The Founding Fathers of Progressive Christianity: Pt. 3 – Von Harnack

This is the third of a four part series in which I explore theologians of the previous two centuries who contributed to the theology which today influences progressive Christianity. In the previous article we looked at a successor to the liberal theologies of the early 1800s, Walter Rauschenbusch. Here we explore one of Rauschenbusch’s contemporaries, the German theologian Adolf von Harnack.

Adolf Harnack and “Theology from Below”

Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was a German theologian whose thinking and writing became very influential not just on the Continent but in England and America as well. He was enormously prolific, producing over 1600 written works in his lifetime. His enormous seven volume History of Dogma remains his magnum opus, and some of his smaller works also demonstrate the liberal thinking which contributed to postmodern theology.

A contemporary of Walter Rauschenbusch, whom we explored in the previous article, von Harnack shared the American’s association with Albrecht Ritschl, under whom they both studied. Roger Olson tells us Ritschl “built on Schleiermacher’s approach to doing theology from below and combined it with Kant’s emphasis on ethics as the essence of religion, including Christianity.” However, von Harnack set the stage for later departures from Orthodoxy in several ways quite different from Rauschenbusch. Here we will explore three primary areas in which Progressive Christianity continues to show evidence of von Harnack’s influence.

Von Harnack’s Appreciation of Marcion

First is von Harnack’s approach to Scripture which one must understand in conjunction with his beliefs regarding Christology. Von Harnack did not defend the unity and authority of the Bible, an issue which caused many of his contemporaries to oppose his career both in ministry and in the universities. Von Harnack wrote extensively on the Church Fathers, and was enamored with Marcion, although he does reference the second century writer as a heretic. A closer reading however indicates von Harnack only referred to Marcion as a heretic in order to appear not so far from the center of Orthodoxy early in his career.

Marcion (c. 85-160) taught that Christ was not the Son of God, rather was an alien god who appeared in human history. For Marcion, Christ was the demiurge of good who countered the evil God of the Law in the Old Testament. Thus, the Old and New Testaments concern two different gods, and Christ, the New Testament god, who is the god of love, defeats the old God of law.

Von Harnack praised Marcion for recognizing the lack of validity of the Old Testament and felt that the Apostle Paul held the same low view of the Hebrew Scriptures. Von Harnack writes:

It will always be the glory of Marcion in the early history of the Church that he, the born heathen, could appreciate the religious criticism of the Old Testament religion as formerly exercised by Paul.

History of Dogma, Vol 1, Ch. 5

Von Harnack’s Doctrine of Scripture and Christ

Von Harnack went further to indicate that theologians should not even take the New Testament at face value. Siding again with Marcion, von Harnack taught that the Synoptic Gospels might be considered generally reliable eye-witness accounts, but the Gospel of John was historically invalid. Further, the Pauline epistles built the Christian belief system as a religion in opposition to the Old Testament God and the Hebrew religion in totality.

Von Harnack referred to Marcion as “the bold anti-Judaist” and claimed his innovations to be “unmistakable.” He believed Marcion strove to build the Christian religion in its earliest forms out of a sense of conviction that the Pauline gospel was in opposition to the Old Testament and that Christ built a Church which should not be weakened by admixture with this other god found in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Second, von Harnack’s Christology is less a defense of a doctrinal position and more an understanding of the importance of love in opposition to law. By accepting Marcion’s position of Christ as the god of love who opposes the Old Testament God of law, von Harnack deliberately weakened the orthodox position of Christ as the uncreated Son of God. While he generally recognized a creator God, von Harnack taught the rest of the representations of God in the Old Testament were hopelessly mired in Hebraic myth. Christ as the opposing force to this God of law is the god of love who intends his gospel to be for the betterment of the individual.

Alister McGrath refers to von Harnack’s doctrinal positions in this way:

For Harnack, the gospel is nothing other that Jesus Christ himself. Jesus Himself is Christianity. In making this assertion however, Harnack implies no doctrine of Jesus; the basis of the assertion is partly historical (based on an analysis of the genesis of Christianity), and partly a consequence of Harnack’s personalist religious assumptions (Jesus’ significance resides primarily in the impact he has upon individuals).

Christian Theology: An Introduction, 342

In von Harnack’s presentation of the person of Jesus we can see the ways in which he is certainly the successor to Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Kant. He expresses the gospel as not a dogmatic position upon which to build a system of belief, but rather a viewpoint, which, when accepted personally, becomes the guiding force for the individual to improve their own ethical life. In this way the Christian ethic of love for others is based on Christ’s revelation of Himself as the god of love. Every believer’s view of Scripture, God, and Jesus is rightly subject to his or her own beliefs and goals, and no believer must adhere to any historical dogma.

This subjectivity is a core value of Progressive Christianity. The first of five core values espoused on progressivechristinaity.org reads this way: Christians “believe that following the way and teachings of Jesus can lead to experiencing sacredness, wholeness, and unity of all life, even as we recognize that the Spirit moves in beneficial ways in many faith traditions.” While von Harnack later fell out of popularity with the rise of neo-orthodoxy, his values are certainly retained in post-modern theologies such as this which elevate personal values at the expense of the doctrines of the Church or of Scripture.

Von Harnack’s Individual Ethics

Finally, von Harnack downplayed the role of the Church today. In keeping with his gospel of love, he certainly defended the responsibility of the believer to care for his fellow person. However, this is largely a role filled by the individual and less by the Church as an institution. Here he differed from Rauschenbusch who felt the responsibility of the Church was inherently to preach and enact a social gospel. For von Harnack the Church seemed to be responsible only to preach a salvation which comes from the god of love and builds love in the believer.

This salvation is seen when the believer evidences a positive ethical code and shares love with their neighbor. He writes:

Above all it must be remembered that the chief task of the Church is still preaching of the Gospel, that is to say, the message of Redemption and eternal life. Christianity as a religion would be at an end if this truth were obscured, and the Gospel were to be changed into a social manifesto, whether for the sake of gaining popularity, or owing to excessive zeal for reform.

Essays on the Social Gospel, Ch IV

Interestingly, von Harnack was active throughout his life in politics and government. He was a devout supporter first of Bismarck and later of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He supported their shared visions for a unified Prussia and Germany, the growth of the German state, and ultimately for the Kaiser’s vision of a German Empire. Although von Harnack never officially joined any party, he prepared Kaiser Wilhelm’s “Call to the German People,” which effectively launched World War I. Along with nearly 100 other liberals of his period he signed a public manifesto endorsing Germany’s endeavors in the war. He also was the founder of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society which the German government later renamed the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science.

Through his activity in politics, von Harnack seems to have embodied his code of the responsibility of the individual. Because his peers in the Lutheran church denied him ministerial positions, he leveraged his influence in academia and civil government to demonstrate the ethical responsibility not of the Church but of the individual. He left the door open for the Church to exercise power in the civil sector, but seemed to feel she would not be up to the task. He wrote:

Protestants believe that if the Government or other secular authority exercises its power rightly, it will be at one with the ethical ideals of Christianity, and accordingly, the ordering of temporal affairs may be safely left in its hands. But this in no way debars the Church from raising its voice in protest against moral and social evils, and from influencing both public opinion and the conduct of matters of national interest.

Essays on the Social Gospel, Ch IV.

Von Harnack stands with Schleiermacher and Rauschenbusch in endorsing a subjective theology which upends the authority of scripture and church tradition. These values, declared initially by the classical liberal theologians, are at the core of what has become post-modern liberal theology. In the closing article of this series, we will explore how Socialist theory and individualism reached their zenith in the field of theology under the guise of liberation theology.