spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

in the cosmos, Polkinghorne (2006:179) elaborates on how God is at work within the contingent
evolvements of history. He affirms the ideas of John V. Taylor (1972:28) about a Creator who
can be supposed to work on the inside of creation, implying that God is present in the whole
process of life, and not only in the gaps. Taylor criticizes the idea that God’s providence is
mainly expressed in the disrupting nature of divine interventions in everyday life, since it would
mean that the works of the Spirit are mainly associated with the one-sided, sudden moments of
discontinuity and naked power in this reality. Taylor refuses to speak of this kind of divine
intervention, because God is already present and working within the history of creation. The
Holy Spirit should not be understood as God’s power, breaking-in in reality at arbitrary moments
and upsetting all structure and logic by leaving gaps in this reality. Following Taylor’s reference
to the idea of a God who can enter when human knowledge fails, Polkinghorne twists the ‘God
of the gaps’ concept by suggesting that these gaps can be considered as benevolent, because they
match well with the intrinsic features of this reality. The gaps of contingency are not caused by
the interrupting power exercises of the Spirit, but they belong to the reality of creation.
Consequently, Polkinghorne characterizes the Holy Spirit as the ‘Spirit of gaps’: the Spirit is
present, hidden and veiled, in the contingent spaces of life. Working on the inside of creation, in
close connection with bodies, the Spirit contends that contingency (of bodies) and fullness of life
do not exclude each other. On the contrary, gaps and fullness constitute two crucial
characteristics of creaturely life. It is the contingent status of creation that provides the Spirit of
gaps with the opportunity to allow ourselves, our bodies, to escape from self-constructed life
templates of autonomy, infinity, ugliness and inadequacy. In the gaps of life, the Spirit restores
the longing for fullness 57 .
Based on various pneumatological approaches to vulnerable and contingent creation, one could
say that the Spirit of God introduces vulnerability as a qualification of the relation between God
and creation. Vulnerability does not only mean that creaturely life is receptive to damage and
disappointment. It is also true that one can find a particular quality in the experience of
vulnerability: the capability to be kept safe and whole, to be healed and lifted. This vulnerability,
which becomes tangible in the human body, can be understood as the realm of the Spirit of God.
57. John Polkinghorne’s approach to the ‘Spirit of gaps’ is developed in the context of the dialogue between faith
and science. Likewise, the Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong contributed significantly to the current debate on
science and religion (see Yong 2006, 2011; Smith & Yong 2010). Yong has developed a pneumatological theology
of creation that allows for the understanding of ‘Spirit’ as a scientific category. He is also of the opinion that
Pentecostal understandings of the dynamic presence of the Spirit in creation make a distinctive contribution to the
scientific discourse.
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