spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

the breath of life, are endowed with the capacity to be restored, to experience healing and shalom
(Ezekiel 37:1-14). When the Spirit gives life, it is always God-related life, with aspects of
wholeness, abundance, peace, well-being and health. The Spirit, thus, creates and upholds the
existential well-being and the promise of renewal of life, because She is the One who fosters lifegiving
relationships.
Articulating a link between God and health, thus, has to do with the work of the Spirit, who
allows God’s breath of life to be shared with human beings. One could say that any statement
about God and health starts with the person of the Spirit, who opens God’s relationality so that
creation can participate in God’s shalom, wholeness and health. In other words, any reference to
health and healing in human life can be understood as an implied reference to the Triune God,
since we find our well-being and healing within the web of relations with God, with other human
beings, with our environment, with everything that is within the horizon of God’s relational life.
The link between the life-giving Spirit and human existence is relationality, and actually
parallels the African perception of health in the sense that healing requires a continuous search
for balance, a continuous process of addressing the illness that has distorted the social tissue of
health. The self-giving love of the Father, the kenotic love of the Son, and the bonding love of
the Spirit provide the basis for understanding what human well-being and health is supposed to
be.
In that sense it is plausible to say that this perspective on Trinitarian social life embraces a
possibility that is not yet fully explored in Reformed theology: if the Spirit can be identified as
the bond of love who opens God’s life towards creation through life-giving bonds, then it
becomes possible to speak of wholeness, health and healing as relationality in creaturely life. In
other words, understanding well-being and health as embedded in Trinitarian relational life
presents a new perspective on the link between Spirit and healing.
Locating health and wholeness in God’s relational life implies that health and healing are
soteriological categories in the sense that one’s wholeness is established by God’s
communication of wholeness. The Scriptures witness the Spirit as the One who is always
involved in creating life-giving bonds, and thus in drawing creation into wholeness and wellbeing
(salvation) provided by God. Health, then, is not something that has its origin in creation
itself. Rather, health and healing are embedded in God’s relational life, and can be experienced
in the life-giving bonds of human life. In this light, the notion of borders in African healing (as
described in Chapter 2, section 4) could be further explored in the context of the accessibility of
health and healing for human beings. In the discourse of African traditional healing, borders
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