spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

providence allows for a limited yet definite locus of contingency: God’s working through natural
and secondary causes allows for the understanding that those causes or instruments are, within
boundaries, agents of contingency (like, for example, the sun travelling its own course and
adjusting it seasonally). Krusche (1957:25) also refers to Calvin’s emphasis on the instruments
as means for God’s providence without God becoming the author of sin. Calvin’s pneumatology
sees the Holy Spirit as the sustainer of life, but not as the One who makes or determines
everything in cosmic life. God works through his Spirit, who works through people (and not in
them, so as not to restrict them). In his sermon on Deuteronomy 32:23-27, Calvin states that God
uses secondary causes such as medicine and doctors to establish healing in cosmic life, and that
God wants humans to make use of those instruments. God’s providence is thus linked with such
agents of contingency in the sense that God involves secondary means in his saving activities.
Calvin’s doctrine of providence also includes the gifts of grace, administered to creation by the
Spirit. This is where Calvin’s notion of common grace comes in. God’s common grace is the
power with which God preserves, sustains, and advances cosmic life in general, and human life
in particular. This divine grace, granted to creation through the work of the Spirit, can be
identified as universal common grace and as general common grace. The former is already
mentioned as the Spirit’s work of sustenance; the later is to be understood as the gift of
intelligence and reason which allows humans to regulate society, to govern, to develop science
and arts.
Calvin’s pneumatology reflects a positive understanding of creation. The Spirit of God is
involved in cosmic life in a sensitive and gracious manner, allowing life to exist and unfold. The
world is seen as a dazzling theatre (Inst. 1.5.8; 2.6.1) that displays God’s glorious works, and
where the Holy Spirit infuses every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to
technology with the gift to witness to the glory of God (Inst. 1.11.12).
Spirit and redemption
The concept of the believer’s union with Christ is a central element in Calvin’s theology
(Hesselink 2008:345). It is only in the union with Christ that the believer can experience
redemption and be saved, sanctified and even glorified. Highly significant in this mystical union
is the role of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is the One who relates the believer to Christ.
Calvin even contends that if the Spirit is not involved, the suffering of Christ and the salvation
accomplished by Christ do not carry any meaning at all for us (Inst. 3.1.1). Van ‘t Spijker
(1989:44) points out the soteriological meaning of the Spirit’s work by saying that only through
the work of the Spirit, Christ extra nos becomes Christ in nobis. And only through the mediating
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