Adolf von Harnack

Estonian theologian and historian

• Born: May 7, 1851
• Birthplace: Dorpat, Estonia, Russian Empire (now Tartu, Estonia)
• Died: June 10, 1930
• Place of death: Heidelberg, Germany

Harnack’s writings on the history of early Christianity remain the standard for all work done in this field. Harnack became an absolute master of the literature of the early Christian era and definitively shaped the perception of this era and its literature not only through his interpretation of the texts but also by his careful editing of the sources.

Early Life

Adolf von Harnack (fuhn HAHR-nak) was born in Dorpat (now Tartu), Estonia. His father, Theodosius Harnack, was a professor of practical theology at the University of Dorpat. In 1853, the family moved to Erlangen when the father was named to the faculty at the University of Erlangen but returned to Dorpat in 1866 when Theodosius rejoined the faculty at the university. Adolf attended the gymnasium in Dorpat, where he initiated his study of church history and began his university studies at the University of Dorpat. In 1872, Adolf left Dorpat to attend the University of Leipzig, where he completed his studies for the doctorate in church history in 1873 and his thesis on Apelles the Gnostic in 1874.

The University of Dorpat surrounded Harnack with a faculty that was Lutheran, strongly devotional, and passionately committed to issues relating to Christology. His decision to focus his studies on church history put him under the tutelage of Moritz von Engelhardt. Engelhardt proved to have a determinative influence on Harnack’s later life. Engelhardt inspired in Harnack a conviction about the role of history as the means for recovering and liberating the core of the Christian religion. Engelhardt is also the source of Harnack’s commitment to a method of study that began with a critical text and grounded all conclusions in a thorough examination of the original sources.

Harnack’s years at Leipzig brought him into contact with the work of Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl’s influence on nineteenth century German Protestant theology was profound, leading to the establishment of the so-called Ritschlian School with which Harnack is often associated. Ritschl wanted to ground Christian theology in history and practice and remove it from the realm of the speculative, the mystical, and the metaphysical. In concert with sixteenth century Reformers, Ritschl emphasized justification and reconciliation, the corporate and historical nature of the Christian community, and that the Christian religion is a way of life, a manner of living that expressed a set of ethical convictions. Harnack absorbed much of this and later reflected it in his historical, nondogmatic approach to Christian theology and his insistence on the ethics as the core of the Christian proclamation.

After the completion of his studies at Leipzig, Harnack began his long and illustrious career as a professor of church history. His first faculty appointment was at Leipzig in 1876, and this was followed by brief tenures at Giessen and Marburg. While at Marburg, Harnack met and married the daughter of Professor Hans Thiersch.

Life’s Work

William II appointed Harnack to the University of Berlin’s chair in church history in 1888. The appointment caused considerable controversy, as Harnack’s writings had earned for him a number of critics in ecclesiastical circles. The appointment was upheld, but the friction between Harnack and the members of the ecclesiastical establishment remained and served as a source of sadness and alienation for Harnack throughout his career.

Harnack remained at the University of Berlin until his death in June of 1930. His career is vivid testimony to a man with extraordinary intelligence, energy, and organizational skills. Besides having to his credit more than one thousand publications, Harnack was the editor and founder (or cofounder) of Patrum apostolicorum opera, Theologische Literaturzeitung, and the series entitled Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur. In addition, Harnack was elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences and asked to write the history of the academy in connection with the celebration of its two hundredth anniversary in 1900. In 1906, Harnack was appointed director general of the Royal Library in Berlin, and in 1911 he was given the post of the president of Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft. Harnack’s service to the state was recognized by the award of the Order of Merit in 1902, and in 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm raised him to the hereditary nobility.

Harnack’s writings and scholarly career revolved around two intricately related poles. On the one hand, he was deeply committed as a scholar to the task of providing critical editions of the texts of early Christian authors and to using these primary sources as the basis for his theories about the rise and development of Christian thought. On the other hand, Harnack as Protestant churchman, was driven by the idea that through the reading and analyzing of these texts he could offer to the church “the inner form of Christian truth,” the true Gospel of Christ. The interrelationship of these two poles had ensured a powerful and enduring legacy. While Harnack’s theories about the Gospel of Christ were controversial and have often been challenged, they rested on solid and seemingly unimpeachable scholarship. To render Harnack inconsequential, one would have to master the primary sources at the same level as Harnack, a task no one has managed to accomplish.

