Dr. Harnack’s “Christianity” Is Merely a Religious Philosophy, or a Neo-Buddhism

Of course it is open to the critics to use the Bible in the way that the cultured Jews now use the New Testament, as a mine from which they can dig out what they are pleased to regard as nuggets, and from the materials thus obtained to frame a system of their own. And this is precisely what Prof. Harnack and his school in Hurope and America have done. He dilates upon the undoubted influence of Greek thought in the early church most true it is that the patristic theology was tainted by theories derived from rival systems of pagan philosophy. The old Platonic conception of the “transcendent” Deity — a God far removed from men — leavened the teaching of the Latin Fathers; while the Greek school, under the influence of the Neo-Platonism of which Alexandria was the cradle and the home, leant towards the conception of a Deity “immanent” in the world, and especially in humanity. With the one set of teachers the prominence given to the great truth of the atoning death of Christ relieved the gloom of a theology in which Divine love to a lost world was well nigh narrowed to favour for such as came within the church. And with the others the Incarnation so overshadowed the Atonement that the balance of Divine truth was entirely lost. But in the one case as in the other the birth and death of Christ were regarded as transcendent mysteries of the faith. Not so, however, with the Rationalists. With them no element of mystery, save such as superstition may have raised, attaches to either Bethlehem or Calvary. Their “Christianity” is merely the outcome of the ministry of the great Rabbi of Nazareth, including “all the later products of its spirit.” The result is nothing more than a grand system of religious philosophy, a splendid type of Neo-Buddhism — Buddhism illumined by a personal God. Let them call it Christian Buddhism, if they will. But to call it Christianity i is eee only unintelligent, but-cdishorest.

‘Dishonest; béeause it is not the Christianity of the New Testament, and no other test or standard of Christianity is legitimate or even possible. If it be Christianity to accord the highest human homage to the Nazarene, to accept his teaching in so far as it commends itself to us, and to lead pure and devout lives, then infidels of the type of Renan and John Stuart Mill are Christians. And according to the present standard of faith and clerical morality, there is no reason why such men should not become ministers of Christian churches and professors of Christian universities. Their position differs from that of Harnack, Delitzsch, Cheyne and the rest, only in this, that they have the honesty to wear their true colours.

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