Everything about Adolf Von Harnack totally explained
Adolf von Harnack (
May 7,
1851–
June 10,
1930), was a
German theologian and prominent church historian.
He produced many religious publications from
1873-
1912.
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
gospel of John in favor of the
synoptic gospels, criticized the
Apostles' Creed, and promoted the
social gospel.
In the 19th century,
higher criticism flourished in Germany, establishing the
historical-critical method as an academic standard for interpreting the
Bible and understanding the
historical Jesus (see
Tübingen school).
Harnack's
iconoclastic work is part of this tradition.
Biography
He 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.
Harnack studied at the local
University of Tartu (
1869–
1872) and at the
University of Leipzig, where he took his degree; and soon afterwards (
1874) began lecturing as a
Privatdozent. These lectures, which dealt with such special subjects as
Gnosticism and the
Apocalypse, attracted considerable attention, and in
1876 he was appointed
professor extraordinarius. 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,
Patrum apostolicorum opera, a smaller edition of which appeared in
1877.
Three years later he was called to the
University of Giessen as
professor ordinarius of
church history. There he collaborated with Gebhardt in
Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur (1882 sqq.), an irregular
periodical, containing only essays in
New Testament and
patristic fields. In
1881 he published a work on
monasticism,
Das Mönchtum — seine Ideale und seine Geschichte (5th ed., 1900; English translation, 1901), and became joint editor with
Emil Schürer of the
Theologische Literaturzeitung.
In
1885 he published the first volume of his
Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (3rd ed. in three volumes, 1894–1898; English translation in seven volumes, 1894–1899). In this work Harnack traced the rise of
dogma, which he understood as the authoritative
doctrinal system of the church and its development from the
4th century down to the
Protestant Reformation. He considered that from its earliest origins,
Christian faith and Greek
philosophy were so closely intermingled that the resultant system included many beliefs and practices that were not authentically Christian. Therefore
Protestants are not only free, but bound, to criticize it; Protestantism could be understood as a rejection of this
dogma and a return to the pure faith that characterized the original church. An abridgment of this appeared in
1889 with the title
Grundriss der Dogmengeschichte (3rd ed., 1898).
In
1886 Harnack was called to the
University of Marburg and in
1888, in spite of violent opposition from the conservative church authorities, to Berlin. In
1890 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences. In Berlin, somewhat against his will, he was drawn into a controversy on the
Apostles' Creed, in which the partisan antagonisms within the
Prussian Church had found expression. Harnack's view was that the creed contains both too much and too little to be a satisfactory test for candidates for
ordination; he preferred a briefer declaration of faith which could be rigorously applied to all (cf. his
Das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis. Ein geschichtlicher Bericht nebst einer Einleitung und einem Nachwort, 1892).
In
Berlin, Harnack continued writing. In
1893 he published a history of
early Christian literature down to
Eusebius of Caesarea,
Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur bis Eusebius (part 2 of vol. 5., 1897); and in his popular lectures,
Das Wesen des Christentums appeared in 1900 (5th ed., 1901; English translation,
What is Christianity? 1901). One of his later historical works,
Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902; English translation,
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, in two volumes, 1904-1905), was followed by some important
New Testament studies (
Beitrage zur Einleitung in das neue Testament, 1906 sqq.; Engl. trans.:
Luke the Physician, 1907;
The Sayings of Jesus, 1908).
Harnack was one of the most prolific and stimulating of modern critical scholars, and brought up in his "Seminar" a whole generation of teachers who carried his ideas and methods throughout the whole of
Germany and beyond.
Like many ostensibly liberal professors in Germany, Harnack welcomed the
First World War in 1914, and signed a public statement endorsing Germany's war-aims. It was this statement, with his teacher Harnack's signature on it, that
Karl Barth cited as a major impetus for his rejection of liberal theology.
Harnack was one of the moving spirits in the foundation, in
1911, of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG), and became its first President. The Society's activities were much constrained by the First World War, but in the
Weimar Republic period Harnack guided it to be a major vehicle for overcoming the isolation of German academics felt as a result of the war and its aftermath. The society's flagship conference centre in Berlin, the
Harnack House, which opened in
1929, was named in his honour. After a long period in
U.S. Army hands after the
Second World War it has now resumed the role Harnack envisaged, as a centre for international intellectual life in the German capital, under the management of the KWG's successor organisation, the
Max Planck Gesellschaft.
Theology
Among the distinctive characteristics of Harnack's work were his insistence on absolute freedom in the study of church history and the New Testament (for example there were no "taboo" areas of research that couldn't be critically examined); his distrust of
speculative theology, whether
orthodox or
liberal; and his interest in practical Christianity as a religious life and not 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 2nd century, Harnack - like earlier German scholars - rejected the
Gospel of John as without historical value regarding Jesus' life:
» "In particular, the fourth Gospel, which doesn't emanate or profess to emanate from the apostle John, can't 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 isn't 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. On the other hand, it's an authority of the first rank for answering the question, What vivid views of Jesus’ person, what kind of light and warmth, did the Gospel disengage?"
Harnack denied the possibility of miracles but argued that Jesus may well have performed acts of healing that seemed miraculous: "That the earth in its course stood still; that a she-ass spoke; that a storm was quieted by a word, we don't believe, and we'll never again believe; but that the lame walked, the blind saw, and the deaf heard won't be so summarily dismissed as an illusion."
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.
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