Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No.

2 (2015): 399-418 399

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

into Heaven:
Faith, Dogma, and Eschatology

h e in h a r d h o t t e r
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, NC

Introduction
I W OULD LIKE TO INVITE the esteemed readers of this essay to
enter into a “what if” thought experiment. 1 What if we were to bracket
for the duration of reading this article a notion of “faith” we might have
encountered in recent Catholic theology, a notion of a “faith” that all
people hold at least implicitly in virtue of our purportedly universally
graced existence, a nonthematic faith in transcendence, meaning, and
goodness, a faith that in light of the state of the world is always paired
with doubt, a faith that can at best be solidified into a strong opinion,
maybe even into a conviction, but that remains always tentative and al­
ways open to revision in light of possible new and conflicting evidences

1 Versions of this essay were delivered as lectures on April 28, 2013, at the Monastery
of Our Lady of Grace, North Guilford, CT, and much earlier, on September 27,2008,
at a Symposium on Mariology at the University of Dallas in Dallas, TX. I remember
with deep gratitude the hospitality my colleagues and I enjoyed at the Cistercian
Monastery, the instructive conversations on Mariology with Fr. Roch Kereszty, O.
Cist., and then Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy, O.Cist., as well as with my co-symposiasts
John Cavadini, Paul J. Griffiths, and Bruce Marshall. I am indebted to the substantive
feedback I received from Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., feedback I attempted to
integrate into the article as fully as possible, and for comments and suggestions from
the Dominican Nuns and, last but not least, from Nancy Heitzenrater Hutter.
400 Reinhard Hiitter

or simply more compelling alternatives. What if we were to bracket this

all too widespread notion of faith, the faith of the seeker, the faith based
on the measure of our own private judgment? What if instead we had
a dream? What if we were to dream that faith in all of its aspects was
a gift given directly from God to each one of us personally? What if
we were to dream that faith was based on a testimony that ultimately
comes from God and that we believe to come from God and therefore
are able to hold with absolute certainty because we believe God? What if
this faith were to contain distinct truths communicated by God by way
of entrusted messengers whom we believe because we believe them to
be God’s messengers entrusted by God with the testimony that conveys
distinct truths about God? What if this faith were part and parcel of
our friendship with God, a friendship enabled, initiated, and ensured by
God, such that the knowledge conveyed by faith were always inherently
part of the personal friendship initiated by God and indeed inherently
part of an inchoate union with God? What if faith were “the substance
of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), so that
“through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say ‘in embryo’—and
thus according to the ‘substance’—there [were] already present in us the
things that are hoped for: a whole, true life”?2What if—lest this faith be­
come wayward and ossified—God had appointed guardians of the faith
that would allow it to grow and to remain faithful to the truth conveyed
by God? And what if the faith itself were certain about these guardians
of the faith and certain that God would guide these guardians through
the Holy Spirit? Would it not be most appropriate to call such a faith, a
faith that has its origin and end in God, a faith that is a gift from God
and anchored in God’s truthfulness—divine faith?3
Because the dreaming goes so well, let us go on for a moment and
ask, what if a contemporary theologian had put this matter into a com­
pelling contemporary theological idiom. For example, the following way:

The sole objectivity of the faith is the subjectivity of the Church.

For the objectivity of the faith is guaranteed by the Spirit of

2 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi §7.

3 For a more detailed discussion of “divine faith,” see my recent article “What Is Faith?
The Theocentric, Unitive, and Eschatologically Inchoative Character of Divine
Faith,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11, no. 2 (2013): 317-40.
 The A ssum ption o f the Blessed Virgin M ary into Heaven 401

God, who judges everything, but is judged by nobody. This

Spirit, however, is present in the Church as her subjectivity and
nowhere else present [as such]. One cannot want to apply the
final measure oneself. The final measure, insofar as it is tangi­
ble at all, is the Church from that moment on that the Spirit of
Truth has united Himself with her, and with me, the individual
only insofar as I stand in the Church and insofar as I have hand­
ed over my faith into hers---- Because [the Church] in freedom
overpowered by the Spirit, is always the obedient servant of the
tru th —in this way alone, but in this way also unconditionally, is
[the Church] the one who rules over our faith ... . Faith is faith
that hears the Church and believes in the Church.4

Let us continue our dream. What if this theologian were Karl Rahner
and what if he had written these words in the opening pages of a book
on the dogma of the Assumption, a book that he never published during
his life? And what if he were to recommend the following attitude for
approaching theologically the mystery of the assumption of the Blessed
Virgin? Consider again the Karl Rahner from 1951:

What is the right beginning for our endeavor to understand

what the Church proclaims about the Holy Virgin and her eter­
nal destiny? The humble reverence (Ehrfurcht) in face of the
mystery of God, a reverence in which the human being does
not make himself the measure of truth, and the unconditional
faith in relationship to the Church and her teaching and in the
Church as the necessary medium of our own understanding of
the faith, a faith that is the measure for everything else and that
can be measured only by itself and no other criteria.5

4 Karl Rahner, Maria, Mutter des Herrn: Mariologische Studien, vol. 9, Sdmtliche Werke
(Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 13-14 (my translation). The quotation is taken from Karl
Rahner’s 1951 monograph Assumptio Beatae Mariae Virginis, which was published
for the first time only in the posthumous edition of his complete works. For detailed
information about the reasons for this delayed publication, see Regina Pacis Meyers
instructive introduction to the volume (xi-lv). I am indebted to Fr. Richard Schenk,
O.P., for having brought to my attention Karl Rahner s “hidden” Mariological treatise.
5 Ibid., 18 (my translation).
402 Reinhard Hiitter

