In the above tirade, we are talking about the same Adolphe Harnack, one of whose works we want to examine. In explanation of the above words of the correspondent of the Moscow Vedomosti, we consider it necessary to note: the Berlin Faculty of Theology elected Harnack to one of the local departments, and the Emperor approved this election, no doubt, because this professor represents a truly outstanding personality in his rare talent, amazing erudition and diligence, and in his sharpness of mind; The Supreme Church Council protested against the election of Harnack to the faculty also not without reason: Harnack is completely alien to Christian beliefs and clearly speaks about his convictions in his writings, avoiding, however, any polemics against Christianity.

For the present time we shall deal with the first volume of Harnack's History of Dogmas, which has this more special title: "The Origin of Christian Dogmas." What prompts us to study Harnack's History of Dogmas is not, of course, that this scientist has recently made so much noise in Germany and won the sympathy of the "iron" Chancellor himself, Bismarck, for all this we have little to do with, but something else, more important from a scientific point of view.

As a quarter of a century ago, the main exponent of the so-called negative views, on a scientific basis, on Christianity and the Christian Church, was F. H. Baur, so at present the most prominent representative of similar views in German theological science is Adolf Harnack. Baur, without a doubt, was a man of the highest gifted, industrious and original thinker; Harnack also possesses all these virtues, so that it is no exaggeration to say that the latter, in terms of the qualities of his intellect and moral energy, stands at the present time above all German church historians in Germany, despite the fact that he is still a young scholar, barely fifteen years of his scientific activity. All this cannot but draw the attention of our science to such a figure as Harnack. We compare Harnack with Baur, but this does not mean that we consider the former to be a disciple or follower of the latter in science. Harnack does not share Baur's views. At the present time there are few more or less faithful pupils of Baur in Germany: Hilgenfeld is comparatively notable among them for his literary activity. But German ecclesiastical history does not benefit from this circumstance in the least. Baur's views do not find ardent adherents, but his tendencies have been preserved in all their force, and his tendencies, as we know, consist in explaining the origin of Christianity and the development of the Church in a purely natural way... Similar tendencies are shared by many German theologians of our time. But none of them detects these tendencies with such clarity and energy as Harnack.

His work "History of Dogmas" (or, more precisely: "Textbook on the History of Dogmas") is the most decisive and multifaceted attempt to explain the origin of Christianity and the development of the Church from the point of view of rationalistic views. The very title of the work is not exact: it, the work, gives much more than is given by the so-called "histories of dogmas", it embraces the historical fate of Christianity and the Christian Church (its ancient period) from all essential aspects. If Harnack had written a history of the Church of the same period instead of his History of Dogmas, he would have had to add very little to what he had published. And Harnack's work is called a "textbook" completely out of place. It is not customary to write textbooks with such a broad program and problematic tasks anywhere, not excluding Germany. Harnack's work is a history of Christianity and the Christian Church in its ancient period, although not from all sides. This gives us the right to look at Harnack's work not as an elaboration of one particular and special theological discipline – the history of dogmas – but as an attempt to expound an entire science – church history for a certain period and from its most important aspects. Thus, Harnack's work is more important than its title allows.

It is hardly necessary to warn the reader of an Orthodox journal that Harnack's attempt to explain the origin of Christianity and the historical growth of the Christian Church by so-called secondary or secondary causes, by pointing out the same factors by which civil historians explain the origin and development of individual states, does not lead to the goal. Harnack's attempt, like other attempts of the same kind (Baur, Renan), is impracticable by the very nature of things. In conclusion, they always get more than what is given in the parcels. It is not without reason that it is so rare in science to encounter experiments in the "construction" of church history on rationalistic principles—serious and many-sided experiments; it is not for nothing that whole decades have passed since Baur "built" or undertook to build the history of the Church on these principles, and we do not find new works of this kind in Germany until the very appearance of Harnack's work, of which we are speaking. The majority of learned German theologians of the rationalist persuasion operate with particular questions of ecclesiastical and historical content, without daring to do anything more. Harnack proved to be bolder and more presumptuous than his brethren in direction; he took up the task that no one had dared to undertake since the time of Baur – to distort and remake the history of the Church, to present its development in a way that is not as "conservative" theologians imagine. And it is impossible not to give credit to the German scientist at least for the fact that he poses all the questions that appear to the mind of the investigator studying the subject from his point of view, directly and decisively, without resorting to any hypocrisy, and answers the questions as directly and without any subterfuge as other German scientists of the same kind resort to. This greatly facilitates the critic's work. There is no room for misunderstandings. Everything is already clear to the point of obviousness. One has only to read his work attentively and then ask oneself the question: what did he want to prove and how did he prove it, and the answer turns out to be direct and decisive: no, Harnack's attempt failed... because it is unrealizable.

