The article analyzes the administrative and legal guarantees of higher spiritual education institutions in the context of modern educational legislation of Ukraine. Given the insufficient level of scientific and legal study of the topic and given the innovative processes in the Ukrainian educational environment, our intelligence to some extent fills the gaps in the study of this issue. Despite the declared norms in the educational legislation, the administrative and legal guarantees of the activity of institutions of higher spiritual education as religious organizations continue to be formed. The new educational legislation laid down new guarantees for institutions of higher spiritual education and defined a new trajectory for the development of theological education. In particular, the law preserves autonomy from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and as a result of accreditation ZVDO may issue a state diploma. The legislator allows religious organizations to maximally correlate the educational policy of ZVDO, to determine the principles of student self-government. Regarding the licensing and accreditation procedure, opening of postgraduate and doctoral studies, specialized academic council on specialty 041 "Theology", the legislator provides for significant concessions and clearly recognizes all documents of the EITI that are equivalent to state documents. The legislation also stipulates that documents on education, scientific degrees and academic titles, which are issued to persons in the ZVDO, may be recognized as equivalent to state documents. However, the institutionalization of theology in the secular education system requires the search for new forms of its presence in the educational and scientific space of Ukraine.