Journal index

Job 19,25–27 are probably the most widely known verses from his book. This pericope is often evoked on funeral occasions, and many Christians undoubtedly ponder those while struggling with the issue of death. The current study does not aim to correct the Christian faith. From the perspective of systematic theology, the Redeemer of Job and that of the Christians is the very same Christ. This essay attempts to outline the meaning of the text through linguistic and poetical analysis. A text (including a spontaneous one) informs a reader even by the way it was created. That is emphatically true in case of a writing formed, handed down, redacted in a stabilized version. (Scribal mistakes, of course, cannot be excluded, but until proven let the principle of lectio difficilior be followed.) The present essay strives to understand the meaning of Job’s words about his Restorer, who is able to redeem even when the flesh and the heart are consumed.

Job 29,18 is one of the most disputed verses from this chapter, especially with regard to the meaning of the Hebrew term lwx. This word can be rendered either as ‘palm’ (so, e.g. in the Septuagint and the Vulgate), or ‘sand’ (e.g. Saadiah Gaon), or ‘phoenix’ (e.g. Genesis Rabbah, B.Talmud Sanhedrin). Several Hungarian versions support both ‘sand’ and ‘phoenix’. This article shows that the Massora parva suggest that lwx is an example of talHin /double entendre. This means that the massoretes who fixed the text of the Leningrad Codex probably took for granted that lwx referred to both ‘sand’ and ‘phoenix’ as a bird-name.

This paper is an analysis of the text entitled Pardonner?, published in 1971 by the French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch. This paper is, to a certain extent, a counterpoint, to Jankélévitch’s earlier writing, Le Pardon (1967). This earlier publication is a calm indicative, while the later publication poses a question: Pardonner? Of course, this latter is not a suspension of what had been written before, but it shows that the creative yes of forgiveness can easily be made irrational and, thus, questionable by a lack of repentance, the tormentor’s arrogance which leads him to think he is indeed worthy of the immeasurable gift offered to him by the victim.

This lecture endeavours to answer the following questions: In what sense was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation different from any previous celebrations? What is the relationship between modernity and the Reformation? Does the Reformation have a formative role in the contemporary society? This study breaks with the traditional and linear interpretation of modernity and offers reverse methodology. Starting from the vantage point of the modern society, it examines the religious and theological impulses, and those interfaith dynamics that can have a role in shaping/modelling a peaceful coexistence of cultures and religions. These impulses are: the necessary interaction between various branches of science and religion in the academic setting; the value of the spiritual/theological interpretation of reality in our society; the freedom of conscience and religious thought in the secular state and in the church; and the preservation of self-identity in the age of mass manipulation. Pondering over these issues can and will make our celebration more relevant in the contemporary setting.

This paper examines the issue of absolution by Vladimir Jankélévitch. The absolving party’s role is to discover the cause external to man, deep down beneath human malice, which motivates the criminal actions. With an investigator’s zeal, an answer is sought to the question of “unde malum”? The old answer comes from dualism: the negative transcendent force, Satan, is the source of all sins. If there is an explanation, sin is mitigated and rage is attenuated, therefore explanations must be found. So one needs to explain – and this absolves one from all obligations of forgiveness. But this method fails the three requirements of true forgiveness, too: it is not an “immediate” “event”. It does not involve a personal relationship between the perpetrator and the injured. The offender is not offensive – at the very most, he is ill or illadvised, but there are no bridges from here to the other side of the abyss, where there is an obligation of love. Absolution is painless, but forgiveness is a heart-breaking, painful sacrifice. However, there is always something behind the intention of absolution which is ultimately similar to forgiveness and love: our author calls it a surplus of energy. The state of the soul is not the same when it seeks exempting or aggravating circumstances.

Another substitute for forgiveness treated by Jankélévitch is the thoughtless purging of the crime committed and its destruction. The author does not use Freud’s concept of suppression, but essentially that is what he is about: throwing the case file into the fire and “never speaking about it again”. According to Jankélévitch, this misleading, abrupt gesture, which sends the message that nothing happened, primarily lacks the third characteristic of true forgiveness, the personal relationship between the parties. The relationship between the victim and his tormentor remains superficial, mere window-dressing, if they fail to work through the most sensitive questions, if the former fails to strive to show mercy, love and forgiveness so that the requirement of truth is left intact.

This paper concludes that within the moral philosophy of Jankélévitch, the problem of forgiveness is ambiguous; or rather the author has an ambiguous attitude towards forgiveness. His point of view also has shortcomings that are due to the deficiencies of his metaphysics, his anthropology, his image of God and his interpretation of death. The God of Jankélévitch is creative energy, eternal acting goodness and love, but it is not a person and does not personally know its creations. It does not rule, does not enter into a covenant, does not bring redemption at the cost of its own heartbreak, does not judge sins and does not forgive them, does not speak, does not give commandments, does not conquer death, does not resurrect the dead, and does not offer eternal life. So the imperative of forgiveness is not —cannot —be supported by faith.

This paper concludes that within the moral philosophy of Jankélévitch, the problem of forgiveness is ambiguous; or rather the author has an ambiguous attitude towards forgiveness.His point of view also has shortcomings that are due to the deficiencies of his metaphysics, his anthropology, his image of God and his interpretation of death. The God of Jankélévitch is creative energy, eternal acting goodness and love, but it is not a person and does not personally know its creations. It does not rule, does not enter into a covenant, does not bring redemption at the cost of its own heartbreak, does not judge sins and does not forgive them, does not speak, does not give commandments, does not conquer death, does not resurrect the dead, and does not offer eternal life. So the imperative of forgiveness is not — cannot — be supported by faith.

