Harnack, Adolf von

(1851–1930)

   Theologian.

   Harnack was the son of a German Lutheran Professor of Theology. He was educated at the Universities of Dorpat and Leipzig and he subsequently taught at the Universities of Giessen, Marburg and Berlin. This last appointment was disputed by the German Church because of his liberal interpretation of scripture. None the less he is remembered as the most influential German theologian of the late nineteenth century. He was a follower of Albrecht ritschl, and his works include Lehrbuch der Dogmen Geschichte (which traced the history of Christian dogma from the early days of the Church until the Reformation), Das Wesen des Christentums (a series of lectures in which he discussed the essence of the Christian religion) and Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament (on the Gospels and Acts). With the New Testament scholar Emil Schürer, he founded Theologische Literaturzeitung in 1881. Harnack believed that the metaphysical doctrines developed by St paul and the Roman Catholic Church had their origin in the Hellenistic thought of the time. Once they were disregarded, the true message of Jesus would be revealed. This he identified with the Kingdom of God which he defined as the ‘fatherhood of God’ and the ‘brotherhood of man’. Harnack’s liberalism stands in sharp contrast to the ‘Crisis Theology’ of Karl barth and his followers, which denied any natural point of contact between God and human beings.

   G.W. Glick, The Reality of Christianity: A Study of Adolf von Harnack as Historian and Theologian (1967);

   M. Rumscheidt (ed.), Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at its Height (1989).