Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HOP Vol XX Special Number

1968 No 2

100 -(07304)

III

THE CHURCHES FOR A JUST AND PEACEFUL WORLD ORDER

In the first two parts of this Contribution we have tried to outline the mein theological foundations of the churches'" social ministry, then we have tried to seek replies to the most urgent problems of the churches which live in the midst of radical social changes., Now we are going to turn cur attention to the world problems of human society* Of course, we can do no more than to discuss a few problems of special urgency? In our opinion, the most important wer Id problems concern the revolutionary changes, the co—existence of races, peaceful co-cxistence and the general and total disarmament* It is to the discussion of these problems that we should like to make our specific Christian contribution«

l) The Problem of Revolution in Oar Theology

a) The Role of the Revolutions in Shaping the Modem World

The successive centuries of the New Age have been marked by a process of rapidly widening revolutionary changes,3 The motionless, stationary world of the Middle Ages las progressively changed into a "dynamic wer Id", "dynamic society" in which powerful, sudden and abrupt thrusts toward radical changes are taking placet. This form of social development - "the sudden catching up with arrested development" - has been compared in modem sociology with the modem bid.ogj.cal theory of mutation, a sudden thrust cf progress, and also with the p he nor., era described by the quantum theory in contemporary physical science which# as spuria and jerks, indicate a non-con-* tinuous process (See the theories of Hartmann, Adler a Toynbee and von Wiese on the essence of revolutions^

There can be no doubt that the modern world and society in which we live have come into being in the wake cf the great revolutions of the past: the revolt of the English Puritans under the leadership cf Oliver Cromwell, the French Revolution, the national revolutions in the middle of the XIXth century, including, as one of the most significant of them, the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and the Great October Revolution of 1917, the latter more comprehensive and of greater consequences than all the preceding revolutions« Without cons idering these revolutions, the world of today and modern society would be simply unthinkable«

„Our age, however, the present period of humanity, is more so than any previous historic period, a time of radical transformation wo live after, in and before revolutionary changes- Those vast transformations of revolutionary nature have already taken, place in many parts of the world-