The Holy Spirit in the Lutheran and Reformation history: An African
perspective
Kenneth Mtata
Abstract
The reformation traditions have been reshaped in the process of transmission and reception. The Lutheran
and Protestant reformation traditions were transmitted by missionaries mainly from pietistic tradition in
dialogue with the Enlightenment spirit. The same Reformation traditions were received among the African
peoples whose traditional religious inclination and the context of colonialism further reshaped the content of
these traditions. Specifically, the Lutheran Christological thrust of the reformation was given a stronger
pneumatological emphasis upon reception. How did this change the content of the received traditional
theology itself? What are the implications of such a change for the future of global Christianity? What does
this mean for Lutherans and Protestants as they prepare to celebrate 500 years of the Reformation in 2017?
On the basis of the work of one African Lutheran theologian, Manas Buthelezi, I seek to explore some of these
questions.
Introduction
The place of the Holy Spirit in the 16th Reformation is an ambivalent one. While one would
have expected the prominence of the Holy Spirit to be associated with such an epochal
highlight in the ongoing renewal of the church, the Spirit became one of the controversies
of the Reformation. Yet when one tries to map out how the reformation faith found roots in
the African continent, it is neither God the father nor the Son that have prominence, but the
Holy Spirit. It would therefore be profitable, if one seeks to know the significance of the
Reformation to Africa, to begin with the Holy Spirit. It will also be appropriate to look at the
ecclesial, socio-economic, and political implications of such a pneumatological perspective
to the commemoration and celebration of the 500 years of the Reformation. After a brief
overview of the Holy Spirit before and after the Reformation periods, I give some
considerable space to look at the work of Manas Buthelezi on the Holy Spirit. The purpose
is to demonstrate how the reformation tradition was reshaped from a Christological to a
more pneumatological inclination due to the African religious and material milieu.
The Holy Spirit and the Reformation
While the previous ecumenical councils had addressed the person of the Holy Spirit in the
context of the trinity debate, the 16th century Reformation provided a new dimension to the
discussion. The new focus was the place of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of the believer
and in the practices of the church. The leading reformers’ strong Christology was
encountered by the strong pneumatology of the left-wing reformers. Of course this
dichotomy does not fully account for the detailed nuances that blurred the boundaries
since both groups took the trinity seriously.
The main reformers pejoratively presented the left-wing reformers as Schwärmer or
“enthusiasts”, as “people with wild, highly emotional ideas.”1 This was because of the
emphasis these groups gave to the “inner religious experience” and inspiration of the Holy
, Berger, Peter (ed), Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a middle Position,
(Wm.B. Eerdmans: Cambridge, 2010) p. 158.
1
1
Spirit. One such a typical group comprised of the three “plebeian prophets” from the mining
town of Zwickau where there had been the previous Hussite influence.2 These prophets
and their followers claimed “direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit”, “denounced infant
baptism, called for the elimination of the clergy, and predicted the imminent end of the
world.”3
Andreas Karlstadt was also sympathetic and a leading figure of this movement. He sought,
in addition to Germanising the liturgy, to address the socio-political and economic
grievances of his people in his sermons through the power of the Spirit.4 Also Thomas
Müntzer is alleged to have pointed to the superiority of the Holy Spirit to the Holy
Scriptures; that “God’s direct speaking to the soul was a more certain witness of the truth
than the plain scriptural text: the letter killed but the spirit quickened.”5 It is well-known
however that some exaggerations tended to characterize each other’s views and to paint
the left-wing reformers with one brush. For instance, there were many left wing reformers
for whom the emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit did not exclude the validity of
the Holy Scriptures. Instead, the Spirit was seen as behind both the initial inspiration and
the subsequent illumination of the scriptures.6
Luther disagreed with the left-wing reformers, not because he did not believe in the
experiential aspect of faith. He rejected the emphasis on internal experience as the basis for
faith because, for him, human beings encountered God through the means outside
themselves (extra nos), through the scripture, the word of preaching and the sacraments. It
was not only Martin Luther who believed and taught that faith was not a result of free will
but the gift that God gave by the Holy Spirit through the Word. “God grants his Spirit or
grace to no one except through or with the preceding outward Word”, he said.7 The three
main means through which the Holy Spirit came to human beings were the “sermonic
words, baptism, and the Lord’s supper.”8
There is a shift from questions regarding the nature and identity to concerns of function of
the Holy Spirit during and after the Reformation. The Holy Spirit was presupposed as the
initiator of rebirth and renewal of both the individual and the church from the beginning of
the church. The early church fathers recognized the ministry of the Spirit as the active
involvement of the Godhead from the time of creation. Martin Luther and the magisterial
reformers saw the Spirit as necessary force behind the birth of faith and the energy of all
subsequent transformation of the believer though the Word and the sacraments. Even
The Hussites were a medieval Christian movement from Czech who followed the tradition of the earlier
reformer, Jan Hus (c. 1369–1415). In Reformation legends, Hus is believed to have prophesied the rise of
Martin Luther.
