial, resurrection, or assumption into heaven. Revelation 12's image of the woman clothed with the sun has acquired an important Marian interpretation, but it cannot reasonably be treated as a historical report of the Assumption.
Nor do we possess contemporary historical testimony describing the event. Traditions concerning Mary's final days emerge more clearly several centuries later, especially in writings associated with the Transitus Mariae, or “Passing of Mary.” The Eastern Christian tradition eventually developed the Feast of the Dormition, celebrating Mary's “falling asleep” and entrance into heavenly glory. The tradition subsequently became established in the West, where greater emphasis was placed upon her bodily Assumption. By the medieval period, belief in the Assumption was widespread.
Pope Pius XII therefore did not invent the Assumption when he solemnly defined it in Munificentissimus Deus in 1950. He inherited a tradition that had developed over many centuries. Nevertheless, the existence of an ancient and widespread tradition does not by itself establish the historical certainty of the event to which that tradition refers. There remains an important difference between saying that something is theologically fitting, that Christians have believed it for centuries, and that we know with sufficient certainty that it was divinely revealed and must therefore be accepted as dogma.
This is precisely where longstanding Protestant objections deserve serious consideration. From the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, many Protestants object that a doctrine carrying binding authority over Christian belief should have a demonstrable foundation in Scripture. They find no such foundation for the Assumption. Some also question whether later traditions can reliably establish an extraordinary event about which the apostolic writings themselves are silent. From this perspective, the problem is not primarily honoring Mary. The Reformers themselves could speak highly of her. The problem is making a particular claim about Mary obligatory Christian belief without what Protestants regard as adequate biblical or apostolic warrant.
Catholics can reasonably respond that sola scriptura is itself not the Catholic understanding of revelation. Catholic theology holds that divine revelation is transmitted through Scripture and Sacred Tradition and authoritatively interpreted by the Church. Development of doctrine is therefore possible. Yet the Protestant objection still exposes an important epistemological question: how do we distinguish an authentic development of apostolic faith from a venerable tradition that gradually acquired greater certainty than its historical foundations warrant? Appealing to Tradition cannot completely settle that question, because the reliability and interpretation of Tradition are themselves part of what is being debated.
This is where Critical Synthetic Realism (CSR) offers a useful perspective. CSR begins from realism: truth exists independently of us. If Mary was assumed into heaven, the Assumption is objectively true whether historians can establish it or not. Historical silence cannot prove that an event did not occur. Yet realism must be accompanied by epistemic humility. Something can be objectively true while human beings lack sufficient grounds for claiming certainty about it.
The distinction between ontological truth and epistemic access to truth is crucial. Human beings can know reality genuinely without knowing it exhaustively. Our knowledge is mediated through language, history, testimony, culture, interpretation and institutions. Religious communities are no exception. The Church may genuinely encounter and preserve divine revelation while still interpreting it through historically conditioned human categories.
From this perspective, defining the Assumption as an infallible dogma was probably a theological overreach. This does not mean that the Assumption is false, nor that Catholics should abandon the feast. Its theological meaning remains profound. The concern is the movement from “this is an ancient, coherent and reasonable Christian belief” to “this is a divinely revealed truth that must definitively be believed.” The latter carries a substantially heavier epistemological burden.
The Assumption therefore offers a cautionary lesson about the pronouncement of dogma. Critical Synthetic Realism does not require skepticism, nor does it require accepting the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. It asks instead that we distinguish what we know from what we believe, what we reasonably infer from what we can demonstrate, and theological fittingness from epistemic certainty. The Protestant challenge is valuable precisely because it forces Catholic theology to explain why ecclesial confidence should sometimes become irreformable certainty.
Perhaps there is an irony here. Mary herself stands within Christianity as a model of faith before mystery. Her fiat did not mean that she understood everything God was doing. It represented trust before a reality exceeding her comprehension. The Church that venerates Mary might learn something from that posture. As Paul reminds us, “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12).
The Assumption may indeed be true. It may beautifully anticipate the destiny awaiting redeemed humanity. But its development also reminds us that truth is greater than our formulations of it. A Church committed to truth should therefore possess not only the courage to teach but also the humility to acknowledge the limits of human certainty. In CSR, this is not weakness or relativism. It is epistemic responsibility: the recognition that reality is knowable, truth is real, but finite human beings—including religious institutions—may never possess it as completely as their strongest formulations sometimes suggest.