scholarly journals Missionale kerkwees en die elektroniese sosiale media

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Lazenby ◽  
Cornelius J.P. Niemandt

Die geweldige toename in die benutting van die sosiale media as interaktiewe kommunikasiemiddel wêreldwyd, bied aan die Christelike kerk groot missionale geleenthede, maar stel ook groot uitdagings en eise. Hierdie geleentheid moet benut word om missionaal ’n verskil ten gunste van God se koninkryk te maak. Die inhoud en die kommunikasiestyl kom onder die vergrootglas. Hierdie artikel poog om ’n paar bybels-etiese beginsels aan te dui wat as basis vir die missionale styl van kommunikasie moet dien. As uitgangspunt word die Bybel as die Woord van God gebruik. Daar word geredeneer dat die moreel-etiese beginsels wat in die Bybel aan die gelowige voorgeskryf word, van die grootste belang is om gestalte te gee aan die koninkryk van God in hierdie wêreld wanneer via die sosiale media op horisontale vlak met mense gekommunikeer word. Dit gaan dus vir die gelowige nooit net om humanistiese, sosiale kommunikasie nie, maar altyd dat die beeld van God in hierdie wêreld geëer en sy koninkryk daardeur uitgebou word. Vir die Christen-gelowige gaan dit nooit om die mens nie, maar altyd om God se eer en die manifestasie van sy koninkryk.Being a missional church and the social media. The tremendous increase in using the social media as interactive communication medium worldwide creates the opportunity for the Christian church to make a missional difference in favour of God’s kingdom on earth. It also brings great challenges with it. This means that the way communication via the mass social media is done, becomes of the utmost importance. The content as well as the manner in which the communication is conducted must be considered. This article aims at providing certain basic biblical-ethical principles for communicating in the mass social media that will serve the missional calling of the church. The point of departure is the Word of God. The basic focus of the argument is that the moral-ethical principles given to the believer in the Bible are of the utmost importance to give practical form to the kingdom of God on earth by means of horisontal communication via the social media. For the Christian believer the focus never falls on humanistic social communication as such, but always to glorify the image of God and thereby expand God’s kingdom in this world.

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J.G. Zandman

The 1960s will be remembered as a major clash that helped shape today’s Western society. Young people were breaking out of the moulds that had been cast by their parents’ post-war era. The conflict brought about significant social change all over Western society. Western man searched frantically for a new world, willing to risk the hardship of revolution.  In a world full of confusing and conflicting approaches in terms of how to view man, the Bible has the clear answer: man is created in the image of God, and is, in this capacity, God’s vice- regent and image-bearer. However, the Christian church is by- and-large remarkably indecisive as the social conscience of Western society.   The main thrust of the sixties was anti-status quo, anti-esta- blishment, anti-materialist. In the process of man’s self-deter- mination on either side of the conflict, great erosion of man’s greatest gift occurred: ethical distinction. The spiritual vacuum created by anti-establishment forces led to confusion and self- destruction.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riaan Rheeder

Bioethics without boundaries and human dignity: A Reformed-ethical assessment. The Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBH) seeks to guide the world community in ethical principles with regard to medicine, life sciences and related technologies. Human dignity as a principle was requested by the world community and serves as a point of departure in most human rights instruments, as well as in the UDBH. Human dignity serves as a foundation for ethical principles and human rights. In this article, attention was given to the question of whether human dignity could be accepted as part of the Biblical message. Human dignity as a principle and grounding in the UDBH was accepted by most major religions of the world. There exists today a universal consensus that human dignity is an extremely important concept in bioethics. In light of the Reformed tradition, all human beings have dignity, as they had been created in the image of God. Because God is absolute value, humans have derived, but definite value. Human dignity is not just a status, but also a command. All the ethical principles and human rights in the UDBH should be regarded as a way of giving expression to the dignity of man. When the dignity of the humans beings is infringed upon, an undignified image of God is revealed, and serves as a direct insult to God.


