‍The Bible never says Mary was assumed into heaven

  Gary Hoge  ·  November 3, 2026

‍Well, no, it doesn’t. But the Bible also doesn’t tell us which books belong in the New Testament—or that there should even be a New Testament. And I’ve never found a passage that teaches that Scripture is the Christian’s only rule of faith. But Protestants accept both the 27-book New Testament and the “Scripture alone” doctrine.

‍So apparently we’re both comfortable accepting doctrines that aren’t explicitly taught in the Bible. Catholics are just more upfront about it.

‍The Catholic Church has never claimed that Mary’s Assumption is explicitly taught in Scripture. But the Church has also never claimed that every Christian doctrine must be taught in the Bible to be true.

‍Not everything was written down

‍The Church teaches that divine revelation was handed down through the teachings of the apostles, whether they wrote them down or not. Paul told the Thessalonians:

‍So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

‍The Catholic Church believes that Mary’s Assumption is among the teachings handed down from the apostles and preserved within the Church. The doctrine wasn’t invented in 1950, when Pope Pius XII formally defined it. Christians had been celebrating Mary’s Assumption for many centuries before that.¹

‍But is there any biblical support?

‍Yes, although we should distinguish biblical support from explicit biblical proof. And there is certainly biblical precedent.

‍Scripture tells us that Enoch was taken by God (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5), and that Elijah was taken up into heaven (2 Kings 2:11). Obviously, these passages don’t prove Mary’s Assumption, but they demonstrate that God has taken someone from earthly life in an extraordinary way before.

‍Catholics also see a connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. The original Ark was the sacred chest that held the tablets of the Law, the manna, and Aaron’s priestly staff (Hebrews 9:4). Mary is sometimes called the New Ark of the Covenant because she carried Jesus, the Word made flesh, the Bread of Life, and our great High Priest. Just as the original Ark carried the signs of God’s presence among his people, Mary carried God himself in her womb.

‍Now here’s something interesting. In Revelation 11:19, John sees the Ark of the Covenant in God’s heavenly temple. Immediately afterward, in Revelation 12:1, he sees a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

‍Who is this woman? Revelation 12:5 tells us that she gives birth to a son who will rule all nations with an iron scepter—clearly Jesus Christ. And Revelation 12:17 describes the rest of her children as those who keep God’s commands and hold fast to their testimony about Jesus. So the woman is both the mother of Jesus and, in a spiritual sense, the mother of his followers. 

‍That certainly sounds like Mary.

‍The woman also represents God’s people, both Israel and the Church. Biblical imagery can have more than one meaning. But if Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant, the appearance of the Ark in heaven immediately before this heavenly woman is especially suggestive. It doesn’t prove the Assumption, but it fits remarkably well with the Catholic belief that Mary was taken bodily into heaven.

‍And there’s nothing particularly strange about the idea of Mary being taken bodily into heaven. Christians already believe that God will someday raise their bodies from the dead and take them into heavenly glory (1 Corinthians 15:42–53; 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). Catholics simply believe that God has already done for Mary what he has promised to do for the rest of us.

‍There’s a deeper significance to this. In Catholic teaching, Mary isn’t just an extraordinary individual. She’s also a model of the Church and, in a sense, represents all believers.² What happened to her at the Assumption is a preview of what God has promised to those who belong to Christ. Her Assumption isn’t just about Mary’s destiny. It’s a demonstration of our own.

‍What about the historical evidence?

‍There’s also some interesting historical evidence, although much of it is circumstantial.

‍From the earliest centuries, Christians treasured the bodily relics of martyrs and other saints. Churches were built over their tombs, and their remains were preserved and venerated. Yet despite Mary’s extraordinary importance, there are no known bodily relics of her. There are relics said to have belonged to her, including clothing and other possessions, but none of her body.³

‍That’s particularly striking because the Church has preserved relics attributed to many figures far less prominent than Mary. If her body had remained on earth, wouldn’t we expect Christians to have preserved and venerated it?

‍Pope Pius XII made this same point when he defined the Assumption in 1950, citing St. Bernardine of Siena’s observation that the Church had never sought Mary’s bodily relics or offered them for veneration.

‍There’s also the testimony of early Christian accounts. By the fifth and sixth centuries, stories of Mary’s departure from this life were circulating in different parts of the Christian world. Although these accounts disagree about many details, several describe her body being taken to Paradise. These beliefs were eventually reflected in the Church’s liturgical celebrations of her Dormition or Assumption, both in the East and the West.⁴

‍We shouldn’t exaggerate the evidence. The earliest surviving Christian writings are largely silent about Mary’s final years, and Epiphanius, writing in the fourth century, acknowledged that he didn’t know how her earthly life ended.⁵ The later accounts contain legendary elements, and we can’t establish that their details go back to the apostles.

‍Nevertheless, there’s something worth considering here. We have a longstanding Christian belief that Mary’s body was taken from this world, a widespread liturgical celebration of that belief, and no authenticated bodily relics of the woman Christians honored above all other saints.

‍Taken together, these considerations make the Catholic belief more reasonable than the objection might initially suggest.

‍Conclusion

‍If we begin with the assumption—if you’ll pardon the pun—that every doctrine must be explicitly taught in Scripture, then the Assumption is going to be difficult to accept.

‍But Catholics don’t believe that every doctrine must be explicitly taught in Scripture. Neither, strictly speaking, do Protestants. They usually insist, though, that every doctrine must at least be derived from Scripture—an idea which, ironically, cannot itself be derived from Scripture.

‍So no, we can’t find a verse that says Mary was assumed into heaven. But if Christ established a Church with the authority to preserve, interpret, and faithfully teach the revelation entrusted to the apostles, including what they taught orally, we don’t have to.

‍And Catholics believe he did.

‍So the objection is correct as far as it goes: The Bible doesn’t explicitly teach Mary’s Assumption. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and there’s good reason to believe that it did.

‍__________

^‍1 Pope Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus (1950), §§15–20. Discusses the longstanding liturgical celebration of Mary’s Assumption in the Eastern and Western Churches.

^‍2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §966; Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, §68. Mary’s Assumption anticipates the resurrection of Christians, and Mary is presented as a sign of hope for the Church.

^‍3 Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus, §33, citing St. Bernardine of Siena. The document appeals to the absence of Mary’s bodily relics as supporting evidence.

^‍4 Stephen J. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford University Press, 2002), especially chapters 1–3. Examines the early accounts, their differences, and their historical and liturgical settings.

^‍5 Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 78.23. Epiphanius discusses possible explanations of Mary’s departure from earthly life without claiming to know which occurred.