scholarly journals Guidelines for the spiritual practice of Sabbath-keeping

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter G.R. De Villiers ◽  
George Marchinkowski
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Ecological Implications ◽  
Christian History ◽  
Sabbath Keeping

The commandment not to work and to rest on the Sabbath became a major spiritual practice in Judeo-Christian history. This article will spell out, in a concrete manner, the key spiritual contents of Sabbath-keeping that are relevant for and that determine an authentic, liberating and joyful celebration of the Sabbath. It, thus, contributes to the debate by Christians about the shape and form of what the practice of Sabbath-keeping practice might look like today. This article firstly explains how and why the practice by times became oppressive and abusive, losing its popularity because of a legalistic moralism. It then analyses how the practice in reality is about sanctifying work that reflects its true nature and that contributes meaningfully to human existence. It will focus on how commitment is a necessary beginning to practise the Sabbath before it analyses the dynamic and inspirational nature of Sabbath-keeping as a practice about resting. The article will anchor theological and theoretic reflections concretely in the life experience of faith communities concluding with a discussion about the lightness of the practice that is enjoyed in liturgy, in community, in play and in joyful celebration. The very last part will spell out ecological implications of Sabbath-keeping as one of the latest, exciting forms of Sabbath-keeping.Contribution: This article responds to the renewed interest in the spiritual practice of Sabbath-keeping. It analyses how the practice lost its popularity because of a legalistic moralism. It will then analyse the lightness of the practice as it is enjoyed in liturgy, in community, in play and in joyful celebration.

scholarly journals Sabbath-keeping in the Bible from the perspective of biblical spirituality

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter G.R. De Villiers ◽  
George Marchinkowski
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Decisive Importance ◽  
Contemporary Context ◽  
Sabbath Keeping

This article responds to the renewed interest in the spiritual practice of Sabbath-keeping by investigating its nature and meaning in the Judeo-Christian traditions. After briefly analysing the reasons for the contemporary neglect of Sabbath-keeping and indications of its renaissance, this article will analyse biblical pronouncements about the Sabbath, mainly from Hebrew Scriptures, but with brief attention to Christian Scriptures that provide various insights of decisive importance to understand and explain its prominent place for faith communities, but that are vitally important for reinvigorating Sabbath-keeping in a contemporary context. It analyses pronouncements in the Bible in Genesis 2:1–3 that highlights the Sabbath as joyful resting; the need for Sabbath-keeping as commandment in Exodus 20:9–11 and in Deuteronomy 5:12–15, and, finally Sabbath-keeping as trust in God as the provider in Exodus 16:1–30. Various spiritual insights and implications of these passages will be discussed. The article assumes historical critical insights as developed in biblical studies but develops a theological analysis that explains the spiritual dynamics in these texts. These spiritual insights explain the prominence of Sabbath-keeping in the Bible and its practice in the Judeo-Christian religious discourse.Contribution: This article contributes to scholarship on spiritual practices, by analysing the nature and meaning of Sabbath-keeping in Genesis 2:1–3, Exodus 20:9–11; Deuteronomy 5:12–15 and Exodus 16:1–30, stressing their spiritual dynamics in terms of joyful resting, as commandment, as trust in divine provision and as a reflection of their covenantal nature.

scholarly journals Sabbath Keeping and Sunday Observance as Spiritual Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-200
Author(s):  
Pieter Gideon Retief De Villiers ◽  
George Marchinkowski
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Past History ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Essential Dimension ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Spiritual Nature ◽  
Sabbath Keeping

This article investigates recent interest in the spiritual practice of Sabbath keeping in the light of its history in Judaism and Christianity. It will focus, firstly, on the spiritual nature of Sabbath keeping in Biblical texts and its reception in Judeo-Christian traditions. It will spell out comprehensive, multifaceted approaches to Sabbath keeping and Sunday observance in these traditions and how dynamically these approaches were developed in terms of later contexts. The article will then analyse the positive impact of this spiritual practice on human relationships, but more importantly, its role in creating awareness of the divine presence which represents its most essential dimension. This will reveal how transformative Sabbath keeping as a spiritual practice can be in the spiritual journey, even and also in contemporary contexts. The aim of the article is to investigate insights that spirituality authors can gain from past history in order to meaningfully respond to challenges in their own context and to empower them to counter the serious consequences for the spiritual health of those who are victims of a consumerist culture. The article is by necessity merely an overview, without in-depth discussion of the detail of Sabbath in various historical phases. Important is a general trend that reflects the ebb and flow of Sabbath keeping in the course of history, its tenacity as a spiritual practice and its deeper meaning in the life of faith communities.

scholarly journals CZŁOWIEK I ŚMIERĆ – MIĘDZY SEPARACJĄ A BLISKOŚCIĄ

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 191
Author(s):  
Piotr Ochotny
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Close Attention

The author, in his paper, pays close attention to the uncontrolled dialectics ofdeath within human existence; that which is actively experienced but passivelysustained; is the end of everything but the beginning of something new; is absolutecertainty but unpredictable uncertainty; is always and only personal for me but always and only personal for others, too. In fact, it is very difficult to explain themeaning of death from an ontological study of death: if and how death exists in thearea of human experience; if death is an immanent possibility for personal existenceor, is it introduced from outwith and occurs when we are not still living. To respondto these questions, the author proposes to use the bridging term, with which variousphilosophical positions can be qualified. This bridging term is ‘distance’ and ourdeath experience is defined as the distance between man (person acting) and hissubject (experience). The dialectical nature of this experience implies that deathmight be through an infinite separation or an infinite closeness to man. Driftingbetween those faraway shores, we can find in Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy. Herefers to death as Other (something else for man), but this does not mean that deathis strange or unknown within one’s life experience.

