Habits of the Spirit

Abstract

"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"