What if we were to assume this framework of divine faith? Equipped

with the reverence Rahner recommends, we would encounter the fol­
lowing as a teaching of the faith that makes divine faith explicit in one
specific regard: “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely
revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin
Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed
body and soul into heavenly glory.” Thus states the dogma of the As­
sumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as it was defined and promulgated
by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, in the Apostolic Constitution
Munificentissimus Deus.6 The dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin into heaven, body and soul, expresses a truth integral to the di­
vine faith we have come presently to assume. The truth made explicit
and specified (we could also say “defined”) in the dogma belongs to the
essence of divine faith; it is an article of this faith as much as the articles
specified in the Apostolic and the Nicene Creed, that is, among others,
that God is triune, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnate, that he
was raised from the dead on the third day and ascended into heaven. All
of these truths and numerous others are divinely revealed and therefore
integral to divine faith.7

6 “Pronunciamus, declaramus et definimus divinitus revelatum dogma esse: Immac-

ulatam Deiparam semper Virginem Mariam, expleto terrestris vitae cursu, fuisse
corpore et anima ad caelestem gloriam assumptam” (DH 3903; Heinrich Denzinger,
Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals,
43rd ed., ed. Peter Hunermann (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010], 809).
7 Unsurprisingly, therefore, Munificentissimus Deus clearly states: “Hence, if anyone,
which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or call into doubt that which We have
defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic
faith” (“Quamobrem, si quis, quod Deus advertat, id vel negare, vel in dubium vocare
voluntarie ausus fuerit, quod a Nobis definitum est, noverit se a divina ac catholica fide
prorsus defecisse [DH 3904]). For further clarification, see “Doctrinal Commentary
on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei',’ issued by the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith on June 29, 1998. In paragraph 11, the commentary states: “To
the truths of the first paragraph belong the articles of the faith of the Creed, the vari­
ous Christological dogmas and Marian dogmas; the doctrine of the institution of the
sacraments by Christ and their efficacy with regard to grace; the doctrine of the real
and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the sacrificial nature of the eu-
charistic celebration; the foundation of the Church by the will of Christ; the doctrine
on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff; the doctrine on the existence of
original sin; the doctrine on the immortality of the spiritual soul and on the immediate
recompense after death; the absence of error in the inspired sacred texts; the doctrine
on the grave immorality of direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.”
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 403

In the following theological meditation I am going to be true to the

thought experiment and presuppose the truth of the dogma as integral
to the divine faith we presently assume “as if.” Given divine faith, I will
explore the truth itself that the dogma conveys. I will first consider the
antecedent revealed truths that give rise to the Church’s faith in the as­
sumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven. These antecedent revealed
truths afford divine faith an indispensable understanding of the sur­
passing theological fittingness of her assumption. Of course, God’s om­
nipotence makes it possible for God to assume any human being into
heaven, body and soul—presupposing in this counterfactual, of course,
that the instantaneous sanctification of this person by operative grace
would be a necessary entailment of such an act of divine omnipotence.
Fittingness, convenientia, however, assumes that God orders all the
works of salvation wisely and that divine faith is enabled by God to trace
the wisdom of such ordering and to praise the beauty of such wisdom.
By way of interpreting a brief meditation by Thomas Aquinas I will sug­
gest how the assumption of the Blessed Virgin roots theologically in her
plenitude of grace and in her divine motherhood.
Given the assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven, I will then
consider, albeit only briefly, the most salient ecclesiological and escha­
tological consequences of this revealed truth of divine faith. As the dog­
matic theologian Louis Bouyer states in his important book The Seat of
Wisdom, “her Assumption is the pledge of the glory Christ will give to
his Spouse, as he has already given it to his Mother.”8

Gratia plena Deipara—Assumpta

—

Let us consider Thomas Aquinas’s theological meditation on the angel’s

salutation Ave, gratia plena, a piece Thomas composed in the year 1269.
The work falls into the early part of Thomas’s second Parisian regency,
the period during which he commenced and completed the enormous
Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae (ST).9 In this brief but never-

8 Louis Bouyer, The Seat of Wisdom: An Essay on the Place of the Virgin Mary in Chris­
tian Theology, trans. A. V. Littledale (New York: Pantheon, 1962), 202.
9 Thomas Aquinas, “In salutationem angelicam vulgo Ave Maria’ expositio” (1269),
Opuscula Theologica, vol. II (Turin: Marietti, 1954), 239-41. Translated into En­
glish as The Angelic Salutation, trans. Joseph B. Collins (New York: Wagner, 1939).
Concerning the exact date on which Thomas delivered this sermon, see the instruc-
404 Reinhard Htitter

