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Liberal Theology at Its Height
Adolf von Harnack was the most outstanding student of early Christianityin modern times and one of the most persuasive exponents of liberaltheology. Although subsequent scholarship has strongly challenged manyof his conclusions, the questions he raised remain central to muchtheological endeavor. Despite their critique of Harnack, both Karl Barth and DietrichBonhoeffer - two of his most eminent students - recognized the immensecontribution he made to Christian theology in the modern era. This volume concentrates on the key texts and ideas in Harnack'sthought. It presents the essential Harnack for students and the generalreader. Martin Rumscheidt's introductory essay and notes on the selected textsset Harnack in his historical context, chart the development of histhought, and indicate the significance of his theology in thedevelopment of Christian theology as a whole. Substantial selections from Harnack's work illustrate key History as a science in the service of theology The gospel, early Christianity, and the history of dogma and thechurch The presence and influence of the 'religious genius' in the history ofChristianity The religious-social imperative in the gospel and church The personal faith of the theologian
- GenresTheology
329 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Adolf von Harnack
830 books12 followersCarl Gustav Adolf von Harnack (7 May 1851 – 10 June 1930) was a German Lutheran theologian and prominent church historian. He produced many religious publications from 1873 to 1912 (in which he is sometimes credited as Adolf Harnack).
Harnack traced the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian writing and called on Christians to question the authenticity of doctrines that arose in the early Christian church. He rejected the historicity of the Gospel of John in favor of the Synoptic Gospels, criticized the Apostles' Creed, and promoted the Social Gospel.
Harnack traced the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian writing and called on Christians to question the authenticity of doctrines that arose in the early Christian church. He rejected the historicity of the Gospel of John in favor of the Synoptic Gospels, criticized the Apostles' Creed, and promoted the Social Gospel.
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May 28, 2024
A DIVERSE SELECTION OF HARNACK’S WRITINGS
Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was a German theologian and prominent church historian.
Editor Martin Rumscheidt wrote in his very useful Introduction to this 1989 book, “The dawn of the new century raised… a concern with what lay ahead… Harnack became heavily troubled by the fact that his relationship to the Church was so heavily overcast. He had always wanted to serve the Church but it did not even call upon him to sit on commissions to examine his own students for their fitness to serve the Church or their theological readiness. The Church, and for that matter some of his own colleagues, regarded him as someone who held an unbelieving theology. He tried to have himself nominated for positions in the synod of Brandenburg but found no one prepared to do so. Eventually he said ‘goodbye inwardly to the Church as it appeared to him in its visible manifestation.’ Instead, he embraced a life of extensive administrative responsibilities in the government of Kaiser Wilhelm II.” (Pg. 21)
Harnack notes, “Even though it is impossible… to establish laws of history, we none the less possess an excellent, albeit not infallible, means by which to organize the abundance of its phenomena, to make them transparent and to understand them, namely ANALOGY. Analogy is a special means of induction. In the writing of history it has always been practiced and valued highly. It is [Oswald] Spengler’s merit to have brought its significance clearly to the fore in his profound and thought-provoking work ['The Decline of the West']” (Pg. 52)
He continues, “All history is ‘history of the spirit’ … and has an inner happening for its foundation; the spirit, however, is one. Whether we possess much or little of it, it is always one and the same spirit working in us and in everything brought forth by history. With that we are led back to ourselves out of the enormous life of history or, rather, a deep unity between all events and the nature of our own higher existence is discovered… Everything which has happened and is still happening in history: that you are yourself and everything depends on your appropriating it consciously. That is why whatever happens in history is not only much more understandable for us than nature and its processes but also can become our own inner possession and meld perfectly with our higher life.” (Pg. 57)
He points out, “The man who reads his Bible in a homely way… sees and feels such things only as he takes to form the true kernel of the narrative: things which concern himself; and it was by these that the Christian doctrine was formerly established by the Church. But the historical way of looking at them may not, and will not, overlook the concrete elements in and by which the life and the doctrine were actually fashioned in their day…. The consequence is, that the sayings and discourses of the Lord, and the image of his life itself, not only take their color… from the history of the time, but they are also seen to possess certain definite limitations. They belong to their time and their environment; and they could not exist in any other.” (Pg. 73)
