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Course 12 · Lesson 7.3

Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 12 outline

Module 1: The Apostolic Fathers and the Early Apologists

  1. Who the Apostolic Fathers were: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the Didache
  2. Church order, worship and martyrdom in the second century
  3. Why Christians wrote apologies: charges, persecution and public defense
  4. Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Module 2: Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen

  1. Irenaeus against the Gnostics: the rule of faith and apostolic succession
  2. Tertullian and the beginnings of Latin theology
  3. Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation
  4. Heresy and orthodoxy: the scholarly debate about early diversity

Module 3: Creeds and Councils: Nicaea to Chalcedon

  1. From baptismal confession to creed
  2. Arius, the Council of Nicaea (325) and Athanasius
  3. The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)
  4. Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): one Christ, two natures
  5. The seven councils and how the churches receive them

Module 4: Augustine, Chrysostom and the Desert

  1. Augustine: life, conversion and the Confessions
  2. Augustine on grace, the Pelagian controversy and the City of God
  3. John Chrysostom: preacher, pastor and critic of wealth
  4. The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Anthony, Macarius and Amma Syncletica

Module 5: The Medieval Church and Scholasticism

  1. The medieval setting: monasteries, cathedral schools and universities
  2. Anselm and the method of scholasticism
  3. Thomas Aquinas: life and the structure of the Summa Theologiae
  4. Aquinas on faith, reason, nature and grace
  5. East and West: the growing divide and the schism of 1054

Module 6: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

  1. Luther and the question of justification
  2. Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition
  3. The Radical Reformation and the English Reformation
  4. The Council of Trent and Catholic reform
  5. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant readings of the Reformation

Module 7: Modern Theology and Tracing a Doctrine

  1. The Enlightenment and its challenges to inherited doctrine
  2. Schleiermacher, liberal theology and Karl Barth
  3. Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements
  4. How to trace a doctrine: development, change and corruption

All courses

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 7.3

What you will learn

  • Describe the aims, main documents and disputed interpretation of the Second Vatican Council.
  • Explain what the neo-patristic movement and the Paris school contributed to Orthodox theology.
  • Define the evangelical movement and the origins of Pentecostalism.
  • Describe the shift of Christianity’s center of gravity toward the Global South.

The big idea

In the twentieth century, each major Christian tradition went through a renewal. The Catholic Church held the Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965), which reformed its worship and changed its way of speaking about the church, Scripture, other Christians and religious freedom. Orthodox thinkers, many of them exiles from Russia, returned to the Fathers and the liturgy and introduced Orthodoxy to the West. Evangelicals and Pentecostals grew rapidly, and the Pentecostal and charismatic movements spread across the world. Together, these changes reshaped what Christianity looks like today.

Key terms

Aggiornamento
An Italian word meaning bringing up to date. Pope John XXIII used it to describe the aim of the council.
Ressourcement
A French word meaning return to the sources. A movement among Catholic theologians to renew theology by studying Scripture, the Fathers and the liturgy.
Collegiality
The teaching that the bishops, together with the pope, share responsibility for the whole church.
Neo-patristic synthesis
A program, associated with Georges Florovsky, of renewing Orthodox theology by returning creatively to the Fathers of the church.
Evangelicalism
A movement within Protestantism that stresses the authority of the Bible, the cross of Christ, personal conversion and active mission.
Pentecostalism
A movement that began in the early twentieth century and stresses the experience of the Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues, healing and prophecy, as seen in Acts 2.
Charismatic renewal
The spread of Pentecostal-style experience of the Spirit into older churches, including Catholic, Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches, from the 1960s.

Background

By the mid twentieth century, Christianity was under pressure from two world wars, secularization in the West and, in many places, hostile governments. Each tradition responded from its own resources. This lesson surveys three of those responses. Each is large, and the lesson can only describe their outlines and the questions about them that are still disputed.