theless rich theological meditation on the angel’s salutation, Thomas

demonstrates well how the Church’s faith moves from the Virgin Mary’s
plenitude of grace to her divine motherhood and from her divine moth­
erhood to her assumption into heaven. Thomas’s brief treatise is rooted
in a thoroughly theological reading of the Sacred Scriptures and thus
helps us see that the Church’s faith in the assumption of the Blessed
Virgin arises from the witness of the Sacred Scriptures. For Thomas’s
theological meditation allows us to understand the assumption imme­
diately in relationship to the plenitude of grace residing in the Blessed
Virgin and in relationship to her divine motherhood, two truths shining
forth from the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. To put it differently:
Given the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, a truth solemnly
defined on December 8, 1854, by Pope Pius IX in the Bull Ineffabilis, her
assumption does indeed follow as a fitting consequence in the economy
of salvation. However, we would seriously misunderstand the Church’s
faith in the assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven if in hindsight
we were to reduce this truth of divine faith to a mere necessary entail-
ment of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Rather, it is import­
ant for a full appreciation of the meaning of the assumption to realize
and remember that the truth of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s assumption
into heaven is a direct consequence of the witness of the Gospel of Luke
itself, namely, a witness of the plenitude of grace that resides in her and
a witness of her divine motherhood.
As is well known, Thomas did not teach the immaculate conception
of the Virgin Mary in her mother’s womb. Rather, at a time when a va-

tive commentary and notes provided by Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., in Saint Thomas
d’Aquin, Somme Theologique. Le Verbe Incarne en ses mysteres. Tome 1: Lentree du
Christ en ce monde {ST III, qq. 27-34) (Paris: Cerf, 2003), 363; Recherches thoma-
siennes: Etudes revues et augmentees (Paris: Vrin, 2000), 285n4. Torrell provides a
French translation in Le Verbe Incarne, 363-70. Also important findings by Torrell
are the appendix “S. Thomas et la vierge Marie,” 340-53, esp. 368nl, and the “notes
explicatives,” esp. 264-68. For recent treatments of Thomas’s Mariology, see T. A.
Mullaney, O.P., “Mary Immaculate in the Writings of St. Thomas,” The Thomist 17
(1954): 433-68; Daniel Ols, O.P., “La Bienheureuse Vierge Marie selon saint Thom­
as,” in Littera Sensus Sententia: Studi in onore del Prof. Clemente J. Vansteenkiste, O.P.,
ed. Abelardo Lobato, O.P. (Milan: Massimo, 1991), 435-53; and Aidan Nichols, O.P.,
“The Mariology of St. Thomas,” in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, ed.
Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (London: T8rT Clark,
2004), 241-60.
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 405

riety of theological positions were still explored and defended, Thomas

taught the perfect sanctification of the Blessed Virgin in her mother’s
womb immediately after the ensoulment (which Thomas assumed—
based on the best scientific theory of his day—did not occur right at
conception). Ironically, from the hindsight of the development of doc­
trine, it is this particular trait of Thomas’s Mariology that lends special
significance to his brief treatise. For it allows us to attend to the direct
theological relationship between the plenitude of grace present in the Bless­
ed Virgin and her divine maternity, on the one side, and her assumption
into heaven, body and soul, on the other side. In short, Thomas’s medi­
tation allows us—in hindsight, after the promulgation of the dogma of
the Immaculate Conception in the bull Ineffabilis Deus on December 8,
1854—to realize that, indeed, her immaculate conception is for the sake
of her divine maternity, while her assumption is a culmination of both
of these prior graces.10
How does Thomas proceed in his brief meditation? First, he points
out something contemporary readers of Scripture would most likely fail
to notice, namely, that wherever in the Sacred Scriptures angels encoun­
ter human beings it is never the angel who greets and expresses rever­
ence to the human being—with the sole exception of the Annunciation.
Thomas gives three reasons why it is improper, under normal circum­
stances, for angels to express reverence to humans, but why it is quite
proper and decent for human beings to do so in regard to angels.
First, angels surpass human beings in ontological dignity. For angels
have a spiritual and incorruptible nature while humans have a corrupt­
ible one. Second, angels are of the utmost familiarity with God and, in
addition, are God’s assistants in the order of providence as well as in

10 For a detailed elaboration of the preeminence of the divine maternity and of the
predestination of the Blessed Virgin to divine maternity as the final cause of her
immaculate conception (Christ’s salvific death on the Cross being the meritorious
cause) and as the root cause, the principle, that comes to full realization first in her
association with Christs suffering and death and then also her eternal association
with Christ in his perfect victory, see the unjustly forgotten Mariology by Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Mother of The Saviour and Our Interior Life, trans.
Bernard J. Kelly, C.S.Sp. (Dublin: Golden Eagle), 1949.
406 Reinhard Hiitter

the economy of salvation, while human beings, due to sin, are in and
of themselves unrelated to and far removed from God. Third, and most
importantly, angels enjoy the surpassing splendor of divine grace; they
participate in the divine light itself to the highest degree. It is for this rea­
son, Thomas surmises, that an angel always appears with light. Human
beings, however, even if they participate in the light of grace, do so only
to a small degree and in a somewhat obscure manner. Now, according
to the Gospel of Luke, the angel indeed explicitly greets the Virgin Mary
and pays her reverence. And this is the case, Thomas argues, because the
Blessed Virgin exceeds the angel in at least three regards.
First, she exceeds the angel in the degree of grace, for the plenitude
of grace indicates a maximum of perfection that the Holy Scriptures
attest nowhere about any angel. 11 Thomas regards this truth to be es­
tablished simply on the basis of the witness that the literal sense of the
Holy Scriptures affords. According to Thomas, the plenitude of grace
is of surpassing significance and constitutes the fundamental principle
of Mariology. The plenitude of grace pertains, first, to the soul of the
Blessed Virgin such that she is enabled perfectly to do good and avoid
sin, and, second, to her body, in that the overflow (redundantia) of grace
from her soul to her body enables her to give birth to the Son of God . 12
Finally, the plenitude of grace pertains, third, to the restitution (refu-
sio) of grace in all human beings. Thomas emphasizes in this important
third aspect of her plenitude of grace that the Virgin Mary is the only

