spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

6.2 REFORMED PNEUMATOLOGIES
The following is a brief overview of pneumatological approaches by various Reformed scholars.
The overview starts with the pneumatology of John Calvin. Most of his ideas about the work of
the Holy Spirit can also be found in the pneumatological approaches of other influential
Reformed theologians, as will be shown at a later stage in this chapter. It thus seems viable to
start with Calvin’s pneumatology, and to complement it with the pneumatological proposals of
Reformed theologians like Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, Arnold Van Ruler, Jürgen Moltmann,
Michael Welker and Jan Veenhof. I have chosen these theologians because they have had a
significant influence on the course of Reformed theology. Some of these approaches were of
particular significance for Reformed theology in South Africa (and thus also in Southern Africa).
Another reason for the selection is the fact that each of these Reformed theologians has offered
rather distinctive and outlined ideas pertaining to the work of the Holy Spirit. This makes it
feasible to present their pneumatological proposals in broad terms 35 . It is not my intention to
suggest that this brief overview will do justice to the rich and extensive pneumatological
approaches of the above mentioned Reformed scholars. However, it is my hope that the synopsis
will give an adequate impression of Reformed pneumatological thought. The systematic
approaches to the work of the Holy Spirit will be followed by a presentation of the
pneumatological perspective found in the Heidelberg Catechism. Finally the question will be
asked whether there are notions, motifs and themes emerging from this discussion that can offer
a matrix of Reformed pneumatology.
35. In the description of the pneumatological proposals presented in this chapter as well as in the rest of this thesis, I
will refer to the Holy Spirit as ‘She’. The deliberate use of this feminine pronoun is motivated by the challenge of
the faulty nature of human language about God. Speaking God requires constant awareness of the unknown side of
God, the transcendent life of God that can never be confined by human speech. The use of the feminine pronoun in
this thesis is thus not meant as a plain correction of traditional speech about God, because the use of ‘she’ instead of
‘he’ will obviously lead to overcorrection and thus to a shift of the problem. By referring to the Spirit as ‘She’ I try
to find language about God the Spirit, while I try to avoid the pitfall of taking words about God for granted. The use
of the feminine pronoun functions as a kind of speed hump: it helps to slow down and to notice the flaws in our
language about God. For example, when God is expressed as male, in a sense maleness becomes divine; when God
is pictured as white, somehow whiteness becomes divine. Despite firm resistance to these projections, there is a twothousand
year tradition that seems to have taken these projections for granted. Precisely by naming the opposite of
these projections (‘she’ instead of ‘he’, ‘black’ instead of ‘white’, ‘disabled’ instead of ‘able’, ‘weak’ instead of
‘strong’, ‘unhealthy’ instead of ‘healthy’), one can at least detect the flaws in our language. As long as the use of the
feminine pronoun for God the Spirit evokes questions (whether positive or negative), its relevance for pointing to
God’s transcendence is proven.
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