Publications - Exit Translations

Géza Sógor: Minority Church – The Church as a Minority

2025

Géza Sógor was born in Arad in 1968. He pursued theological studies at the Protestant Theological Institute in Cluj-Napoca between 1988 and 1993. In 1991 he studied at the German-speaking Lutheran faculty in Sibiu; between 1992 and 1993 he completed undergraduate studies in sociology in Cluj-Napoca, organized by the Central European University; and he further expanded his theological education in the Netherlands. In 1995, at the invitation of Professor Willem Balke, and again in 2015 as a scholarship holder of the Fundament Foundation, he obtained a Master’s degree in Systematic Theology with a specialization in Political Theology in Kampen. In December 2024 he was awarded a PhD in Systematic Theology by the Reformed Theological University of Debrecen, under the supervision of Sándor Fazakas.

Following his service in the Moldavian diaspora mission, he was ordained to the ministry in 1994. He served in Gerendkeresztúr–Aranyoshadrév (1995–1998), as chief librarian of the Protestant Theological Institute in Cluj-Napoca (1998–2001), as associate pastor in the Upper Town Reformed Congregation of Cluj-Napoca (2001–2009), and since 2010 he has served in the Kányád–Jásfalva Reformed Congregation in the Odorheiu Secuiesc region. From 2010 to 2018 he was president of the National Reformed Ministers’ Conference Association of Romania. Since 2010 he has been a member of the executive board of the Conference of European Pastors’ Associations. Together with his wife, Erzsébet Gyöngyi Vincze, a teacher of religious education, they are raising five children.

Since 1920, the Transylvanian Reformed Church has lived as a linguistic and confessional minority. In Transylvanian public discourse, the interpretation of this minority situation has, to this day, largely taken a pessimistic tone. This observation also applies to ecclesial discourse and to the communication of church governance. In this volume, with the help of political theology, I examine this interpretive model that has been in place since 1920. I consider political theology particularly suited to this investigation because this theological subdiscipline emerged over the past half century primarily in parallel with the accelerated secularization of Western Europe and North America. This secularization has also accelerated in Transylvania in recent decades.

If we examine the biblical patterns of the congregation and how it lived in a minority situation, we will adopt a critical stance toward the paradigm of Christianity (Christianity as a principle shaping culture and society). In this way we become free to rediscover the roots of the Christian congregation. Such a shift in perspective is necessary for an evangelical interpretation of minority ecclesial existence.

Stefan Paas: Pilgrims and Priests

2025

STEFAN PAAS (b. 1969) is Professor of Missiology and Intercultural Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as well as Professor of Missiology at the Theological University of Utrecht. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Pretoria. Alongside his academic work, he is actively involved in church planting, missionary projects, the leadership of missionary institutions, and ecclesial missionary consultancy.

His research focuses primarily on questions of church planting and mission, as well as on the relationship between European culture and Christianity. He also explores the possibilities of missionary identity and community formation in post-Christian society. In his theological and missiological thinking, central importance is given to the possibility of mission, missionary identity, and community formation within the deeply secularized, post-Christian context of the West.

In his book Pilgrims and Priests, he seeks a missionary model that addresses small Christian communities living in a secular environment. After a critical analysis of traditional missionary models, drawing on the biblical motif of exile and the First Epistle of Peter, he develops the model of the “priestly church,” which he regards as a realistic, biblically grounded, and ecumenically sensitive approach. This model offers numerous points of connection for practical action, highlights the value of small communities, and underscores the significance of church planting, evangelization, and service. According to the author, these elements are held together by the glorification of God (doxology).

This book may exert a significant influence on missiological thinking within the Reformed Church in Romania and on the life of congregations, especially by emphasizing the importance of linking personal faith with community.

Karl Barth: The Epistle to the Romans

2025

“The following morning I found myself with a stack of commentaries on the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in order to pursue what was, at least for me, a new line of questioning: what does it actually say? From the notes I made at that time emerged the well-known, controversial book… I initially wrote the book quite literally for my own personal edification, and for that of my friend Eduard Thurneysen and other like-minded worriers. Of all the further circles my book would go on to attract, I had no idea in 1918, when, with the help of a friendly industrialist, it appeared with a Bern publisher and was prepared together with the volume of sermons published jointly with Thurneysen.”
(Karl Barth, 1927)

“[Like Marcion, Barth] again and again rolls before us one of his favorite ideas with the same contingent sovereignty, with the same—indeed especially—dualistic hostility toward world, culture, and origin, and with the same one-sidedness.”
(Adolf Jülicher, 1920)

