Adolf Harnack

Adolf von Harnack, German theologian

Adolf von Harnack (May 7, 1851–June 10, 1930), was a German theologian and prominent church historian who pioneered the effort to free Protestant Christianity from what he considered to be an inauthentic dogmatism that had attached to it through the early church's development in the Roman Empire. Although best known for his achievements in theology and church history, Harnack was also a major force in German scientific circles, serving as the a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and other major scientific institutes.

Harnack produced many important religious publications from 1873-1912. He traced the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian writings and called on Christians to question the authenticity of doctrines that arose in the Christian church. He argued that Christianity must free itself from theological dogmatism and seek, through rigorous study of the history of Christian doctrine, to return to religion of the earliest church. He thus rejected the Gospel of John as unhistorical and criticized the Apostles' Creed as adding doctrinal points never intended by Jesus or the earliest leaders of the Christian church.

Harnack's voluminous writings remain foundational reading for serious students of early church history and the development of Christian theology.

Biography

Harnack was born at Tartu (then Dorpat) in Livonia (then a province of Russia, now in Estonia), where his father, Theodosius Harnack, held a professorship of pastoral theology. Adolf studied at the local University of Tartu (1869–1872) and later at the University of Leipzig, where he took his degree. Soon after this (1874) he began lecturing on such special subjects as Gnosticism and the Apocalypse. His lectures attracted considerable attention, and in 1876 he was appointed as a professor at Leipzig. In the same year he began the publication, in conjunction with Oscar Leopold von Gebhardt and Theodor Zahn, of an edition of the works of the Apostolic Fathers, an edition of which appeared in 1877.

Three years later, Harnack was called to the University of Giessen as professor of church history. There he collaborated with Gebhardt in editing an occasional periodical dedicated to studies in New Testament and patristics (the works of the Church Fathers). In 1881 he published a work on monasticism and became joint editor with Emil Schürer of the Theologische Literaturzeitung.

In 1885 Harnack published the first volume of his monumental work, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte ("The History of Dogma"). The book built on the work of earlier German biblical scholars such as Ferdinand Christian Baur and Albrecht Ritschl, and also pioneered new ground in applying the historico-critical method to the study of the New Testament and early church history. In this work, Harnack detailed the historical process of the rise of church doctrine in the early church and its later development from the fourth century down to the Protestant Reformation. He held Christian doctrine and Greek philosophy were closely intermingled. The resultant theological system included many beliefs and practices that did not originate with the historical Jesus or his Apostles and were not authentically Christian in his opinion. Therefore Protestants are not only free, but bound, to criticize the traditional propositions of Christian theology. Protestantism, he held, should be understood not only as the the attempt to break away from archaic Catholic traditions and authority, but also as a rejection of inauthentic dogma and a return to the pure faith that characterized the original church.

In 1886 Harnack was called to teach at the University of Marburg. In 1888 he was invited to teach at the prestigious University of Berlin. This appointment was strongly opposed by the official Evangelical Church of Prussia because of Harnack's views that Protestantism had not yet gone far enough in returning to the authentic traditions of earliest Christianity. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and the recently appointed emperor, Kaiser William II, overruled the opposition, clearing the way for Harnack's acceptance. In 1890 he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

In Berlin, he was drawn into a controversy on the Apostles' Creed. Harnack's view was that the creed contains both too much and too little to be a satisfactory test for candidates for ordination as ministers. He preferred a briefer declaration of faith which could be rigorously applied to all. Despite being rejected for any office in the official Church of Prussia, Harnack exercised a broad influence among Protestant churchmen throughout Europe. His careful academic methods and teaching ability won the enthusiastic support of his students, many of whom rose to positions of leadership in their respective churches.

Harnack continued writing, and in 1893 he published a history of early Christian literature down to Eusebius of Caesarea, ("The History of Ancient Christian Literature"). A collection of his popular lectures, Das Wesen des Christentums (What is Christianity?) appeared in 1900. One of his later historical works, published in English as The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (1904-1905), was followed by several important New Testament studies on Luke the Physician, 1907; and The Sayings of Jesus, (1908).

