Calvin Synod Herald, 1973 (73. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1973-10-01 / 10. szám
REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA 5 Hungary, Executive Secretary; Official delegate to the Oxford and Edinburgh Conferences (1937), and to the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Amsterdam, 1948; Accredited visitor, Second Assembly of the World Council, Evanston, 1954; Official delegate to the General Council of the Alliance of Reformed Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian System, Geneva (1948); Princeton (1954), Sao Paulo, Brazil (1959), Frankfurt (1964), Nairobi, Kenya (1970). PUBLICATIONS: Editor, Theology and Life, 1958-1965; and three major works in English: The Major Traits of Calvins Theology, 1952; Light Against Darkness, 1961; Christ’s Church; Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed, 1965. From the Denomination ... “It gives me great pleasure to join with Bela Vassady’s friends and colleagues in celebrating his long and fruitful years of service to the church and to theological education. When he joined the Seminary faculty in September 1952, he brought to it a perspective that was different (here I speak of his background in Europe), intensely ecumenical and Reformed. He also brought with him years of engagement in the theological task and a deep involvement in theological education. “Over the years since that time that perspective has broadened significantly as he has reflected theologically on the American experience. In this connection I particularly remember his sermon in Santee Chapel following the assassination of President Kennedy. His commitment to ecumenism has never wavered. The sign of that is his volume Christ’s Church: Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed, now regarded as a major contribution to the corpus dealing with the Consultation on Church Union. These lines from the concluding prayer of the book vividly reveal his ecumenical concern: “Gather us, Lord, or scatter us; do as Thou deemest right, building us all into one Church... Thou, who has formed Thy Church, come, and reform it again and anew.” “As I look back over our years together as colleagues on the Seminary faculty, I am especially grateful for the leadership he took in establishing and editing Theology and Life. He showed himself to be not only a good editor but an able administrator. Few of us dreamed that such a journal could attract either the readership or the authorship that it did. He is a visionary who can give concretion to his dream. “Finally I want to express my gratitude for him as a teacher. In those first years we were together on the faculty our offices adjoined each other. I was working on my doctoral dissertation and he was always busy on his next book. It is not difficult to imagine how often the occasion arose for one of us to read something the other had written and then to discuss it. In those conversations he was my teacher, not just because we dealt with issues in his field but also because he was always eager to compare notes with me on a passage of Scripture. “Bela Vassady has served the Church well. I wish for him and Serena God’s richest blessing in retirement.” Robert V. Moss United Church of Christ President-------------^ ------------------HUNGARY - KENYA - SUDAN This is an edited version of an interview with the Rev. István Csákány, which Fred Kaan recorded for INTERVOX, the ecumenical radio news service. K: It isn’t every day that a Hungarian Reformed pastor is made available by an African church to go and work as an agricultural expert in another African country. Yet this is exactly what happened to István Csákány, who has been working in Kenya and who is about to go to Sudan. Could you tell me something about how all this came about? C: In 1967, representatives of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa visited the Reformed Church of Hungary, and as a result of their contacts with our leaders, our Church agreed to send my colleague, Dr. Janos Pastor and myself to Kenya. Dr. Pastor went to teach at St. Paul’s Theological College, Limuru... K: ... and you went into agricultural work? C: Yes, I was asked to work in a development project with the nomadic Maasai, because I am a qualified agriculturalist as well as a pastor. K: This project is being sponsored by the Presbyterian Church? C: Yes, the Presbyterian Church has a center, the Maasai Rural Development Center, which is near Nairobi, but which is in an untouched area, where nomadic life is becoming increasingly difficult; each year during the dry season countless animals die through lack of water and grass. K: Wasn’t it difficult to get into a Maasai setting? C: For years, the Presbyterian Church had been trying to get into the Maasai area, but without success. It wasn’t so much a religious problem as fear of outside influences generally. Then in 1968, the local Maasai chief became a Christian, joined the Presbyterian Church and asked for help for his people. He has worked very hard in the setting-up of the Center.
