And it was the century that opened with its perhaps most eminent theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, making the Trinity a mere appendix to the Christian faith; it was the century that closed with his greatest successor, Adolf von Harnack, dismissing the Trinity altogether as a bundle of philosophical rot. Of course, the theologians weren’t feeding the atheists, but they were disarming the church so that the atheists could storm on without meeting much serious opposition.
