Adolf von Harnack’s Dark Theology

 https://counter-currents.com/2017/02/adolf-von-harnacks-dark-theology/

~Freedom~

"Harnack‘s theology is liberal theology in the sense that it emphasizes the imperative of freedom: the freedom of thought, the pursuit of truth, and freedom from external interference."

~Human Power~

"He was also confident in the power of human thought and the ability to transcend one‘s subjectivity to attain genuine objectivity. In him, scrupulous reasonableness and unshakeable religious faith were combined, resting on his awareness of one‘s dependence on the absolute spirit."

~Christianity for Harnack~

According to Harnack, true Christianity was 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.”
 Gary Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 326-327.

~Harnack on War~

Harnack’s thought was permeated with his conviction that war was an essential part of history, and that nations could hardly establish themselves without rivalry that risked wars. 

~Three Powers in History~

 In January 1912, he wrote:
The progress of the development of world history has placed the three Germanic empires of England, North America and Germany at the apex of humanity as far as the main features of culture are concerned. Apart from their being related by blood, these three states have also a great inheritance in common. This common inheritance sets them the highest goals, but also lays on them the solemn obligation before the judgment seat of history to work peaceably together.
J. C. O´Neill, “Adolf von Harnack and the entry of the German state into war”, Scottish Journal of Theology, (vol. 55, no. 1, 2002), 13-14.

~Reaction Against Britain with Russia~

Great Britain sides with Russia against Germany! What does that mean? That means: Great Britain breaches the dam that had protected Western Europe and her culture against the desert sands of the asiatic non-culture of Russia and the Panslavs. Now we Germans have to plug that breach in the dam with our own bodies. We will do it though soaked in streams of blood, and we will win through. We have to win through; for we protect the work of fifteen hundred years on behalf of all Europe and also on behalf of Great Britain! But the day when Great Britain breached the dam can never be forgotten in world history.
J. C. O´Neill, 7

~Harnack Encouraged Students to Fight with God~

On August 1, 1914, the day the war began, Harnack was giving his last lecture of the summer on the history of dogma. He began the lecture by telling his students that the Kaiser had worked towards peace to the limits of honor, and that they now had the privilege to fight a just war for the Fatherland. He told them that if they were called up, they must to go to the battlefield in the consciousness that they were fighting “With God, for King and Fatherland.” After he said that, the students started singing Martin Luther‘s hymn, “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”).
J. C. O´Neill, 15.

~Spirit in History~

 the highest stage of science is where “. . . the conscious spirit meets us with ideas norms and values. At this stage the science of history comes into its own . . .” He added, “Not only natural laws are operative in history, in it lives the spirit which gives birth to the idea, to values and norms, that is to say, to laws of freedom.”
Adolf Harnack, Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height, 45.

We must now speak of the spirit. All history is the history of the spirit and has an inner happening for its foundation; the spirit, however, is one. Whether we possess much or little of it, it is always one and the same spirit working in us and in everything brought forth by history.
Adolf Harnack, Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height, 57.

~Culture~

Culture, is for Harnack an organism whose nature is to expand and advance and permeate all things. If culture loses its restless striving and ascent, “. . . it begins at once to harden into mere civilization; immediately the decay of its dying members sets in until barbarism arises which is the more shocking the more plentiful are the masks and the grimaces into which the higher values of a better day have been changed.”
Adolf Harnack, Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height, 59-60.