A common thread is a return to sources. Catholic theologians went back to Scripture and the Fathers. Orthodox theologians went back to the Fathers and the liturgy. Evangelicals and Pentecostals went back to the Bible and the Book of Acts. Each claimed to recover something lost and each was accused of novelty.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Second Vatican Council

Pope John XXIII announced a general council in 1959 and opened it on October 11, 1962. After his death in 1963, Pope Paul VI continued it, and it closed on December 8, 1965. Thousands of bishops from every continent attended, along with observers from other churches. It issued sixteen documents. Among the most important are four constitutions: on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium), on the church (Lumen Gentium), on divine revelation (Dei Verbum) and on the church in the modern world (Gaudium et Spes).

The council allowed the Mass and sacraments to be celebrated in local languages, called for fuller participation of the laity and emphasized the church as the people of God as well as a hierarchy. It taught that bishops share responsibility for the whole church, and that Scripture and tradition come from one source. It recognized elements of truth and holiness in other Christian communities and in other religions, in the declaration Nostra Aetate. It affirmed religious freedom in Dignitatis Humanae, and it repudiated the teaching that the Jewish people as a whole are guilty of the death of Jesus.

Step 2: Interpreting the council

Catholics disagree about how to read the council. Some stress that it was a new beginning, an event that changed the church. Others stress that its texts are in continuity with earlier teaching. Pope Benedict XVI, in 2005, spoke of a hermeneutic of reform in continuity, rejecting both a reading that sees a break and a reading that denies any change. A group of traditionalists, such as the Society of St. Pius X, reject parts of the council, and others believe that its implementation went beyond what it intended. The question is still active.

Step 3: Orthodox renewal

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many Russian thinkers fled and settled in Paris, where they founded the Saint Sergius Institute. Sergei Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky and later Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff and others introduced Orthodox thought to the West. Florovsky called for a return to the Fathers, a neo-patristic synthesis, and argued that Orthodoxy had absorbed Western categories in recent centuries. Lossky wrote on the mystical theology of the East. Schmemann, whose book For the Life of the World is in the library, presented the liturgy as the center of Christian life.

Orthodox renewal also included a revival of the Philokalia, the collection of monastic writings, and of the prayer of the heart. Under Communist rule, millions of Orthodox suffered persecution, and the Church emerged with many martyrs. The movement is not uniform, and Orthodox scholars debate the extent to which the Paris school is representative, and whether its emphasis on the Fathers has become too narrow.

Step 4: Evangelicals

Evangelicalism is a broad movement. The historian David Bebbington described its marks as biblicism, crucicentrism (focus on the cross), conversionism and activism. After the fundamentalist controversies, a group of Americans sought a more engaged and scholarly stance and formed the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. Billy Graham’s preaching drew millions. The Lausanne Congress of 1974 brought evangelicals from around the world to commit to evangelism together with social concern. Evangelicals are diverse in politics and in views on baptism, church government and the sacraments, and their relation to the larger Protestant world is much discussed.

Step 5: Pentecostals and the Global South

Pentecostalism traces its modern beginning to revivals in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901 and especially to the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles from 1906, led by the African American preacher William Seymour, in which people of different races worshipped together. The movement emphasized baptism in the Holy Spirit, tongues, healing and an expectation of God’s direct action. In the 1960s, similar experience appeared in Catholic, Anglican and other churches as the charismatic renewal.

Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity has grown extraordinarily, especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia. More broadly, the center of Christianity has moved southward, so that today a large share of Christians live in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Scholars such as Lamin Sanneh and Philip Jenkins have described this change. It means that the future of the history studied in this course will be written increasingly by Christians outside Europe and North America.

  1. Why might the use of local languages in worship be a deep change as well as a practical one?
  2. How can a council both renew and continue the tradition?
  3. What does it mean to say that Orthodoxy had a Western captivity?
  4. What do evangelicals and Pentecostals share and where do they differ?
  5. Why might the Azusa Street revival’s racial mixing matter?
  6. What difference does it make that most Christians now live outside Europe and North America?

Examples

A Mass in a village

Before the council, a village parish in Africa or Asia heard the Mass in Latin. After it, the Mass could be said in the local language and with local music. Many Catholics there found worship newly their own.

