spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

life within the old life through his particular grace. Roozenboom (2007:175) calls the believer’s
direct participation “a typical feature of particular grace”, by which the believer, through the
mystical union with Christ, is considered justified on the basis of Christ’s perfection. The Spirit’s
renewal of the elect means that the believer is advanced to the position where Christ is. God
reckons the believer righteous on the basis of Christ’s perfect accomplishment. Creation and
eschatology are thus closely related in Kuyper’s pneumatology, even though the eschatological
dimension of the Spirit’s work does not entail notions of realized eschatology. Kuyper maintains
the tension between the believer’s ‘old life’ and ‘new life’ by indicating that the renewal of the
believer is like a new rose grafted on the stem of a wild rose, as a result of which the new rose
still relies on the roots of the wild rose (Kuyper 1888:152). The renewed believer is like the new
rose: the completion of creation is suddenly much nearer through the grafting of the new life, but
the full transformation is not yet realized.
Velema (1957:227-246) contends that the relation between the Spirit and the Son in Kuyper’s
pneumatology begs for serious attention. He identifies a deficit in Kuyper’s pneumatology,
which is rooted in his doctrine of creation and anthropology. According to Kuyper, the human
being consists of a body and a soul; the body and the soul cannot be separated, and together they
form the being (the self) of an individual. In the soul, God has planted spiritual potential that has
to flourish, just like a germ has to be developed in biological life. According to Kuyper, the
planting of this spiritual potential is the work of the Son, and the Spirit is the One who keeps the
seed alive and growing (Velema 1957:238). The implication of the close connection between
spiritual potential and the Son is that the Spirit is not involved in the creation of new spiritual
life; the Spirit is assigned to sustain and develop it. This perspective on the work of the Spirit
differs from the ideas of the Reformers, who saw a close relationship between new (spiritual) life
and the work of the Spirit: conversion or regeneration was ascribed to the Word through the
power of the Spirit. Velema indicates that Kuyper’s distinction between the work of the Son and
the work of the Spirit does not provide a fruitful basis for Reformed pneumatology (1957:244).
Spirit and charismata
In The Work of the Holy Spirit, Kuyper dedicates a whole chapter (XXXVII) to the spiritual gifts
of the Holy Spirit. Charismata are perceived as the “divinely ordained means and powers
whereby the King enables His Church to perform its task on the earth” (Kuyper 1946:130). The
charismata are framed by the institution of the church, and are the talents people have been
graced with in order to serve others, inside and outside the boundaries of the church. In a sense,
the charismata of the Spirit can be compared to the phenomena of fire and light within the
structure of a household: they are not the central part of the household, but they ensure the well-
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