scholarly journals The Sabbath as a remedy for human restlessness

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Kessler

Considering that many people today suffer from restlessness, it would be very helpful to remind ourselves of a very old, very simple but very effective  remedy: rest on the Sabbath. In the Christian tradition, Sabbath-keeping often only focused on its  spiritual aspects. This article has focused on the benefit of rediscovering the gift of the Sabbath  as ‘a delight to the soul and a delight for the body’ (Heschel). It has shown how we can explicitly  learn from the Jewish tradition of holistic Sabbath observance. The article consists of four  parts: the phenomenon of human restlessness, ten different facets of the Sabbath in the Old  Testament, a short section on the history of pro-Sabbath and anti-Sabbath attitudes within the  Christian churches and a concluding section about applying the basic principles of the Sabbath  in modern life for the sake of a good work-life balance. Examples from the German context  are included.Die Sabbat as kuur teen menslike rusteloosheid. Wanneer die hedendaagse rusteloosheid van mense in ag geneem word, het dit  waarde om onsself aan ‘n baie ou, eenvoudige dog effektiewe maatreël tot herstel te herinner, naamlik om op die  sabbat te rus. In die Christelike tradisie fokus sabbatsonderhouding dikwels slegs op godsdienstige  aspekte. Hierdie artikel het gefokus op die wins in die herontdekking van die  sabbatsgeskenk as ‘n ‘behae vir die siel en die liggaam’ (Heschel). Dit toon duidelik hoe ons uit die Joodse tradisie van ‘n holistiese sabbatsonderhouding kan leer. Die artikel het bestaan uit vier dele,  naamlik die verskynsel van menslike rusteloosheid, tien verskillende fasette van die sabbat  in die Ou Testament, ‘n kort historiese oorsig oor pro- en teen-standpunte van die  Christelike kerk ten opsigte van die sabbat, en ten slotte die toepassing van basiese  sabbatsbeginsels in die moderne lewe ter handhawing van ‘n goeie balans tussen werk en lewe. Voorbeelde  uit die Duitse konteks is ook ingesluit.

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (172) ◽  
Author(s):  
Buddhi Prasad Paudyal

Acute poisoning by organophosphorus (OP) compounds is a major global clinical problem, withthousands of deaths occurring every year. Most of these pesticide poisoning and subsequentdeaths occur in developing countries following a deliberate self ingestion of the poison. Metacid(Methyl parathion) and Nuvan (Dichlorovos) are commonly ingested OP pesticides; Dimethoate,Profenofos, and Chlorpyrifos are other less frequently ingested compounds in Nepal. The toxicityof these OP pesticides is due to the irreversible inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzymeleading to accumulation of acetylcholine and subsequent over-activation of cholinergic receptorsin various parts of the body. Acutely, these patients present with cholinergic crisis; intermediatesyndrome and delayed polyneuropathy are other sequel of this form of poisoning. The diagnosisdepends on the history of exposure to these pesticides, characteristic manifestations of toxicityand improvements of the signs and symptoms after administration of atropine. The supportivetreatment of OP poisoning includes the same basic principles of management of any acutelypoisoned patient i.e., rapid initial management of airways, breathing, and circulation. Gastriclavage and activated charcoal are routinely used decontamination procedures, but their valuehas not been conclusively proven in this poisoning. Atropine is the mainstay of therapy, andcan reverse the life threatening features of this acute poisoning. However, there are no clearcut guidelines on the dose and duration of atropine therapy in OP poisoning. Cholinesterasereactivators, by regenerating AChE, can reverse both the nicotinic and muscarinic effects;however, this benefit has not been translated well in clinical trials. All these facts highlight thatthere are many unanswered questions and controversies in the management of OP poisoningand there is an urgent need for research on this aspect of this common and deadly poisoning.Key Words: poisoning, organophosphorus insecticides, decontamination, antidotes


2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Bochow ◽  
Astrid Bochow ◽  
Rijk van Dijk