We are always seeking for the sense of the life, for ourselves and for the place in our family and community. Religion shows a new way to us, according to Jesus Christ’s principles. The son of God not only created a religion, but gave us an example how to live, and sacrifice himself for us. Sándor Karácsony reckons religion as a spiritual behavior, the base of our social contacts. We have to see into our lives and character according to the message of Jesus Christ. The right and appropriate personality can be evolved by individual training.

This essay applies the method of semantic analysis for biblical metaphors. First it highlights the settled meanings of the lexemes of the metaphors under scrutiny. After establishing the sememes, the analysis focuses on the plain or hidden nominal predicative statement of the metaphor, namely only on the context of the tenor and vehicle, seeking for that conjunctive semes which can help us to understand the chosen metaphor. We can realise that the metaphor’s meaning is not definable, being imagined as a fuzzy set, where some semantic marks (or semes) are highlighted and others remain hidden. The larger context introduces other disjunctive semes too, not alluded to previously, thus enabling different connotations for metaphors.

The views of Sándor Karácsony about religious education can be clearly discerned from his writings. The main task of reformed pedagogy is to activate continuously the divine notions in this continuously changing world. Protestant teachers must accomplish their daily work according to the Gospel of Christ. The Hungarian Reformed Church was a so-called “church of schools” for hundreds of years. This means that even between WWI and WWII it owned more schools than churches. The number of Reformed schools is significant even today. Sándor Karácsony claims that only Reformed people and communities are able to maintain Reformed schools by people who “are ready to serve and sacrifice themselves” for this cause (Karácsony, Sándor: A magyarok Istene. Széphalom Könyvműhely, Budapest 2004, 172).

Es ist eine Zumutung sondergleichen, die man an jeden, der sich mit Problemen christlicher Ethik beschäftigen will, stellen möchte, folgende zwei Fragen, die ihn überhaupt zur Erörterung ethischer Probleme führten, beantworten zu können. Wie werde ich gut? und Wie kann ich etwas Gutes tun? Auf diese Art formulierte Fragen muß man aber von vornherein als der Sache unangemessen verzichten, und die zwei sehr verschiedenen Fragen sollten in das Licht Gottes Willens gestellt werden um sie beantworten zu können.

Nach einem Vierteljahrhundert seit den gesellschaftlich-politischen Umwälzungen Ost- Mittel-Europas im Jahre 1989 sind die ungarischsprachigen reformierten Kirchen der Region immer noch vor die Frage gestellt: Mit welchen weitreichenden Konsequenzen ist zu rechnen, wenn die Verantwortung für die Geschichte und für die moralisch-sittliche Schuld erwähnt wird? Eine Reduktion der Schuldfrage auf die Feststellung, dass Kirchenleitende, Pfarrerinnen und Pfarrer bzw. kirchliche Mitarbeiter zu ihren persönlichen Taten (d.h. geheime Zusammenarbeit mit der Staatsmacht) und Versäumnissen stehen sollten, wird an sich der Sache nicht gerecht. Einerseits wird in dieser Studie gezeigt, warum eine solche Zusammenarbeit mit Repressionsorganen eines totalitären Staats als theologisch absurd und damit als Schuld zu betrachten sei. Andererseits wird betont, dass Versagen und Schuld nicht nur dort zu finden sind, wo man aus Furcht und Angst vor repressiven Maßnahmen oder aus erhofftem Eigennutz auf Protest, Fürsprache für Entrechtete, auf Kritik am politischen Regime oder an den eigenen kirchenpolitischen Kompromissen verzichtete, sondern auch dort, wo man die gesellschaftliche Realität verengt wahrnahm und auf eine theologisch-kritische Analyse dieser Wirklichkeit verzichtete. Verantwortlich sind ein Christ und die Kirche nicht nur für ihre Taten, sondern auch für ihre Sicht der Wirklichkeit, ja für ihre Theologie. Als Folge dieser theologischen Orientierungskrise blieb für die Kirche entweder eine unkritische Bejahung bzw. Begeisterung für das politischgesellschaftliche Sein der Wirklichkeit oder eine Reihe von politisch-ethischen und theologischen Zugeständnissen, um eventuell Schlimmerem vorzubeugen. Dieser Zusammenhang von anscheinend harmlosen Zugeständnissen, Kompromissen oder Verzichten auf theologische Deutungen der Wirklichkeit – ganz zu schweigen vom Mangel an gelebter Solidarität – hat zur persönlichen Schuldverstrickung des Einzelnen geführt. Nach der systemtheoretischen bzw. sozial-theologischen Darstellung der Schuld in der Vergangenheit bietet die Studie schließlich einige Kriterien für einen adäquaten Umgang mit der Vergangenheit im kirchlichen und gesellschaftlichen Raum: Die ethische Dimension des Aufarbeitungsprozesses, die Förderung einer Kultur des Mitleidens, die zwangsfreie Ermöglichung der Erinnerung und die Komplementarität der politisch-rechtlichen und religiös-moralischen Dimensionen der Versöhnung sollten dafür sorgen, dass nicht weitere Verletzungen (als „zweite oder dritte Schuld”) das Miteinander der Generationen trüben, sondern dass ein freies, friedliches und der historischen Wahrheit verpflichtetes Zusammenleben ermöglicht wird.