As with the previous volumes of Explorations in Theology, the general title of Spirit and Institution given to the essays in this volume should not be understood as one that intends to indicate a systematic treatment of its topic. “Spirit and Institution” indicates only a kind of leitmotif that echoes in a kind of “free variation” throughout most of the essays gathered here. Only one of them, the eponymous essay, explicitly develops the motif for its own sake; but even it makes no claim to have exhausted its inner possibilities. This is merely a sketchbook: all it tries to do is approach its main object from different angles. But perhaps in using this method we can catch sight of unexpected turns and shapes, seeing things afresh as if for the first time. There is a central Light that illuminates everything, but we can glimpse it only from its different rays. Perhaps some eager soul thirsty for systematics would like to make something out of these fragments, putting the stones in order and assembling them into a mosaic. The author, however, mistrusts such undertakings. Such constructions merely try to yank the mystery from its seclusion and cast it into the glare of our light. But God dwells in inaccessible light. Nevertheless, our theme is one that, if circled humbly and unpretentiously, directly affects Christians and the Church today. What most threatens Christianity today, and is the deepest source of its current anemia, is the splitting apart of these two features of the Church united in our title. And because it is very difficult to put back together again what has already been driven asunder, we prefer from the outset to contemplate them both at their point of origin: at the source where they both originate and mutually fructify each other. Reform never takes place by reassembling and gluing back together pieces that have broken apart. Rather, “a shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse; from its roots a branch will bear fruit.”

From the author’s Introduction