spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

One who sustains creaturely life. In line with this sustenance by the Spirit is the idea that the
Holy Spirit is involved in emphasizing and upholding the quality of creation in its vulnerability.
In other words, the vulnerability of creation is the realm of the life-giving Holy Spirit. In this
research, the vulnerability of creation means that creation is susceptible to damage as well as
susceptible to healing (cf. Culp 2010). On the basis of a pneumatological approach, the notion of
quality of life then generates a new Reformed perspective on healing: the Holy Spirit reveals that
the vulnerability of creation is to be understood as a qualification of creation.
The works of the Spirit, upholding the quality of life amidst the vulnerability to damage and the
vulnerability to health, are always the opposite of the mechanisms of invulnerability to which
people resort in this life. The Holy Spirit invites persons to accept their vulnerability as a
fundamental feature of creation. Receiving or consenting to one’s vulnerability as characteristic
of God-given life implies perceiving one’s own life in the light of the cross and the resurrection
of Christ. The vulnerability of God transpires in the cross and the resurrection, in Christ’s
susceptibility to damage and his susceptibility to glory. The Holy Spirit redefines creaturely
vulnerability in a Christian way, and reveals the meaning of vulnerability as quality of life: as
life that belongs to God.
The redefinition of vulnerability by the Spirit is thus an invitation for human beings to own their
vulnerability, that is to accept being creatures who are susceptible to damage as well as
susceptible to wholeness. This human consent to being vulnerable can be understood as
partaking in the Spirit’s mission of beautifying creation, for accepting one’s vulnerability is an
act of beautifying one’s life. The Spirit draws vulnerable creaturely life to her beauty and
perfection. Yet, being beautiful here means being beautiful in Christian terms, that is:
beautifying one’s life through the ugliness of the cross. The cross of Christ is the only way to
glorify God, and thus to consent to vulnerability, and thus to place one’s life under the reign of
God’s beauty. In other words, the Spirit’s redefinition of vulnerability goes hand in hand with a
converted sense of beauty as a way of speaking about healing.
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