3 Malia, Martin and Emmons Terence, History's Locomotives: Revolutions and the Making of the Modern
World, (Yale University Press, 2006) pp. 77-78
4 Malia, Martin and Emmons Terence, History's Locomotives, p.78
5 Malia, Martin and Emmons Terence, History's Locomotives, p.79
6 Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, p.46
7 Schmakald Articles, Erlangen, 25:140
8 Bayer, Oswald, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, (WB Eerdmans Publishing:
Cambridge, 2003), 243.
2
2
though these reformers rejected claims that exalted personal experience of the Spirit, they
did not deny the immediate operation of the Spirit in the individual and the church for the
on-going vitality of the church.
It was this understanding of the Holy Spirit as creator of faith that influenced mission
theology of the 19th century Europe compelling the sending of missionaries to the African
continent.
From Luther to Africa: The missionary factor
Christianity of the 16th century reformation tradition was introduced to Africa by the
missionaries in the 19th century, although earlier sporadic missionary acts by the Catholic
Jesuits are also known in East Africa from the late 16th century.9 Before the arrival of these
European missionaries, however, there was Christian presence already as a result of earlier
contacts between Africa and the Mediterranean world. As depicted in the Acts of the
Apostles (8:26-40), there could have been some Africans at the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit and birth of the Church at Pentecost in Jerusalem. Some African theologians would
want to go further in seeing the church Fathers like Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria as
the flowering of the early planting of Christianity in Africa that dates back to the first
century. If they are correct, it means that the earliest African Christian tradition “emerges
and matures broadly speaking between 42 and 692 C.E. That is 660 years of African
Christianity before the Arab Conquest.”10 In this understanding therefore, when the
western missionaries arrived in Africa, they were not necessarily bringing a new religion.
“Christianity has never departed Africa. In some ways, the Church is now returning to its
African roots”, Oladipo would say.11
Yet, it should be noted that when the large number of missionaries came to Africa around
the 19th century, they were not spreading the same Christianity that had been in the
isolated parts of the continent before. This was something new. First and foremost,
Christianity of the missionaries was now part and parcel of the colonial package. On one
hand, missionary theology served, intentionally or unintentionally, to buttress
subservience among the colonized masses. Through a literal interpretation of Romans 13:1
which says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no
authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God”, this new
Christianity was not always the liberating news of the Reformation. For some Lutheran
missionaries, the relationship with the colonial system could be understood through a
simplistic reading of Martin Luther’s ‘Two Kingdoms’ theory. On the other hand, it was the
missionary education, health system and general personal developmental approach that
allowed Africans to get connected to the good news of the Reformation. For example,
Cathal J. Nolan (editor), The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and
civilization, Volume 1 (Greenwood Press: Westport, 2006), p. 487.
10 Oden, Thomas, C. How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western
Christianity, (Inter-Varsity Press, 2007),p.125. See also Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of
a Non-Western Religion, (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 1995).
11 Caleb Oluremi Oladipo, The Will to Arise: Theological and Political Themes in African Chrstianity (Peter
Lang: New York, 2006), p. 115.
9
3
almost all the political movements in Africa were led by Africans who had been educated
and mentored by European missionaries.
To come back to our theme, it should be observed that the framework of the passing on and
reception of the Reformation evangelical heritage was filtered through the double screen of
missionary pietistic tradition and a traditional African spirituality. The missionary outlook
was responding to a multiple forces but two main ones, the growing enlightenment
influence back home and the wild pagan culture in the missionary field. So while western
missionaries felt obliged to exorcise the Africans of their ‘paganism’, they also saw in
Africans, an opportunity to preserve the ‘original’ Christian religion not contaminated by
shades of growing secularism and industrialization characteristic of their home countries.
