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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: The author points out the fact that liberalism includes theoretical and practical manifestations, among which economic, political, and spiritual manifestations are inserted as well.
However, liberalism should be sharply delimited from the anti-clerical approach, which bore the separation of church and state in mind.
The large ideology-flow was expected to refill the churches. The ideas reached Hungarian territories primarily through reading of foreign works and studies abroad.
The Liberal Theology movement, which started from Germany, is essentially a heritage of theological rationalism. However, the spirit of Liberal Theology was also born out of the German philosophical idealism. It reached Hungarian Protestantism through schools founded by Kant, Schleiermacher and Hegel, nevertheless, not directly, but combined with the theologies of Alexander Schweizer and Biedermann as well.
The Dutch Scholten, who followed Baur’s and Schweizer’s footsteps, had the main impact on the Reformed Liberal Theology of Transylvania and Ödön Kovács was his faithful follower.
The Hungarian theologians met with the representatives of the new movement during their studies abroad. They got acquainted with the teachings of Liberal Theology; they adopted and validated them in the theological training at home.
Hungarian Liberal Theology did not build up a well-defined system, as during the fierce fights there was no time for the required immersion and the definition of a system. There was a certain system; however, it was not gathered in a book. The theses became well-known through writings published in journals, weeklies and books.
They gathered into liberal schools and formed a common theological group. Thus the Theological Faculties of Pest, Sárospatak and Nagyenyed propagated theological liberalism, while the Theological Faculty of Debrecen represented the opposition camp, keeping to the thesis of Reformed Orthodoxy.
In this study the author presents the main theses of Liberal Theology that were the causes of heated debates in the press of the 70s and 80s of the 19th century.
Keywords: liberalism, theological liberalism, studies abroad, theological rationalism, Hungarian Protestantism. |
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