Abstract In many African societies today Christian churches, Pentecostals in particular, are an important source of information on sexuality, relationships, the body, and health, motivated in part by the HIV/AIDS pandemic but also related to globally circulating ideas and images that make people rethink gender relations and identities through the lens of ‘romantic love’. Contextualizing the contemporary situation in the history of Christian movements in Africa, and by applying Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, this introduction and the subsequent papers show that Christian doctrines and practices are creating social spaces of altering relational ethics, identities and gender roles that appeal especially to upwardly mobile women.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 129-155
Author(s):  
Donna McCormack

This article examines the carceral imaginaries that emerge from the late capitalist structure of organ donation as an issue of short supply. This piece explores this issue through the lens of spatial segregation, arguing that carceral imaginaries are spaces of luxury where donors are segregated from recipients and are thereby legally murdered. The focus is Ninni Holmqvist’s novel The Unit (2008) where the future is structured through gender equality but reproductive normativity. Donors are segregated away in the luxurious unit because they have not repro- duced. Having not produced future generations of labourers, these donors must contribute to the nation by donating their body parts to the reproductive – and therefore productive – members of the nation. Focusing on Sweden’s history of eugenics and on gender equality, this article argues that the very space of care, namely the clinic, which facilitates life-saving treatments also subjects whole populations to violence and death through reproductive norms. Finally, it sug- gests that space is both that through which bodies move, but also the body itself. That is, the segregation of the body’s parts and the idea that space may be divided by borders are mutually constitutive and found both the restrictions of bodily movement through space and murder as the gift of life.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Stanisław Łucarz

The article focuses on the notion of femaleness and its role in the history of salvation in the works of Clement of Alexandria. Although these are not the central themes of his considerations, he reflects on this subject against the back­ground of his magnificent vision of the incarnation of the divine Logos. The be­getting or generating of Logos by Father is the first stage of the incarnation, which is followed by the next stages: the creation of the world and of human beings, the revelation in the Old Testament and – although not directly – in the Greek philosophy. The last stage is the incarnation in Jesus Christ. All this leads towards the divinization and the unity in God. Femaleness in Clement’s work should be considered as a part of cosmic dimensions. For him, men and women are substan­tially – i.e. on the level of their souls – equal, hence in the spiritual and intellectual dimension both sexes are vested with identical dignity and enjoy equal rights. The differences between sexes are located in the body and affect various aspects of human life, mostly biological and reproductive ones, not to mention the family, community and religious reality. In practice, it is the woman who is subordinated to man due to the fact, as Clement holds, that the female body is weaker than the male one, more subjugated to passivity, less perfect and more susceptible to pas­sions. For that reason, on the way to salvation, it is the man who is the head of the woman. However, it is not an absolute subjection. If the woman goes on the way to salvation (a Christian woman), and the man does not, the Lord is the head of the woman (the divine Logos, whom she follows). All these differences resulting from the possession of a body are eliminated in eschatology, in which will be the total equality. On that way to the eschatological fulfillment, the divine Logos is indispensable. He incarnates himself and comes to the world through a woman. He chooses what is weaker in order to reveal His power. This way it is a woman, and not a man, who first experiences His divinizing closeness and action.


