spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

he emphasizes that the resurrection of Christ refers to the real divine involvement, turning
Christ’s redemptive death and resurrection into a historical and effective reality for us (Kraan
1974:203;1984:84). This perspective of realizing eschatology 48 involves all aspects of life in a
direct and decisive way (Kraan 1974:202,204; 1984:85). Since God’s salvation is real and
effective in this world, physical healing has also become a matter of salvation. Kraan
acknowledges the presence of disease in this reality, and interprets diseases as signs of the old
order, which is chaos. That is how the old order aims to sabotage the full existence of the new
order. Yet, God’s grace has overcome the old order, and the actuality of the new order calls for
believers to reject and rebel against disease; it should not be accepted as if it is coming from
God.
Kraan’s theology is characterized by the full revelation of eschatological salvation. There is no
tentative or provisional salvation, because Christ’s resurrection brought real and effective
redemption in its fullest sense. With his understanding of realizing eschatology, Kraan differs
from the Reformed majority that defends a discontinuity or at least a ‘discontinual continuity’
between creation and God’s ultimate reign, in which physicality can never reach perfection and
the believer’s transformation is never completed. Kraan’s emphasis on the soteriological
meaning of the resurrection for the present tense challenges Reformed thought, and poses the
question of how the link between physicality and transformation can be expressed from a
Reformed perspective. Within the Reformed tradition, the theme of embodied resurrection life in
the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not-yet’ is still underdeveloped. Harmen de Vries
(2011:20) affirms this in relation to Dutch theological discourse.
Considering the theme of transformation and physicality, Reformed pneumatological thought
does not offer satisfying options for articulating a link. This has to do, in my perspective, with
both the power of the metaphor and the prioritizing of the soul over the body. The metaphorical
approach is rightly to be seen as powerful and persuasive, since it recognizes the ‘is and is not’
aspect of discourse on God. One simply cannot theologize without using metaphors. Yet the
downside of metaphorical language is the tendency to stop searching for non-metaphorical ways
of verbalizing transformation and embodiment. Once metaphorical language is applied to the
theme, it is difficult to invite literal language on the scene again. The other complication in
48. Kraan’s concept of ‘realizing eschatology’, as reference to the effective reality of God’s salvation in the present,
differs from the concept of ‘realized eschatology’ used by the Protestant New Testament scholar CH Dodds (The
Parables of the Kingdom, 1935; The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 1953). Kraan’s understanding of the
presence of the Kingdom is that it is real, but still advancing; the powers of the old order are still trying to
undermine the new order.
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