Recognizing the Spirit

Boldly tackling the question of how to negotiate diversities in identity and practice within the unity of ecclesial relationship, this book constructs an ecclesial Pneumatology capable of addressing modern issues of church conflict and separation.

For decades, ecumenists have lamented the stagnation of the ecumenical movement. Simultaneously, individual church bodies, communion, and denomination have been fracturing over questions of gender and sexuality. Both slow-moving crises stem from the issue of how to negotiate diversities in identity and practice within the unity of ecclesial relationship––an issue that at its root is a problem of “recognition.” Here, ecumenical recognition is supplemented with insights from Continental philosophy, literary theory, and Augustinian Pneumatology. Ultimately, this book follows the work of Eberhard Ju¨ngel to propose a correspondence between the existence of the church and the existence of the triune God, in that both exist as “a communion of mutual otherness.”

If God is who Christians say God is––if the Spirit is and does the work that Augustine and Jüngel say it does––then Christians are incorporated into a Body whose shape we are not free to determine, whose contours are not ours to construct or demarcate. God’s primary recognition of believers in the church affects a secondary recognition that, despite the very real harm Christians do perpetrate against one another in our performative divisions, should make us question the extent to which we can every truly do without one another.

Author Biography

Kathryn L. Reinhard is assistant professor of religious studies at Gwynedd Mercy University.