“Piercing the Veil” and African Dreams and Visions

Abstract

Abstract Pentecostal scholarship is conscientiously examining gaps in Western theology in regard to pneumatology. This article describes the phenomena of pentecostal dreams and visions (D/V s) in the African context as significant to that dialogue, pointing to their spiritual value in many African churches. I suggest that they can be seen as existential samples of the pneumatological imagination as put forth by Amos Yong and also as described by Nimi Wariboko. I use Yong’s theology to argue that the pneumatological imagination in African contexts readdresses the experience of D/V s, which are normative phenomena in indigenous religions, through the hermeneutical interplay of Spirit-Word-community. I also suggest that the experience of D/V s satisfies Wariboko’s definition of grace, that they are subject to his politics of spiritual warfare, and that their interpretation and application exemplify the transformation of “ontological and epistemological coordinates of existence” by “piercing the veil” of phenomenality for the experience of the noumenal.