Dr. Harnack Rejects the Incarnation, the Resurrection and the Atonement

His first staggering blow will be the discovery that “the history of Jesus’ birth” is worthless. “Two of the gospels do, it is true, contain it,’ but yet “we may disregard it.”* The Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, must thus give place to Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph; a man whose mind was warped by a petty, provincial environment,; whose religious teaching, therefore taxes our ingenity to discriminate between the element of kernel and of husk,t a man who believed in such “absurdities” as “stories of demons,”§ and whose views on social questions were biased by “his eschatological ideas and his particular

The next blow to faith will be the discovery

p. 30. tp. 12. tp. 55. §p. 58. |p. 101.

that the resurrection is a mere “belief.” Here again what has been said about the birth applies: the language used is that of Christianity, but that is all. “Whatever may have happened at the grave and in the matter of the appearances, one thing is certain” we are told, “This grave was the birthplace of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there is a life eternal.”* ‘Whatever may have happened;” for, as the author says, “It is not our business to defend either the view which was taken of the death, or the idea that he had risen again.”+ “Views” and “ideas,” not facts. The only facts left us are that there was once “a man called Jesus Christ,” and that He died upon a cross. “The conviction that obtained in the apostolic age that the Lord had really appeared after His death on - the cross may,” Dr. Harnack tells us, “be regarded as a coefficient.”t It is not that the fact of the appearances was “a coefficient,” but merely the belief that there were appearances. And this distinction is emphasised by the context. For this statement immediately follows a reference to the “coefficient of a mistaken expectation of Christ’s near return.”

p. 162 +p. 155. tp. 178.

“The Christian religion,” so-called, abounds with delusions and frauds, and Dr. Harnack’s “Christianity” is no better. “That Jesus’ death on the cross was one of expiation” is also an “idea.”* It belongs to a class of ideas that- — “respond to a religious need.” And, as the author adds, “history has decided in its favour, and we are beginning to get in touch with it.” More than this, “everywhere that the just man suffers, an atonement is made which puts’ us to shame and purifies us.” “These are the ideas which have been suggested by Christ’s death,” and “they have taken shape in the firm conviction that by His death in suffering He did a definite work; that He did it ‘for us.’”§;