spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

Migliore (2008) has the same opinion about a redefinition of the nature of God’s power. He
makes a case for understanding God’s power as shared power on the basis of the doctrine of the
Trinity. His claim is that the living God, whose life is communal or social by nature, is “the
power of self-giving love” (2008:82). Migliore shows that a full understanding of God’s power
will have a profound impact on Christian life. The power of self-giving love of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit can reshape the ways in which power is exerted in human life, both by
individuals and communities. Christian politics, inspired by the power of God, is directly linked
with forgiveness, hospitality to strangers and prayer for God’s coming reign.
Reformed understandings of the concept of divine power seem to embrace two opposite
perspectives: divine power as a self-sufficient or relational power. A rather radical shift from
solitary power to shared power can be noted in Reformed discourse. The conceptual imprecision
of the biblical concepts of power, in combination with global societal changes, contributed to the
absence of nuance in Reformed theology on power. In other words, one could say that Reformed
theology works with an underdeveloped notion of divine power.
10.1.2 Pentecostal understanding of power
Another theological perspective on God’s power has been developed by the growing field of
Pentecostal theologies 62 . Sykes (2006:107) places the Reformed understanding of divine power
as weakness (as antagonistic to power) over against the Pentecostal emphasis on the importance
of signs and wonders through God’s power. In Pentecostal theologies, divine power is
understood as the power of the Spirit that enables the believer to exist in a way that corresponds
with God’s intentions (cf. Anderson 1991:120). One of the often mentioned aspects of
Pentecostal pneumatologies is that the Holy Spirit is represented as the power that enables
believers to conquer evil forces and malevolent spirits. The Holy Spirit is the enabler who brings
victory in spiritual warfare, and who is considered as the “new Christian change-agent” (Kalu
2002:122; see also Anderson 2002:527). Gräbe (2002:241) contends that “the Pentecostal
message of God’s life-giving power, which delivers from evil and allows one to feel safe in a
hostile world, is relevant to the existential world of Africa. The message of African Christianity
must provide for the existential this-worldly needs, and not only for the life to come”. The Holy
Spirit is thus perceived as the divine power who guarantees fullness of life in the here and now
(see Ngong 2010:2) 63 . Pentecostal theology of power, therefore, hinges on the person and the
62. The chapter on church-based healing discourse addressed briefly the Pentecostal conceptualization of the power
of the Spirit, and came to the conclusion that the question of power is central in Pentecostal discourse.
63. In his work on the Holy Spirit and salvation in African Christian theology (2010), David Tonghou Ngong resists
this kind of popular pneumatological soteriology, because according to him this approach restricts the African
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