He argues, “The message of the death and resurrection of the God Jesus Christ, who had become man, became the gospel of the Church at large, and has taken its place side by side with Christ’s teaching of the kingdom of heaven… Apparently… the ‘second gospel’ almost supplanted the ‘first.’ But this is not even true as regards doctrine. Not only does the ‘first gospel’ live in the hearts of those who take the Christian religion in earnest, but it is also lacking in the dogmas of the Churches; it is, indeed, a decisive point of departure among them… The paramount issue today is not the miraculous or non-miraculous, but the question whether the soul of man has an eternal value which distinguishes it from all else; whether moral goodness is a conventional product, or a life-principle of the spirit; and whether there be a living and saving God or not. He who denies these questions… must reject Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom of heaven, and all the ideas, thoughts and prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount.” (Pg. 152-153)
He advises, “let us not, as many polemical Protestants have done, condemn the old Catholicism and the whole development of the Church up to the Reformation. Everything has its time, and every step in the history of the Church was needed… It was God’s providence that so guided the development of the Roman empire so that it resulted in that wonderful covenant between Christianity and the ancient world which endured nearly 1500 years. When it had done its work, when the time was accomplished, the covenant was dissolved, and could be dissolved because the Church in her New Testament possessed scriptures which have nothing to do with that covenant, because they are older than it. There lies the abiding value of the New Testament.” (Pg. 193-194)
He states, “For what [Luther] restore was nothing less than the religious way of understanding the gospel, the sovereign right of religion in religion. In the development that had proceeded him there had not been merely the making of a mistake here and there; there had been a betrayal of religion to its enemies and to its friends. Luther… was right in seeing … both… the domination of an earthly, self-seeking ecclesiasticism over religion, and in the clinging around religion of a moralism that crushed its life… he did not with equal distinctness perceive the deplorableness … into which religion had been brought by the Old Catholic theology…” (Pg. 253)
He asserts, “Jesus Christ was a prophet. Whoever wishes to approach him must begin with this observation concerning his person and work. Whoever is not prepared to understand the prophets and their task in history can also not understand Jesus Christ. However, Christianity not only calls him a prophet but also differentiates him from all other prophets in that it acknowledges him to be the savior and, in looking back to him, wants to know nothing more of any other savior either before or after him. How is such an acknowledgement to be understood and justified? The simplest way seems to be to call upon the testimony of Jesus Christ about himself. It is beyond dispute that he made a distinction between himself and all the prophets and that he claimed a unique place for himself… Jesus Christ was a prophet, but he was the last of them… We are not, for that reason, justified in naming as prophets the great men of God who followed him: Paul, the fourth evangelist, Augustine, Francis, Luther, and the others.” (Pg. 309)
This book is an excellent way to begin to “delve in” to the writings of Harnack.
Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was a German theologian and prominent church historian.
Editor Martin Rumscheidt wrote in his very useful Introduction to this 1989 book, “The dawn of the new century raised… a concern with what lay ahead… Harnack became heavily troubled by the fact that his relationship to the Church was so heavily overcast. He had always wanted to serve the Church but it did not even call upon him to sit on commissions to examine his own students for their fitness to serve the Church or their theological readiness. The Church, and for that matter some of his own colleagues, regarded him as someone who held an unbelieving theology. He tried to have himself nominated for positions in the synod of Brandenburg but found no one prepared to do so. Eventually he said ‘goodbye inwardly to the Church as it appeared to him in its visible manifestation.’ Instead, he embraced a life of extensive administrative responsibilities in the government of Kaiser Wilhelm II.” (Pg. 21)
Harnack notes, “Even though it is impossible… to establish laws of history, we none the less possess an excellent, albeit not infallible, means by which to organize the abundance of its phenomena, to make them transparent and to understand them, namely ANALOGY. Analogy is a special means of induction. In the writing of history it has always been practiced and valued highly. It is [Oswald] Spengler’s merit to have brought its significance clearly to the fore in his profound and thought-provoking work ['The Decline of the West']” (Pg. 52)
