The Lord Is the Spirit. John A. Studebaker

ecclesiology. Reminiscent of Luther, Hütter aligns the Spirit with the doctrines and practices of the Church. The Church begins with a trinitarian conception of “communio–ecclesiology,” where the Church is the fellowship of participation in the communion of the Father with the Son in the Spirit. Hütter’s concern is that the Church see herself rightly, as “a glad recipient” of God’s saving work, but also as a body that understands how this “receiving” takes place. “This receiving embodied in practices is precisely the way in and through which the Holy Spirit works the saving knowledge of God.”203 In this paradigm, Church doctrine and practice become the “mediate forms” through which the Spirit guides the Church to truth, and these truths become the “binding authority” of the Church.204 Since Hütter describes the Spirit’s actions as the “poimata” of the “Spiritus Creator,” the Spirit seems to possess a sort of “poetic authority” with respect to the local church. How might such an authority of the Spirit be discerned in light of our pattern of divine authority? We shall investigate this further in chapter six.

      James Buckley and David Yeago’s Knowing the Triune God

Buckley and Yeago seek to construct an “evangelical Catholicity” that is “deeply embedded in the Luther tradition.”205 Like Hütter, who seeks to discover the Spirit’s work in the practices of the Church, these editors attempt to understand the Spirit’s work in the Church’s practice of spirituality—they “hope to know the triune God by the gift of the Spirit in the practices of the Church.”206 They want to re-focus on the Spirit’s work as that which goes beyond the modern “dividing line between the inner and the outer” (which aligned the Spirit with inward subjectively and posited the Spirit against outward practices). Instead, all aspects of spirituality must begin from “one single starting point: in the Spirit, beginning with God’s action and beginning with the Church and its practices are one beginning, in a unity in which the divine and the human are neither divided nor confused.”207 Because of the Spirit’s intimate role in the practices of spirituality, we must ask Buckley and Yeago whether the Spirit has a specific authority with respect to spirituality. We shall investigate this further in chapter seven.

      Gregory Jones and James Buckley’s Spirituality and Social Embodiment

Jones and Buckley’s goal is to confront modern “spirituality,” which only “takes us out of the socially embodied world into a more inward (mystical) space.” A “socially-embodied spirituality,” on the other hand, “calls us beyond our selves to more material realities.”208 Jones develops this spirituality by looking at Bernard of Clairveaux, and concludes that,

Christian living involves a journey of learning to know oneself precisely as one who is known by God. This journey of self-knowing requires awareness of both our absence from God . . . [and] our being renewed in the divine image by God’s Spirit learned through such practices as prayer and almsgiving.209

Yeago builds on this initial approach to spirituality by showing its actualization in the Church. “The mature Luther” described the Church as “the gathered people” which believes in Christ and has the Holy Spirit: “The inward is given through the outward: it is by virtue of its divine character as a bodily, public assembly that this community is endowed with these inward, spiritual blessings.”210 The Spirit is thereby the one who distributes Christ’s salvation “through the Christian Church and through the forgiveness of sins imparted in the Church.”211 The Spirit incorporates believers into the Church so that one’s private spirituality can find expression in adherence to the Church.212 Since such a view seems to elevate the practices of the Church to a place of paramount importance in the development of the believer’s spirituality, we will need to ask Jones and Buckley whether the Spirit retains “authority” with respect to this development. We shall investigate this further in chapter seven.

      The Governing Authority of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline

      Now that we have observed several contemporary approaches to the Spirit/Church relationship (both theoretical and practical approaches) we are able to examine them in search of a provisional definition of the Spirit’s governing authority, and then pose initial questions for each approach regarding its alignment with the provisional definitions discerned earlier. These questions will be further addressed in chapter three and four as well.

In discerning the “authority” of the Spirit in relationship to the Church, it seems that these various “communitarian” and “paleoorthodox” perspectives might be categorized in terms of “functional power” and “governing authority,” respectively. A function is the ability or power to perform specific duties, but does not imply any delegation of authority from one person to another213 (and in this sense it is not an “authority” at all, since it is not essentially personal). In the “communitarian” approaches to ecclesiology presented by Welker, Moltmann, and Hodgson, the Spirit only seems to possess the functional power to perform a specific task within communities (i.e., creating pluralistic communities within our human experience, experiencing the Spirit “as community,” or invoking liberating experiences, respectively). The Spirit’s “authority” seems to be reduced to his “power” to create an experience of God in the context of the Church community, but without due concern for the pattern of authority.

      “Governing authority,” on the other hand, incorporates the authority inherent in one’s own person along with a delegated authority to work or function as “governor” (we might think of a “governor” who is granted the authority to rule locally under the auspices of a President or King). Such a “governing authority” of the Spirit seems to coincide with Oden’s “paleoorthodox” understanding of the doctrine of the Spirit (which generally respects the pattern of authority) while listening to the “postmodern” desire for a renewed focus on the experience of the Spirit within the Church. In this scenario, the body of Christ, having a temporary status until Christ returns with his eschatological Kingdom, is created and administered by the “governing authority” of the Holy Spirit.

      Whereas a “functional power” of the Spirit is not necessarily associated with the other aspects of the Spirit’s authority already discussed, the Spirit’s “governing authority” implies a vital connection to these aspects. If the Spirit’s authority or power is not related to the other elements in our pattern of authority, what will this do to our understanding of the Spirit’s “authority”?

      As a result, initial questions can be asked regarding each of the above-mentioned “whole book” theologies of the Holy Spirit. For instance, in their concern for the experience of the Spirit, have these theologians left behind various aspects of our pattern of authority in the developing their models? What does this do to the notion of the “governing authority of the Spirit”? In particular, we will need to ask:

      1. Does Moltmann’s “panentheism” depreciate the Spirit’s authority as a divine Person?

      2. Does Pinnock’s “universalism” or Hodgson’s “modified trinitarianism” nullify the Spirit’s executorial authority?

      3. Does Welker’s “pluralism” reduce the Spirit’s veracious authority with respect to inspiration, and does Badcock’s attention to spiritual experience reduce the Spirit’s veracious authority with respect to illumination?

      4. Precisely what effects do any deficiencies in Moltmann’s, Hodgson’s,