Református Szemle 114.4 (2021)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the life of the churches and the local congregations. The Hungarian experiences fit into the international trends. The ongoing paradigm-shift in mission-ecclesiology has become even more complex. The pandemic amplified some of the ongoing changes and, at the same time, has brought about new phenomena. This study describes these changes and provides suggestions that could strengthen the churches in order to effectively fulfil their mission even under the current circumstances.

This short text discloses Karl Barth’s idea on confession and prayer as it is presented in his Church Dogmatics III/4. Confession of faith and prayer are central to Christian thought, but most often they appear in theological literature only as a topic of Christian confessional piety. This short paper seeks to answer the question of whether prayer and confession of faith carry both an outward and an inward ethical charge in Christian thought. Barth treats the question of confession and prayer in his Dogmatics as belonging to the domain of special ethics. The confession of faith, whether implicit or explicit, always points to Christ and as such cannot avoid affirming and critically evaluating the reality of the world. By doing this, it becomes essentially an expression of ethical awareness. Likewise, prayer, rooted in the revelation of God, by its actualising the relationship between God and man it becomes in every situation an occasion for a decision in favour of God and neighbour. By these means Christians can show that they take Christianity seriously.

The election, education and ordination of future ministers has always been a responsibility of church officials, such as teachers, ministers, deans, respectively the assembly of the deanery. Teachers and ministers have also had the responsibility of identifying bright and talented students and church youth who can be directed to higher education to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for pastoral ministry. In addition to the usual biblical and theological subjects, they had to learn Latin grammar, dialectics and rhetoric, and after completing their secondary education, they had to consolidate what they had learned at university level. Young people applying for the ministry first had to acquire the necessary practical skills as assistant ministers under the guidance of ordinary ministers, and only then were they ordained as ordinary ministers in a congregation.

This is the third, closing section on the life of Countess Anna Teleki (1783-1851). In Part I we dealt with her youth, in Part II with her marriage to Simon Kemény, and in this last section with her widowhood. After the death of her husband, Anna Teleki moved to Enyed (Aiud), where her home, the “Burg”, became not only a centre of her family life but also of cultural and political life. She was responsible for the financial support of Farkas Bolyai. Her sons and sons-in-law played a nationally important role in the Union and during the War of Independence (1948). They were forced to flee from Enyed because of the attack of the Romanian Moț groups. After the War of Independence, the family went into hiding in Tiszaroff and Érmihályfalva (Valea lui Mihai). Here she received a letter from Farkas Bolyai evaluating the recent events of those days. She died on her return to Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) in 1851. Her life and moral example deserve respect even by biblical standards.