11 By way of a handy summary, we can turn for one brief moment to the Sutnma theo-
logiae, where Thomas in the third part considers the Mother of God in the proper
theological context of Christology. Here is his argument why she indeed received in
the womb the plenitude of grace: "In every genus, the nearer a thing is to the princi­
ple, the greater the part which it has in the effect of that principle, whence Dionysius
says (Coel. Hier. iv) that angels, being nearer to God, have a greater share than men,
in the effects of the Divine goodness. Now Christ is the principle of grace, author­
itatively as to his Godhead, instrumentally as to His humanity: whence (Jn 1:17) it
is written: Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. But the Blessed Virgin Mary was
nearest to Christ in His humanity: because He received His human nature from her.
Therefore it was due to her to receive a greater fulness of grace than others” (ST III,
q. 27, a. 5).
12 Thomas Aquinas, “In salutationem angelicam vulgo ‘Ave Maria’ expositio” (Marietti
no. 1115-17).
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 407

other person apart from Christ (considered in his humanity) to receive

grace for every other human being.13
Second, the Blessed Virgin exceeds the angel in divine familiarity.
The angel expresses this in the sentence “The Lord is with you.” And
this, Thomas points out, is the case in three utterly unique ways: First of
all, Father and Son together have a familiarity with her in a way different
from any other creature, angel or human: “The child to be born of you
will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35b; RSV). Moreover, due to
being in her womb, God the Son has a familiarity with the Blessed Vir­
gin, indeed as a son, while he has familiarity with the angel only as Lord
but not as Son. In short, while God is the angels Lord, God is also the

13 Ibid. (no. 1118). Nota bene: The Blessed Virgin did not receive this grace simply as
a passive instrument of the Holy Spirit, but precisely as a human person, endowed
with a principle of agency and of cooperation with Gods grace. Being full of grace
allows her to perform an act of perfect freedom, the freedom of realizing the sur­
passing good God enables her by grace to realize: “Behold, I am the handmaid of
the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38; RSV). And therefore the
Blessed Virgin merited the grace for every other human being. Lest the charge of an
undue exaltation of the Virgin Mary be put at the feet of Thomas Aquinas (and the
whole preconciliar Mariology, for that matter), let me emphasize that the Blessed
Virgin merited de congruo proprie (congruously) what Jesus merited de condigno (in
strict justice). Thomas explains how such meriting de congruo is based on friendship
with God: “One may merit the first grace for another congruously: because [a per­
son] in grace fulfills God’s will, and it is congruous and in harmony with friendship
that God should fulfill [that persons] desire for the salvation of another, although
sometimes there may be an impediment on the part of him whose salvation the just
[person] desires” (ST I-II, q. 114, a. 6). In reference to this passage, Garrigou-La-
grange offers a pertinent and indeed famous example: “In this way, a good Christian
[sic] mother, for example, can by her good works, her love of God and of her neigh­
bour, merit the conversion of her son de congruo proprie. St. Monica obtained the
conversion of St. Augustine by that kind of merit as well as by her prayers: ‘The son
of many tears,’ said St Ambrose, could not be lost.’" Mother of The Saviour, 180-81.
Because the Mother of God, due to her plenitude of grace, has the highest degree
possible for a human being of friendship with God, she merits de congruo proprie in
virtue of the rights of friendship (in iure amicabili), the grace for every human being.
See Pope St. Pius X’s Encyclical Letter Ad diem ilium from February 2, 1904, for a
magisterial confirmation of the Blessed Virgin as mediatrix of grace: “We are... very
far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of grace—a power that
belongs to God alone. Yet, since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with
Christ and has been associated by Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for
us de congruo [in a congruous manner], in the language of the theologians, what
Christ merits for us de condigno [in a condign manner], and she is the supreme
minister of the distribution of graces” (DH 3371).
408 Reinhard Hiitter

Virgin Mary’s Son. 14 This single circumstance makes her indeed the sin­
gle most important creature of the whole universe. And finally, the Holy
Spirit has familiarity with her because he overshadows her and hence
dwells in her as in the temple. Consequently, according to Thomas, God
has greater familiarity with the Virgin Mary than with any angel, be­
cause Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the whole Trinity, is with her. And so
the angel rightly expresses reverence to the Blessed Virgin. For she is the
mother of the Lord, mater Domini, hence Domina, and therefore worthy
of surpassing reverence.
But the Blessed Virgin not only exceeds the angel in plenitude of
grace and in familiarity with God. Rather, and this is the third aspect,
Thomas emphasizes that she exceeds the angel also in regard to purity.
After having received the plenitude of grace, the Virgin Mary is free
from any form of sin (original, mortal, and venial) and in that of similar
purity as the angel, but different from the angel, she is also—in virtue of
her divine maternity—the source of purity in others. Hence her purity
surpasses that of the most pure and holy creature, the angel.
At this juncture we need to halt for a moment and recapitulate in
order to appreciate the full import of Thomas’s brief account so far. The
triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, abides with the Virgin Mary
in an utterly singular way and hence has familiarity with her to a degree
that exceeds God’s familiarity with any other creature. To put it differ­
ently, according to the witness of the Sacred Scriptures, as divine faith
receives it under the guidance of the Church’s teaching and as Thomas
understands it through the medium of divine faith, the Blessed Virgin
holds that very place of singularity in the universe that according to the
erroneous assumptions of the adoptionist Christological heresy Jesus
holds. Jesus was not a human person adopted by God and elevated to
the highest level of adoptive divinity possible for a creature—as was held
by ancient adoptionism long ago and was held in recent times and still
is held in present times by strands of liberal Protestantism and Catholic
Modernism. Rather, the Blessed Virgin was the distinct human person
chosen by God for divine maternity and because of it was eventually

