With Troeltsch (1865-1923), Harnack was the foremost German advocate of a liberal theological program. In his great studies of early Christianity and Christian dogma he developed the claim that their development was a strictly historical process which could be understood through historical-critical method alone, without recourse to meta-historical sources of authority. Rumscheidt draws the themes of Harnack’s liberalism from a letter written to a friend at the end of his secondary schooling. He lists, ‘the need to understand, to know religion historically and to relate it to all other historical phenomena, to push beyond the merely dogmatic or creedal to the living core or essence of religious truths and then to defend the self-won insights with frankness, integrity and reason.’ (Rumscheidt, 11.)

Greatly influenced by Ritschl, Harnack followed him in taking the Christian gospel to be an ethical message. The gospel preached by Jesus had been obscured by the progressive hellenization of the Christian movement. Hellenization channeled Christian development into speculative ventures aimed at defining group boundaries, that is, into dogmatic stasis. Dogma, for Harnack, refers paradigmatically to the trinitarian and christological formulations of the ecumenical councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. The gospel was not lost entirely, nor was dogma sheerly speculative, but the pernicious effect of the development was the dependence of Christian faith upon a metaphysics, of the historical Christ upon an ‘imagined Christ.’ (A term from his ‘Fifteen Questions to the Despisers of Scientific Theology’; cf. ibid., 87.)

The 16^th century Protestant reformers revived the gospel’s independence of moralism, ritualism, hierarchicalism and philosophical speculation, yet they themselves continued to adhere to the ancient dogmas and to a dogmatic mode of expression. Thus, the Reformation was an ‘unfinished Reformation,’ confusing essentials and non-essentials of the faith. Harnack urged a ‘critical reduction of dogma,’ in the spirit of reform that retrieves Christianity from the misadventures of the historical church. Rigorous historical criticism at last provided the means to winnow the timeless ‘kernel’ of Christianity from its various timebound ‘husks.’ The Berlin university-wide lectures of 1899-1900, published in 1900 as Das Wesen des Christentums (What is Christianity? [1903]) carried out this program. They proved to be Harnack’s most popularly influential work, rapidly going through multiple editions in numerous languages.

The essence of Christianity, its element of permanent validity, addresses an essentially unchanging core of human nature that yearns for that ‘presence of the eternal in time’ which would vindicate the human spirit’s sense of its own value over against an indifferent natural order. The gospel’s simple satisfaction of this yearning is its self-authentication. It presents itself through the very experience of the heart’s trusting submission to a holy, loving God, a submission that renews the person for an ethical life enamored of the good, energized by grace and at the service of the neighbor. Jesus’ teaching is encompassed in three notions: the fatherhood of God, the infinite worth of the human soul, and the ethical ideal of the kingdom of God within believers. The gospel does not depend upon metaphysical foundations, dogmatic formulae, or ritual and institutional guarantees. It thus perfectly answers the plight of modern men and women wearied as they are with theological and metaphysical hocus-pocus. Christianity in essence is a practical affair. Although the right ordering of life implies certain beliefs concerning God, humanity and the world which deserve articulation, the factical development of dogma in the church is a regrettable hypertrophy, too-often pursued violently and vindictively. (Cf. WC, 124-25.)

Harnack treats Jesus’ unique status as Son of God as a matter of inscrutable self-consciousness on Jesus’ part:

The consciousness which he possessed of being the Son of God is, therefore, nothing but the practical consequence of knowing God as the Father and as his Father. Rightly understood, the name of Son means nothing but the knowledge of God. Here, however, two observations are to be made: Jesus is convinced that he knows God in a way in which no one ever knew him before, and he knows hat it is his vocation to communicate this knowledge of God to others by word and by deed—and with it the knowledge that men are God’s children. In this consciousness he knows himself to be the Son called and instituted of God, to be the Son of God, and hence he can say: My God and my Father, and into this invocation he puts something which belongs to no one but himself. How he came to this consciousness of the unique character of his relation to God as a Son; how he came to the consciousness of his power, and to the consciousness of the obligation and the mission which the power carries with it, is his secret, and no psychology will ever fathom it. (WC, 128. Cf. the similar discussion of Jesus as messiah in the pages that follow.)