He was enobled—thus entitled to use the "von" before his last name—in 1914. Like many ostensibly liberal professors in Germany, Harnack welcomed the First World War and signed a public statement endorsing Germany's war aims. It was this statement that Karl Barth, a student of Harnack, cited as a major impetus for his disillusionment in liberal theology.

Harnack was one of the moving spirits in the foundation, in 1911, of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (today known as the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science), and became its first president. He retired from his position at the University of Berlin in 1921, but continued be influential in both theological and scientific circles. The Society's activities, which were much constrained by the First World War, were guided by Harnack to become a major vehicle for overcoming the isolation of German academics in the war's aftermath. The Society's flagship conference center in Berlin, the Harnack House, which opened in 1929, was named in his honor. Harnack died June 10, 1930, in Berlin.

Theology

One of the distinctive characteristics of Harnack's work was his insistence on absolute freedom in the study of church history and the New Testament. He held that there could be no "taboo" areas of research that could not be critically examined. However, he distrusted of speculative theology, whether orthodox or liberal. He had a special interest in practical Christianity as a religious life rather than as a system of theology. Some of his addresses on social matters were published under the heading "Essays on the Social Gospel" (1907).

Though the four gospels have been regarded as canonical since Irenaeus in the second century, Harnack—like earlier German scholars—rejected the Gospel of John as without historical value regarding Jesus' actual life. He wrote:

"The fourth Gospel, which does not emanate or profess to emanate from the apostle John, cannot be taken as an historical authority in the ordinary meaning of the word. The author of it acted with sovereign freedom, transposed events and put them in a strange light, drew up the discourses himself, and illustrated great thoughts by imaginary situations. Although, therefore, his work is not altogether devoid of a real, if scarcely recognisable, traditional element, it can hardly make any claim to be considered an authority for Jesus’ history; only little of what he says can be accepted, and that little with caution."

Harnack was skeptical about the miracles reported in the Bible but argued that Jesus and other biblical figures may well have performed acts of faith healing. "That the earth in its course stood still; that a she-ass spoke; that a storm was quieted by a word, we do not believe, and we shall never again believe; but that the lame walked, the blind saw, and the deaf heard will not be so summarily dismissed as an illusion."

Harnack was not reticent to examine the writings of Christian authors considered heretical in church tradition. He held that these writers had much to teach modern Christians about the development of church doctrine, and even suggested that some of their teachings should not be considered heretical today. He further believed that many fundamental proposition of Christian doctrine—such as the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, and the Trinity—were not present in the earliest church and needed to be re-examined by modern Christians in light of the historical origins.

Legacy

Harnack was one of the most prolific and stimulating of modern critical scholars. He raised up a whole generation of teachers who carried his ideas and methods throughout the whole of Germany and beyond. He was the leading historian of early Christianity—indeed of Christianity in general—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Harnack's impact went beyond the fields of church history and theology through his membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences and his later directorship of the Prussian State Library. He also served as the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (today known as the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science) and was instrumental in the founding of its research facilities in medicine and natural science.

Harnack's greatest contribution, however, remains his pioneering writings in the field of historical dogmatics and church history. Although many of his specific findings have been challenged by church historians and theologians, both liberal and conservative, Harnack's fundamental thesis regarding the development of Christian doctrine in the Roman world has been adopted by many mainstream Christian scholars.

Bibliography

• Adolf von Harnack. Christentum, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft, Kurt Nowak et al., eds., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003, ISBN 3-525-35854-7 is the best recent assessment of Harnack and his impact from a variety of perspectives.

External links

• Harnack-Forum (German Website)
• Works by Adolf Harnack at CCEL (English)
• Works by and about Adolf Harnack in the German National Library catalogue.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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