“In theology… The first revolutionary step was represented by the interpretation Karl Barth gave of the Epistle to the Romans—this was a ‘critique’ of liberal theology, directed not so much against critical historical scholarship as such, but rather against that theological complacency which takes the results of historical scholarship to be the understanding of Holy Scripture. In this respect, Karl Barth’s work, however much it refrains from methodological reflection, constitutes a kind of hermeneutical manifesto.”
(Hans-Georg Gadamer, 1972)

“Karl Barth’s book is the consciously practiced destruction of the cultural backdrop that makes us forget that justification was once our own concern.”
(Martin Walser, 2012)

Eberhard Busch: Karl Barth

2024

The reader is given with this edition a really good textbook. It introduces to the thinking of Karl Barth in such a way that we can trace the intellectual movements that formed the background of Barth’s more than fifty years of creative activity. From this background, both Barth’s personality and his theological development emerge clearly, from the first version of the explanation of the Epistle to the Romans to the last volume of the twelve-volume dogmatics. Only Eberhard Busch, who was the great scientist’s personal assistant in Barth’s last years, could write it this way. Embedded in the biography, it provides a short, summary description of Barth’s most important works and lectures, followed by the regularly published volumes of dogmatics. With this, he brings Barth’s thoughts to life, and also encourages us to turn to Barth himself.

Online spirit. Church and communitybuilding in the digital age

2023

The Covid pandemic forced us to celebrate, to provide pastoral care and further training digitally. Live streams and online platforms, chat rooms, and social media tools helped church community members stay connected. There was experimentation and retrospective evaluation. What does digitalisation mean for our communication tools? And: Is digital communication suitable for religious communication in all respects? Does the Holy Spirit also speak through new media? And what does this mean for the role of a pastor who serves in a church that often finds itself in sporadic situations? These are the questions that were raised at the 2022 conference in New Amsterdam. Spending time together in the churches of New Amsterdam and at the campsite “Buitenland” gave us the experience of a real learning community. With a total of 40 pastors, we examined the issues of online church life over two days in three topics: pastoral care, worship celebration and ecclesiology.

Gijsbert van den Brink, Cornelis van der Kooi: Christelijke dogmatiek

2022

The theologian of these days does not chase a mirage or imagine that he can encapsulate the infinite mystery of God between the covers of any chunky work—yet he writes a book, sometimes with the claim of authoritative Christian teaching. His shock before his subject does not silence him, but this is precisely what drives him to a constant search: to disciplined, regular, precise work, and consequently precise and clear speech. And to prayerfully writing textbooks, since the old thesis is still valid today: lex orandi – lex credendi, i.e. the order of faith is determined by the order of prayer. Surely this creative dynamic also applies to the authors of this prestigious volume, two outstanding Reformed professors at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam who, while striving for the most logical thought throughout the work, are not left with amazement and wonder at the being and work of the Triune God. (dr. Béla Visky S., professor at the Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj/Kolozsvár)

Nico ter Linden: Het verhaal gaat III. Books of Kings and Judges.

2022

In the third volume of the series Het verhaal gaat, the author returns to the Old Testament and tells the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.

Jeffrey D. Jones: Facing Decline Finding Hope, New Possibilities for Faithful Churches

2022

Facing Decline Finding Hope was born out of the experience that the current way Christian churches operate is not much longer theologically or financially sustainable. There is a realistic chance that 80% of churches will face the dilemma of survival or change within the next twenty years. This is frightening from a pessimistic point of view, but it can also be a reason for hope. For Church leaders, governing bodies and ministers of various denominations, but also for church members concerned about the future of our church, it is thought-provoking, courageous, and raises novel questions.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Ethics

2021 (2nd, revised edition)

Do Christian solutions to worldly problems exist at all? Bonhoeffer, a key figure in twentieth-century history of moral thought, contemplated on this topic in a 1941 essay. The issue weighs even more heavily on Christianity today than it did three-quarters of a century ago. This fragmentary work is an indispensable guide for all those who refuse to stifle man’s unquenchable need to see together creature and Creator, history and the Lord of history, the body and the Word made flesh.

Forgiveness

2021

To unfold. Protestant preaching in practice

Preaching is a process of unfolding: of carefully revealing and showing what is already there, accurately reading and diligently speaking, precisely studying and modernly communicating.

As the story goes – II

2020

Part 2 of the series Bible stories by the famous minister from Amsterdam, rev. Nico ter Linden.

It contains words of and parables about Jesus of Nazareth as they have been written down about forty to fifty years after his death by Marc and Matthew.