Prof. Harnack’s Scheme

But though his lectures are apt to deceive the many, he himself is chargeable with no sinister intention. For his scheme is disclosed in his opening words. His purpose is “to remind mankind” “that a man of the name of Jesus Christ once stood in their midst.”* To the devout Jew and to the intelligent Christian the meaning of “Jesus Christ” is “Jesus the Messiah” — a divine title of supreme solemnity and honour. But to the world in general it has no such significance. It merely designates the “historic Jesus” who lived and died nineteen centuries ago; and if reverent thoughts or religious emotions are aroused at the mention of the name, it is because the mind turns back to a remote past, not upward to the throne where the Lord of life and glory sits on the right hand of God.

And so here the question, “What is Christianity?” does not find answer in the divine revelation of which the Lord Jesus Christ is the sum and substance, but resolves itself into “the purely historical theme: What is the Christian religion?”+ The spiritual Christian has learned to distinguish between Christianity and “the Christian religion,” but Prof. Harnack makes no such distinction. For not even “the historic Jesus” himself will afford

p. 1. tpp. 6, 9.

“the materials” for his inquiry; “he must include the first generation of His disciples as well.”* Nor will even this suffice. For, he tells us, “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.”+ This being so, our “materials” must not be limited even to the life and teaching of “Jesus Christ and His disciples:” to ascertain aright what is Christianity “we must include all the later products of its spirit.”

But, of course, “Jesus Christ” and His “message” are of principal importance. What, then, are “our authorities” here? The answer is, in words, “the first three gospels.”§ “In words,” I say; for let no one suppose that he may accept any one of the three as trustworthy. If the Rationalist would leave us even a single book of the New Testament, the foundations of our faith, however narrowed, would at least be secure. But before the wor- p. 10. tp. 12. tp. 10. §p. 19.

shipper can betake himself to the sanctuary he must repair to the professor’s classroom to learn how much or how little of all on which his faith rests has escaped in the general wreck,