Systematic theology

The study reviews the writings and reports of Sándor Tavaszy about the Unitarians. His writings were published in the Református Szemle, Az Út Reformed periodicals and in the Transylvanian press of the time. I examined three areas of Tavaszy’s writings: 1. his reports on Unitarian church events (bishop’ inauguration, Church anniversary); 2. his evaluation of Unitarian personalities (Sámuel Brassai, Balázs Orbán); 3. mutual book reviews (Tavaszy’s books’ reviews by Unitarians and reviews of Unitarian books by Tavaszy).

The main theme of my writing is Jonathan Edwards’ reflection on the beauty of God. In his writings and sermons, God’s beauty is not coherently defined, but fragments of his thinking on beauty can be found throughout in his works. My research does not aim at providing a coherent picture of Edwards’ views on God’s beauty. Edwards did not provide any consistent criteria of beauty and the qualities that are true of God, so that we have no easy task when we want to capture and summarise his views.

This short study, drawing on a small part of Calvin’s vast written corpus, seeks to show how the reformer used the concepts of eternal life and death. Tackling with uncertainties on the fringes of eschatology, Calvin shows how difficult it is to grasp the meaning of these two concepts, even when the theologian stands on firm biblical theological grounds.

An appropriate understanding of the praxis of Christian piety is an integral part of Christian life. In various periods of the Church, Christian piety was evaluated from different perspectives. The reason for this was not only the altering praxis of piety in the Church. After all, Christian piety has a narrative and interpretative function. It is narrative in providing context to Christian self-understanding. It is interpretative in two respects. On the one side, it never stands alone but functions as a reflexion on the Christian teaching.

Folklorists remain indebted to this day for exploring the possible occurrences of Jesus-patterns in folktales: this is a gap that I aim to fill in this study. The storytellers of the Carpathian Basin were fond of creating parallels between the life and deeds of the fairy-tale hero and Jesus. The narration of the miraculous birth, the divine origin, the hidden childhood, the healing activity, the crucifixion, the underworld passage, and the resurrection as parabolic narratives are presented in plentiful variants.

While the Qur’an often refers to Jesus Christ, it presents a picture which is different from the New Testament. The Qur’an “denies” that Jesus Christ would be the Son of God, implicitly also discounting the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Jesus is only a creature, a prophet of God, whom God saved from death on the cross. The denial of the death of Jesus Christ was presum- ably theologically motivated, insofar as Muhammad’s successful career was aimed to prove that the servant of Allah cannot fail or suffer because God protects his people and leads them to prosperity.