spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

Chapter 6 is an account of pneumatological approaches developed by Reformed theologians
(Calvin, Kuyper, Barth, Van Ruler, Moltmann, Welker, Veenhof and Van der Kooi) as well as an
overview of the Heidelberg Catechism’s pneumatology. The overview of Reformed
pneumatologies presents particular motifs that can be seen as the contours of a matrix of
Reformed pneumatology. This matrix shows that three key concepts of the African health
discourses can be identified as prominent pneumatological themes, while the fourth concept
seems to be underdeveloped in Reformed thought.
The subsequent chapters (Chapters 7-10) in the second part of this study are elements of an
open-ended pneumatological adventure. The chapters engage contextual health
conceptualizations with pneumatological perspectives in order to generate new articulations of
the relation between God and health. Each chapter offers a constructive approach to the relation
between God and health: each key concept (derived from the African health discourses) plays a
central role in one of the respective chapters, and can be considered as a lens through which the
relation between God and health is viewed.
Chapters 7-10 offer a pneumatological sketches of health and healing, nothing more and nothing
less. The four pneumatological sketches are fragments in the discourse on God and healing. They
may be contradictory, but cannot be mutually exclusive, because the sketches are partly rooted in
the discourses on health in Africa: the different perceptions of health (as defined by the various
health discourses) address multiple and different realities, thus the same approach may apply to
theological conceptualizations of health.
Chapter seven is an exploration of the concept of relationality. Relationality is prominent
concept in social Trinitarian discourse, where God’s life is perceived as loving communion. The
Augustinian idea of the Holy Spirit as the bond of mutual love within the Trinitarian Godhead
allows for the understanding of the Spirit as the One who embraces the relationships among the
Trinitarian persons, and as the One who establishes relationality between God and creation. On
the basis of the identification of the Spirit as the bond of love, this pneumatological orientation to
relationality provides Reformed language for the link between God and healing.
Chapter eight is an exploration of the concept of transformation. Within theological discourse,
transformation is a recurring concept. It is, however, also a very complex concept in Reformed
pneumatology due to its elusive nature. A pneumatological focus draws attention to the question
to what extent Reformed perceptions of transformation offer space for categories of physicality
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