Institution or Body?

Scot McKnight recently posted this riddle:

“Hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus Christ.” These words describe large numbers of people, especially young people, today. They are opposed to anything which savors of institutionalism. They detest the establishment and its entrenched privileges. And they reject the church — not without some justification — because they regard it as impossibly corrupted by such evils. Who do you think said this? [No googling answers.]

It was from John Stott, written in 1958.

IMO it is an oxymoron, but then again I'm not I'm not a good nominalist. A protestant hermeneutic, insofar as it is nominalist, will not be able to countenance universals. An institution is a universal; thus institutions must be opposed. It seems essential to classic protestant identity to protest, focus on the tension between Christ and church, to always be struggling, to live in the "not yet." Institutions make for broad and handy targets of criticism. Thus for protestants it makes perfect sense to emphasize the distinction between the two, and assume that somehow one can relate to Christ independently of Church.

Postmoderns, riding the tsunami of modernism to its inevitable shore, exult in deconstruction and the slaughtering of sacred cows. Institutions invite dismantling-- marriage, church, family, whatever. But some postmoderns (inexplicably) draw a line at deconstructing persons, and so Jesus is able to escape the knife. Thus emergents can relate to Jesus independently of the Church.

But is this faithful to scripture? How does this connect with what Paul writes in Ephesians? Does Paul consider "institution" somehow different from Body? (And even if He does, is Body a particular, or a universal?) Again, a protestant hermeneutic, insofar as it is nominalist, will not be able to countenance universals; an institution is a universal; thus institutions must be opposed.

But what if there is a different hermeneutic, one that is not based on the modernist nominalist metaphysic? What if there are universals, in which particulars participate? (Augustine and Aquinas seemed to think so, calling them "ideas in the mind of God.") Then it will not be so easy to dismiss institutions, or read "Body" as anything except a universal in which particular congregations and persons participate.

As for "me and my house," we take the Church to be the Body of Christ, and that Body is incarnated through the institutional church. So it is a contradiction to accept Christ but reject His Body. Perhaps it is even heresy? ( from Gk. hairesis "a taking or choosing," from haireisthai "take, seize," middle voice of hairein "to choose," of unknown origin.)