Sárospataki Füzetek 17. (2013)
2013 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Szilveszter Füsti-Molnár: Can the Heidelberg Catechism be Neglected in the Life of the Reformed Church of Hungary?
Szilveszter Füsti-Molnár which result in structural changes. Gaps opened during the changes set the new directions of the transitory state. In other words, they indicate the place of regeneration in the structures left behind us. The individual crossing such breaking points goes through such a cultural sphere which hardly possesses or totally lacks those features that characterize either the past or the future situations,’* 2 - says Turner. In this process, common sense and real experience can have a decisive role, which speak against obtaining or taking possession of what one has experienced, and putting this into dogmas and objective doctrines, and in then integrating these into the structure. The essence of this process is an ‘stepping beyond’, which promises the possibility of the wholly other (the numinous by Rudolf Otto)3- in opposition to the all-surveying, measuring, and all-judging and condemning attitudes. Changes in the structure of thinking can be detected in the liminal processes of the transitional stage, which is both a destructive and creative process. In accordance with this, the social differences, the differences in status, possession and individual interests, disappear, and a so called communitas4 of puritan mentality and creative power is formed, which creates new solutions for human relational structures. We have to be careful with the description of the borderline experience and the thus created communitas, since the communitas of fully developed personalities - as purely estrangement-free states of human relationships- are statements which are hard to maintain. They suggest that the impersonality of the structure is merely a mask under which there are whole persons (accomplished personalities), and thus only the masks should be put aside. According to this, communitas could be understood as a kind of heavenly and utopian or millennial state of this world, and both the community and the religious acts of the individuals should strive to reach it.5 In order to avoid the trap of the tame utopia, the emphasis should rather be put on the dramatic character of the borderline experience that gives a hermeneutic frame for the thought indicated in the title. Namely, the essence of the liminal (defined as the in-between or borderline ogy but other fields as well. Turner first formulated his theory of liminality in the late 1960s, and it continued to be a central theme in his work until his death in 1983. See Victor Turner, "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage," from The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (1967), "Liminality and Communitas," from The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969), and "Passages, Margins, and Poverty: Religious Symbols of Communitas," from Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors (1974). 2 Victor Turner: Liminalitás és communitas. In: Zentai Violetta (szerk.): Politikai antropológia. Osiris-Láthatatlan Kollégium, 1997. 52-53. 3 See: Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy. Trans. John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923; 2nd ed., 1950 [Das Heilige, 1917.]). 4 Victor Turner,.: The Ritual Process, (London: Routledge, 1969), 96-97.; Victor Turner, "Liminality and Communitas,"from The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969), 95., Victor Turner, "Passages, Margins, and Poverty: Religious Symbols of Communitas,"from Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors (1974), 233. 5 Victor Turner: Átmenetek, határok és szegénység: a communitas vallási szimbólumai. In: P. Bo- hunnan-M. Glazer (szerk.): Mérföldkövek a kulturális antropológiában. Pannem Kft., 1997.681. 46 Sárospataki Füzetek 17. évfolyam i 2013 I 4
