The Upper Register

Harnack: Doctrine versus Experience

Martin Rumscheidt has a helpful overview of Harnack's life that you can read on Google books (Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height [San Francisco: Collins, 1989], 9-33). In his introduction, Rumscheidt quotes Harnack as saying:

I do not desire to be given the fulness of ready-made statements, rather, I want to produce every statement in that web by myself and then make it my own.

Rumscheidt then comments:

In this are the roots of Harnack's theological liberalism: 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 (p. 11).

Harnack's dissatisfaction with "the merely dogmatic or creedal" approach to the Christian religion, and his drive to push on "to the living core or essence" of the faith is seen clearly in What is Christianity? For example, Harnack says:

An experience -- it is only the religion which a man has himself experienced that is to be confessed; every other creed or confession is in Jesus' view hypocritical and fatal. (p. 148)

It is not a question of a "doctrine" being handed down by uniform repetition or arbitrarily distorted; it is a question of a life, again and again kindled afresh, and now burning with a flame of its own ... Individual religious life was what [Jesus] wanted to kindle and what he did kindle. (p. 11)

The distinction between "doctrine" and "life" (as a religious experience) is not necessarily bad, but Harnack takes it to great extremes.

For example, he has no time for the "theories about vicarious sacrifice," but concludes that Christ's death was "for us" in some vague sense that we can "feel" but not articulate (pp. 156-60).

Or take another example--the "Easter message" (read "doctrine") of the empty tomb is not important; what is important is the "Easter faith" (read "experience") of the living Christ (p. 160).

Thus for Harnack Christianity is essentially a religious experience.  The doctrinal truths that the church has historically proclaimed and confessed are irrelevant and in many ways dangerous, since they obscure the immediacy of the religious experience or feeling that is, in some ways, a more authentic way of grasping the truth than the noetic development of doctrine.

Harnack, then, becomes an iconoclast who is continually attacking the church's traditional creedal formulas as he tries to uncover the essential core experience that lies beneath the mass that has grown up like barnacles upon the hull of a ship. Or to use another analogy, he attempts to peel off the layers of the onion, only to be left with nothing in the end.

Harnack: The Kernel and the Husk

In his opening lecture, Harnack lays out his basic hermeneutical method as he strives to explain the essence of Christianity. That method may best be described as making a distinction between the kernel and the husk, that is, between that which is essential in the message of Jesus and that which is incidental and bound by the historical circumstances in which Jesus lived. Let us hear Harnack in his own words:

Jesus Christ and his disciples were situated in their day just as we are situated in ours; that is to say, their feelings, their thoughts, their judgments and their efforts were bounded by the horizon and the framework in which their own nation was set and by its condition at the time. Had it been otherwise, they would not have been men of flesh and blood, but spectral beings ... To be a man means, in the first place, to possess a certain mental and spiritual disposition, determined in such and such a way, and thereby limited and circumscribed; and, in the second place, it means to be situated, with this disposition, in an historical environment which in its turn is also limited and circumscribed ... From these circumstances it follows that the historian, whose business and hightest duty it is to determine what is of permanent value, is of necessity required not to cleave to words but to find out what is essential. (pp. 12-13)

Harnack explicitly approaches the question, "What is Christianity?" more as a historian than a theologian. Indeed, Harnack's historical investigations on the apostolic fathers, his 3-volume study of the history of Christian dogmatics, and his work on The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, are all helpful historical studies and retain their value even today. Perhaps the church historian should have remained in his own bailiwick and not ventured into the realm of theology. But venture he did, and what we need to recognize is that he ventured into that realm using the methods, tools, and habits of thought of the historian, and the particular kind of historian who, in good German fashion, thinks of history as the evolution and unfolding of grand ideas.

To return to Harnack:

[Thinking historically] helps us to grasp what is essential in the phenomena, and to distinguish kernel and husk ... [The Gospel] contains something which, under differing historical forms, is of permanent validity. (pp. 12, 14)

In particular, Harnack argues that though Jesus came within the historical context of the Judaism of his day, Jesus' teaching has only a loose connection with Judaism. Thus, for Harnack, it is not absolutely important to become intimately acquainted with the various sects of Judaism, or with their apocalyptic fervor and messianic hopes. 

The oftener I re-read and consider the Gospels, the more do I find that the contemporary discords, in the midst of which the Gospel stood, and out of which it arose, sink into the background. I entertain no doubt that the founder had his eye upon man in whatever external situation he might be found--upon man who, fundamentally, always remains the same. (p. 17)

For Harnack, then, the aspects of Jesus' (or John the Baptist's) teaching that focus on a coming day of judgment, about an axe being laid to the root of the trees, about unquenchable fire, or sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel--all of this is mere "apparatus" (p. 41), mere husk that is not essential to the core message of Jesus concerning the soul's individual relationship with God.

What, then, is the core message?

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. (p. 8) ... It is not a question of angels and devils, thrones and principalities, but of God and the soul, the soul and its God. (p. 56, cp. p. 142)

I'll have more to say about this core message in future posts, but it is enough to meditate on that thought, "God and the soul, the soul and its God."

The Cremer-Harnack Debate

I'm planning to blog through Hermann Cremer's lectures, A Reply to Harnack on the Essence of Christianity(German: 1901; English translation: 1903), published a year after Adolf von Harnack's more famous lectures, What is Christianity? (1900). I've given the titles in English translation; in the original German, they had the same title, Das Wesen des Christentums [The Essence of Christianity]. But before blogging through Cremer, it is only fair to blog through Harnack first, to give him a chance to make his own case before hearing his critic.

I have several motives for blogging this debate.

