Adolf von Harnack

“ Where in the history of mankind can we find anything resembling this, that men who had eaten and drunk with their Master should glorify him, not only as the revealer of God, but as the Prince of life, as the Redeemer and Judge of the world, as the living power of its existence, and that a choir of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Barbarians, wise and foolish, should along with them immediately confess that out of the fulness of this one man they have received grace for grace? ”

“ Clement was the first to grasp the task of future theology. According to him this task consists in utilising the historical traditions, through which we have become what we are, and the Christian communion, which is imperative upon us as being the only moral and religious one, in order to attain freedom and independence of our own life by the aid of the Gospel; and in showing this Gospel to be the highest revelation by the Logos, who has given evidence of himself whenever man rises above the level of nature and who is consequently to be traced throughout the whole history of humanity. ”

“ It is a task by itself more rich and comprehensive than that of the historian of dogma, to portray the diverse conceptions that have been formed of the Christian religion, to portray how strong men and weak men, great and little minds have explained the Gospel outside and inside the frame-work of dogma, and how under the cloak, or in the province of dogma, the Gospel has had its own peculiar history. ”

“ The moral law of nature of which the Apologists speak, and which they find reproduced in the clearest and most beautiful way in the sayings of Jesus,441 calls upon man to raise himself above his nature and to enter into a corresponding union with his fellow-man which is something higher than natural connections. It is not so much the law of love that is to rule everything, for love itself is only a phase of a higher law; it is the law governing the perfect and sublime Spirit, who, as being the most exalted existence on this earth, is too noble for the world. ”

“ Judged from the stand-point of pure science, of empirical knowledge of the world, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle marks a momentous turning-point, the post-Aristotelian a retrogression, the Neoplatonic a complete declension. But judging from the stand-point of religion and morality, it must be admitted that the ethical temper which Neoplatonism sought to beget and confirm, was the highest and purest which the culture of the ancient world produced. ”

“ On the basis of this conception of redemption Origen developed his idea of Christ. Inasmuch as he recognised Christ as the Redeemer, this Christ, the God-man, could not but be as many-sided as redemption is. Only through that masterly art of reconciling contradictions, and by the aid of that fantastic idea which conceives one real being as dwelling in another, could there be any apparent success in the attempt to depict a homogeneous person who in truth is no longer a person, but the symbol of the various redemptions. ”

“ Israel, no doubt, had a sacred treasure which was of greater value than all the treasures of the Greeks,—the living God—but in what miserable vessels was this treasure preserved, and how much inferior was all else possessed by this nation in comparison with the riches, the power, the delicacy and freedom of the Greek spirit and its intellectual possessions. ”

“ The purpose of the creation of the world was and is the production of men, i.e., beings possessed of soul and body, endowed with reason and freedom, and therefore made in the image of God; beings who are to partake of the blessedness and perfection of God. Everything is created for man's sake, and his own creation is a proof of the goodness of God. As beings possessed of soul and body, men are neither mortal nor immortal, but capable either of death or immortality.438 The condition on which men can attain the latter introduces us to ethics. ”

“ We recognise in these forms few Jewish, but many Græco-Roman features, and finally, we perceive also in the doctrine of faith on which this commonwealth is based, the philosophic spirit of the Greeks. We find a Church as a political union and worship institute, a formulated faith and a sacred learning; but one thing we no longer find, the old enthusiasm and individualism which had not felt itself fettered by subjection to the authority of the Old Testament. Instead of enthusiastic independent Christians, we find a new literature of revelation, the New Testament, and Christian priests. ”

“ The strongest guarantee imaginable is found in the fulfilment of prophecy. Since no man is able to foretell what is to come, the prediction of the future accompanying a doctrine proves its divine origin. God, in his extraordinary goodness, not only inspired the prophets, through the Logos, with the doctrines of truth, but has from the beginning put numerous predictions in their mouth. These predictions were detailed and manifold; the great majority of them referred to a more prolonged appearance of the Logos in human form at the end of history, and to a future judgment. ”

“ Was it not in keeping with the consciousness possessed by the new religion of being the universal religion, that one should not be satisfied with mere beginnings of a new knowledge, or with fragments of it, but should seek to set up such knowledge in a complete and systematic form, and so to exhibit the best and universal system of life as also the best and universal system of knowledge of the world? ”

“ If we read the great work περι αρχων, or the treatise against Celsus, or the commentaries connectedly, we never cease to wonder how a mind so clear, so sure of the ultimate aim of all knowledge, and occupying such a high standpoint, has admitted in details all possible views down to the most naive myths, and how he on the one hand believes in holy magic, sacramental vehicles and the like, and on the other, in spite of all his rational and even empirical views, betrays no doubt of his abstract creations. But the problem that confronts us in Origen is that presented by his age. ”

“ According to the older notion the Church was the sure communion of salvation and of saints, which rested on the forgiveness of sins mediated by baptism, and excluded everything unholy. It is not the Church, but God alone, that forgives sins, and, as a rule, indeed, this is only done through baptism, though, in virtue of his unfathomable grace, also now and then by special proclamations, the pardon coming into effect for repentant sinners, after death, in heaven. If Christendom readmitted gross sinners, it would anticipate the judgment of God, as it would thereby assure them of salvation. ”

“ Christianity as religion is absolutely inconceivable without theology; first of all, for the same reasons which called forth the Pauline theology. As a religion it cannot be separated from the religion of its founder, hence not from historical knowledge. And as Monotheism and belief in a world purpose, it is the religion of reason with the inextinguishable impulse of thought. ”

