The Holy Spirit in African Christianity by Chike Chigor;

Author:Chike, Chigor;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authentic Media

The Holy Spirit and the Bible

Under this final theme I discuss the two pattern theories on the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Bible: 1) a relationship between the Holy Spirit and Biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), and 2) the Bible viewed as the source of the in-filling of the Holy Spirit and tool for the verification of inspired word.

Spirit-illumination

At Mount Zion, the church members believe that the Holy Spirit must be involved in order for one to get the intended meaning of Biblical texts. They believe that the Holy Spirit can give people different meanings to the same text and can even give a person a different understanding of the same text on different occasions.

The emphasis of the role of the Holy Spirit in Biblical interpretation can be found in the African Initiated Churches which preceded the African Pentecostal Churches.265 For example, Francis Githieya describes how the Church of Holy Spirit (Arathi) of Kenya, which was founded in the 1920s, believed that:

the key to unlocking the truth of the scriptures came not from the mission churches but through their own study of the scriptures as illuminated by their experience of the Holy Spirit.266

The church’s founder, Joseph Nganga, is said to have gone into seclusion in the early days of the church “to seek guidance from the Holy Spirit in his interpretation of the scriptures”.267

In a similar vein, Omoyajowo shows how the members of the Cherubim and Seraphim of Nigeria rely on the Holy Spirit to give them the meaning of Biblical passages. The church’s constitution states: “Believers shall study the Scriptures diligently relying on the power of the Holy Spirit of God to guide them to the correct and true meaning of the Scriptures.”268 Elsewhere, the church makes the statement that “A careful research and prayerful reflection of the Scriptures comparing Scripture with Scripture yields its beauty and its deep and hidden meaning ….”269

However, the link with the Holy Spirit in African Biblical interpretation is not universally made by African scholars. For example, Justin Ukpong’s description of biblical interpretation in Africa does not refer to the work of the Holy Spirit. Ukpong, who writes from a Roman Catholic background, remarks that there is a discernable pattern in the way Africans interpret the Bible which is different from the “Western pattern”.270 The African pattern involves a direct encounter between the text and the African context.271 He commends African scholars for giving greater recognition for the methodologies employed by the ordinary readers, a characteristic of which is the influence of their indigenous worldview. “The conceptual framework of interpretation is informed by African socio-cultural perspective” and their goal is to get the:

theological meaning of the text in today’s context, so as to forge integration between faith and life, and engender commitment to personal and societal transformation.272

Ukpong also remarks that in this African approach, there is no one absolute meaning of the biblical text to be recovered through historical analysis. Also, unlike in some Western-oriented interpretive approaches which consist of first recovering the meaning

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.