First, my dissertation has gotten me interested in the work of Hermann Cremer who first developed the theory that "righteousness" in Hebrew thought is a "relational concept." In the course of my research on Cremer, I came across his reply to Harnack and although I am critical of his relational interpretation of righteousness, I enjoyed his apologetic on behalf of orthodox Christianity. Cremer's work reminds one of Machen's Christianity and Liberalism (1923) a couple of decades later in response to the American version of the liberalism.

Second, while I am clearly in Cremer's corner in this match, I want to explain Harnack's views as sympathetically as possible and to enter into his thought world. Theological liberalism is obviously not something I want to endorse. But I do want us to take it seriously and not reject it out of hand as so obviously wrong that we need not bother to understand it or strive to see why it may be attractive to so many. Don't forget that even Machen, when he sat under Wilhelm Herrmann's lectures in Germany, was for a time captivated by his Christocentric piety. Of course, he ended up rejecting Herrmann's Christ as a shallow image of the true one. But his renewed commitment to historic orthodoxy was that much stronger and richer after first putting himself in Herrmann's shoes and seeing his brand of faith from the inside. Don't dismiss the liberals out of hand! They have some valid things to say and can be surprisingly attractive in their piety.

Third, it is important to be reminded that the line between liberalism and evangelicalism is not an uncrossable chasm. There are liberals who call themselves evangelical. And there are some who profess to be evangelicals who are really liberals. I've experienced this permeable lining between the two camps at Fuller Theological Seminary. Some of the professors there would best be classified as theological liberals, even though they are still evangelical in their piety. Another example of this hybrid of the liberal-evangelical (or the evangelical-liberal) is Brian McLaren and some of his partners in the emergent/emerging "conversation" (as they like to call it). I'm not arguing that McLaren is necessarily in agreement with everything Harnack stood for, but I do think one can see certain similarities in terms of their moralistic emphasis and their concern for the social implications of the gospel.

Although the Harnack-Cremer debate took place more than a hundred years ago, the issues are still relevant today.  So join me over the next few months as I blog through these two books by two great theological minds.

For Harnack, I'll be using the translation by Thomas Bailey Saunders published in the Fortress Texts in Modern Theology (1986).

For Cremer, I'll be using the version on Google Books, translation by Bernhard Pick, published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1903.

The story that frames the atonement, part 2

Now a question may arise in  your mind, Why did God bother to go through the whole "first level" or typological fulfillment in the first place? If the "real" narrative is the Adam narrative of creation, fall, redemption, consummation, why Israel? I believe the reason is pedagogical. The Adam narrative happened too long ago and with so few witnesses. So God re-enacted the Adam narrative on the grand stage of world history in order to set the context for the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Meredith Kline put it this way:

A variety of purposes can be discovered to explain the insertion of the old covenant order and its typal kingdom into the course of redemptive history. Of central importance was the creation of the proper historical setting for the advent of the Son of God and his earthly mission (cf. Rom 9:5). In accordance with the terms of his covenant of works with the Father he was to come as the second Adam in order to undergo a representative probation and by his obedient and triumphant accomplishment thereof to establish the legal ground for God’s covenanted bestowal of the eternal kingdom of salvation on his people. It was therefore expedient, if not necessary, that Christ appear within a covenant order which, like the covenant with the first Adam, was governed by the works principle (cf. Gal 4:4). The typal kingdom of the old covenant was precisely that. Within the limitations of the fallen world and with modifications peculiar to the redemptive process, the old theocratic kingdom was a reproduction of the original covenantal order. Israel as the theocratic nation was mankind stationed once again in a paradise-sanctuary, under probation in a covenant of works. In the context of that situation, the Incarnation event was legible; apart from it the meaning of the appearing and ministry of the Son of Man would hardly have been perspicuous. Because of the congruence between Jesus’ particular historical identity as the true Israel, born under the law, and his universally relevant role as the second Adam, the significance of his mission as the accomplishing of a probationary assignment in a works covenant in behalf of the elect of all ages was lucidly expressed and readily readable.

Much more than the works-probation aspect of Jesus’ task was included in the revelatory design of the typal kingdom. It prepared a public context in world history in which the meaning of Jesus’ mission as a whole might be communicated effectively.

[Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 352-3.]

Note the statement highlighted in bold:  "the congruence between Jesus' particular historical identity as the true Israel under the law, and his universally relevant role as the second Adam." That is the heart of the matter. 

I would argue that the role of the Davidic king is what most clearly points backward to Adam and forward to Christ as the second Adam. It was the king who was responsible to lead the people of God in faithful obedience to the Law. As the king goes, so go the people. If he is obedient, the people are generally faithful and their tenure in the land continues. If he is an idolater, the nation as a whole is filled with idolaters and is (eventually) cut off from the land.

God said to King Solomon after he finished building the temple: "If you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight" (1 Kings 9:6-7 ESV). 

The king's disobedience or obedience, then, in a typological and imperfect way, is what determines whether God's people continue to dwell in God's holy land. In the same way, Christ's obedience (as God's anointed King) is the meritorious ground that secures the eternal inheritance. Therefore, to call Jesus "the Messiah" is to call him "the second Adam" using the idiom of the typal kingdom.

The cross fits in as follows. The obedience of the Messiah or second Adam included a mission of not only fulfilling the precepts of the Law but of enduring the Law's curse on behalf of those who had violated the Law. This of course would not have been necessary for the pre-fall Adam nor was it envisioned as part of the Davidic king's ordinary role. But now that the covenant of works (whether in its Adamic or Mosaic form) has been broken, the only way the blessings of the covenant can be enjoyed by sinners is if they are judged under the penal curse of the covenant and emerge on the other side through union with a representative Substitute in his death and resurrection. The kingly office of Christ is then conjoined with the priestly.