14 Indeed, as Thomas emphasizes in the Summa theologiae, the Virgin Mary is the
mother of the person of the Son—the person of the Son being the Incarnate Logos
(ST III, q. 35, a. 4 co„ ad 2 and 3).
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 409

assumed, body and soul, into the glory of heaven. The principle gratia
plena constitutes her whole existence from beginning to end. Mary is
the most fully divinized human person from the moment of her coming
into existence, as the particular human being she is, to her glorification
in heaven. While Thomas has no particular reason to state the matter
in the context of his interpretation of the angelic salutation, in an ecu­
menical post-Reformation setting it is important, however, to mention
explicitly that the Catholic Church recognizes the privilege of the Vir­
gin Marys preservation from original sin and her existence gratia plena
in light of the merits of Christ, just as analogically she is associated in
prayer in the mystery of the Cross, only because of the merits of her Son
and in dependence upon them.
Now we are prepared to turn to the section of Thomas’s meditation
where the assumption is mentioned—indeed very briefly, but com­
pletely as a matter of fact, not at all as something that is up for debate
or in need of an elaborate theological defense or justification. Due to
the fullness of grace residing in her, the Blessed Virgin Mary was free
from any stain of sin. For this very reason she was also preserved from
the curse of sin. Thomas only briefly gestures to the curses of Genesis
3:16-19. Interestingly, he does not distinguish between the curses ap­
plying to the man and those applying to the woman. For Thomas states
that in every regard the curse of sin was not going to affect her. There
is first Genesis 3:16a: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children” (RSV). Contrary to this curse,
Thomas in accord with the received tradition states that the Blessed
Virgin conceives the Son of God without loss of her virginity (sine
corruptione), bears him in consolation (in solatione), and gives birth
to him in joy {in gaudio). She is, second, preserved from having to
eat bread in the sweat of her face (Gen 3:19) because, according to St.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, virgins are released from the solicitude of this
world and are free for God alone. And finally and most importantly,
the Blessed Virgin is preserved from the common destiny of human­
ity to have to return to the dust. “And from this,” Thomas states, “the
Blessed Virgin was preserved, because of her bodily assumption into
heaven. For we believe that after her death she was raised up again and
410 Reinhard Hiitter

borne to heaven.”15 He concludes by citing Psalm 132(131):8: “Arise,

O Lord, and go to thy resting place, thou and the ark of thy might”
(RSV). Because Christs humanity, in virtue of divine election and pre­
destination, is the all-sufficient and hence all-powerful instrument of
human salvation and because Christ receives his humanity from the
Blessed Virgin, she can indeed rightly be considered the ark of God’s
might. And if indeed she is the latter she must be preserved from all
stains of sin, original, mortal, and venial. For otherwise she could not
be the ark in which the Spirit of God dwells. At this point it should at
least be mentioned that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of
the Blessed Virgin does provide greater clarity. For the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception allows a more penetrating theological under­
standing of the fact that, like every other human being after the fall,
the Virgin Mary incurred the debt of original sin.16 However, unlike
every other human being after the fall, she was preserved from in­
curring the stain of original sin from the first instance of her exis­
tence. To put the matter differently: The grace of the Blessed Virgin is
not “Adamic,” it is not a grace “stretching forth” so to speak from the
state of original righteousness to the Virgin Mary. Rather, her grace
is “Christie.” Unlike every other human being after the fall, she is free
from sin in virtue of her immaculate conception, but like every other
human being after the fall and like the human nature of Christ, she is
subject to imperfections and has the capacity to suffer and die. She is
plena gratia and sinless, but in complete conformity with the suffering
and death of Christ by whom her grace is merited. Precisely because

15 Thomas Aquinas, “In salutationem angelicam vulgo ‘Ave Maria’ expositio” (Marietti
no. 1123): “Et ab hac immunis fuit Beata Virgo, quia cum corpore assumpta est in
caelum. Credimus enim quod post mortem resuscitata fuerit, et portata in caelum.
Psal. CXXXI, 8: ‘Surge, Domine, in requiem tuam; tu, et area sanctifkationis tuae.’”
For the theologically delicate question of whether the Blessed Virgin underwent
death, see note 17 below.
16 Arguably, this is what Thomas intends to maintain in ST III, q. 27, a. 5, ad 2, where
he holds that if some human being after the fall had not contracted original sin, “this
would be derogatory to the dignity of Christ, by reason of His being the universal
Saviour of all.” It is here that Thomas does not make the distinction between the
debt of original sin that indeed pertains to all human beings (and that distinguishes
Christ also from Mary and makes him also her savior) from incurring the stain
(from which Mary was preserved in virtue the merits of Jesus Christ the Saviour of
the human race).
 The Assumption o f the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 411

