Jaroslav N. Ondra

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Jaroslav Němec Ondra (born March 18, 1925 in Studená u Telče , † April 8, 2000 in Prague ) was a Czech Protestant theologian , pastor of the Evangelical Church of the Bohemian Brothers and university professor .

Live and act

Ondra was born a few years after the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic . After graduating from university , he studied Protestant theology and was ordained pastor of the Evangelical Church of the Bohemian Brothers in 1949 . He held this office for eleven years, during which time he came into contact with theologians like Josef Hromádka . In 1958 he was one of the founders of the Christian Peace Conference with Hromádka and was its second general secretary from 1959 to 1969. Slávek - as his friends called him - described in his report as Secretary General to the Second All-Christian Peace Assembly in 1964 the reasons why he and other Christians decided at that time to participate in the Christian Peace Conference and to enter into an ecumenical dialogue in the broadest possible sense:

“ God's covenant with man is the clear expression of the fact that God, holy and almighty, does everything of himself to save and redeem sinful man, both individually and mankind as a whole. ... God cares about life. He did everything of his own accord so that death was not the last thing for us. His covenant with us obliges us, as those called to follow his Son Jesus Christ, to walk in his footsteps and, like him, to do everything for life and against death. ... We live in the atomic age .... The greater our Christian responsibility is. The endeavor to save life is now called participation in Christian peace work .... Passivity of Christians in this sense can indirectly mean a shortening of the "time of grace" ... The main theme of our meeting "My covenant is life and peace "calls on all of us, without distinction, who have come together here for this gathering, not to remain silent on the questions of life and peace and to come to the right words ... to concrete deeds that will be done in different parts of the world should help to create conditions for peaceful coexistence between states of different social systems, to eliminate the possibility of war as a means of solving even difficult problems and to lead humanity towards a peaceful epoch that is the only future of the world. ... "

The justification of the military crackdown on the Prague Spring by the Warsaw Pact states by the CFK in 1968 led him to resign from his post as Secretary General.

In 1967 Ondra became a Dr theol at the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Bratislava . PhD. In 1970, Ondra began to teach Protestant theology at the Comenius Faculty in Prague and at the same time began studying law at Charles University . After completing this course and a habilitation on Hegel's dialectics, he received a professorship at the Comenius Faculty in 1978 , where he headed the Ecumenical Institute until his retirement in 1991 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Theologické a ekumenické předpoklady pro křesťanskou mírovou práci . Diss. Bratislava 1967.
  • Základy dialektiky u Georga Wilhelma Friedricha Hegla . Habil. Prague 1978.
  • Some biblical reflections on the changes in Europe . In: Ecumenical Revue 46 (1993), pp. 146-150 ( online resource ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "My covenant is life and peace" (Mal. 2.5), documents and messages from the II. All-Christian Peace Assembly in Prague, June 28 to July 3, 1964
personal data
SURNAME Ondra, Jaroslav N.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ondra, Jaroslav Němec
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech Protestant theologian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Studená u Telče
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 2000
Place of death Prague