1957 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Solmsen

A short section of Aristotle's de generatione animalium embodies his final answer to the question how the faculties of soul are transmitted from parent to offspring. Aristotle here speaks in a tone which is dogmatic as well as enthusiastic; he is able to announce a new discovery. There is, he sets forth, in the sperma a peculiar substance (σῶμα) which has some connection with soul and differs in quality as the souls themselves differ in worth. This substance is identical with two of the entities mentioned in our title and ‘analogous’ to the third.Πάσης μὲν οὖν ψυχῆς δύναμις ἑτέρου σώματος ἔοικε κεκοινωνηκέναι καὶ θειοτέρου τῶν καλουμένων στοιχείων ὡς δὲ διαφέρουσι τιμιότητι αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ ἀλλήλων, οὕτω καὶ ἡ τοιαύτη διαφέρει φύσις. πάντων μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι ὑπάρχει ὅπερ ποιεῖ γόνιμα εἶναι τὰ σπέρματα, τό καλούμενον θερμόν. τοῦτο δ᾿ οὐ πῦρ πὐδὲ τοιαύτη δύναμίς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐμπεριλαμβανόμενον ἐν τῷ σπέρματι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀφρώδει πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ πνεύματι φύσις, ἀνάλογον οὖσα τῶν ἄστρων στοιείῳ.The sentences which follow state that fire has no generative or procreative power, yet such a power must be present in the Sun and in the θερμόν, the vital heat of living beings. Clearly, then, this θερμόν cannot be identical with the fire.Nowhere else in the body of his preserved work does Aristotle establish this close connection between the vital heat, the pneuma, and the element of the stars, the so-called aether. These three concepts differ as much in their origin and past history as in their function and place within Aristotle's own physical or biological system. A brief sketch of them—skipping by necessity many significant episodes in the history of each—will suffice to make this clear.What needs here to be said about the ‘element of the stars’ is indeed not much. It was Aristotle himself who added this element to the canonic four of the Empedoclean and Platonic tradition. The dialogue On Philosophy and the First Book On the Heaven secured it its place. It is divine, un-ageing, and unchanging, and yet a material element. Like the other elements it has its specific ‘natural motion’, to wit the circular, which makes it possible for Aristotle to explain by a physical ‘hypothesis’ the celestial motions for which Plato had resorted to the World-Soul. The place of this element is the entire heavenly region, extending from the First Heaven to the moon; below this, in the regions occupied by the four other elements, it is never to be found.


Author(s):  
A. Zahorodnia

This article addresses the role of Christianity in the formation of the US ideology, particularly its influence on the formation of the concept of American exceptionalism. Although the recent decades have witnessed the increasing attention of American and European scholars to the influence of Christianity on the history of the United States, the body of historical research, and especially the Ukrainian one, still lacks general comprehensive analyses of the role of Christianity in the formation of American ideology and political culture. The article pays a particular attention to the messianic ideas preached by the Puritan leaders in the early history of the New World. These ideas have deeply rooted in the political ideology of the U.S. and still have a strong influence on its development. The article covers the role of Christian rhetoric, which is widely used in the addresses to the nation, and proves its significant role in the shaping of public opinion. Special attention is also paid to the characterizing of Protestant ethic, which basic principles had an impact on the formation of the American value system and influenced the development of the most crucial features of American identity – deep individualism and entrepreneurial mindset.


2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (100) ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Mark Featherstone

The objective of this article is to explore the evolution of what Beatrice Hibou calls the bureaucratisation of the world through a cultural history of the idea of bureaucracy in the western canon, taking in readings of Max Weber, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. The purpose of this historical survey is to reveal the essential problem of bureaucracy relating to the estrangement of body and writing in a state of modern technological abstraction. In order to set up this cultural history the first part of the article concerns perhaps the originary moment of the estrangement of humanity from writing, Socrates' story of the gift of writing from Plato's Phaedrus. Following exploration of Socrates' story, the article considers Derrida's famous analysis of the pharmakon of writing and suggests that what Derrida considered the original problem of speech and writing (that is, the need to decentre the proto-totalitarian idea of presence) no longer applies in the contemporary bureaucratised world where writing itself has evolved its own totalitarian form – abstract bureaucratic language that no longer speaks to the human. The article goes on to trace the evolution of this strange form of writing through exploration of the key works of Weber, Kafka, Arendt, and Foucault, before concluding by suggesting that what is required to move beyond the bureaucratisation of the world is the reversal of Derrida's pharmakon towards a situation that recognises the presence of human being in the world. Extending this point, the final section of the article concludes by suggesting that it is possible to find this argument in Bernard Stiegler's work and explaining that his theory of the neganthropocene may contain a solution of the problem of estranged writing and the totally bureaucratised world.


