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 Just think of Q&A 4, as well as the theme of Church discipline in Q&A 83. The way Jesus put the heart of the Law into words shows its crucial importance. The concept of love is in opposition to the notion of law creating overly objectified structures. In this context, love aims at regulating not merely religious life but human life as a whole. It regulates marriage, kinship, private property, trade, farming and jurisdiction. Love is not merely bound by the concept of religious law categories, but it also means ethos. It is the standard for a good life on the basis of which one can decide what to serve and what one deserves credit for. These questions will be the basic issue of righteousness within the given structure. Moreover, these questions can only be decided by the people within the structure. The debate of love and law erupts at the borderline of the inside and the outside of the structures. As far as - in agreement with von Rad - we can see a close relationship between the commandments and the covenants, it will be clear from this that the commandments of Yahweh show the confrontation with decisions concerning life and death faced by his people. Despite the fact that Yahweh expects decision from his people on the basis of the commandments, the commandments were not prerequisite requirements for the covenant, as if the covenant coming into effect was conditioned by the obedience rendered by Israel. It is quite the contrary. The covenant is made and thus Israel will start to hear the commandments.12 The concept of love (agape and charitas) requires a much deeper understanding. Love cannot be reduced to a particular emotional binding that connects us only to a restricted group of people. Ricoeur’s theory of symbols shows that Jesus view on love as assuming emotional attachment, also refers to another symbolic meaning of agape, making use of the surplus in the symbolic meaning of love.13 In this sense love can be made universal which goes beyond mere emotional attachment. We can clearly see this in Pauls letters. It is necessary to note here that today due to modernity’s striving for a straightforward understanding of the slogans of liberty - equality - brotherhood, our present age fits agape into brotherhood, and that way agape is merely understood as basically only a matter of solidarity in human relationship, and this view cannot do anything with the particular additional meaning of the concept. The concept of brotherhood is unintentionally overshadowed and becomes unmanageable in todays contemporary impersonal and seemingly straightforward structural changes. The universal category of love carries the economy of grace, and as soon as it concerns practice it attests the logic of overflow - as Ricoeur refers to it14. This helps us to understand Jesus’ new commandment of love in compari'2 Gerhard von Rad: Az Ószövetség teológiája. Osiris, 2000.1.158-159. 13 Paul Ricoeur: Liebe und Gerechtigkeit. Tübingen, 1990. See also: Paul Ricoeur: Nyelv, szimbólum és értelmezés. Fabiny Tibor (szerk.): A hermeneutika elmélete I (Ikonológia és Műértelmezés 3.). Szeged, 1987,179-198. 14 Paul Ricoeur: Liebe und Gerechtigkeit.Tübingen, 1990. 52 Sárospataki Füzetek 17. évfolyam | 2013 | 4
