Navigating a wide range of literature, Euntaek David Shin offers a fresh take on how to think theologically about human finitude and what faithfulness might look like for us amid such complex and competing realities as distraction, inequality, sabbath, and memory. Readers will find much here that is both creative and original.
~Kelly M. Kapic, author of You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News
In a time when 'being busy' can be a badge of honor, we need to reclaim the goodness of rest. Euntaek David Shin achieves the beginnings of this reclamation--not by extolling the values of rest subjectively (as many as those are) but by grounding this rest in the creature's dependence on the Triune God. Theologically rich and beautifully written, this book is like a slow breath out, reminding us of our gift of dependence.
~Christa L. McKirland, Lecturer in Systematic Theology, Carey Baptist College
Shin's meditation on the divine vocation and gift of 'rest' in our lives, bound up with our very created being, stands as an inspiring witness to the hope for a fulfilled existence that our culture and habits have squeezed out of so many hearts. Shin engages with sensitive depth fundamental aspects of human life like created limits, physical and relational space, daily activities, the givenness of our days and gifts, and the hope of God's life. In doing so, he leads the reader through a rich field of scriptural, theological, and philosophical wisdom with the aim of providing a practical, but intellectually compelling, vision of the contented life that relies on God. Not so much a tonic as an elixir of grace in our brittle age, this book deserves a wide reading and even more so, a robust following.
~Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology Emeritus, Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto
Augustine famously taught that we find rest in God alone. In this impressively systematic and well-researched book, firmly grounded in the original languages and yet conversant with a large cast of interlocutors past and present, Shin creatively unfurls Augustine’s compact insight on an ample canvas: more than a weekly obligation, rest is the joyful shape of the whole Christian life in all of its dimensions--space, time, relationships, and daily rhythms. This is a theology of rest for today, and for every day.
~Han-Luen Kantzer Komline, Marvin and Jerene DeWitt Professor of Theology and Church History, Western Theological Seminary
There are many books on sabbath as advocated and practiced today and in the days of the formation of the Torah, and on the psychological value of such in the eras of the Old and New Testament, and on the cultural uniqueness of a theological account of rest. Shin brings all this and his additional linguistic grounding in Hebrew, Greek, and his native Korean to bare. This is an exercise in constructive theology in a work that deals with the implications of his two variables in light of "place" illustrated in nature and society and in daily activities, of time, and in terms ofmemory, and God, the source of all these domains.
~Rodney L. Petersen, PhD, is a Visiting Scholar at Duke University Divinity School, Africanus Journal
