spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

the cross points to victory: God’s power is in his weakness, his death brings glorified life 64 . The
cross stands for death, but also includes resurrection meaning. John’s theology of the cross
clearly understands the cross as triumph over the power of death, as an “instrument and point of
victory, not the point of defeat which has to be reversed on Easter morning” (Marsh 1968:618;
see also Bultmann 1955:56; Newbigin 1982:160; Schillebeeckx 1980:409ff). The cross and
resurrection are kept very close together, but not in such a way that the meaning of the cross is
lost in the event of the resurrection. God’s power is established through his suffering and death 65 .
The tension of the cross and resurrection is held together by the Spirit of God. The Spirit is the
Spirit of Christ, the crucified One through whom it is possible to refer to the cross as the
beginning of new life. Moltmann (1992:60-65) identifies the Holy Spirit as the One who
accompanies Jesus in his life and death (see also Dabney 2001:56). Jesus receives his power to
proclaim the coming Kingdom in word and deed from the Spirit without limits (Luke 4:18-19,
John 3:34), and the Spirit accompanies and empowers Jesus up to the point of his death on the
cross. The passion story of Jesus can simultaneously be understood as the story of the Spirit,
even though the Spirit does not suffer the same way as Jesus does (Moltmann 1992:64; Novello
2011:94). The Holy Spirit is associated with the power of an indestructible life (Hebrews 7:16,
9:14; 2 Corinthians 13:4), and She enables Jesus to surrender to death. The participation of the
Spirit in Jesus’ surrender is shaped by the Spirit’s life-giving power to make this end the new
beginning: the Spirit is not only involved in the journey to the cross, but She is also the auctor
resurrectionis Christi, the source of life and re-birth of everything living (Moltmann 1992:67f,
with reference to Calvin, Corpus Reformatorum XLVII, 48).
In the Scriptures, resurrection events are considered to be the work of the Spirit, because the
Spirit of God gives new life that is beyond the power of death (Romans 1:3-4; Ephesians 1:19-
20; 1 Peter 3:18). Thomas (2002:262) contends that the New Testament authors based their
perception of the resurrecting Spirit on the vision outlined by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37) in
64. According to Rücker (1985:210) this concept of a suffering God has difficulty finding access to African ideas of
power, because they generally do not match with the doctrine of a God who surrenders himself to weakness. Mbiti
(1973:402) conveys the same idea by describing the opinion of an African Christian who explains that Jesus is his
Savior, “not so much because of the cross but because he is linked up with the God who, by virtue of his
almightiness, can and does rescue or save the needy”. Bongmba (2004:108), in his reflection on the concept of
power in Africa from a theological perspective, emphasizes that the notion of God’s suffering is to be embraced:
“one must insist that no conception of divine power is complete if it ignores the reality that God is a suffering God”.
65. In his Between Cross and Resurrection, Alan E. Lewis develops a theology of Holy Saturday by exploring
extensively the dialectics of God’s power and glory. He takes his stance in the ‘no-man’s-land’ of Easter Saturday,
in the helplessness after death and before resurrection life.
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