her grace is Christ-conforming, it leads her into an exemplary union

with the paschal mystery.
What does it mean to be preserved from the consequences of orig­
inal sin? Original humanity before the fall was not preserved naturally
from death. Rather, like other composite creatures due to a composite
nature, the human being is in principle vulnerable to decomposition
and corruption. Hence the preservation of original humanity from nat­
ural death was a fortification that original humanity received as part of
the gifts of original righteousness and sanctifying grace. Due to preser­
vation, growth, and perseverance in sanctifying grace, at the eventual
point of natural death there would have occurred a transference, body
and soul, into heaven. If the plenitude of grace that the Virgin Mary
received exceeded that of the angel, and if her familiarity with God
also exceeded the one the angel has with God, she must in both exceed
original humanity or at least not lack anything in regard to anything
that original humanity had received in the state of original righteous­
ness. That means first and foremost that the consequences of the fall,
the withdrawal of original sanctifying grace and the destruction of the
state of original righteousness do not apply to her. Hence what was tak­
en from original humanity and has been superabundantly restored and
surpassed by Christ’s salvific death and resurrection is already realized
in and for the Blessed Virgin. 17

17 Unfortunately, I am not able to include into this meditation a proper treatment of

the Blessed Virgins conformity to the Cross, a treatment necessary, it seems to me,
to approach rightly the theologically delicate question of whether the Mother of God
underwent death. As is well known, an older Eastern tradition holds that she died,
while a more recent Western tradition holds that she underwent a kind of exaltation
to God without death in an ecstatic spiritual love. As a brief substitute for a proper
treatment, I shall adduce two theological authorities, the former having been the
teacher and doctoral advisor of the latter. First I shall turn again to Garrigou-La-
granges Mother of The Saviour, a superb preconciliar Mariology that incidentally
is fully compatible with the Mariology of the Second Vatican Council and that, ac­
cording to my understanding advances an interpretation of the death of the Blessed
Virgin that succeeds in synthesizing the central concerns of the Eastern and the
Western traditions: “Man was not made immortal at the beginning otherwise than
by a special privilege. The Incarnate Word willed to take passible flesh. Marys flesh
was passible too. Thus the deaths of Jesus and Mary were consequences of the inher­
ent weakness of human nature left to itself and unsustained by any preternatural gift.
Jesus, however, mastered death by accepting it for our salvation. Mary united herself
to Him in His death, making for us the sacrifice of His life in the most generous mar-
412 Reinhard H utter

Maria Assumpta: Realized Anticipation of the Church’s End

On the basis of what has been said so far it might seem as if the assump­
tion of the Blessed Virgin would separate her most radically from us:
the Virgin Mary highly exalted, body and soul in the glory of God and
perfectly conformed to Christ, her son. What does the Blessed Virgin
have to do with us and what, in turn, we with her? Do not the unique
privileges of the Mother of God separate her categorically from us ? 18
Continuing our thought experiment that divine faith indeed obtains, at
least three theological conclusions are to be drawn.
First, in the Blessed Virgin, assumed body and soul into heaven, the
economy of salvation is present as completed, as having already reached
its telos in one human person. This is first and foremost the case—as
elaborated in the first part—because of the Blessed Virgin’s singular re-

tyrdom of heart the world has ever known after that of Our Saviour. And when, later
on, the hour of her own death arrived, the sacrifice of her life had been already made.
It remained but to renew it in that most perfect form which tradition speaks of as
death of love, a death, that is to say, in which the soul dies not simply in grace or in
God’s love, but of a calm and supremely strong love which draws the soul, now ripe
for heaven, away from the body to be united to God in immediate and eternal vision.
Marys last moments are described by St. John Damascene in the words ‘She died an
extremely peaceful death’” (Mother of The Saviour, 135-36). The second theological
authority I shall adduce is Pope St. John Paul II, who addressed the question in his
general audience of June 25, 1997: “It is true that in revelation death is present as a
punishment for sin. However, the fact that the Church proclaims Mary free from
original sin by a unique divine privilege does not lead to the conclusion that she
also received physical immortality. The Mother is not superior to the Son who un­
derwent death, giving it a new meaning and changing it into a means of salvation.
Involved in Christ’s redemptive work and associated in his saving sacrifice, Mary
was able to share in his suffering and death for the sake of humanity’s redemption.
What Severus of Antioch says about Christ also applies to her: ‘Without a prelim­
inary death, how could the resurrection have taken place?’ . . . To share in Christ’s
resurrection, Mary had first to share in his death. . . . Whatever from the physical
point of view was the organic, biological cause of the end of her bodily life, it can
be said that for Mary the passage from this life to the next was the full development
of grace in glory, so that no death can ever be so fittingly described as a ‘dormition’
as hers” (Pope John Paul II, Theotokos— Woman, Mother, Disciple: A Catechesis on
Mary, Mother of God [Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2000), 201-2).
18 For a lucid and profound theological treatment that completely diffuses this concern
that is often put on the threshold of what some regard as a troubling “high Mariolo-
gy” reflective of a purported “fulfillment theology,” see Thomas Joseph White, O.P.,
“The Virgin Mary and the Church: The Marian Exemplarity of Ecclesial Faith,” Nova
et Vetera (English) 11, no. 2 (2013): 375-405.
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 413

lation to Christ as Mother of God. This unique relation is integral to

the incarnation of the Word of God and reaches its perfection in the
everlasting presence, body and soul, of the mother with her Son in the
eternal glory of God. One of the great Catholic theologians of the twen­
tieth century, a convert from Lutheranism and now somewhat unjustly
forgotten, put the matter succinctly in The Seat of Wisdom, published
about ten years after the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption,
but still before the Second Vatican Council. The passage merits being
quoted in full:

Each one of these souls, these living members of Christ and his
Spouse who make but one flesh in one and the same Spirit, will
remain distinct, all the more so in that each brings its own in­
dispensable element to the harmony of universal charity. But,
if there is one distinguished forever from all the rest by a role,
a quality, a gift of grace of incomparable excellence, it is Mary
herself. For Mary will forever remain the person through whom
the Word was born in the world, and the one through whom
his Spouse was born for him, by means of his death. Mary will
ever express within Christs Spouse, the Church, what, in her,
transcends even the quality of Spouse, namely, divine Mother­
hood. This incomparable dignity, which, in and for the Church,
belongs personally to Mary alone, will be invested with so great
splendour because it shows forth the greatest condescension of
grace, the most amazing token of the divine love for the crea­
ture, namely, the kenosis of the eternal Son who made his crea­
ture child of God.

In this way, Mary is the realization in a single person, at the

centre and, we might say, the culmination of history, of all that
is most noble and perfect to be realised by the whole world at
the end of history. All the graces given to each person, just as,
before her, they led up to the grace which was hers, so, from
now on, flow from her. In her grace as Mother of God, she is
full of grace in an absolute sense. She prefigures, and, as it were,
pre-contains all the graces the Church will ever receive; and the
supreme grace, uniquely transcendent, of mother of grace itself
414 Reinhard H utter

in its divine source, belongs to the Church and testifies, within

it, to its quality of Spouse, only because it belongs for ever to
Mary, the first and surpassing realisation of the Church whose
collective personality is realised only in individual persons.19

The Blessed Virgin lives already now the fulfillment of human life in the
beatific vision, united in love with God for which human beings were orig­
inally created and toward which they were ordered by original righteous­
ness and elevated by sanctifying grace. The final end of humanity and the
ensuing perfect happiness are realized in the Blessed Virgin Mary—the
complete embodied human perfection united by intellect and will with
God. The present life of the Mother of God in heaven is infinitely more
real than ours, a life of surpassing completion and perfection, a life with­
out the imperfections of sin, natural evil, the fallibility and corruptibility
of material substances, of contingency, and of death, but in virtue of the
participation in the divine life, a life of infinite compassion and mercy—
all of this fully human in personal, embodied identity.
Second, Maria Assumpta is the anticipated Eschaton in history. To­
gether with Christ the head of the Church, she as one fully belonging to
the Church already now constitutes the transhistorical perfection of the
Church. This is at least what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council
teach. Consider section 63 of Lumen Gentium:

The blessed Virgin, through the gift and office of the divine moth­
erhood which unites her with the Son the redeemer, and by rea­
son of her singular graces and gifts, is also intimately united to the
church: the mother of God is the type of the church, as already St.
Ambrose used to teach, that is to say, in the order of faith, hope,
and charity and perfect union with Christ. For in the mystery of the
church, which is also rightly called mother and virgin, the blessed
virgin Mary has taken precedence, providing in a pre-eminent and
singular manner the exemplar both as virgin and as mother.20

19 Bouyer, Seat of Wisdom, 200-201. The English translation appeared first in England
in 1960.
20 Norman P. Tanner, S.J., ed., Decrees o f the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, Trent-Vatican
II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 896.
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 415

Consider, furthermore, the date of the dogmas promulgation: Instead of

being promulgated on August 15, the ancient feast day of the Assumption,
the dogma was promulgated on November 1, the feast day of All Saints. I
take the theological significance of this remarkable circumstance to be the
following: While in virtue of her divine motherhood being the first and
foremost of the communion of saints, the Virgin Mary does as such be­
long inherently to the communion of saints. For she is, after all, a human
person, a creature, all the way down. Hence her assumption, body and
soul, into heaven pertains profoundly to the whole communion of saints.
Again, Louis Bouyer puts the matter into succinct theological terms:

Just as in Mary was first effected that perfect union with Christ
on the Cross that the whole Church is to realise in the course
of its history, so the perfect union with Christ in glory was also
accomplished in Mary, as soon as her earthly history was ended,
as it will be accomplished for the whole Church at the end of all
history.. . .

Christs Ascension does not mean that he has left us to our pres­
ent condition, since he has gone only to prepare a place for us,
that where he is we also may be; no more does Mary’s Assump­
tion mean her separation from us. As her Son is represented in
the epistle to the Hebrews as semper vivens ad interpellandum
pro nobis (7:23), so she remains, as the constant belief of the
Church assures us, at his side, the interceder par excellence. Al­
ready, her blessedness is perfect, present, as she is, with God
who has placed in her his delight. But, more than ever, the con­
templative prayer which raises her above the angels, in the bliss
of an eternal Eucharist, carries an irresistible intercession, on
her part, that sinners, all of us countless children of hers, may
come to be united with her Son.21

Not only has Christ, the head of the Church, arisen from the dead and
sits in glory at the right hand of the Father, but also the one who is his
mother, and by transference of Christ under the Cross, the mother of