What is clear from historical criticism is that Jesus did not have a christology but his gospel concerned only God, equally his Father and Father of us all. Since ‘Fire is kindled only by fire; personal life only by personal forces,’ (WC, 145) the historical Jesus alone is normative for any essential christology. This underlying theory of the unaccountable appearance of religious genius surfaces in discussions of Jesus, Paul, Augustine and Luther. It is a kind of cult of personality, which holds grim Wagnerian implications in Harnack’s thought. Although Harnack’s christology proceeds entirely ‘from below,’ his portrait of the personality of Jesus is remarkably ubermenschlich. (Indeed he speaks of Jesus effecting a ‘transvaluation of all values’ [WC, 68].) One wonders how much Harnack shaped the reception of Nietzsche in 1930s Germany. His account, in What is Christianity?, of why Jesus is the ‘founder’ of Christianity and not a Jewish reformer seems almost a rationale for German Christian participation in the Holocaust. ‘Liberal theology at its height’ endorsed cultural and national pride at its most base:

It is quite true that what Jesus proclaimed, what John the Baptist expressed before him in his exhortations to repentance, was also to be found in the prophets, and even in the Jewish tradition of their time. The pharisees themselves were in possession of it; but unfortunately they were in possession of much else besides. With them it was weighted, darkened, distorted, rendered ineffective and deprived if its force, by a thousand things which they also held to be religious and every whit as important as mercy and judgment. They reduced everything to one dead level, wove everything into one fabric; the good and holy was only one woof in a broad earthly warp….Pharisaical teachers had proclaimed that everything was contained in the injunction to love God and one’s neighbor. They spoke excellently; the words might have come out of Jesus’ mouth [sic]. But what was the result of their language? That the nation, that in particular their own pupils, condemned the man who took the words seriously. All that they did was weak and, because weak, harmful. Words effect nothing; it is the power of the personality that stands behind them.

…. They had made this religion into an earthly trade, and there was nothing more detestable…. (WC, 47-51.)

Yet, Harnack was the most widely honored theologian of his time. He was persona non grata with the authorities of the Evangelical church—for doctrinal, not ethical, reasons. (His 1892 proposal, to remove the Apostles’ Creed from liturgical use and replace it with a shorter confession which accorded with the results of historical critical scholarship, initiated rancorous conflict.) Later, he contested Karl Barth’s word of Krisis, which he believed threatened the scientific character of theology. The open correspondence between he and his former pupil, Barth, originally published in 1923 in the magazine, Die christliche Welt gives valuable insight into each man’s mind and heart. (Cf. Rumscheidt, 85-106.) More moderate successors also began to redraw Harnack’s program, criticizing his narrow definition of dogma, his thesis of hellenization, and especially the central notion of a ‘timeless kernel’ for a ‘timeless humanity.’

Harnack’s theory of the development of doctrine and the church may be illuminatingly contrasted with the theories of John Henry Newman and Ernst Troeltsch. For Newman, doctrine has arisen as the mysterious, inexhaustible idea of Christianity, in which all was given at the apostolic reception of Christ, gloriously unfolds through the changes of history. The essence itself is finally unstateable but its integrity and efficacy is never impugned. While Harnack believed that the inevitable development of the church was only ‘excusable’ in light of reformation, Newman viewed development as a more faithful relation to the essence because the authority of the church—ultimately in papal infallibility—served as a control. Indeed, in some sense, the authority of the church is the idea of Christianity. With Troeltsch, development is understood through full-on historicism: even the norms for identifying Christianity are changing—not as quickly as Christianity itself, admittedly, but the essence of Christianity is a developing, wandering thing.

