Anamnesis, Epiclesis, Prolepsis: Categories For Reading The Second Vatican Council As “Renewal Within Tradition’’

Abstract A major ecclesiastical council—particularly one that claims ecumenical status—may be approached in two ways, both of them essential to its understanding, interpretation, and evaluation; moreover, because the two approaches interact, they must not be separated. A council may be broadly considered as an event located within a preparatory history, where it then occurs in its own way and finally has effects in the ecclesial body. Alternatively, it may be more narrowly examined for its own deliverances, which are authoritatively promulgated in textual form. As a Protestant (and specifically a Methodist) sympathetic to viewing the Second Vatican Council as an instance of ‘‘renewal within tradition,’’ I concentrate on two conciliar documents—the decree on ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio) and the constitution on the sacred liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium). These I set in relation to the two convergent ‘‘movements’’ in the history of the twentieth century that aimed at the recovery of full unity among Christians of institutionally divided traditions and the renewal of their intentionally common worship: the ecumenical movement and the liturgical movement. In the deepest sense, these two movements found their sources in apostolic and patristic Christianity (that is, in the common ground before the major divisions of the sixteenth, the eleventh, and even the fifth centuries), and in the longest run they sought to advance the Church—and indeed thereby the world—toward the consummation of God’s Kingdom.