The Forgotten Council?

Interesting background to the Council of Orange from Alister McGrath's book on the Theology of the Cross:

The doctrine of justification had been the subject of considerable debate within the early western church during the course of the Pelagian controversy. In 418 the Council of Carthage undertook a preliminary clarification of the church's teaching on justification in response to this controversy. Its pronouncements were, however, vague at several points which were to prove of significance, and these were revised at what is generally regarded as being the most important council of the early church to deal with the doctrine of justification -- the Second Council of Orange, convened in 529. No other council was convened to discuss the doctrine of justification between that date and 1545, when the Council of Trent assembled to debate that doctrine, among many others. There was thus a period of over a millennium during which the teaching office of the church remained silent on the issue of justification.

This silence serves to further enhance the importance of the pronouncements of Orange II on the matter, as these [Carthage's canons] thus come to represent the definitive teaching of the Christian church on the doctrine of justification during the medieval period, before the Council of Trent was convened.

Recent scholarship has established that no theologian of the Middle Ages ever cites the decisions of Orange II, or shows the slightest awareness of the existence of such decisions. For reasons which we simply do not understand, from the tenth century until the assembly of the council of Trent in 1545, the theologians of the western church appear to be unaware of the existence of such a council, let alone of its importance. The theologians of the Middle Ages were thus obliged to base their teaching on justification on the canons of the Council of Carthage, which were simply incapable of bearing the strain which came to be placed on them.

The increasing precision of the technical terms employed within the theological schools inevitably led to the somewhat loose terms used by the Council of Carthage being interpreted in a manner quite alien to that intended by those who originally employed them.

For reasons such as these, there was considerable confusion within the later medieval church concerning the doctrine of justification. This confusion undoubtedly did much to prepare the way for the Reformation, in that the church was simply not prepared for a major debate on justification, and was unable to respond to Luther's challenge when it finally came. (pp. 11-12)

Originally posted in June 2004