21 Bouyer, Seat of Wisdom, 201-3.

416 Reinhard Hiitter

all his followers, has already been assumed, body and soul, into heaven.
And for this reason the whole communion of the saints, the whole body
of Christ is already anchored in the glory of God, not only in the head,
the risen Christ—which is the absolute conditio sine qua non—but also
already in one, who like the rest of the elect relies completely on the in­
finite merits of Christs salvific sacrifice of charity on the Cross.
Third, if the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven, soul
and body, heaven must be part of creation and must have the exten­
sion of at least two human bodies. The resurrection body is a glorified,
incorruptible body, but it is still a body and hence has spatial exten­
sion, circumscription, and position. Some Lutheran theologians in the
Reformation period taught the ubiquity of Christs body. According to
their ontological interpretation of the communicatio idiomatum, Christs
body is taken to be omnipresent as Christs divine nature is omnipres­
ent qua divine substance. Rejecting, in addition, the traditional belief in
the assumption of the Mother of God into heaven, body and soul, and
assuming simultaneously the “sleep of the soul” allowed them to forego
the affirmation of a created heaven. It also meant that there was no ec-
clesial inchoatio of an already obtaining eschatological reality.
Marys assumption, soul and body, entails on the contrary, the reali­
ty of created heaven, of an eschatological presence and not just a prom­
ised future that might obtain for God in the eternal nunc of the divine
midday but not yet for the ecclesia militans on earth. Rather, created
heaven is a reality already in the world in which the ecclesia militans
struggles on. Hence the complete remaking of the cosmos, the new
heavens and the new earth, has begun with Christs resurrection and
ascension into heaven but has continued into the life of the Church in
and through the assumption of the Blessed Virgin. The Church exists
on earth, in purgatory, and already in heaven, the created heaven—and
in the case of the Blessed Mother, soul and body, in the eschatological
perfection of glory. The time of the Church is always already fulfilled
eschatological time, fulfilled in head and body, fulfilled in Christ and in
his mother. Fulfillment does not mean completion and perfection, but
a concrete inchoatio, the beginning of the completion and of the perfec­
tion. The ecclesia militans still struggles; there will be failures, betrayals,
persecutions in the ecclesia militans as there have been, but the ecclesia
triumphans already is in place in eschatological perfection and comple-
 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven 417

tion in her most eminent member who constantly intercedes for all the
other members of the body of Christ on earth and in purgatory.
I have begun this article with a memorable theological statement by
Karl Rahner. I shall end it with an equally memorable theological state­
ment from his older brother, Hugo Rahner. It is to be found in his small
but important book Our Lady and the Church:

Our Lady’s Assumption, the final history of the body of the

woman who gave birth to God is . . . not so much an exception
to the rule, but much more a fulfilling in advance of what is
promised to the whole Mystical Body of Christ. And, moreover,
it is not only promised, but in a sense already realized__ When
the Church celebrates the Assumption, she is celebrating her
own final glory.22

Conclusion
What Christ has accomplished for the sake of all humanity, he has al­
ready fulfilled comprehensively for his mother, who under the cross has
become our mother and through her assumption, body and soul, into
heaven has become the eschatological icon of the Church where she re­
veals to the Church, the mystical body of Christ, the Church’s own final
end. In Mary, in whom all of faithful Israel is gathered, and who in virtue
of her divine maternity is the first of Christ’s body, the Church already
is anchored in heaven, and heaven is reaching into the ecclesia militans.
The stunningly beautiful Baroque churches of my home area in Fran­
conia, Germany, embody this vision in the vertical continuity between
the ecclesia militans at worship in the nave and, as depicted on the walls
as various apostles, martyrs, saints, and bishops, and as depicted on the
ceiling paintings, the ecclesia triumphans, being simultaneously with
the ecclesia militans at worship, eternally glorifying the Blessed Trinity.
The ecclesia militans opens up vertically right into heaven and when the
faithful look up to the ceiling they see heaven open and closest to the
risen Christ they see the Mother of God in heavenly glory. In virtue of
the divine faith they have, the faithful understand perfectly well that the

22 Hugo Rahner, S.J., Our Lady and the Church, trans. Sebastian Bullough, O.P. (Bethes
da, MD: Zaccheus Press, 2004 [1961]), 123-24, 128.
418 Reinhard H utter

open heaven depicted on the ceiling is not one of a future to come but
of a present that here and now impacts the ecclesia militans down below.
And so it would be most natural for the faithful to join St. Gabriel and
St. Elisabeth in greeting the Holy Mother and simultaneously asking her
for her prayer: “Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
With this prayer we have reached the end of the “what if” thought
experiment. It is time to wake up from our dreaming and face again our
cold, gray, and drab world in which we might (always haunted by doubt)
dare the wager of faith based on a nonthematic existential prompting.
Or at least this is what the profoundly secularized simulacrum of faith,
the well-camouflaged comprehensive rule of private judgments in mat­
ters of revealed religion, would want us to believe. But what if we have
no good reason to entertain the preceding reflections as a “what if”
thought experiment of a hypothetically supposed divine faith? What if
divine faith is indeed the only faith worth having? What if sacred the­
ology is inherently bound to and fed, illumined and guided by divine
faith? What if this theology is the only theology worth doing? For after
all, as Spe Salvi emphasizes, “in embryo there are already present in us
the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life.”23 And having received
the very substance of a whole, true life in divine faith, must it not be
similar to what Psalm 126 expresses: “When the Lord restored the for­
tunes of Zion, we were like those who dream” (Ps 126:1; RSV)? ISlvV

23 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe salvi, §7.

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