By understanding theological discourse as a church practice determined by the salvific-economic mission of the Holy Spirit in doctrina and the core practices, we overcome the false alternatives between freedom and being bound, between theology being self-determined or being externally determined. Only in the Holy Spirit and in genuine poeisis of communion does theology as a church practice participate in God’s liberum arbitrium [freedom]. Only by remaining bound to God’s economy of salvation does it step into the ‘freedom of the children of God’, becoming thus a discipline commensurate with its object. For only within its distinct pathos does it become capable of truth.
The ecclesial koinonia is to be understood as a soteriological work of the Holy Spirit grounded as such in the communion of the triune God, a communion which through its own presence engages its salvific activity in the koinonia and indeed binds itself to the koinonia by beginning to draw the latter into the divine life. The ‘other’ side of the church as the work of the Holy Spirit is also that the triune God has bound his communion to the ecclesiastical koinonia … In its pathos the church is the actualizing agent of the salvific-economic mission of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. In this sense the church needs to be understood precisely as the public of the Holy Spirit.
Reinhard Hütter Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice
You could try Hütter’s more accessible Bound to be Free: Evangelical Catholic Engagements in Ecclesiology, Ethicsm and Ecumenism. It is not only state of the art, but it is full of joy.