Diacovensia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-651
Author(s):  
Wiesław Przygoda

Charity diaconia of the Church is not an accidental involvement but belongs to its fundamental missions. This thesis can be supported in many ways. The author of this article finds the source of the obligation of Christians and the whole Church community to charity service in the nature of God. For Christians God is Love (1 John 4, 8.16). Even though some other names can be found, (Jahwe , Elohim, Adonai), his principal name that encapsulates all other ones is Love. Simultaneously, God which is Love showed his merciful nature (misericordiae vultus) in the course of salvation. He did it in a historical, visible and optimal way through his Son, Jesus Christ through the embodied God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who loved the mankind so much that he sacrificed his life for us, being tortured and killed at the cross. This selfless love laid the foundations for the Church, which, in essence, is a community of loving human and God’s beings. Those who do not love, even though they joined the Church through baptism, technically speaking, do not belong to the Church since love is a real not a formal sign of belonging to Christ’s disciples (cf. John 13, 35). Therefore, charitable activity is a significant dimension of the Church’s mission as it is through charity that the Church shows the merciful nature of its Saviour. A question that needs to be addressed may be expressed as follows: in what way the image of God, who is love, implies an involvement in charity of an individual and the Church? An answer may be found in the Bible, writings of the Church Fathers of and the documents of Magisterium Ecclesiae and especially the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.


2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-59
Author(s):  
Gerald A. Klingbeil

Abstract This study examines the triangle linking biblical creation, anthropology, and human language. It takes as its point of departure the notion that language is an important part of the image of God in which humanity was created (Gottebenbildlichkeit). Since most of creation is accomplished through God’s spoken word (see Gen 1 and also John 1), the human ability to speak and communicate abstract concepts appears to be an echo of the divine and distinguishes humans from the rest of creation. The paper traces some of the highlights marking the important role of language within the context of human history, including the fall and the divine plan of redemption, thus linking the theological categories of anthropology and soteriology.


Author(s):  
Stefanus Suheru

AbstractThis research addresses the problem of violence in the name of religion increasingly widespread in Indonesia. Ironically, the violence is getting legitimacy of scriptural texts, including the Bible. This means, that violence is not only driven by external motives such as political, economic and social development. Internal motives can also make a major contribution, even a major problem. Violence has theological roots, one of them, related to the interpretation of religious texts which, when understood literally, is able to present the figure of a violent religion. Solutions offered in this study is the reading of narratives of violence, with the text of Joshua 11 as an example, using the method of narrative analysis. The results showed that the text of Joshua 11 violence can not justify a Christian to be violent. The image of God as the Divine Warrior is ambiguous, kherem implementation that does not ignore the grace of salvation for outsiders to be insiders, and Israel's war put the violence in the name of religion in a position that is not relevant to the lives of Indonesia plural. Violence texts as core testimonies need to be matched with texts of peace as counter testimonies.AbstrakPenelitian ini membahas masalah kekerasan atas nama agama yang semakin marak di Indonesia. Ironisnya, kekerasan ini mendapatkan legitimasi dari teks-teks kitab suci, termasuk Alkitab. Hal ini berarti, kekerasan tidak hanya dipicu oleh motif-motif eksternal seperti kepentingan politik, ekonomi dan sosial.  Motif internal juga dapat memberikan kontribusi yang besar, bahkan merupakan masalah utama.  Kekerasan memiliki akar teologis, yang salah satunya, terkait dengan interpretasi teks-teks keagamaan yang ketika dipahami secara literal, mampu menghadirkan sosok agama yang penuh kekerasan. Solusi yang penulis tawarkan dalam penelitian ini adalah pembacaan narasi kekerasan, dengan teks Yosua 11 sebagai contoh, dengan menggunakan metode analisis naratif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa teks kekerasan Yosua 11 tidak bisa dijadikan pembenaran orang Kristen untuk melakukan kekerasan. Citra Allah sebagai Divine Warrior yang ambigu, pelaksanaan kherem yang tidak menutup anugerah keselamatan bagi outsiders sehingga menjadi insiders, dan perang Israel yang bersifat kasuistik, menempatkan kekerasan atas nama agama pada posisi yang tidak relevan dengan kehidupan Indonesia yang majemuk.Teks-teks kekerasan sebagai core testimony perlu ditandingkan dengan teks-teks perdamaian sebagai counter testimony.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 2084-2089
Author(s):  
Reymand Hutabarat ◽  
Franklin Hutabarat ◽  
Deanna Beryl Majilang