Harnack’s classic work, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (seven volumes, History of Dogma , 1896-1899), was first published between 1886 and 1890. It was followed by a one-volume summary, Grundriss der Dogmengeschichte, which was published in two parts between 1889 and 1891. The study follows the development of Christian doctrine to the Reformation, giving exhaustive treatment to the earliest period. The work displays Harnack’s extensive familiarity with and control of the sources and exposes his conception of the historian’s task and his theological standpoint. For Harnack, the historian has the responsibility of revealing, through historical research, how the Gospel of Jesus Christ became absorbed into authoritative ecclesiastical doctrines and thereby transformed from that “which awakened in men’s hearts the certainty that God rules heaven and earth and is Judge and Redeemer,” to dogmatic propositions to which one gave simply intellectual assent. This tragic transformation began when ancient Christians attempted to translate the Gospel into thought forms comprehensible to a Hellenistic worldview. By the fourth century, the simple Gospel of Christ had been replaced by a complex set of propositions protected by a rigidly authoritarian institution. The liberation of the Gospel from this morass had begun with the Reformation in that “the Reformation obtained a new point of departure for the framing of the Christian faith in the Word of God and it discarded all forms of infallibility. . . . In this way that view of Christianity from which dogma arose was set aside.” Harnack envisioned his own work as bringing this aspect of the Protestant Reformation to its completion.

The ideas woven into the History of Dogma were distilled and presented in a more accessible form in Harnack’s second major work, Das Wesen des Christentums (What Is Christianity? , 1901), which was first published in 1900. This work was enormously popular, receiving fourteen printings, and equally controversial. The early chapters attempt to define the Gospel of Christ. As in his previous work, the Gospel is characterized as “simple” (that is undogmatic), offering a set of moral precepts combined with a proclamation about the power and love of God. The later chapters test the different forms of Christianity against this definition. It was Harnack’s hope that this procedure would not only further clarify the central characteristic of the Gospel but also demonstrate its persistence by locating it within the manyfold manifestations of the Christian religion.

A significant portion of Harnack’s later life and work was preoccupied by New Testament research. In a series of studies entitled Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament published in four parts between 1906 and 1916 (Luke the Physician, 1909), he dealt at length with the question of the interrelationship of the first three Gospels (the Synoptic problem) and the dating and authorship of Acts. Harnack supported the widely held theory of the priority of the Gospel of Mark, and he agreed with the supposition of the existence of an independent source for Matthew and Luke. Harnack broke from the academic mainstream by assigning a very early date for the composition of the Synoptic Gospels and by claiming that Acts was written by Luke during the time of Paul’s Roman captivity.

Significance

Harnack’s extensive list of publications and record of service to the academic community and the state readily attests his talent and energy as a scholar and administrator. For Harnack himself, however, the measure of success was the cause of Protestantism. Harnack frequently referred to himself as one who had been given the task to reawaken and complete the efforts begun by the Reformers of the sixteenth century. The tools learned and used in the academy, especially the tool of historical criticism, were to be used to consummate the Protestant revolt against the dogmatic authoritarianism of the Roman Catholic Church.

While Harnack’s theological standpoint has been challenged and to a large extent displaced (ironically) by the Protestant dogmatist Barth, his stature as a scholar of Christian literature remains at the highest level. Harnack’s quest for the Gospel of Jesus Christ resulted in such an extraordinary grasp of the early Christian literature that he continues to be recognized as the standard against which all work in the literature of the early Christian era is compared.

Bibliography

Glick, G. Wayne. The Reality of Christianity: A Study of Adolf von Harnack as Historian and Theologian. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. A thorough examination of Harnack’s theological and historical studies. The work is especially useful for detailing the influences of Harnack’s father and Harnack’s teachers at Dorpat and Leipzig.

Jenkins, Finley Dubois. “Is Harnack’s History of Dogma a History of Harnack’s Dogma?” Princeton Theological Review 21 (July and October, 1923): 389-428, 585-620. A detailed attack on Harnack’s claim to have rescued the simple Gospel of Christ from Christian dogma. Jenkins argues that Harnack operated from a naïve view of historical research that kept him from recognizing his own theological bias.

King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism? Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2003. Includes the chapter “Adolf van Harnack and the Essence of Christianity.”

Pauck, Wilhelm. Harnack and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. This is a brief summary of the life and work of Harnack with special attention given to Harnack’s History of Dogma. The book includes Harnack’s moving funeral address given for Ernst Troeltsch.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Significance of Adolf von Harnack’s Interpretation of Church History.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review, January, 1954: 13-24. An article written in defense of Harnack’s interpretation and conception of Christianity as a historical phenomenon and against “the Barthian and neo-confessional theologies . . . which neglect the historical dimensions of the Christian faith.”

Richards, George W. “The Place of Adolph von Harnack Among Church Historians.” Journal of Religion 11 (July, 1931): 333-345. This article has a brief biographical sketch, a summary of the important works of Harnack, and a comparison of the work of Harnack with that of Baur and Ritschl.

Tyson, Joseph B. Luke, Judaism, and the Scholars: Critical Approaches to Luke-Acts. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. This survey of scholarship about the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles includes a chapter about Harnack’s ideas.