“ This conception appears to fall short of the Christian ideal and perhaps really does so; but as soon as we measure it not by the Gospel but by the aims of Greek philosophy, we see very clearly the progress that has been attained through this same Gospel. What Origen has in his eye is mankind, and he is anxious for the amendment not merely of a few, but of all. The actual state of things in the Church no longer allowed him to repeat the exclamations of the Apologists that all Christians were philosophers and that all were filled with the same wisdom and virtue. ”

“ The way in which he attempted to sever Christianity from the Old Testament was a bold stroke which demanded the sacrifice of the dearest possession of Christianity as a religion, viz., the belief that the God of creation is also the God of redemption. And yet this innovation was partly caused by a religious conviction, the origin of which must be sought not in heathenism, but on Old Testament and Christian soil. For the bold Anti-judaist was the disciple of a Jewish thinker, Paul, and the origin of Marcion's antinomianism may be ultimately found in the prophets. ”

“ Mightier than all others, however, was the longing men felt to free themselves from the burden of the past, to cast away the rubbish of cults and of unmeaning religious ceremonies, and to be assured that the results of religious philosophy, those great and simple doctrines of virtue and immortality and of the God who is a Spirit, were certain truths. He who brought the message that these ideas were realities, and who, on the strength of these realities, declared polytheism and the worship of idols to be obsolete, had the mightiest forces on his side ”

“ The Gospel presents itself as an Apocalyptic message on the soil of the Old Testament, and as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and yet is a new thing, the creation of a universal religion on the basis of that of the Old Testament. It appeared when the time was fulfilled, that is, it is not without a connection with the stage of religious and spiritual development which was brought about by the intercourse of Jews and Greeks, and was established in the Roman Empire; but still it is a new religion because it cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. ”

“ The Gnostics sought to determine what Christianity is as a religion, and, as they were convinced of the absoluteness of Christianity, this process led them to incorporate with it all that they looked on as sublime and holy and to remove everything they recognised to be inferior. The Apologists, again, strove to discover an authority for religious enlightenment and morality and to find the confirmation of a theory of the universe, which, if true, contained for them the certainty of eternal life; and this they found in the Christian tradition. ”

“ Not only did he himself expressly declare that the creator of the world is a self-contradictory being of limited knowledge and power, but the whole doctrine of redemption shews that he is a power subordinate to the good God. We need not stop to enquire about the details, but it is certain that the creator of the world formerly knew nothing of the existence of the good God, that he is in the end completely powerless against him, that he is overcome by him, and that history in its issue with regard to man, is determined solely by its relation to the good God. ”

“ Nay, more: he was felt and known to be the ever living one, Lord of the world and operative principle of one's own life. "To me to live is Christ and to die is gain;" "He is the way, the truth and the life." One could now for the first time be certain of the resurrection and eternal life, and with that certainty the sorrows of the world melted away like mist before the sun, and the residue of this present time became as a day. This group of facts which the history of the Gospel discloses in the world, is at the same time the highest and most unique of all that we meet in that history ”

“ The life of the spirit, till then conceived as a member of an ordered world and subject to its laws, now freely passes beyond these bounds, and attempts to mould, and even to create, the universe from itself. ”

“ Instead of investigating the actual conditions in which believing and intelligent men have been placed, a system of Christianity has been constructed from which, as from a Pandora's box, all doctrines which in course of time have been formed, are extracted, and in this way legitimised as Christian. The simple fundamental proposition that that only is Christian which can be established authoritatively by the Gospel, has never yet received justice in the history of dogma. ”

“ The preaching of Jesus Christ was in the main so plain and simple, and in its application so manifold and rich, that one shrinks from attempting to systematise it, and would much rather merely narrate according to the Gospel. Jesus searches for the point in every man on which he can lay hold of him and lead him to the Kingdom of God. The distinction of good and evil—for God or against God—he would make a life question for every man, in order to shew him for whom it has become this, that he can depend upon the God whom he is to fear. ”

“ This enlightenment itself is life. But the enlightenment is dependent on revelation, asceticism and surrender to those mysteries which Christ founded, in which one enters into communion with a præsens numen, and which in mysterious ways promote the process of raising the spirit above the sensual. This rising above the sensual is, however, to be actively practised. Abstinence therefore, as a rule, is the watchword. Christianity thus appears here as a speculative philosophy which redeems the spirit by enlightening it, consecrating it, and instructing it in the right conduct of life. ”

“ It has only one aim; that man may find God and have him as his own God, in order to gain in him humility and patience, peace, joy and love. How it reaches this goal through the advancing centuries, whether with the co-efficients of Judaism or Hellenism, of renunciation of the world or of culture, of mysticism or the doctrine of predestination, of Gnosticism or Agnosticism, and whatever other incrustations there may yet be which can defend the kernel, and under which alone living elements can grow—all that belongs to the centuries. ”

“ The soul, an active essence, begets the corporeal or the world of phenomena. This should allow itself to be so ruled by the soul that the manifold of which it consists may abide in fullest harmony. Plotinus is not a dualist like the majority of Christian Gnostics. He praises the beauty and glory of the world. When in it the idea really has dominion over matter, the soul over the body, the world is beautiful and good. It is the image of the upper world, though a shadowy one, and the gradations of better or worse in it are necessary to the harmony of the whole. ”