Education for Discipleship: A Curriculum Orientation for Christian Educators

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Hull
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Curriculum Orientation ◽  
It Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Educators

THIS ARTICLE INVESTIGATES the long-held assumption that Christian educators need their own curriculum orientation. Seminal documents published by Philip Jackson and Harro Van Brummelen in the nineties are analyzed against the background of a brief history of the field of curriculum theory. The author accepts Jackson's conclusion that curriculum theorists and classroom teachers are generally confused about the true nature of curriculum orientations and about the way curriculum reform takes place. Jackson's own understanding of curriculum orientations raises the bar of curriculum reform from the mere substitution of one conceptual model for another to the preference of one way of life over all others. The investigation reveals that Van Brummelen's presentation of an alternative Christian curriculum orientation both rises above Jackson's critique and is vulnerable to it. Education for Discipleship is a highly evolved alternative curriculum orientation; nevertheless, its implementation is limited to a learning community actualizing a biblical world and life point of view from a conceptual model to actual practice. This investigation suggests that substantive curriculum reform requires two-way traffic along the conduit of influence that connects faith, theoretic frameworks, curricular practice, and community life experience.

Cultural Roots for the Evolution of Wilderness and the Anxieties of Urban Living

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Yuling Che ◽  
Feifei Duan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Space Perception ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Living Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technological Civilization

Space being the precondition for human existence, human perception and experience vary responding to different spaces. Modern urban dwellers live in urban space where they seem to have much space mobility but end up living in a homogenized concrete jungle. This fact has influenced, if not defined, modern urban dwellers’ life experience and caused their anxieties about such an existence. However, wilderness, as opposed to urban space, is not merely a type of space, but a way of existence relating to diversity, freedom, and healthy savagery. Civilizational evolution explains the change of human perception of wilderness from fear and desire to conquer to longing and affection, and in this sense the history of the evolution of space perception is also a history of civilization because space and culture are entwined and the more diversified the types of human living space, the more diversified their existences. In the contemporary world, the significance of wilderness not only lies in its resistance to the aforementioned homogenized, unidimensional, urban human existence, but the civilization of wilderness points to a new form of civilization that is intrinsically different from technological civilization for whose disease the civilization of wilderness per se may serve as a possible remedy.

3. Philosophical hermeneutics

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Truth And Method ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer ◽  
Basic Movement

Philosophical hermeneutics refers to the detailed examination of human understanding that began with the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002). In his book, Truth and Method, Gadamer drew together many of the previously discussed insights from Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Husserl, and Heidegger to provide an extensive description of what understanding is. ‘Philosophical hermeneutics’ outlines Gadamer’s key views: he believed that our perception of the world is not primarily theoretical but practical; he regarded understanding as the basic movement of human existence that encompasses the whole of life experience; language is central to shaping our understanding of the world; mediation is the heart of the hermeneutic experience; and application is its soul.

scholarly journals The influence of dwelling in the Word within the Southern African Partnership of Missional Churches

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius J. Nel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Missional Churches

�All of creation dwells within the Word of God, the Word who created us, the Word who redeems us� (Ellison 2009:91). The article evaluated the influence that the communal spiritual practice of dwelling in the Word had in the missional transformation of congregations that formed part of the Southern African Partnership of Missional Churches. It investigated the background, hermeneutic and methodology of dwelling in the Word on the participating congregations. The article concluded that the practice had a profound effect on the theology and missional practice of most of the participating congregations as it had a positive influence on the attitudes and beliefs, minimum knowledge base, and skills of a number of churches leading to spontaneous missional activity, the discernment of a specific missionary calling, and the integration of theory and practice. However, it had not always led to the formation of new faith communities.

Leviticus

2019 ◽  
pp. 62-71
Author(s):  
Ellen F. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Economic Practices

Leviticus articulates an embodied and enacted spirituality that cannot be abstracted from physical, social, and economic practices. The book raises several issues debated in contemporary faith communities, and its symbolism is central in both Judaism and Christianity. Beginning with a focus on sacrifice, Leviticus shows that we eat and live by the grace of God. The ritual of atonement and the prohibition on eating blood (16‒17) highlight how blood may symbolize the covenant that binds human life to God. The book’s final section (17‒27) points to the importance of land as a mirror of human existence, an extended sanctuary, a partner in covenant, and an agent of covenant justice.

scholarly journals “Being-Placed before God”: Reading the Early Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Liturgy with Jean-Yves Lacoste

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 716
Author(s):  
Jorge Luis Roggero
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Third ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Basic Features

This article aims to demonstrate, by means of a comparison with Lacoste’s proposal, that we can find a particular phenomenology of liturgy in the early Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion, centered in the structure of “being-placed before God”. His examination of this structure manages to go deeper than Lacoste in order to account for the essence of human existence. With this purpose in mind, in the first section of the article I will the present the basic features of the liturgical experience, as it is introduced in Experience and the Absolute. In the second section, I will analyze the early Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion and its interpretation of Christian factical life experience. Finally, in the third section, I will bring the insights from both sections together to establish the particularities of Heidegger’s phenomenology of liturgy.

Articulation Training: A New Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sallie W. Hillard ◽  
Laura P. Goepfert
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Remediation Measures ◽  
New Perspective

This paper describes the concept of teaching articulation through words which have inherent meaning to a child’s life experience, such as a semantically potent word approach. The approach was used with six children. Comparison of pre/post remediation measures indicated that it has promise as a technique for facilitating increased correct phoneme production.

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