spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

In this study, the fictional story of Grace Banda is a narrative element that is meant to illustrate
the meaning of the link between key motifs of health and theological discourse. She will reappear
in the Chapters 7-10. Grace Banda is a fictitious person, but her story is based on reality.
Her experiences are those of the congregants and ministers of the Reformed Church, and they
make her a true representation of African Reformed Christianity. The Grace Banda narrative
emphasizes the need for a contextual theological approach to healing, and it exemplifies how a
pneumatological approach to African concepts of health can broaden Reformed understandings
of health.
6. Research contribution
This study of Reformed theological insights on healing is not confined to the field of biblical,
practical, or systematic theology like most other contributions. It starts outside the realm of
theology and focuses on the variety of African health conceptualizations first. By including
cultural and medical anthropological research, this exploration is an interdisciplinary approach to
health and healing. On the basis of the identification and description of prominent health
discourses, currently existing in Southern Africa, this study can be seen as a contribution to
interdisciplinary research on health.
A major obstacle in the study of health from a Reformed theological perspective is the difficulty
of finding sufficient academic contributions on health and healing. Pertaining to the Southern
African context, this lack of resources is related to, and explained by, the history of those
churches that were founded by European missionaries. These missionaries belonged to a
tradition that had renounced the subject of healing since the Reformation. Essentially, one could
say that Reformed theology in general struggled with the complex relationship of healing and
salvation, and became silent on the theme of healing altogether. The explorative and constructive
nature of the second part of this study should be understood against this background of silence.
The exploration is meant to be a contribution to the broadening of theological articulations of
healing that address the quest for healing by African Reformed believers in a contextual way.
The work of the Holy Spirit is centralized in this endeavor of opening up the Reformed matrix to
African notions of health. The whole exploration of broadening Reformed articulations of God
and healing depends on a pneumatological orientation: the focus on the Spirit allows for a link
between God and healing so that Reformed reflection on healing can be broadened. This study is
meant to be a contribution to pneumatology and constructive theology.
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