Sárospataki Füzetek 13. (2009)
2009 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Hörcsik Richard: A Kálvin-kutató Nagy Barna emlékezete
A Kálvin-kutató Nagy Barna emlékezete appoint timely tasks for the 21st century Calvin studies to be carried out in the Reformed Church of Hungary. His Life Barna Nagy was born on 15 May 1909 in Sárospatak. His father, Béla Nagy (1877-1939) was a professor of theology. Between 1919 and 1927 Barna Nagy studied at the Patak College. It is worth nothing that this is when his language skills were unfolded. In the Sárospatak Youth Bulletin he regularly published translations of poems from English, German, French. As a student of theology he acquired skills in shorthand writing, he won several competitions. This would later help him to be able to read almost continuously those 16th century notes that were taken by French shorthand writers, by which Calvin’s sermons had been put down. He spent the 1929-30 academic year in Montpellier, France, where he got acquainted with Calvin’s theology. After this he attended the lectures of Brunner in Zurich and was oriented to systematic theology. Finally, in 1933-34 as a student of Barth in Bonn, he became every inch a dogmatist. He received his doctorate in 1936 in Debrecen. In 1937 he was elected a professor of systematic theology to replace his father in Sárospatak. The minutes of the board of directors mention the recommendation given by Karl Barth, in which “Barth qualifies him as a profound thinker, who is able to give independent form to theological problems, a gifted theologian...” In 1947 Nagy was the dean of the Academy, and the rector of the college. He attended the Amsterdam Assembly of the World Council of Churches. The first serious breaking occurred in his life when the Patak College was ceased. After leaving his beloved town and school he moved to Budapest. In 1952 he received scholarly position at the General Convent. Although after two years he replaced prof. János Victor at the Budapest Theological Academy, very soon a second shock followed. After the 1956 revolution he was imprisoned for a short time, and was deprived of his academic chair. The General Convent downgraded him to a “research professor”. According to one of his former colleagues this unfortunate fact “helped Nagy display his skills, when the teaching position was replaced by scholarly research. He entrenched himself in the first century of the Hungarian and thus European Reformation.” Of course it is also a fact that as a teacher having been deprived of his academic chair, he could not educate generations of theologians, and thus was not able to nurture and bring up a young generation of Calvin scholars - the effect of which is still felt by us. Yet in this “research asylum” he was able to accomplish something lasting and indispensable as far as Hungarian Calvin studies are concerned. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches commissioned him to take care of part of the unpublished sermons of Calvin. During that decade his work became more recognised abroad: in Basel, Geneva, Zurich and Wittenberg. As an acknowledgement of his work the Zurich University granted him an honorary doctorate in 1968. Here, at home, he became more and more involved in the discipline of literary history. His former colleague said of Nagy at his funeral service: "... his work has built Sárospataki Fii/,ölek 79