Harnack, Adolf von. 1986 [1900]. What is Christianity? Translated by Thomas Bailey Sanders. Introduction by Rudolf Bultmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Lotz, David W. 1987. ‘Harnack, Adolf von.’ Encyclopedia of Religion. Mircea Eliade (Editor in Chief). Vol. 6. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.) 198-199.

Macquarrie, John. 1967. ‘Harnack, Carl Gustav Adolf von.’ Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Paul Edwards (Editor in Chief). Vol. 3. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and The Free Press.) 414-415.

Rumscheidt, Martin (ed.) 1988. Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height. London: Collins.

German historian and theologian; one of the main representatives of liberal Protestant theology.

Harnack was born in 1851, in a Lutheran family, as the older of a set of twins. After his mother’s death in 1857, he became especially connected to his father, Theodosius Andreas Harnack, who was a teacher of homiletics and church history at the Lutheran University in Dorpat (a part of East Prussia; later, Russian province Livonia). Adolf’s father’s pious loyalty to Luther’s ideas, combined with the scholarly approach to the matters of religion, made a decisive impact on Adolf Harnack’s understanding of theology as vocation (Glick 1967, 23). When he was seventeen, Harnack wrote to his friend that he wanted to study theology not in order to be given the ready-made statements of faith, but in order to understand every statement of faith, and only then making them his own (Harnack in Rumschaidt 1989, 11).

Harnack found support for his intellectual pursuits at the University of Darpat, where Lutheran orthodoxy was taught inseparably from the scholarly methods of historical investigation. The most important figure in his Darpat days was Professor Moritz von Engelhardt—his "magister, patronus and amicus" (Glick 1967, 30). Professor Engelhardt’s insistence on the study of original sources and use of textual criticism was clearly reflected in Harnack’s university dissertation on Gnosticism. This work contained two elements that would mark Harnack’s scholarly work. The first element was the application of historical method in theological study, which prepared him for the acceptance of F. C. Baur’s (1792-1860) and Albrecht Ritschl’s (1822-1889) historical approach to theology. The second element was Harnack’s fascination with Marcion, which he would fully articulate only in 1920, with the work entitled Marcion, Gospel of the Alien God.

Harnack began his teaching career at the University of Leipzig in 1874, the same year he received his Ph.D. degree. In 1879, he transferred to the University of Giessen, where he completed the first volume of his History of Dogma. Although already known in theological circles as the editor of the Theologische Literaturzeitung and as an initiator of the series on the Church Fathers, it was with the publishing of the History of Dogma in 1885 that Harnack entered the epicenter of theological discussions.

These discussions reached the level of disputes with the second volume of the History of Dogma, when Harnack was criticized for using the New Testament and Christianity "as sources, rather than as norms, for the formation of personal faith" (Rumscheidt 1989, 14). Fully affirming the principles of Ritschl’s historical criticism, Harnack here questioned the authorship of the gospel of John and baptism as being instituted by Jesus in the name of Triune God. This approach caused a break between Harnack and Lutheran confessionalism, received from his father and confirmed at Dorpat University. While Harnack believed that he could reconcile his new theological ideas with his theological background, his father saw their disagreement as not simply theological, but rather disagreement about fundamental Christian values. Harnack’s theological ideas, therefore, brought him fame but also introduced him into the world of controversies. One thing, however, was not disputable: his intellectual rigor and personal charisma were challenging for both his followers and his adversaries. Harnack was especially admired by his students. When in 1888, Harnack began to teach at the University of Berlin, his early morning lectures were visited by over four hundred students. In 1892, Harnack supported his students in the idea of the exclusion of the Apostle’s Creed from public worship. He argued this on the grounds of "personal credibility…over…mere credulity of worship" (Rumscheidt 1989, 17), and affirmed the necessity of the individual study of the history of Christianity as a precondition for building up on the Christian faith (Harnack 1989c, 302/303). Harnack only once asserted that there was some higher good than the individual. In the time of World War I, he wrote that "one country’s life [is] something ideal [that comes in] place of the individual life[,] a great good [and] a high-spirited disposition…very closely akin to religion" (Harnack in Rumscheidt 1989, 25). Harnack historian and theologian was also a patriot who could assert that German greatness was founded on its defensive forces and its scholarship (ibid., 24).