It is known, for example, that Berlin missionaries in Southern Africa “encouraged a
patriarchal society with the missionary taking the place of the chief.” These missionaries
welcomed African customs and African spirituality within certain limits.12 This “dialectics
of rejection and incorporation of the African world of spirits and gods”13 characterized the
period of the missionaries that lasted until the end of the first half of the 20th century when
Africans begun to claim the right to forge the agenda of Christianity in Africa. It is within
this framework one should seek to understand both the Reformation Effects and the
trajectory of African Christianity to its contemporary manifestations.
African religiosity before and after the missionaries
As has been indicated above, African religiosity before the arrival of western missionaries,
which has also remained the basis for subsequent spirituality was and is based on strong
expressive religious experience tied to the socio-political and economic realities of the
people. This religiosity was characterized by an understanding that human beings were
“not alone in the universe, for there is a spiritual world of powers or beings more powerful
and ultimate than” us.14 It was further believed that human beings could “enter into
relationship with the benevolent spirit-world and so share in its powers and blessings and
receive protection from evil forces by these transcendent helpers”.15 The reality of the
afterlife and the “important place of the ancestors or the ‘living dead’” who remain “united
in affection and in mutual obligations with the ‘living living’”, was taken seriously and
serviced through various rituals.16 The African’s was a “sacramental universe where” “no
sharp dichotomy” existed “between the physical and the spiritual.” Instead, the physical
acted as a “vehicle for ‘spiritual’ power”, while the physical realm was held to be patterned
on the model of the spiritual world beyond” and that such sets of powers, principles and
patterns ran “through all things on earth and in the heavens and welds then into a unified
Hexham, Irving and Poewe, Karla, The Spread of Christianity among Whites and Blacks in Transorangia,in
Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social, and Cultural History, edited by Elphick, R. and Davenport, R.
(University of Carlifornia Press: Berkeley, 1997) pp. 121-134, here p.132
13 Heuser, Andreas, The Embattled Body in African Pentecostal-type Christianity, in Embodiments of Cultural
Encounters, edited by Sebastian Jobs and Gesa Mackenthun, (Waxmann Werlag: Münster, 2011), pp. 115-140,
here p. 120
14 Bediako, Christianity in Africa, 94.
15 Bediako, Christianity in Africa, 94.
16 Bediako, Christianity in Africa, 94.
12
4
cosmic system”.17 This was the religious field into which the reformation message brought
by the missionaries fell. How would it grow?
Initially missionaries made no single Christian convert as theirs and the African universes
did not find corresponding categories. Conversion was achieved, at a large scale, through
education in the missionary schools and of the Africans who would have run away to seek
refuge in mission centers. This rate conversion was not as rapid as when Africans
themselves started preaching and communicating the gospel message using their own
African worldview as a medium of passing on the message. But even then, the church
remained in the hands of the western missionaries both in terms of governance and
theological framework. This would not last long.
The beginning of the 1950s saw a steady increase of political independence of the African
states from colonialism. This also triggered a growing interest among Africans to take
leadership of the churches and redefining the theological agenda of the African church. It
should be noted that even before this time, African indigenous churches had sprout out the
whole sub-Saharan Africa with their emphasis on the movement of the Holy Spirit. These
churches sought to relate their African religious outlook to their Christian faith. These
churches, also known as ‘churches of Spirit’, characterized what would define African
Christianity to the present day, an emphasis on the Spirit. The late Ogbu Kalu, a leading
African theologian observed that this “pneumatic factor in Christianity that resonates with
the vibrancy of primal African spirituality” was the reason behind the Pentecostal and
charismatic character of Africa in recent years.18 While many scholars have observed the
Holy Spirit as characterizing Africa Christianity, it is surprising that not much work has
been committed to investigating this phenomenon.19
The Spirit and Lutheran reception in Africa
Initially, the Lutheran churches in Africa mimicked their founding European mother
churches, at least in practice. In belief it was a different story. African Lutheran Christians
tended to be Lutherans during the day and before the surveillance of their European
counterparts but secret members of the African Indigenous or Spirit Churches during the
night. The reason was simple to understand; many of these Christians identified with the
practices in the Spirit Churches because the later represented the African spirituality better
than the Lutheran and other missionary-founded churches. I remember during my days as
a pastor in an urban Lutheran church when members of my congregation would disclose
how they used to visit a prophet in the African Indigenous church in order to get the
service that we in the Lutheran liturgical tradition could not provide. In a sense, the way
Bediako, Christianity in Africa, 95.
