Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)
1968-06-01 / 2. szám
HOP Vol XX Special Number - 45 - (07685) 1968 No 2 share, too, will be bigger if the economic strength of the community increases* We understand, and make our people in the churches understand that there are no arguments in the Bible to justify the "sacrament0 of private property,neither the eternal value of public ownership, yet the Bible clearly teaches that the whole earth and everything therein belongs to God, and that man can only perform his "stewardship" with the earthly possession in the right manner if he is free of selfishness and looks upon the problems of economic life with the eyes of the community, keeping in mind all the tine that public property serves the good of the whole people* The third important area of concern in our preaching is related to the Christian conception cf werk. The basis of our social order is work, but an obsolete opinion inherited from the past has tried in many ways to consider werk as the consequence of sin and as an activity under the coercive force of God's curse* Taking their texts both from the Old and the New Testaments, our preachers proclaim that work is worship the origin of which is in God's command after creation: "subdue the earth”. That means that man, by God's commission, is to have dominion over the created world, arxL that the purpose cf work is to ward off from the world the forces rebelling against God, the for eres cf sin and death, that is, of Satan* Prom another albeit inseparable point of view, work is the service we owe to our neighbours; in view of our social interdependence we have the duty mutually to help one another, having solidarity with one another, end thus making work the instrument of building up the smaller and larger human communities. Calling on the authority of the Bible, we also proclaim that every discrimination between physical and intellectual work is false: everyone is to/his work on the post which God's purPPseful providence assigns to him, in the sense of what the Apostle Paul teaches about this matter - with primary reference to the church but also with a paradigmatic bearing upon the world - in the 12th chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinth ianso We make our witness to the truth that the essence cf work is service in a specific way in that we declare in our sermons the conviction that a social system based on work is superior to any other social system. Mention is to be made of a specific aspect of the Christian understanding of work in the present situation of mankind* The breath-taking progress of science and technology often gives cause for concern also among Christians who expostulate: "We are no longer masters of what we have accomplisliedl" Those Living in the state of such fears and anxieties are, of course, disposed to take a negative position as to the development of soience and technology and their accomplishments. Hence one cf the important tasks of our preaching is to dispel such fears and anxieties. Our preachers tell their hearers thrt God is Sovereign of the whole world whose gracious power encompasses all manifestations of human life, and He is not a puny idol that we had to be anxious about. He, on the other hand, gave commission to man to subdue the earth and thus, by virtue of his work, man becomes a co-worker of God* All accomplishments of science for the good cf mankind, all the inventions cf technology designed to improve the conditions of our life must inspire grati
