Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 50:1 (Mar 2007)
Article: Habits Of The Spirit: Reflections On A Pragmatic Pneumatology
Author: Adonis Vidu

JETS 50:1 (March 2007) p. 105

Habits Of The Spirit: Reflections On A Pragmatic Pneumatology

Adonis Vidu

Adonis Vidu is assistant professor of theology at Emanuel University, Str. Nufarului 87, 410597, Oradea, Romania.

The question of the relationship between the Spirit and the practices that are a constitutive part of the church is especially pressing today. The reason for this urgency is that in the wake of the so-called linguistic turn in both philosophy and theology, it has become customary to conceive religion primarily in terms of participation in specific practices. Being a Christian is defined in terms of becoming skilled in certain practices. One’s being a Christian is no longer so much a matter of having a certain sort of relationship to God, a certain ontological status deriving by being regarded as justified by God. Rather, it has become a matter of socializing oneself into a habit of life.

One might be forgiven for suspecting that this is the return—with a vengeance—of an institutional and formalized model of religion, a final victory over the Reformation. However, despite its “tilt” towards Rome, postliberal theology also cherishes a post-Constantinian ideal of Christianity. It tends to define the church not so much in terms of a formal acknowledgement of belonging to this and that visible community, but rather in terms of authentic participation in Spirit-inspired practices. Nonetheless, it is still “visibility” that matters, albeit not the formal visibility associated with institutionalized religion, but the practical visibility which is also translatable as the fruits of the Spirit.

To be sure, Reinhard Hütter deplores the damaging effect the distinction between the external, formal, and the internal, informal church has had on ecclesiology. It is only possible to erect a disjunction in this way if we construe externality as the sphere of human activity, while restricting divine action to the realm of the internal, of the soul. This privatization of religion that may have been partly encouraged by the Reformation is now viewed with reservation. Once we understand that the external must be construed as necessarily pneumatological, it becomes clear that only faith can discern the externality of the Holy Spirit’s activities.

This description of the “core practices” of the church as belonging to the agency of the Holy Spirit nonetheless assumes an important theological position, that is, that the activity of the Holy Spirit must proceed along the lines of these core practices into which the church has already been habituated. The activity of the Spirit—his presence in the church—is overlapping

JETS 50:1 (March 2007) p. 106

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