Kalu, Ogbu, U. Power, Poverty and Prayer: The Challenge of Poverty and Pluralism in African Christianity
1960-1996 (Peter Land: Frankfurt, 2000), p.105
19 Among the scholars to have observed this are, Ranger, Terance, Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in
Africa, p. 181ff; Muzorewa, Farai David, Through Prayer to Action: The Rukwadzano Women of Rhodesia,
p.258ff; Oosthuizen, Gerhardus Cornelis, The Healer-Prophet in Afro-Christian Churches, (E. J. Brill: Leiden,
1992) p. 70ff
17
18
5
the Lutheran and Reformation tradition was passed on through the medium of the
European missionaries did not fully meet the needs of the African person especially his
spiritual inclination.
When African theologians, even those trained in the west, started theologizing from their
indigenous spiritual disposition, the subject of the Spirit became an important one. As VeliMatti Kärkkäinen has observed, the growth of contextualized understandings of the Spirit
in the global south, but especially in Africa, have tended to “complement the mainly
Western approach that” had dominated the Reformation theological reflection for a long
time.20 In this light let me commit some space to Manas Buthelezi, one eminent African
Lutheran Theologian who gave a detailed study about the Holy Spirit from his African
perspective.
Bishop Dr Manas Buthelizi (born 1935) is mainly known for his black theology and
liberation theology work from the 1970s.21 His work emerged from the context of
apartheid and racial discrimination in South Africa. In his black theology, Buthelezi sought
to develop a theological anthropology highlighting the equality of all before God, hence a
criticizing the apartheid program of separate development. His theological method had the
experiences of the segregated black people as its point of departure. Through this theology
he sought to stimulate the agency of the black people so that they could contribute to their
own emancipation and development.
On the surface, the Buthelezi of black theology appears drastically different from the one
after 2000; the latter talks about the Holy Spirit. While during his days in liberation
theology, he was more of a political activist, after his tenure as bishop of the Lutheran
Church in South Africa, he became more of an evangelist and spiritual healer. During his
days of liberation theology, his interlocutors and audience were the university students,
pastors, church leaders and international organizations whom he sought to mobilize
against the apartheid regime. As a teacher on the Spirit, his audience has become the
ordinary members of the Lutheran Churches. When I asked him why such a shift, he told
me that as a contextual theologian, he always sought to address the most urgent pressing
needs and questions of his time. At the present moment, the question of the Holy Spirit has
become urgent for Buthelezi.
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual
Perspective, (Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, 2002), p.147
21 Manas Buthelezi in "The Theological Meaning of True Humanity," in The Challenge of Black Theology in
South Africa, ed. Basil Moore (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1974); Buthelezi, M. 1972 An African Theology or A
Black theology. Pages 3-9 in Mothlabi, Mokgethi (ed), Essays on Black Theology. [Black Theology Project]
University Christian Movement: Johannesburg. ———. 1972 The Theological Meaning of True Humanity.
Pages 70-80 in Mothlabi, Mokgethi (ed), Essays on Black Theology. [Black Theology Project] University
Christian Movement: Johannesburg. ———.1973 African Theology and Black Theology: A Search for a
Theological Method. Pages 18-24 in Becken, Hans-Jurgen (ed), Relevant Theology for Africa: Report on a
Consultation of the Missiological Institute at Lutheran Theological College, Mapumulo, Natal, September 1221, 1972. Durban: Robinson & Co.
20
6
Buthelezi has been talking about the Holy Spirit for some years now, at least just sometime
before his retirement in 2000 until now. One of his most comprehensive approach to the
subject is in the presentation he made in June 2002 at a Lutheran World Federation
consultation on Renewal Movements in Lutheran Churches held at Moshi, Tanzania. Here he
articulated the circumstances surrounding the shift of his theological focus and his
theological approach. He characterized his presentation as “something between a sermon,
a bible study and a personal experienced.”22 His first reference to the Lutheran and
Reformation tradition was, “according to our confessions…”, by which he referred to the
Nicene Creed in which the Holy Spirit is presented as “worshiped and glorified” together
with the father and the son.23 In other words, Buthelezi understood himself standing in the
evangelical tradition going back to the apostolic period through the church fathers and
reclaimed by the 16th century Reformation. He evinces some continuity between the arche
and telos of his previous and the current theological approach as that of orthopraxis, not
only orthodoxy. He interested in the subject of the Holy Spirit is not mainly about
metaphysical explication of the nature of the Spirit but of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as the
“vital deposits of power for effective ministry”. As a true contextual theologian he starts
with his own experience and the experience of his church. But this starting point is what
Carter Lindberg has called the “neuralgic point for Lutheran” theological study of the Holy
Spirit, i.e. starting with human experience.24
Buthelezi narrates that he began not only to theologically reflect about the Holy Spirit but
also provide liturgical spaces for his Lutheran congregations to experience the Holy Spirit
as a result of the questions from his congregants. One of his congregants had asked him
how one could be filled with the Holy Spirit. Even though Buthelezi was conversant of the
Lutheran pneumatology which state that the Holy Spirit is received through the preaching
of the word and the administration of the sacraments, he felt that this theology of the Holy
Spirit he had inherited from his seminary training “was not user friendly. It was something
that made sense only to theologians and it lacked the dimension of practical application to
the simple needs and activities of an ordinary congregation”.25 What then is Buthelezi’s
understanding of the Holy Spirit?
