[ealgeone]

Considering the written word of man, inspired by God. The Cannon that is the Bible wasn’t really settled until about 400 years after Christ’s Death. The notion that it, and only it, are what God has given mankind is wholly ignorant. The entire “Sola Scripture” nonsense was invented by a bunch of foolishness in the 16th century, and perpetuates sadly to this day. “Sola Scripture” is a perfect example of “reintrepretation” for whatever you wish to prove, and hence the plethora of denominations the protestant ideology has spawned, yet they all claim Sola Scripture... if that is true you can’t wind up with dozens if not hundreds of offshoots that have popped up and died off over the centuries. Its a fools errand, but that is one thing the world is never short of.

yeah...the Bible says so much about Mary remaining a virgin, her immaculate conception, being assumed, her appearing in various forms, praying/worshipping her, the papacy, etc.

you really don't want to examine the Scriptures real close on this because the rcc position falls apart real quick.

and I certainly hope you don't appeal to the ECF's because they were all over the board on these issues.

[The_Reader_David]

And where in the Scriptures do you find support for your position that only what can be deduced from the text of the Scriptures is true. Even in the limited domain of matters bearing on knowledge of God and matters necessary to our salvation? And, I remind you that you really must limit the domain, there are innumerable truths which cannot be proven from Scripture (Fermat's Little Theorem, the fact George Washington was the first POTUS under the Constitution,...) I see no warrant for the view that Jesus's promise of the Holy Spirit leading the Apostles, and by extension us, into all truth, is limited to the collection of the Canonical Scriptures and their interpretation by discursive reason.

I will not defend the Latin's strange notion of "the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary", which as an Orthodox Christian, I regard as an attempt to fix a non-existent problem.

However, Our Lady's perpetual virginity, and the fact that after her death, she was assumed body and soul into Paradise, are matters that Christians, whether Orthodox, Latin, Assyrian, Coptic, Armenian or Jacobite, agreed upon until some Germans in the 16th century came up with the strange notion that a shortened version of the Scriptures were a self-interpreting axiom-system from which everything true about not only God, but the earthly relatives of Our Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, could be proven.

As an aside, I note that Papal dogmatization of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is defective not because it affirms that she was assumed body and soul into heaven, but because it fails to condemn the erroneous view, current in many circle of the Latin church, that she did not die.

On what basis do you put the details of the Virgin Mary's life in the same category with regard to the authority of Scripture as the fact Jesus died for our sins, rose again from the dead (as attested by many witnesses) and ascended into heaven, rather than the the category in which Fermat's Little Theorem and the presidency of George Washington fall?