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This paper explores the pneumatological-sociological picture of the Holy Spirit that appears in much contemporary theology, in which the Spirit is strongly associated with local communities and social movements, and decidely not with "institutions" (complex formal organizations). This picture is elaborated through reference to several examples and illuminated by a discussion of its socio-political context. The picture fits a neoliberal context in which national and international political economies are protected from democratic contestation. The paper also responds to moral, political, and theological worries about institutions in light of concerns that the neglect of institutions undermines resistance to neoliberalism. Finally, an alternative picture is sketched in which human "ritual play" generates a variety of organizational forms that potentially participate in the Spirit.
This paper turns to means the Holy Spirit employs to orient one to Christ’s person-forming work. Drawing out the narrative significance of bodily limits, as depictions of one’s need for God’s help, God’s power to provide, and enjoyment of divine gifts, shows that Protestants, like Luther, Wesley, and Calvin, deployed figurative language and metaphors of disability. These narrative deployments emphasize the Spirit’s use of sensation to stimulate awareness of divine activity. Indeed, analyzing disability’s textual function reveals how *hearing* the Word, the *taste* of faith, and pleasing *visions* construct a sensorial habitus. The Spirit, then, uses this habitus to carry one to the Word, restore relationships, and inspire fellowship. In contrast to criticisms of the Protestant tradition as overly intellectual and disinterested in sensation, the paper concludes to gesture towards a pneumatology that unearths Protestantism’s surprising compatibility with disability justice through its attention to sensation.
In *Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit*, Elizabeth Groppe argues that Congar’s distinctive contribution to pneumatology lies in his integration of anthropology and ecclesiology. This paper builds upon this insight and uses Congar as a foundation from which to construct an integrated pneumatological theology of preaching. Theological reflection on the activity of the Spirit in preaching continues to lack a robust integration between anthropology and ecclesiology, often focusing on the individual preacher at the expense of the community. What if we instead began with the Spirit-filled community as the starting point for a theology of preaching? A coversation between Congar's pneumatology and the practical field of homiletics, this paper approaches preaching not only as an application of theology but also as a source of theological reflection. I reveal how reflecting more deeply on the Spirit's activity in the community gathered for the preaching event can help advance our pneumatology.
In this paper, I propose an approach to a theology of social transformation in dialogue with Irenaeus’ thought, bringing the aesthetic concept of glory—divine and creaturely—into dialogue with theo-political societal transformation.
Irenaeus’ view of the power of divine glory to transform humans and humanity may provide conceptual raw material for a constructive political theology and theo-political aesthetic of sustainable systemic transformation. Drawing on Irenaeus’ Adversus haereses, Epideixis, and other extant writings, I begin by sketching the theocentric character of Irenaeus’ understanding of politics and his embrace of symphonically-differentiated unity. I consider the socio-political implications of Irenaeus’ juxtaposition of paradigmatic models of change—Christ’s radical work of recapitulation—and progressive models of growth—the Holy Spirit’s multivalent work of fostering spiritual progress in human lives across the spectrum of the divine οἰκονομία and in the collective homo by whom Irenaeus tells a communal story with a unified protagonist.