Adolf von Harnack

“ 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. ”

“ If we put aside abstract considerations and merely look at the facts of the given situation, we cannot but admire a creation which first broke up the various outside forces assailing Christianity, and in which the highest blessings of this faith have always continued to be accessible. If the founder of the Christian religion had deemed belief in the Gospel and a life in accordance with it to be compatible with membership of the Synagogue and observance of the Jewish law, there could at least be no impossibility of adhering to the Gospel within the Catholic Church. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Gnosticism in all its phases was the violent attempt to drag Christianity down to the level of the Greek world, and to rob it of its dearest possession, belief in the Almighty God of creation and redemption, then Catholicism, inasmuch as it secured this belief for the Greeks, preserved the Old Testament, and supplemented it with early Christian writings, thereby saving—as far as documents, at least, were concerned—and proclaiming the authority of an important part of primitive Christianity, must in one respect be acknowledged as a conservative force born from the vigour of Christianity. ”

“ He glides over from the one to the other; limits the one by the other; plays off Scripture against reason, tradition against the obscurity of the Scriptures; and combats fantastic speculation by an appeal sometimes to reason, sometimes to the limits of human knowledge. Behind all this and dominating everything, we find his firm belief in the bestowal of divine incorruptibility on believers through the work of the God-man. ”

“ No positive religion can do more for its followers than faith in the revelation through Christ and the prophets did for the Apologists. Although it chiefly proved to them the truth of that which we call natural theology and which was the idealistic philosophy of the age, so that the Church appears as the great insurance society for the ideas of Plato and Zeno, we ought not at the same time to forget that their idea of a divine spirit working upon earth was a far more lively and worthy one than in the case of the Greek philosophers. ”

“ The Divine Being who makes himself known on earth in audible and visible fashion can only be the Divine Word. As, however, according to the fundamental view of the Apologists the principle of religion, i.e., of the knowledge of the truth, is also the principle of the world, so that Divine Word, which imparts the right knowledge of the world, must be identical with the Divine Reason which produced the world itself. In other words, the Logos is not only the creative Reason of God, but also his revealing Word. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, the inclination to sweep away all Church law is quite intelligible, for when you give the devil your little finger he takes the whole hand. But, on the other hand, it cannot be imagined how communities are to exist on earth, propagate themselves, and train men without regulations; and how regulations are to exist without resulting in the formation of a code of laws. In truth, such regulations have at no time been wanting in Christian communities, and have always possessed the character of a legal code. ”

“ Supposing minds of a radical cast, to have existed at the close of the history of ancient civilisation, what would have been left to us? The fact of a strong and undivided religious interest attaching itself to the traditions of the philosophers and of the two Testaments was the condition—to use Origen's own language—that enabled a new world of spirits to arise after the old one had finished its course. ”

“ The historian who wishes to determine the advance made by Græco-Roman humanity in the third and fourth centuries, under the influence of Catholicism and its theology, must above all keep in view the fact that gross polytheism and immoral mythology were swept away, spiritual monotheism brought near to all, and the ideal of a divine life and the hope of an eternal one made certain. Philosophy also aimed at that, but it was not able to establish a community of men on these foundations. ”

“ To Justin faith is only an acknowledgment of the mission and Sonship of Christ and a conviction of the truth of his teaching. Faith does not justify, but is merely a presupposition of the justification which is effected through repentance, change of mind, and sinless life. Only in so far as faith itself is already a free decision to serve God has it the value of a saving act, which is indeed of such significance that one can say, 'Abraham was justified by faith.' In reality, however, this took place through μετανοια. ”

“ In the second half of the third century there were no longer any Churches, except remote communities, where the only requirement was to preserve the Catholic faith; the bishops had to be obeyed. The idea of the one episcopally organised Church became the main one and overshadowed the significance of the doctrine of faith as a bond of unity. The Church based on the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, the vicegerents of God, is herself the legacy of the Apostles in virtue of this her foundation. ”

“ THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AND HIS SELF-UNFOLDINGS OR CREATIONS.719 The world points back to an ultimate cause and the created spirit to an eternal, pure, absolutely simple, and unchangeable spirit, who is the original source of all existence and goodness, so that everything that exists only does so in virtue of being caused by that One, and is good in so far as it derives its essence from the One who is perfection and goodness. ”

“ On the contrary the Logos preserves his impassibility, and it is only the soul that hungers and thirsts, struggles and suffers. In this, too, it appears as a real human soul, and in the same way the body is sinless and unpolluted, as being derived from a virgin; but yet it is a human one. This humanity of the body, however, does not exclude its capacity of assuming all possible qualities the Logos wishes to give it; for matter of itself possesses no qualities. ”

“ We do indeed know the factors, and can therefore theoretically construct the development; but the real course of things is frequently hidden from us. The genesis of a harmonious Church, firmly welded together in doctrine and constitution, can no more have been the natural unpremeditated product of the conditions of the time than were the genesis and adoption of the New Testament canon of Scripture. But we have no direct evidence as to what communities had a special share in the development, although we know that the Roman Church played a leading part. ”

“ But everything true and good is Christian, for Christianity is nothing else than the teaching of revelation. No second formula can be imagined in which the claim of Christianity to be the religion of the world is so powerfully expressed (hence also the endeavour of the Apologists to [pg 201] reconcile Christianity and the Empire) , nor, on the other hand, can we conceive of one where the specific content of traditional Christianity is so thoroughly neutralised as it is here. ”

“ This is the divine wisdom: "The soul practises viewing herself as in a mirror: she displays the divine Spirit in herself as in a mirror, if she is to be found worthy of this fellowship; and she thus discovers the traces of a mysterious way to deification."694 Origen employed the Stoic and Platonic systems of ethics as an instrument for the gradual realisation of this ideal.695 With him the mystic and ecstatic as well as the magic and sacramental element is still in the background, though it is not wanting. ”

“ Moreover, as soon as the New Testament was recognised, the conception of a subsequent revelation through the Paraclete was a highly questionable and strange innovation. But for those who acknowledged the new prophecy all this was ultimately nothing but a means. Its practical tendency, based as it was on the conviction that the Church abandons her character if she does not resist gross secularisation at least, was no innovation, but a defence of the most elementary requirements of primitive Christianity in opposition to a Church that was always more and more becoming a new thing. ”

“ If even men can carry on conversations with themselves and make themselves objects of reflection, how much more is this possible with God.537 But as yet he was the only person.538 The moment, however, that he chose to reveal himself and sent forth from himself the word of creation, the Logos came into existence as a real being, before the world and for the sake of the world. ”