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Last Friday, I began a review of the new Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, edited by Massimo Faggioli and Catherine Clifford, focusing exclusively on the opening section of the book, which serves as a kind of frame for understanding Vatican II. Today we focus first on the painting in the frame, the event that was the council and the texts that it produced, followed by a brief examination of the handbook's thorough treatment of the reception of the council.
If the first section warranted a more detailed examination of each chapter, for the book's second section, "The Council Documents," it is enough to mention the highlights. Unsurprisingly, Richard Gaillardetz's chapter on the ecclesiology of Vatican II is exceedingly well done. He sets forth some of the important antecedent documents and events that made "the freshness of Vatican II's deliberations and principal teachings" possible. He relates the prior conciliar discussion of the liturgy to the resulting liturgico-sacramental foundation of the ecclesiology found in Lumen Gentium as well as the missionary nature of the church, which would become so central a theme in the post-conciliar landscape. Anyone familiar with Gaillardetz's work on authority will find it set forth concisely here, and how these developments were made possible by the retrieval of a theology of the local church from the ressourcement theologians.
Gaillardetz also helpfully highlights the Trinitarian origins of the church. The Christocentrism of the documents of Vatican II is evident, but not exclusive. "As Congar observed, the council's ecclesial Christocentrism escapes a more reductive Christomonism by integrating the missions of Christ with that of the Spirit," Gaillardetz writes. "Together, Christ and the Spirit 'co-institute' the Church." I have read a lot about ecclesiology but have never before encountered such a clear articulation of the pneumatology at work in the texts.
The chapter on revelation, from Australian Jesuit Gerald O'Collins, is similarly masterful. I count less than a dozen paragraphs in the entire chapter that are not underlined, asterisked or dog-eared in my copy. These two sentences strike precisely the kind of thoughtful, balanced treatment characterizes the whole: "In worship and life, revelation continues as an actual encounter with God. But this living dialogue adds nothing to the core of the divinely revealed truths, which essentially amount to Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead, along with the coming of the Spirit."
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