Harnack channeled his patriotism primarily in the wide range of administrative and cultural responsibilities; he was the editor of the Theologische Literaturzeitung for 29 years, the Rector of the University of Berlin, Director of the Royal Library, and the first president of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Foundation. For his work, he was awarded the hereditary title in 1914. At the same time, Harnack was a family man dedicated to his wife and four children. When he married Amaile Thiersch in 1879, he declared that "in [his] home there is to be no more working after 8 pm," so that he could give all his attention to his family (ibid., 20).

Although deeply involved in the events of his time, Harnack never joined any political party. He twice refused the invitation to teach at Harvard; he rejected an ambassadorship to the United States. His task, Harnack was convinced, was to dedicate his energies to the development of "the freedom of thought, of pursuing truth on every path, the freedom from interference by those who have been given authority in human institutions" (Rumscheidt 1989, 33). It was precisely Harnack’s insistence on the freedom of scholarship that marked him as one of the strongest advocates of liberal theology. Adolf von Harnack thought that the only way to nurture Christian faith was to remain in the condition of permanent uncertainty. No student of theology, he believed, should be spared a profound crisis; the worst condition is not when one has doubts about theology or authority, but when one is trapped in the sponginess of mind and indifference (Harnack in Lohse 1985, 19). Harnack died in Berlin, in 1930.

Harnack’s works in English translation (according to Martin Rumscheidt):

The Acts of Apostles (1909); The Apostles’ Creed (1901); Bible Reading in the Early Church (1912); Christianity and History (1896); The Constitution and Law of the Church in the First Two Centuries (1910); Essays on the Social Gospel (with Wilhelm Herrmann) (1907); History of Dogma (1896-9); Militia Christi: The Christian Religion and the Military in the First Three Centuries (1981); The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (1962); Monasticism: Its Ideals and History and the Confessions of St. Augustine (1901); New Testament Studies (1908-25); Outlines of the History of Dogma (1957); Thoughts on the Present Position of Protestantism (1899); What is Christianity? (1957).

The centrality of historical method in Harnack’s theology had three major sources: first, a general tradition of Protestantism and its historical quest for the original meaning of the Scripture; second, Baur’s critical investigation of the history of Church and his idea that Christianity is an inherently historical phenomenon; and third, Ritschl’s "new theology" that rejected the a priori argumentation in historical analysis.

Beginning with the premise that historical analysis attempts to exclude subjectivity, Harnack argued that history was the final level of scientific knowledge. Harnack wrote that we first determine, analyze and order the things, then we understand their interrelationships, and investigate life. The fourth stage of knowledge, when "the conscious spirit meets us with its ideas, norms and values" is where the science of history comes in and grasps the spirit of a particular event (Harnack 1989d, 44-46). Although every historian faces a fundamental problem in the relation between the facts and their interpretation, the historical research remains as the only device for understanding the past and constructing the present. Thus, for Harnack the study of history was a way to intervene in the course of history (Glick 1967, 108). In his major work, the History of Dogma, Harnack historically approached the origins and developments of Christian dogma in order to found the knowledge necessary for the further assessment and development of Christianity. Harnack began by defining the dogma as the objective content of faith, affirmed by the authority and determining the boundaries of the community. He wrote that the Christian Church usually look at dogma as the revealed truths of the Gospel. However, the historical study of the Gospel shows that dogma did not exist in the beginnings of Christianity, but developed in the theological debates over Christological issues. Although dogmas had their origins in the Gospel, they came into existence in the process in which a simple message of Christian faith became substituted by knowledge. In other words, Harnack saw the development of Christianity as a process of its intellectualization and hellenization. The Protestant Reformation, Harnack argued, did not finalize its critical relationship toward the dogmatic contents of Christianity. Harnack’s study of dogma demonstrated that he clearly understood the historical analysis as a study of institutions. However, the ultimate goal of his historical analysis was given within his theological framework. In his lectures entitled What is Christianity?, Harnack employed historical method in order to discover the immutable nature of Christian faith. He intended to answer this question by extrapolating the changeable elements of Christianity from its eternal, pure essence. Harnack furthermore asserted that the acquirement of the sound knowledge of the past is necessary for a personal appropriation of the message of the Gospel. According to him, historical knowledge is demanded from every Christian, not only the historian.

