The Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin

Francis A. Sullivan, S.J. (Roman Catholic Theologian and Historian):

To make the matter more concrete, we can apply what is said here to such doctrines as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. No one nowadays claims that these doctrines have always been explicit objects of Christian faith. They are not clearly taught in Scripture, nor is it easy to show that they necessarily follow from the scriptural evidence. It is highly unlikely, indeed extremely improbably, that there was any explicit oral tradition about either of these doctrines during the first centuries of the Christian era.

(Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church, [Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2002; previously published by Paulist Press, 1983], p. 17.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria