Presbyterian Seminary Budapest
Presbyterian Seminary Budapest
Our seminary stands on the foundation of the Bible as summarized in the Reformed creeds and confessions. The faculty members subscribe to the Westminster Standards, II Helvetic Confession or the Three Forms of Unity.
Our aim is to train men for the ministry by exalting Christ. Through our partnership with Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, we recognize the rich reformed heritage of Puritan Theology.
Hungary has also a rich history of the Reformed Christianity and even of a Puritan movement which aimed to renew the Church in the 17th century. Hungarian Presbyterianism has its roots in the Puritan movement which wanted to evangelize the church, establish the plurality of elders in each congregation and to abolish the office of bishop. Sadly, this movement was crashed at that time. One of the greatest polymaths at that time Apáczai Csere János (1625-1659) though professed: “I am a presbyterian.” But those men and their ideals of a faithful church live even today through their writings. Our endeavor is to bring to life some of the forgotten wisdom of our Puritan forefathers and apply that in our modern context.
For this we aim at academic excellence. The program that we offer is not an easy program. We would like that those men who would teach the people of God would be well trained and skilled in knowing the Bible, interpreting the Bible, knowing the original languages, standing strongly in the biblical doctrines. Being able to defend and proclaim the Word of God.
Character formation and mentoring is also the aim of this seminary. We cooperate with the local churches, that the seminary student would not only receive a theoretical knowledge, but would go through a formation of his character through mentorship.
Our history goes back to the early 1990’s when radical political changes happened in Eastern Europe. An American mission organization Westminster Biblical Missions came to Hungary and started a new Reformed theological Seminary – Karolyi Gaspar Institute of Theology and Missions (KGITM) in Budapest. The seminary later relocated to Miskolc. Hungarian speaking students came from three countries – Hungary, Romania and Ukraine and completed their theological training in four years. The first 7 students graduated in 1996 and started to lay down the foundations of a new Church after the historic and nominal Hungarian Reformed Church closed its doors before the graduates. This was primarily because of our seminary’s strong theological convictions regarding the inerrancy and authority of Scriptures, reformed theology, the need for faithful membership in church and biblical administration of the sacraments. We rejected liberalism, ecumenical fellowship with the Catholic church and liberal churches, the office of bishops and ordination of women for the ministry.
Thus, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe was born. This new Presbyterian church trained its a pastors for the next few years in this seminary. Meanwhile, with the new challenges we realized that we need to make some changes and restructured the program for distance learning. Since some of our teachers continued their studies in US and built new contacts with like-minded seminaries like Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, we felt the need for further development.
By God’s providence Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary decided to expand their accredited program in Europe and offered a cooperation with our seminary. By restructuring our seminary, we have chosen a new name, Presbyterian Seminary in Budapest, and started our new endeavor in 2022.
We are a Bible grounded, Gospel preaching, Christ centered seminary, with the clear aim to share the gospel and give proper tools in the hands of those men who are eager to share the whole counsel of God.
The aim of our seminary is to fulfill the great commission by training men for the ministry. Our joy would be if men graduating from this seminary would plant new and faithful churches by evangelizing the lost.
We believe that Calvinism is not a lifeless set of doctrines, but the doctrines of grace need to exert a lifechanging influence on the minds and hearts of those who accept them. This needs to me manifested in humility, joy, peace, and boldness to preach the eternal gospel of God.
We are open to cooperate with other Christians who share our vision for planting or strengthening faithful, evangelical, reformed churches.
We have a partnership with like-minded seminaries and formed an association called European Association of Reformed Theological Schools (EARTS).