Adolf von Harnack

Life

Harnack was born on May 7, 1851, in Dorpat, in the Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire; Dorpat is present-day Tartu, Estonia. His father was the theology professor Theodosius Harnack. He received his doctorate in Leipzig in 1873 and then earned his habilitation with a study of Gnosticism. He became a full professor at the University of Giessen in 1879 and moved to the University of Marburg in 1886. In 1888 he went to the University of Berlin, an appointment strongly opposed by conservative church authorities. He retired in 1921 and died in Heidelberg on June 10, 1930.

Work and Contributions

Harnack's research centered on church history and the history of dogma, that is, the history of how Christian doctrines arose and changed over time. His major work is the History of Dogma (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols., 1886–1890). In it he interpreted Christian doctrine as the product of the gospel of Jesus encountering the spirit of Greek philosophy, a process he called "Hellenization." He also founded a series publishing critical editions of the writings of the Church Fathers.

His best-known book is What Is Christianity? (Das Wesen des Christentums, 1900), a collection of sixteen lectures delivered to students of all faculties at the University of Berlin during the winter semester of 1899–1900. He summarized the core of the gospel in three points:

• The kingdom of God and its coming
• God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul
• The higher righteousness and the commandment of love

He regarded the doctrines and institutions that arose in the course of history as the husk surrounding this kernel. Influenced by Albrecht Ritschl, he is regarded as a leading representative of liberal theology.

During his Berlin years he was drawn into a controversy over whether the Apostles' Creed should serve as the confessional standard for candidates for ordination. He favored adopting a shorter declaration of faith in place of the Apostles' Creed.

Harnack was also active in academic administration. From 1905 to 1921 he served as director general of the Royal Library. In 1911 the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (today the Max Planck Society) was founded at his proposal, and he served as its first president until his death.

Assessment

Harnack's contribution in systematically organizing the literature of the early church and the history of its doctrines is widely acknowledged. His supporters hold that his attempt to understand doctrine as a historical development prompted fresh inquiry into the meaning of Christianity in the modern world.

He has also drawn considerable criticism. In a 2020 article in the Korean journal Theological Forum (Sinhak Nondan), Baek Chung-hyun criticized Harnack's understanding of the gospel as overly simplistic and reductionist, explaining complex matters by reducing them to only a few elements. Baek pointed in particular to Harnack's oversimplification of Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity. In contrast to Harnack's view of doctrinal development as "Hellenization," a movement has also emerged that regards the theological synthesis achieved by the early church as a "Great Tradition" to be recovered today.