Creation or Evolution? – Seventh-day Adventists and Natural Science in Hungary
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Babeș-Bolyai University / Cluj University Press
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In my study, I examine the Seventh-day Adventist theological thought from the point of view of its response to the challenges of Darwinism and how this topic is reflected in Hungary. The subject is also interesting because the founding of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (1863) and the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) coincide, so the church had to deal with a topic that was – and still is – a major challenge for Christianity as a whole. As we shall see from the study, unlike many Christian denominations, the Church’s position has remained consistent throughout in rejecting Darwin’s theory from the outset and in trying to point out its potential pitfalls on an ideological basis. Hungarian Adventist theologians have also addressed this issue in a number of works. In the first part of my study, I will describe the ideological basis for the adherence to creationism in Seventh-day Adventist theological thought. I will then explore the ways in which this conviction was expressed in the writings of Hungarian Adventist theological thinkers in the 20th and 21st centuries (e.g. Jenő Szigeti, Attila Szabó). I will discuss the particular supra-denominational organization that brought together in Hungary all those researchers and scholars who argued against the theory of evolution. Finally, I will present the work of Zsuzsa Vankó, the most prominent Hungarian Seventh-day Adventist theologian on the subject.