A liturgy in exile

Russian exiles in Paris, far from home, held the liturgy in small chapels and saw it as the heart of their identity. Out of this experience, theologians wrote about the Eucharist as the center of the church.

A small house on Azusa Street

In a former church building in Los Angeles, people gathered daily for prayer, singing and testimony. Newspapers mocked, but the movement spread across the world within a few years.

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catholic Church teaches that Vatican II is an authentic ecumenical council and that its documents are authoritative. Catholics differ about its application: progressives stress change and openness, conservatives stress continuity, and traditionalists question parts of it.

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians value their renewal as a rediscovery of the Fathers and the liturgy. They have been involved in ecumenical dialogue, though some Orthodox oppose it. Views of Vatican II differ: some appreciate the return to the sources, others find it insufficient.

Protestant

Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants emphasize the Bible and personal faith. Mainline Protestants participated in the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches. Some evangelicals are wary of Catholic and Orthodox claims, and others learn from them, and views of Pentecostal experience vary widely, with some Protestants critical.

Scholarly views

Historians and sociologists study how modern movements reflect social change as well as theology. They debate how best to define evangelical and Pentecostal, how to count them and how to understand the global shift. They note that Christianity has grown most where it has been translated into local cultures.

Why it matters

These movements are the context for living Christianity today. A student who walks into a Catholic parish, an Orthodox liturgy, an evangelical congregation or a Pentecostal service is entering a tradition shaped by the renewals of the last hundred years. Knowing the background makes it easier to understand what each community is trying to do.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Vatican II changed Catholic doctrine completely.

Correction: The Church teaches that the council developed the understanding of the faith while remaining in continuity with it. Whether it did so successfully is disputed.

Misunderstanding: Vatican II abolished Latin.

Correction: It permitted local languages but said Latin should be preserved in the Latin rites. In practice, Latin was widely abandoned.

Misunderstanding: Evangelical and fundamentalist mean the same thing.

Correction: They overlap in history, but many evangelicals distinguish themselves from fundamentalists, and the two differ in attitude toward culture and scholarship.

Misunderstanding: Pentecostalism is mostly an American movement.

Correction: It began in the United States, but most Pentecostals and charismatics now live in the Global South.

Knowledge check

What were the main changes associated with Vatican II?

The council allowed worship in local languages, encouraged participation of the laity, described the church as the people of God, taught collegiality of the bishops, recognized truth in other Christian communities and religions, affirmed religious freedom and repudiated collective Jewish guilt for Jesus’s death. Catholics still debate how to interpret these changes.

What was the neo-patristic movement?

It was a program, led by Georges Florovsky among Russian exiles in Paris, to renew Orthodox theology by returning creatively to the Fathers. It argued that Orthodoxy had absorbed Western categories in recent centuries. It introduced Orthodox thought to the West through scholars like Lossky, Schmemann and Meyendorff.

How would you define evangelicalism?

It is a Protestant movement marked, in Bebbington’s description, by biblicism, focus on the cross, conversion and activism. It is diverse in politics and in views on baptism and church government. The National Association of Evangelicals formed in 1942 and Billy Graham and the Lausanne Congress shaped it.

Where did Pentecostalism begin, and where does it grow now?

Its modern beginnings are traced to revivals in Topeka in 1901 and the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles from 1906, led by William Seymour. Since the 1960s it has spread through the charismatic renewal in older churches. It has grown most in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Think it through

  1. What does it mean for a tradition to return to its sources without simply repeating the past?
  2. How might worship in your own language change what you hear?
  3. What would you ask someone from a tradition different from yours about their worship?
  4. How does knowing that most Christians live in the Global South change how you see the history in this course?

Independent assignment

Reading across traditions

Read the opening chapter of Schmemann’s For the Life of the World and the first chapter of Lumen Gentium from the library. In your notebook, write 150 words on how each describes the church. Then write 200 words naming one hope and one worry that a member of each tradition might have about the other’s account. Aim for 350 to 500 words.

Further study