spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

Spirit that creaturely life can exist and develop. The Spirit, then, is not only the power of God
preserving life, but also the One who quickens and sustains life (vivificator). The implication is
that when God withdraws His Spirit from a creature, it means death. Calvin therefore does not
conceive of birth and death as framed by the natural circle of life, but as particular moments in
which the world degenerates and is being renewed by the power of the life-giving Spirit
(Krusche 1957:20).
In Calvin’s pneumatology, the concept of the Holy Spirit as the source and sustainer of life
applies to all of life: the activity of the Spirit in relation to the cosmos is universal. Yet there is a
difference between the Spirit’s activity in creation in general and the Spirit’s activity in the
individual life of the believer. The Spirit as the third person of the Trinity is actively present in
creation, but will never become part of it: the Spirit is a divine being, who does not have a
dwelling place in general creaturely existence. This is different when it comes to the particularity
of believers, since the Spirit of God lives in them, the elected are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The relation between Spirit and creation is thus multidimensional, but it should be noted that
Calvin does not isolate the work of the Spirit in creation in general, and the work of the Spirit in
the regenerate (Höhne 2009:173). This distinction in the work of the Spirit will be elaborated at a
later stage in this chapter.
The presence of the Spirit in the universal cosmos is conceptualized as the providence of God.
Calvin relates the Spirit’s secret sustaining activity to all different kinds of means that nourish
and develop life (like the rays of the sun, bread, medical activities), and he understands these
instruments or secondary causes as eventually stirred by the hand of God (Calvin 1987:231). The
faithful God gives life through the use of various means (media), even though we cannot see
Him as the true source of all cosmic life because He is hidden behind these instruments (Höhne
2009:162). The question can be raised whether Calvin’s doctrine of providence turns out to be a
deterministic relation of God and creation, in the sense that the world is totally dependent on
God, or whether the doctrine of providence also incorporates notions of contingency and of
creation’s distinctiveness. Colin Gunton (1998:151) contends that Calvin’s view on divine
providence lacks any proper distinction between chance and contingency, resulting in Calvin’s
dismissal of the notion of contingency when he rejects the possibility of chance in the universal
cosmos. According to Gunton, Calvin’s emphasis on God’s will was accompanied by a tendency
to necessitarianism: the relation between God and creation is fully determined by God, with
chaos as the only alternative to God’s will (see also Schreiner 1991:30, who indicates that
Calvin’s doctrine of providence is ambivalent when it comes to creation’s contingency). Höhne
(2009:158-178), on the contrary, is of the opinion that Calvin’s understanding of divine
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