Prof. ThDr., DrSc. Petr Pokorný

Prof. Souček (Biblical and New Testament Studies) wrote a letter to the Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, Visser't Hooft, about the situation in Czechoslovakia and the alternatives for future development. His interpretation (as paraphrased by Pokorny) was that democracy had not been maintained by constitutional means and could have been maintained only by a military coup. That way, however, it would have discredited itself finally. It lost its credit for the first time during Munich, when many people ceased to trust in democracy and workers turned away from the West. For the second time, it lost credit during the expulsion of Sudeten Germans. That was a brave statement from him at the time (and a very rare one, others included P. Pitr; J. L. Hromadka only questioned whether the expulsion was done in a humane way). If the “Yugoslav model” had been used, the democratic tradition would not have survived the third blow. That, however, was not a realistic scenario (as Yugoslavia had been founded before the Soviets invented the A-bomb). Therefore, the Christians must take the burden - of which Hromadka talked after the February 1948 - upon themselves. As for the economy, it does not have to mean a total disruption, offers Souček; economy runs on inertia and the post-war results were good, with Czechoslovakia making it among the top 10 richest countries in the world at that time. Therefore, he concluded, we had to suffer through it all."

"We evangelicals were raised on the notion that the world is rotten and man is sinful (envious, aggressive etc. - see the doctrine of the original sin etc.), which, interestingly, affected the entire Catholic church as well. In reality, people actually long for something good. Nowadays, many people are ready to volunteer for a purpose if they know it has a meaning, but they do not have that substantial assurance covering their back. These people are like sheep without a shepherd. They need somebody to tell them that it is meaningful. When we say the prayer "Your kingdom come..." we mean "May your Kingdom come on this Earth" – this is the future that we live for. The apocalyptic vision of the world is very topical these days. It has integrated the two dimensions of human hope: that man wants to live for something - something that has a meaning even without his contribution – because if it depended only on man, it would be very unstable. And he wants to know that he is not meant to become something new- that he is the ultimate aim of God’s intentions with mankind. And that's the beautiful thing about the apocalyptic notion - that the dead, for example those who were tortured to death, will rise again and see the victory of what they lived for. This should be translated into a common language, taken out from the apocalyptic context, or it should frame it somehow, knowing it is an objective expression, the “second naiveté”as Ricoeur puts it, which is indispensable. This has to be said these days."

"I was admitted to the Academic Gymnasium still during the war. It was not easy to pass then, the exams took two or three days. A German inspector came and was to test primarily our physical fitness; the P.E. made nearly half of the whole examination. In the morning there was the German language, and the remaining quarter was left for all the other subjects. It was quite paradoxical that the inspector himself was in a wheelchair. They even measured our skulls to see if we were Aryan enough."

Interviewer: "Once, you quoted a definition by Karl Barth that his assistant published after his death: 'Resurrection or the eternal life is "what is not lost".' Pokorny clarifies after a moment: "Literally, 'nothing will be lost'; and the assistant’s name was E. Busch (1965-1968)." The interviewer: "Do you agree with this definition?" Pokorny: "Eternity does not mean lasting forever in time. That would make life relative. This is what makes Buddhism so deep - understanding that this is no hope really. The naiveté of the modern people is that they want to secure this cheap eternity, find a secret recipe, resort to transmigration, which is actually a punishment for both Buddha and Plato, before man finally dwells in nirvana or atones for his sins. On the contrary, it is this confrontation with the Ultimate Reality which brings people together, it is when personal histories become intertwined. This is where the simple image of common dining as a vision of eternity comes from: inscription in the Book of Life, a face-to-face meeting. These are the metaphors that directly affirm human identity: face to face, inscription in the Book of Life ... after all, that's what is written in our IDs."