Abstract
Levering, a professor of theology at Mundelein Seminary, has written a beautiful book which takes into account the two demurring sources about Mary’s assumption. These have come from biblical criticism as well from the skepticism about these beliefs from non-Catholic Christian traditions. The result of his scholarship is a convincing apologia for the dogma of her assumption into heaven. This is no mean feat. Furthermore, both in biblical studies and in ecumenical relations, that event has been a side issue or non-existent. So much is this so that L. notes “the last book published in English on Mary’s Assumption appeared over thirty years ago” (2).
L. argues clearly and convincingly that belief in Mary’s assumption, body, and soul into heaven rests on three “scriptural pillars.” The first of these is the New Testament’s typological portraiture of her. His reasoning is accompanied by the best Mariological scholarship available at present. The second pillar undergirding his scholarship rests on the church’s belief and his that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the church has the authority to interpret divine revelation. He gives a credible account for this belief. And the third pillar is that Mary’s assumption into heaven completes the picture of what God has had in mind in bringing about the creation of the world and sending his Son and the Spirit into it. Absent her assumption, these mysteries lack a specific endpoint.
Some recent portraits of Mary—for example. Elizabeth Johnson’s Truly Our Sister— have supplied a considerable amount of empirical data about Mary’s life on earth. This approach manages to respectfully take her off a pedestal, but neglects the implications of scriptural typology the biblical authors employed for subsequent generations to spell out her meaning. L. uses three recent trenchant studies of biblical typology, all done by Protestant scholars, to show how biblical authors often have much to say about their subject matter through types rather than through other more explicit forms of discourse like the Ark of the Covenant or Eve. Both of these have proven to be pregnant sources for understanding Mary’s role in God’s plan for the world’s salvation—devotionally, liturgically, theologically, doctrinally.
The affection of the author for his subject matter comes through most clearly in his chapter on the “fittingness of Mary’s assumption.” L. says that his intention is not to prove the truth of the dogma of the assumption but its fittingness. He quotes John Henry Newman to that effect who believed that “nothing is too high for her to whom God owes His human life; no exuberance of grace, no excess of glory, but is becoming, but is to be expected there, where God has lodged Himself, whence God has issued” (131). Notwithstanding this less-than-proof purpose, L. takes three of the primordial pieces of the revelation—creation and the fall, the election of Israel, and the Incarnation of the Word—and shows how Mary’s assumption ties into one package the relevance of these central truths of revelation. It is not an odd add-on. On the contrary as the Anglican theologian John Macquarrie observes, Mary’s assumption sheds light on “the beginning of a vaster (dare we even say, cosmic or universal?) assumption” (cf. his Mary for All Christians, 2003).
L. is at pains to show how her assumption is an augur of where all of creation is headed, according to Paul. “The whole created world will be set free from its bondage to decay” (Rom 8:21). Mary’s bodily assumption is an eloquent piece of evidence indicating that “when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Cor 15:54). Therefore her destiny prefigures the destiny of all who believe in her son. The author obviously would think it was impoverishing not to have this belief as part of one’s faith.
This belief as a dogma of the Catholic faith was not generated by the hierarchy or the papacy. It had its start in the fifth century with the faithful’s growing belief that Mary, being “blessed among women,” would include the blessing of her bodily assumption into heaven. Over the centuries that belief was continually confirmed by the devotional and liturgical life of the faithful.