For Buthelezi, the Holy Spirit should first and foremost be sought in the ministry of Jesus.
One cannot understand the “Holy Spirit and open ourselves to His power, if we forget in the
first place what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit.”26 Here Buthelezi is consistent with
Luther’s Christocentric hermeneutics. For him, Jesus Christ is not only a principle and
content of preaching and theology but also an exemplar upon which ministry must be
modeled. One such learning point, according to Buthelezi is to multiply through ministerial
equipment of those who could do what Jesus did in his life time. According to Buthelezi, the
Buthelezi, Manas, The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, in Consultation on renewal movements in
the Lutheran Churches in north and south, edited by Rasolondraibe, Peri (The Lutheran World Federation:
Geneva, 2002).
23 Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.9.
24 Lindberg, Carter, The Third Reformation: Charismatic Movements and the Lutheran Tradition, (Mercer
University Press: Macon, 1983),p.234
25 Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.10.
26 Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.11.
22
7
gifts of the Holy Spirit allow ordained and lay ministry to converge around the same source
of power and replicate the signs and wonders that Jesus performed in his earthily
ministry.27 Informed by John 14, Buthelezi is confident that Jesus expected his disciples to
“do more and greater miracles than he had himself” had done “while he was still on
earth.”28 Jesus said this in the full awareness of the limitations of human nature, which
could only be addressed by the Holy Spirit, Buthelezi argues. For Buthelezi this
dispensation of the work of the Holy Spirit “includes our time, the year 2002. He (the Holy
Spirit) is still with us in the Lutheran Church, but we have unfortunately ignored him.” 29 In
traditional Lutheran theology, Buthelezi would be viewed as slowly moving in the direction
of “an adoptionist Christology that presents Jesus as the example we are to follow”.30
Buthelezi would not mind this label as he once said, “The maturity of the African church is
only evident when Africa is able to produce its own heretics.”
Buthelezi sees the Holy Spirit playing a central role in the process of interpreting the
scriptures. He argues that while an exegete is able to attain head knowledge by
appropriately rearranging and reconstructing the biblical text, this remains the ‘letter that
kills’ without the Holy Spirit’s illumination. His conclusion on this subject of interpretation
is that there is “a difference between knowing certain facts as part of head knowledge, and
being led by the Holy Spirit in understanding the practical application of those facts.” 31 By
referring to Luther, Buthelezi says it was the day the scriptures came alive through the
power of the Holy Spirit after diligent study that Luther felt as if he was born again.
Buthelezi was aware that those who talked about the Holy Spirit in their Lutheran churches
in his diocese were confronted by the injunction: “it is un-Lutheran”. Buthelezi’s ministerial
or functional approach to pneumatology leads to a predictable logical conclusion of the
discussion on justification and sanctification and the old “ordo salutis” debate. While others
thought that ordo salutis, describing the processes “by which the work of salvation,
wrought in Christ, is subjectively realized in the hearts and lives of sinners”, was an 18th
century discussion, some actually see “Luther’s personal struggle” as a “search for a truly
evangelical ordo salutis.”32 Buthelezi is aware of this Lutheran and Reformation problem.
But for him, Lutherans have made mistakes in overemphasizing one aspect of theology
above the rest. “If Luther were to rise from the dead he would be shocked at the strange
things, which are done, under the cover of his name”, he says.33 One such shocking thing for
Buthelezi is the overemphasis on “justification at the expense of teaching and preaching the
totality of the principles of sanctification.” For Buthelezi this isolates “Jesus from the Holy
Spirit” that Jesus taught so much about. Buthelezi sees two main functions of the
sanctification in this context, (a) it is not about morality but ministry since the sanctified
Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.12.
Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.13
29 Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.13.
30 Lindberg, Carter, The Third Reformation, p.236
31 Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.14.
32 McGowan, A. T. B. Justification and the ordo salutis, in Justification in perspective: Historical Developments
and Contemporary Challenges, edited by McCormack Bruce L. (Baker Academic: Grand Rapids,2006) pp. 147164 here p.148
33 Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.13
27
28
8
are likely to be “more productive in their ministry and to be agents of the repetition of the
apostolic tradition of performing signs and wonders, which Jesus initiated”; (b) it is a
means of grace, that is, it is undeserved experience which God endows to a sinful human
being, what Paul meant when he said, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show
that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us (1 Corinthians 4:7)”. 34 By making
the gifts of the Holy Spirit part of the means of grace, Buthelezi adds to the traditional
Lutheran understanding of the Word and the sacraments as the means of grace to move
towards John Wesley’s understanding.35 For Buthelezi, the work of justification is not
superior to that of sanctification for they are both the results of the Holy Spirit.
Summary
I do not continue to reflect on Buthelezi’s detailed analysis of the gifts of the Holy Spirit
especially healing which he deals with at length. I however observe some aspects of his
understanding of the Holy Spirit; (a) the Holy Spirit is a neglected ministry in the Lutheran
tradition because of the dominance of justification over sanctification, Christology over
pneumatology; (b) His understanding is informed by his own personal ministry experience;
for Buthelezi, experience is not inferior to reflection; (c) the Holy Spirit is attested in the
bible but also functions to make holy Scriptures relevant to the life of the church; for
Buthelezi, faithfulness to the Holy Scriptures is faithfulness to the Holy Spirit for the later
inspired the former and continues to illuminate the former in the life of the church.
Conclusion
The centrality of the Holy Spirit at every turning point of the history of the people of God is
evident from the creation, through Pentecost, the 16th century Reformation and the
subsequent establishment and growth of Christianity in Africa. Informed by his African
religious outlook, Buthelezi’s reflection on the Holy Spirit engages with this longstanding
tradition of the Spirit. His position is consistent with the contemporary self-understanding
of Christians in Africa, a region of the world where Christianity is growing fast. The
implications of a pneumatological understanding of Christianity in the celebration and
commemoration of the 500 years of the Reformation are both positive and negative.
The negative potential of a pneumatic Christianity has already become evident in my own
context in Africa. The recent growth of the personalities called prophets, moves beyond
what Buthelezi envisaged. While for Buthelezi the Holy Spirit democratizes as well as
globalizes ministry, recent developments have seen the growth of personality cults in
which only a few individuals are deemed to be endowed with the Spirit and are entitled to
benefits in cash and kind from their unquestioning followers. The growing Gnostic type of
Christianity where a few individuals are said to have special illumination by the Holy Spirit
seems to be buttressing a skewed economic system where gullible Christians are cheated
into believing that if they give their hard earned money to these special prophets, they will
be blessed with more from God. In a culture where personhood construction tends to be
hierarchical, this emergence of a Holy few endowed with the Holy Spirit may actually
34
35
Buthelezi,The gifts of holy spirit for the healing of world, p.13-14
John Wesley, The Means of Grace: A Sermon. On Malachi ii. 7, (1848).
9
recreate the scenario confronted by Martin Luther and the other reformers when the
gullible superstitious masses sought to earn their salvation through the indulgences.
The positive potential is that the vitality of worship and the vibrancy of religion will be
expected in the church. Dominant Christian theology will no longer be about the
appropriateness of articulation of cold religious facts, but also a warm human intellectual
and emotional experience of the faith. Experience will become part and parcel of legitimate
theological work and not being perceived as destructive to ‘objective’ intellectual work.
Particularly, the place of sanctification in the ordo salutis of the 21st century Christianity
will prove to be very relevant in light of the deterioration of the public ethical orientation
globally. The renewal of the church in Luther’s time initially decreased the gap between the
academic theologian and the Christian on the pews. In the last two centuries or so,
especially in some parts of the western world, the gap between academic pursuit has
become disconnected with the life of the church. The Holy Spirit’s inalienable connection to
human experience could provide a new way of synergy.
That Buthelezi’s pneumatology is representative of the growing majority of the church
requires further exploration so that both its benefits and dangers for the renewal of the
church are identified as the Christian celebrates and commemorates 500 years of the
Reformation.
Thank you
10