Református Szemle 107.4 (2014)

Walter Jens, die hervorragende Gestalt des deutschen literarischen und kulturellen Lebens weist in seiner vielseitigen Tätigkeit eine reiche Verbindung zwischen Theologie und Literatur auf. In dieser Studie möchten wir ihn von einer speziellen Seite vorstellen und zwar anhand sei-ner Tätigkeit als Bibelübersetzer. Welchen Quellen, Methoden und welchem Stil folgt er in seiner Übersetzung und warum? Gelingt sein Anliegen, das Hörerlebnis der ersten Jesus-Anhänger authentisch durch seine Übersetzung uns heute zu vermitteln? Welche Verbindung hat er mit der Übersetzung von dem großen Vorfahren Luther?

In our Church ecclesiastical elections are organised once every six year. At the level of church district the bishop, at the level of the dioceses the person and functionality of the dean are crucial. Therefore, not only the pastors and deacons should be given special training but also the ecclesiastical superiors. The leaders are often unsuitable for the position, which can have very damaging consequences. The temptation of power and money can be dangerous. We must seek to ensure that the Spirit of God guides the church elections.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s view about the ethics of Jesus is a classic presentation of the tension between the love ethic and the hard requirements of relative justice in the power conflicts of a sinful world. His theory could be a guide for Christians in our society today, tomorrow and for many years to come.

After World War II many questions were raised by the „generation of sons” to their fathers regarding the war. There was an urgent need to cope with the past somehow. In this past elaboration the voice of the victims was worth to listen to and forgiveness of the aggressors became a major question of the society. This article was born from a study of western forgiveness-discussions and presents the Hungarian forgiveness-ethos after the end of the Great War and the big changes of 1989. More precisely it presents some of the reasons why the subject of forgiveness was lacking in Hungarian reformed theology. Shortly after the trauma of the Great War pax sovietica arrived. There was no time to distance oneself enough from the harms of the previous period and to raise and develop a public discussion on subjects like forgiveness and reconciliation because new traumas had to be faced.There was no time to cope with the past of the war, and there was no possibility (because it was not allowed) to speak out those harms until the end of the communist regime.Due to the special geopolitical situation of Eastern Europe, the isolation from western theology and with country-borders divided, Hungarian reformed theology has developed into two different directions. In Hungary the “theology of the serving church” became the unison voice of the church, while in Transylvania, building on the foundation of “new reformation theology”, a special Word-theology was born and developed into a pan-homiletic direction. Homiletics became the crown of theological studies, and every study of theology (historical, biblical, systematic and practical) had to offer some results for preaching.

I am aware that József Benkő’s manifold and diversified work cannot be summarised in a few pages without omissions. I have presented only the events through which this son of Erdővidék, who had never studied at a foreign academy, became internationally famous as a domidoctus. He has proven that, if endowed with the necessary perseverance, respect for work and humility as a scientist, one can become a well-known scholar living even in areas as remote as Erdővidék.