spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

efers to Hamilton 1957:26-40). Thus, being adopted as a son or daughter of God means that the
Spirit recovers both soul and body for a life with God. Welker (2007:239) stresses that “the
ability to host the Spirit even in our bodies, and to unite with God in Christ ‘in the Spirit’ is a
breathtaking elevation, an extension of real human existence”. Adoption through the Spirit
means holistic transformation; it means life to mortal bodies when the Spirit lives in the believer
(Romans 8:11). Paul refers to the redemption not only of physical existence, but of the whole
embodied existence. The Greek word sōma expresses for Paul more than the human body; it is
the embodied existence that includes the social and ecological dimensions of life, and that allows
a person to participate in human society (Dunn 1998:61). The obvious implication of a union
with the triune God is that the Spirit of adoption has a holistic approach when it comes to
transformation and salvation 47 .
The crucial transition established by the work of the Spirit of adoption is not only to be
understood as a holistic, all-embracing transformation; it also means that the union with Christ
has an eschatological connotation. The Spirit of adoption initiates a process that has already
started, and that has not yet finished. In his metaphor of adoption (and throughout his
soteriology), Paul uses two tenses of salvation (aorist and continuous), referring to two phases in
the process of salvation: the beginning and the ongoing (Dunn 1998:461). Paul’s double use of
the metaphor also expresses this tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not-yet’. In Romans 8:15
the metaphor of adoption denotes an ‘already established salvation’ through the receiving of the
Spirit who makes it possible for the believer to call God ‘Father’. Yet Romans 8:23 refers to
adoption as something that is not yet completed: there is still the waiting for the redemption of
the body and for the final adoption as sons and daughters. The Spirit of adoption, thus, bridges
the ‘already’ and the ‘not-yet’ of salvation; the union with Christ means being caught between
the decisive beginning of existential transformation and its completion.
47. The notion of a holistic or multidimensional understanding of the believer’s adoption as a son or daughter of
God is also present in the pneumatology of Clark Pinnock (1996). In his treatment of salvation as a transforming
union with God, he indicates that Luther’s understanding of justification as salvation placed the emphasis on the
sinner’s change of status, from guilty to not guilty, rather than on a personal union with God. In response to this
characteristic of Reformed theology, Pinnock proposes a more relational model of salvation with an understanding
of the Spirit as the One who leads believers to a transforming, personal, intimate relationship with the triune God
(149). He also emphasizes that this union with God is not a mere spiritual union, but should be understood
holistically: “union with God is not limited to spirits. The creation does not disappear or nature go into oblivion. The
goal of the union is (…) a multidimensional consummation of creaturely existence in God” (1996:155, with
reference to Santmire 1985: 217-218).
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