spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

not be disappointed: God’s love will be poured out in the hearts of the believers. Augustine
contends that it is the Spirit who will be poured out, because when God pours out his love, He
shares nothing other than Himself, and this is done through the Spirit who is the mutual love of
the Father and the Son (cf. Umstattd 2008:29).
Within the Trinity, the Spirit is characterized as the One who is the principle of divine
communion and unity. This implies that the Spirit, as bond or embrace of the inner-Trinitarian
love, is the provider of love and communion. The Spirit is not only the mediator of relationship
or the gift proceeding from the Father and the Son, but the bonding Spirit also gives communion
to the Father and the Son. Eugene Rogers Jr. (2005:67) contends that “it is this received unity,
the koinonia or communion of the Holy Spirit, that renders the life of the Trinity dynamic and
allows for the inclusion of others within that life without distortion” (italics original). In
embracing the Father and the Son, the relationship-oriented Spirit always creates possibilities for
inviting creation in that embrace and communion of love. Calvin, following Augustine, also
refers to the Spirit as the bond of love, who places human life in relation with God’s love: “the
Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself” (Inst. 3.1.1).
7.2.2 Ecstatic spirit
There is a general consensus to conceive the Trinitarian God as ‘ecstatic’ on the basis of this
movement towards creation. The Greek theologian John Zizioulas developed the concept of
ekstasis in his relational Trinitarian theology as described in his magnum opus ‘Being as
Communion’ (1985). The basic thrust of his approach is that true existence is constituted in
communion (Kärkkäinen 2007:90). It is not possible to truly exist without moving beyond the
‘individual’ self-existence. In other words, to be a true person and to be able to live in freedom
necessitates living in relationships, in communion. Zizioulas views this communal ontology of
personhood as an avenue to naming the mystery of the Triune God.
The main building block of Zizoulas’ communal ontology of personhood is provided by the
Cappadocian Fathers, who, on the basis of the relation between hypostasis and prosōpon 43 , stated
that ‘person’ implied that relationality is a constitutive element of being; a human being cannot
be a ‘person’ if he or she does not exist relationally. Zizoulas retrieved this Cappadocian
innovation of personhood, and placed it in the frame of communion. In doing so, he turned the
43. The Greek word prosōpon refers to the mask, used by Greek actors in theatrical plays. In theological terms,
prosōpon carries the meaning of ‘person’ in the sense that one’s personhood was an addition of unique attributes to
one’s essential human nature — as was the mask to the actor (see Grenz 2004:138).
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