Introduction : Anthony Hoekema was active in his works as a preacher, teacher, and writer.[1] He is one of the most outstanding reformed theologians which authored several books such as Created in God’s Image, The Four Major Cults, What About Tongue-Speaking? The Bible and the Future, and Saved By Grace.   Method : Hoekema’s theology as a whole is a reformed theology. The core and the very foundation of reformed theology is the sovereignty of God. Hoekema sees that the creation of man in God’s image is “the most distinctive feature of a biblical understanding of man.” This is why he understands that “the concept of the image of God is the heart of Christian anthropology.”   Result & Discussion : His concept of the image of God in man is examined in this section, which is divided into the following five parts: the meaning of being created in the image of God, the structural and functional aspects of God’s image, Jesus as the true image of God, the image of God in man’s threefold relationship, and the image of God in four different stages.    


2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Brandstetter

Animals have provided a theme and a model for movements in dance from time immemorial. But what image of man do danced animal portrayals reflect? What questions of human identity and crisis do they reveal? Do the bodies of animals provide symbolic material for the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions raised by man's mastery of nature?The exploration of the boundary between man and animal—in myths and sagas, in the earliest records of ritual and art, and in the history of knowledge—is part of the great nature-versus-nurture debate. In the Bible the relationship is clear: Adam, made in the image of God, gives the animals in Paradise their names. In this way he rules over them—but Thomas Aquinas's commentary on this biblical text makes clear that the act of naming animals in Paradise is a step toward man's experiential self-discovery. Since then the hierarchy seems to be beyond doubt.Homo sapien, as theanimal significans, is distinguished from other animals by his ability to speak, his upright gait, the use of his hands, and the capacity to use instruments and media—man as what Sigmund Freud called the “prosthetic god” (1966, 44).


2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Van Eck

This article pays tribute to the contribution made by Yolanda Dreyer regarding critique on the prevalence of patriarchy in society, as well as her defence of homosexuality as a normal sexual orientation. Taking as point of departure her work on the woman as created in God’s image, it is argued that understanding the metaphor ‘created in God’s image’ as referring to rule over all, and not as created as man and woman, has important implications for the relationship between man and woman, as well as the normalisation of relationships between the same sex.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Conte ◽  
Pierluigi Vitale ◽  
Agostino Vollero ◽  
Alfonso Siano

Healthcare organizations are being increasingly requested to publicize their sustainability efforts on digital environments and social media, in part because previously passive patients are now becoming active customers. This paper investigates how leading healthcare organizations are using Facebook to communicate their sustainability, in terms of their focus on different components of the 3Ps (people, profit, planet) and interactive communication strategies used on social media. A content analysis was made of the Facebook posts (n = 6145) of healthcare organizations in the Forbes Global 2000 (2017 annual ranking) from 2015 to mid-2018. Our findings show that the social component of sustainability prevails over environmental and economic issues, although it does not seem to generate increased consumer engagement (in terms of users’ likes, comments, reactions, etc.). A data visualization dashboard was developed to help managers in benchmarking competitors and assessing how they can increase response rates and public engagement on social media, thus encouraging the active participation of users. The study also provides useful insights for communication managers in identifying how to use deliberative tools to develop consumer relationships on social media and aligning companies and consumers regarding shared sustainability themes.


1994 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Gould

The writings of the Early Church concerning childhood are not extensive, but in the works of a number of Eastern Christian authors of the second to fourth centuries it is possible to discern some ideas about childhood which raise important problems of Christian theology and theological anthropology. The theological problem is that of the question posed for theodicy by the sufferings and deaths of infants. It is harder to give a brief definition of the anthropological problem, but it is important to do so because to define the problem as the Eastern Fathers saw it is also to identify the set of conceptual tools—the anthropological paradigm—which they used to answer it. These are not, naturally, the concepts of modern anthropology and psychology. Applied to patristic thought, these terms usually refer to speculations about the composition and functioning of the human person or the human soul which belong to a discourse which is recognizably philosophical and metaphysical—by which is meant that it is (though influenced by other sources, such as the Bible) the discourse of a tradition descending ultimately from the anthropological terminology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Patristic anthropology seeks to account for the history and experiences of the human person as a created being—fhe experience of sin and mortality in the present life, but also of eternal salvation and advancement to perfection in the image of God.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document