The encounter of Harnack-theologian and Harnack-historian in his lectures on the nature of Christianity resulted in the simultaneous use of the historical concept of change and theological categories of essence. The awareness that Jesus and his disciples were situated in their times in the same way in which we are situated in ours (Harnack 1986, 12), did not prevent Harnack from concluding that Jesus directed the message of the Gospel to an eternal human being who, despite the external situation, remains fundamentally unchanged (ibid., 17). Furthermore, Harnack determined the scope of his historical analysis with theology as he evaluated all the historical expressions of Christianity with regard to the Gospel. He declared that "the Christian religion is something simple and sublime; it means one thing and one thing only: Eternal life in the midst of time, by the strength and under the eyes of God" (ibid., 8). Put differently, Harnack understood the message of the Gospel as being directed to the inner man. He did recognize the social content of the Gospel and its proclamation of the higher righteousness. However, he saw the Gospel as being bound up with the idea of the infinite value of human soul. Harnack therefore rejected the ideas that the Gospel had an inherently socialist character, or that it offered a political and social agenda. Christian faith is the religion of liberty, Harnack proclaimed, and the Gospel is not the legal code. The Gospel "has only one aim – the finding of the living God, the finding of Him by every individual as his God" (Harnack 1986, 191).

The historical approach to the Gospel defined the features of Harnack’s Christology. Harnack rejected the issues of traditional Christology and developed the historical analysis of Jesus’ position towards the Gospel. On the one hand, Harnack demonstrated, Jesus described the Lord of Heaven as his Father and subjected himself to his Father’s will. On the other hand, Jesus was the only one who knew the Father, and this knowledge ascribed him with Divine Sonship (ibid., 128). Jesus’ message, Harnack concluded, is much simpler than everything that the Christological theories proclaimed. "The Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed it, has to do with the Father only and not with the Son" (ibid., 144). Jesus as the personal embodiment of the message of the Gospel leads people to God the Father. Herein, Harnack followed Ritschl’s position that Jesus "has the value of God for us" (in Glick 1967, 53).

The criticisms of Harnack’s historical method in theology usually address the primacy of the one approach over the other. Indeed, Harnack advocated the objectivity of historical method, and then ended up by giving the absolute standpoints, and either/or interpretations. Furthermore, his scholarship was grounded in the trust in human potential, yet he finished his lectures on the essence of Christianity with the following words: "Pure knowledge is a glorious thing [but] it is religion, the love of God and neighbour, which gives life a meaning" (Harnack 1986, 300). Since Harnack’s loyalty to the idea of intellectual freedom should never be separated from his Christian faith, his scholarship is to be understood as an attempt to reconcile history with theology.

During the last years of his life, Harnack was very concerned about the decline of the theologians’ respect for historical research and withdrawal of the religious knowledge "into the depths of one’s soul" (in Rumscheidt 1989, 30). Especially worrying for Harnack was the encounter with his former student Karl Barth, whose sincerity Harnack acknowledged, but of whose theology he was frightened. In the correspondence between Barth and Harnack, the younger theologian discharged Harnack’s scientific theology and argued that the main task of theology was the reception and transmission of the Word of the Christ (Harnack 1989b, 88).