He continues, “All history is ‘history of the spirit’ … and has an inner happening for its foundation; the spirit, however, is one. Whether we possess much or little of it, it is always one and the same spirit working in us and in everything brought forth by history. With that we are led back to ourselves out of the enormous life of history or, rather, a deep unity between all events and the nature of our own higher existence is discovered… Everything which has happened and is still happening in history: that you are yourself and everything depends on your appropriating it consciously. That is why whatever happens in history is not only much more understandable for us than nature and its processes but also can become our own inner possession and meld perfectly with our higher life.” (Pg. 57)
He points out, “The man who reads his Bible in a homely way… sees and feels such things only as he takes to form the true kernel of the narrative: things which concern himself; and it was by these that the Christian doctrine was formerly established by the Church. But the historical way of looking at them may not, and will not, overlook the concrete elements in and by which the life and the doctrine were actually fashioned in their day…. The consequence is, that the sayings and discourses of the Lord, and the image of his life itself, not only take their color… from the history of the time, but they are also seen to possess certain definite limitations. They belong to their time and their environment; and they could not exist in any other.” (Pg. 73)
He argues, “The message of the death and resurrection of the God Jesus Christ, who had become man, became the gospel of the Church at large, and has taken its place side by side with Christ’s teaching of the kingdom of heaven… Apparently… the ‘second gospel’ almost supplanted the ‘first.’ But this is not even true as regards doctrine. Not only does the ‘first gospel’ live in the hearts of those who take the Christian religion in earnest, but it is also lacking in the dogmas of the Churches; it is, indeed, a decisive point of departure among them… The paramount issue today is not the miraculous or non-miraculous, but the question whether the soul of man has an eternal value which distinguishes it from all else; whether moral goodness is a conventional product, or a life-principle of the spirit; and whether there be a living and saving God or not. He who denies these questions… must reject Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom of heaven, and all the ideas, thoughts and prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount.” (Pg. 152-153)
He advises, “let us not, as many polemical Protestants have done, condemn the old Catholicism and the whole development of the Church up to the Reformation. Everything has its time, and every step in the history of the Church was needed… It was God’s providence that so guided the development of the Roman empire so that it resulted in that wonderful covenant between Christianity and the ancient world which endured nearly 1500 years. When it had done its work, when the time was accomplished, the covenant was dissolved, and could be dissolved because the Church in her New Testament possessed scriptures which have nothing to do with that covenant, because they are older than it. There lies the abiding value of the New Testament.” (Pg. 193-194)
He states, “For what [Luther] restore was nothing less than the religious way of understanding the gospel, the sovereign right of religion in religion. In the development that had proceeded him there had not been merely the making of a mistake here and there; there had been a betrayal of religion to its enemies and to its friends. Luther… was right in seeing … both… the domination of an earthly, self-seeking ecclesiasticism over religion, and in the clinging around religion of a moralism that crushed its life… he did not with equal distinctness perceive the deplorableness … into which religion had been brought by the Old Catholic theology…” (Pg. 253)
He asserts, “Jesus Christ was a prophet. Whoever wishes to approach him must begin with this observation concerning his person and work. Whoever is not prepared to understand the prophets and their task in history can also not understand Jesus Christ. However, Christianity not only calls him a prophet but also differentiates him from all other prophets in that it acknowledges him to be the savior and, in looking back to him, wants to know nothing more of any other savior either before or after him. How is such an acknowledgement to be understood and justified? The simplest way seems to be to call upon the testimony of Jesus Christ about himself. It is beyond dispute that he made a distinction between himself and all the prophets and that he claimed a unique place for himself… Jesus Christ was a prophet, but he was the last of them… We are not, for that reason, justified in naming as prophets the great men of God who followed him: Paul, the fourth evangelist, Augustine, Francis, Luther, and the others.” (Pg. 309)
This book is an excellent way to begin to “delve in” to the writings of Harnack.
June 17, 2020
This is the third book I've read in the 'Making of Modern Theology' series, and the series continues to be excellent. The texts are arranged and introduced in a very accessible way. I found Harnack himself more difficult to get on with. With his emphasis on history and the supremacy of German culture, he doesn't make for inspiring reading. Despite this, this book is great way in to Harnack and understanding liberal theology.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews