spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

5.3.3 Power of the Holy Spirit
Within the African church-based healing discourse, the meaning of the power of the Spirit is
understood in such a way that the Spirit is not only needed for dismantling the effects of evil, but
also for revealing the cause of illness and misfortune (Anderson 1991:56). The Holy Spirit
moves beyond the treatment of symptoms, and reaches deeper, uprooting the source of the
ailment. The power of the Spirit is a crucial theme within the church-based healing discourse,
because the power of the Spirit is key to a new perspective on experienced reality. The outlook
on life in abundance will remain blurred if the power of the Spirit is out of the picture, since the
Spirit is needed in order to discern, identify and address evil.
Allan Anderson, who has published extensively on the Pentecostal tradition in Africa, shows in
his Moya (1991) how African and biblical concepts of spirit and power are related to one
another. According to Anderson, critics who state that AIC and PCC pneumatologies understand
the Holy Spirit as a kind of mixture of African traditional concepts of spirit (in which the Holy
Spirit is turned into an impersonal and manipulated kind of power) do not do justice to
pneumatologies that put a strong emphasis on the power of the Spirit rather than the person of
the Spirit. Even though power-pneumatologies may seem less reflected upon from a Western
theological perspective, “perhaps the ‘power’ made available to Christian believers through the
Holy Spirit is closer to the African concept of ‘life-force’ than we dare to admit!” (Anderson
1991:60). In a sense, one could agree with Anderson that the African concept of vitality or life
force can be approached as preparatio evangelii, since the traditional concept of spirit (umoya in
the ngoni languages) can help in understanding the power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian
tradition. Umoyo is the vital power, the force that is essential for human existence, growth and
development. And as the cornerstone of the identity of the individual, umoyo can be compared to
the Hebrew ruach and the Greek dunamis: the power that converts itself into strength, ability,
dignity, authority, and the overpowering of suppression and injustice. It is, according to
Anderson, the power implored and experienced through the Holy Spirit. It is about the divine
power that is badly needed by the human being in order to become how he or she is suppose to
be in the eyes of the Bible: whole and holy, that is filled with the Spirit.
Within the church-based healing discourse, believers prefer to express the manifestation of the
Spirit’s power in a very concrete and visible way 32 . The outcome of the spiritual battle should be
32. Even though pneumatological manifestations like exorcism and healing usually govern the church-based healing
discourse, prophecy is another essential pneumatological constituent of the healing ministry. Prophecy is understood
as the articulation of a direct revelation of God by the power of the Spirit, who aims at a renewed relationship of
God and mankind. Hence, a church leader’s prophetic gift needs to be used in order to address and reveal the
137