[Conservative til I die]

My main issue with the Protestant theological worldview, which you touched on here and in other posts, is that Protestants look at Christianity in the vacuum of the Bible. The Early Fathers are completely ignored, linguistics are completely ignored, historical context is completely ignored.

While no one is saying that the words of historians or the Early Church Fathers are on par with the Bible, their writings are very relevant when one talks about things the Bible is silent or iffy on.

For instance, one might say that Mary definitely had children and was not a perpetual virgin. OK, that's a valid thing to claim. Scripture is somewhat ambiguous about this. However, if you look at what the earliest fathers of the Church taught, they almost uniformly teach that Mary was a perpetual virgin. There simply is no Tradition of Mary as mother of several children.

Similarly, when we talk of Mary's Assumption, again this is something that simply is not covered in the Bible at all. But, when we look back on the historical writings, it is quite interesting that there are no churches claiming to have possession of her relics. No one claims to have built their Church over or near Mary's grave site. This is all indicates that while we can never prove without a shadow of a doubt she was assumed bodily into Heaven, that there is a longstanding, uniform Tradition that she was.

Many Protestants tend to ignore this simply due to an aversion to Tradition. However, it *is* important and relevant.

[annalex]

Protestants look at Christianity in the vacuum of the Bible

We are reminded that they do not look at the entire Bible either, thus large swaths of Christian theology, such as Communion of Saints and treasure of merits remain off limits.

It is actually worse that merely separating a part of the tradition, -- written canonical Word that is -- and ignoring the rest. Ignorance of Tradition is ignorance of the Scripture. On this thread, for example, we see an utter unability to profitably read a plain canonical text because of the perverse urge to reject the traditional understanding.

[OLD REGGIE]

"... it is quite interesting that there are no churches claiming to have possession of her relics."

No one has ever claimed to have Jimmy Hoffa's remains. Is it reasonable to assume he vanished into thin air?