Author(s):  
Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez

RESUMENEn la obra del pensador gallego Francisco Sánchez (1551-1623), titulada Que nada se sabe, existen una serie de características que nos obligan a relacionarla directamente con el pensamiento judío. Entre estas cuestiones se hallan: las citas bíblicas recogidas por su autor, siendo la gran mayoría de ellas procedentes del Antiguo Testamento; la falta de la dedicatoria a la virgen María o la relación entre el alma y el cuerpo que recoge Sánchez y que es de claro origen judío.PALABRAS CLAVEESCEPTICISMO, PENSAMIENTO JUDÍO, FRANCISCO SÁNCHEZABSTRACTIn the work of the thinker Francisco Sanchez (1551-1623), entitled That nothing is known, there are some characteristics that force us to directly relate it to the Jewish thought.  Some of these questions are: the Biblical quotations gathered by its author, coming the great majority of them from the Old Testament; the lack of the dedication to Virgin Mary or the relation between the soul and the body that Sanchez shares with the Jewish tradition. All these topics point at the importance of this tradition in the work That nothing is known.KEYWORDSSCEPTICISM, JEWISH THOUGHT, FRANCISCO SANCHEZ, RENAISSANCE


2021 ◽  
pp. 151-177
Author(s):  
Вадим Евгеньевич Елиманов

Данная статья представляет собой попытку системной реконструкции учения св. Николая Кавасилы о Евхаристии как Жертве. В труде св. Николая «Изъяснение Божественной литургии» Евхаристия предстаёт как Богочеловеческая Жертва, в которой Церковь в целом и каждый христианин в частности под видом даров (хлеба и вина) приносит саму себя, свою жизнь в жертву Богу. Бог в ответ на это дароприношение подаёт Саму Жизнь, Самого Себя. Важным открытием стало определение смысловой связи между этапами совершения Евхаристической Жертвы, этапами совершения ветхозаветных жертв и этапами домостроительства спасения, совершённого Христом. Было установлено, что всякая жертва совершается в момент изменения состояния: когда «дар» (δῶρον) становится «жертвой» (θυσία). Если Голгофская Жертва совершилась через распятие, когда Христос из «Дара» Богу стал «Жертвой» Ему, а ветхозаветные кровавые жертвы совершались через заклание, когда жертвенное животное из дара становилось жертвой Богу; то Евхаристическая Жертва совершается через преложение (μεταβολή), когда дары (хлеб и вино) становятся истинной Жертвой, то есть Телом и Кровью Агнца Христа. This article is an attempt at a systematic reconstruction of the doctrine of st. Nicholas Cabasilas on the Eucharist as Sacrifice. In the work of st. Nicholas «Commentary on the Divine Liturgy», the Eucharist appears as a God-Human Sacrifice, in which the Church as a whole, and every Christian in particular, under the guise of gifts (bread and wine), offers itself, its life as a sacrifice to God. God responds to this gift and gives back Life itself, Himself. An important discovery was the definition of the semantic relationship between the stages of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the stages of the Old Testament sacrifices, and the stages of The Economy of Salvation, accomplished by Christ. It was established that every sacrifice is made at the moment of state change: when a «gift» (δῶρον) becomes a «sacrifice» (θυσία). If the Sacrifice of Calvary was made by crucifixion, when Christ from the «Gift» to God became the «Sacrifice» to Him, and blood sacrifices in the Old Testament were made by slaughter, when the sacrificial animal from the gift became the sacrifice to God; then the Eucharistic Sacrifice is performed by the transformation (μεταβολή), when the gifts (bread and wine) become the true Sacrifice, i.e., the Body and Blood of the Lamb of Christ.


2001 ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Yu. Ye. Reshetnikov

Last year, the anniversary of all Christianity, witnessed a number of significant events caused by a new interest in understanding the problem of the unity of the Christian Church on the turn of the millennium. Due to the confidentiality of Ukraine, some of these events have or will have an immediate impact on Christianity in Ukraine and on the whole Ukrainian society as a whole. Undoubtedly, the main event, or more enlightened in the press, is a new impetus to the unification of the UOC-KP and the UAOC. But we would like to focus on two documents relating to the problem of Christian unity, the emergence of which was almost unnoticed by the wider public. But at the same time, these documents are too important as they outline the future policy of other Christian denominations by two influential Ukrainian christian churches - the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. These are the "Basic Principles of the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to the" I ", adopted by the Anniversary Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Concept of the Ecumenical Position of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, adopted by the Synod of the Bishops of the UGCC. It is clear that the theme of the second document is wider, but at the same time, ecumenism, unification is impossible without solving the problem of relations with others, which makes it possible to compare the approaches laid down in the mentioned documents to the building of relations with other Christian confessions.


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