spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

The focus in Welker’s pneumatology is the reality of the Spirit, and the ways in which the Holy
Spirit can be experienced. Welker wants to get a clearer view on the diverse testimonies to God
the Spirit. These testimonies are his point of exit, which makes Welker’s pneumatological
approach a realistic and pluralistic theology (Welker 1994:4649). It is realistic, because he does
not attempt to offer a comprehensive metaphysical model of the Spirit’s work, but wants to begin
with biblical and contemporary testimonies to the Holy Spirit. These testimonies are connected
to each other, but they can also be incompatible. Precisely these interconnections and differences
contribute to a perspective that is sensitive to the reality of the Spirit. In other words, ‘realistic’
has to do with both the diversity in creaturely reality and the mystery of God’s reality. According
to Welker, the weakness of most other pneumatologies is that they do not make a distinction
between God’s reality and creation (between the Holy Spirit and human spirit, resulting in
natural pneumatologies), or address issues that are beyond this worldly life, ignoring human
experiences (resulting in pneumatologies of the beyond). A realistic pneumatology would avoid
those two pitfalls. Consequently, Welker’s pneumatology is a pluralistic approach: the different
patterns in human experiences of the Spirit refer to and require a sensitivity to the diversity (and
sometimes incongruity) of those collections of experiences. In contrast with pneumatological
contributions of other theologians, Welker’s pneumatology is not a systematic approach of the
work of the Spirit, nor does it include metaphysics of the Spirit, salvation, and inner-Trinitarian
relationships of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. He basically maps the diverse human
testimonies of the Spirit (as found in the biblical traditions) and identifies various patterns of
Spirit-experiences, which offer knowledge about God.
Welker’s concern is the modern and secular claim that God is absent in this reality, and he
wishes to counter this claim. His presupposition is that the Holy Spirit reveals the presence and
the power of God (1994:2, 40). Knowledge about God, and about God’s creative power, makes
us look towards the Spirit, who is involved in creaturely reality. The early-biblical testimonies to
the Spirit are still unclear (in the sense that they do not provide distinct references to the Holy
Spirit) but a pattern can be identified: God’s Spirit is the Spirit of deliverance. God’s Spirit wants
to deliver, restore, renew, preserve and empower human beings.
Following the early, and not fully crystallized, experiences and testimonies to the Spirit are those
experiences that reveal God’s Spirit as a Spirit of justice and of peace. Identifying God’s Spirit
as the Spirit of justice is one of the major contributions of Welker’s pneumatology. He bases his
approach on various messianic texts (Isa. 11:1ff; Isa. 42:1ff; Isa. 61:1ff), and shows how these
texts reveal the socio-political dimension of the Spirit’s action. The Spirit of God, who in
comparison with the earlier testimonies now rests on persons and endows them (1994:109),
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