Duvduv

What is Harnack's evidence that such a get together took place in the second century or that a managing committee existed?

Roger Pearse

There is none. The process was probably organic.

It's worth remembering that Harnack was a German, writing in 1901, during a period of increasing hatred for Jews. The state church to which he belonged increasingly found the Jewish elements in Christianity repellent.

So, if you are a Lutheran, in name at least, and you hate Jews, what do you do? Well you need to get rid of all first century Christianity.

Harnack called for the OT to be dropped, and wrote as if Marcion -- whose Jesus was a phantasm -- was the founder of all sorts of things. A generation later the "German Christians" were calling for the NT to be stripped of its Jewish elements, and likewise portrayed a non-Jewish Jesus of doubtful historicity.

It's worth remembering that this is the same period in which it becomes established as "fact" that the gospels belong to the 2nd century.

All this stuff was a current of thought, in a direction which may be many things, but was certainly neither historical nor concerned primarily to establish historical fact.

Harnack was a great scholar; but the intellectual times in which he lived were evil.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Iskander

Harnack was a protestant and he may have still displayed the mark of the beast on him despite the cleansing of the reformation.

Vaticanism- to use a modern term for the rule of the King Pope—was a virulent malignancy that ruled through the inquisition and the hell-fire of Satan and it took ages for Europeans to overcome the cesspool in which Vaticanism had thrown them in.

The times in which Harnack published (1901) were much kinder than the times before the reformation and the wars of a later time.

Harnack believed that a Jewish preacher called Jesus existed and accepted an early Jewish-Christian existence, but he says that the formation of the one set of books did not begin until the second century.

Iskander

“These discussions reached the level of disputes with the second volume of the History of Dogma, when Harnack was criticized for using the New Testament and Christianity "as sources, rather than as norms, for the formation of personal faith". Fully affirming the principles of Ritschl’s historical criticism, Harnack here questioned the authorship of the gospel of John and baptism as being instituted by Jesus in the name of Triune God.

This approach caused a break between Harnack and Lutheran confessionalism, received from his father and confirmed at Dorpat University. While Harnack believed that he could reconcile his new theological ideas with his theological background, his father saw their disagreement as not simply theological, but rather disagreement about fundamental Christian values.


http://www.ccel.org/ccel/harnack


Although deeply involved in the events of his time, Harnack never joined any political party. He twice refused the invitation to teach at Harvard; he rejected an ambassadorship to the United States. His task, Harnack was convinced, was to dedicate his energies to the development of "the freedom of thought, of pursuing truth on every path, the freedom from interference by those who have been given authority in human institutions".

It was precisely Harnack’s insistence on the freedom of scholarship that marked him as one of the strongest advocates of liberal theology. Adolf von Harnack thought that the only way to nurture Christian faith was to remain in the condition of permanent uncertainty. No student of theology, he believed, should be spared a profound crisis; the worst condition is not when one has doubts about theology or authority, but when one is trapped in the sponginess of mind and indifference. Harnack died in Berlin, in 1930.”

Duvduv

In other words he offered an assertion without any evidence.
Sounds like AA and his devotion to his second century Justin.

Iskander

You will find that all ancient religions are unable to satisfy the birthers.That also goes for political events that took place in ancient times, but the reconstruction of our history is as valid an exercise as the study of the origins of species.


A newly formed religion provides a birth certificate, hospital records and so forth for the leading characters in the play but, in knowing about ancient events, we have to content ourselves with the examination of the footprints to explain the how of what now exists.

I will not comment on other people in this forum

sotto voce

Actually, the word is 'Protestant'. And that difference gives the clue to very much. It could shut the mouths of people who cannot get it into their heads that a person with faith, but without a nice, safe mentor, pastor, guru or pope can indeed be called Christian. Or maybe it could not. Maybe there is no telling some people, because hormones overrule cerebration.

Harnack was a Protestant like Hitler was a socialist (and I'm sure they would have loved each other). Now how is Protestantism defined, by the most usual scholarly standard? Protestantism is not, as control freakery likes to pretend, a matter of rebellious protest against legitimate authority. Rather, it is the reverse, an open stand in favour of testamentum, or truth, divinely revealed eternal truth, as claimed, in the context of existing contemptible, earthly, deeply antichrist teaching, as claimed. It is based on just two beliefs: sola fide, and sola Scriptura. Faith is primary, while belief in sola Scriptura is evidence of real faith. That is, an observed consequence of faith. By Protestantism, those who fail to recognise 66 books are not Christian: those who add any other authority to them are not Christian. Many see fit to reverse that ontology, but they are demonstrably wrong. There were Christians before there were 66 books, according to the books themselves.

But sola fide has another, necessary consequence, a deduced tenet, that not only has long-standing political consequences, but now has consequences in a world where many seek to ensure conformity in acceptance of sexual standards, standards that are not in conformity with those of Scriptura. So it is inevitable that there will be conflict of interests between those who insist on sola Scriptura, and those who oppose it, for either reasons of increasing political control, or of reducing biblical sexual limitation. It should be well noted, though, that these latter motives are themselves very liable to be incompatible, if history is anything to go by. Those who have most sought to limit personal faith have also been most likely to limit sexual freedom, or licence, depending on viewpoint. So there is a potential trap, a need to tread carefully, perhaps.

That concomitant tenet is the belief in the priesthood of all believers. Or, to be more specific, the exclusive priesthood of all believers, to exclude the doublespeak of the slippery casuist. This is necessary because faith justifies. Justification cannot be partial: one is either divinely accepted, or one is not. And if one is justified, one needs no sacrifices or any other rituals of priests, that historically have been elevated to the status of 'sacraments'. The justified need no priests, mentors, gurus or popes, these, all of them, necessarily hypocritical. Necessarily appointed by the worldly, who have often been notoriously, egregiously engrossed in the things of this world, without even reference to moral propriety, let alone spirituality. History abundantly attests to the validity of this view. The medieval cathedral, enormous, gleaming, astonishing, numinous, surrounded by filthy hovels, expressed perfectly the faith, the logic, of those who claimed to be catholic. And it still does, like a terrible, immutable indictment written in the sky.

So very well put. And it is that same Vaticanism that today seeks to establish the need for authority in deciding a canon of Scripture. Especially as their own record has it, embarrassingly, that they had not even decided among themselves on that canon in the fourth century! One does not need to be a 'sheep', who instantly recognises the Master's Voice, to know what is the New Testament, and what is not. What everyone recognises in a moment, the allegedly holy and apostolic catholic church was still uncertain of, even before the 17th century Council of Trent! And these are the humorous people who today come on the internet to try to tell everyone that the Bible is all their own work. OT included!

Iskander

Why do you say this?

sotto voce

Say what?

Perspicuo

Calvinist derail :hijack: courtesy of Sotto Voce.