In the first volume of the History of Dogmas, to which we will devote this article, Harnack studies the history of the Church in the first three centuries (20th and 1-696 pp.). First we will set forth the content of the book, without interrupting this exposition with any critical remarks, and then we will make an analysis of what has been said. Of course, we can do both without going into details and details.

Harnack's initial point of view is quite sufficiently characterized in the following words of his own. "All empty abstractions," he calls the idea of the fullness of Christian revealed truth, "must be discarded as scholasticism and a kind of mythology. Only in the living man did dogma (or Christianity) have its history, and only here." He does not want to know anything about Revelation, about miracles. Harnack says: "The historian is incapable of dealing with a miracle as a real historical event, for with this the point of view on which all historical research rests is destroyed. Each individual miracle remains, from the point of view of history, quite doubtful, and the sum of the doubtful never leads to the certain" (S. 12, 50). The author speaks here about the Gospel story. Harnack's initial point of view, we believe, is now clear to everyone.

Harnack presents the teaching and activity of Jesus Christ in the following terms: "Jesus did not give any new teaching, but He in His person presented a holy life in union with God and before God, and by virtue of this life He gave Himself to the service of His brethren, in order to win them for the Kingdom of God, that is, from selfishness and the world to lead them to God, from natural ties and opposites to a union in love and prepare them for eternal life. With this Kingdom of God in mind, He Himself did not leave the religious and political society of His people and did not give the disciples a command to leave this society; much more for the sake of this Kingdom of God than for the fulfillment of the messianic promises given to the people, He recognized Himself as the promised Messiah. This gave rise to the new gospel brought by Jesus, and with it His own Person, to be woven into the fabric of belief and expectation which, on the basis of the Old Testament, had such significance among the Jewish people, taking on a very varied color. The emergence of the messianic teaching, according to which the Messiah is no longer something unknown, since he is found in Jesus of Nazareth, and with it the appearance of new dispositions and moods among those who believe in Him, is a direct result of the impression of the person of Jesus. A new understanding of the Old Testament arose in accordance with the conviction that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ (Messiah)." "In the proclamation and dispensation of the kingdom of God, Jesus demanded of men that they should join Him, because He had declared Himself to be sent from God as a helper (Heifer) of men, and therefore as the promised Messiah. As such, He proclaimed Himself to the people, appropriating to Himself certain or other names, for the names Anointed, King, Lord, Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God, which He used in relation to Himself, together signify the Messianic ministry, and were understood and known to the majority of the people. But if through these names He most closely indicated His calling, ministry, and power as the Messiah, then through them, especially by the name of the Son of God, He indicated His special relationship to God the Father, as the basis of the ministry He had taken upon Himself. He did not reveal the mystery of this relationship in detail, but contented himself with declaring that only the Son knows the Father, and that through the sending down of the Son, this knowledge of God and this adoption by God became the property of all other people. At the same time, He proclaimed that with His death His messianic activity would not end, for the Kingdom of God would come only when He came again in glory on a cloud of heaven. Jesus announced this second coming shortly before His death, it seems, shortly before His death, and His disciples, in separation from Him, found consolation in the fact that immediately after His death He would take a place next to God in the higher world. In Jesus' conversations with His disciples, the first place was occupied by the idea that the end (of the world) would soon come, the day and hour of which, however, no one knows. As a consequence of this, the exhortation to renounce all the blessings of this world was of great importance. However, Jesus did not preach asceticism — He Himself was not an ascetic — but taught perfect simplicity and purity of disposition and good humor, which remains unchanged both in the midst of shortcomings and sorrows, as well as in the midst of earthly well-being" (S. 36, 49-51).

As simple as the teaching of Jesus Christ was, so was the faith of His disciples and followers – in the first generation (until 60 A.D.). "The content of the faith of Jesus' disciples and the gospel that bound them together," says Harnack, "can be reduced to the following statements: Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised by the prophets; He, Jesus, after death through the divine resurrection, ascended to heaven and took a place at the right hand of God, then He will come again and establish the visible kingdom (chiliasm?); whoever believes in Jesus, that is, belongs to the community of His disciples, who calls on God as Father and lives according to the commandments of Jesus, is holy and has confidence in the grace of God, in participation in the glory to come, and therefore is sure of salvation" (S. 55). The disciples and followers of Jesus did not stay in the company of the Jews, but separated from it. Under what circumstances this took place, the author does not explain, and is content to remark that it happened during the first two generations of believers in Jesus. The event of the separation of Christians from the community of Jews, according to Harnack, was of great importance in the life of the first Christians. The early Christians began to think that the Old Testament had ceased to be the property of the Jews, but had become their property, and at the same time they had the idea that in place of the Jews they themselves should become the people of God; rejecting the Jewish understanding of the Old Testament and the Jewish Church, Christians thereby became a society capable of fulfilling a "world mission." "The place which this independent religious society has taken in relation to the Jewish tradition, rejecting the national isolation and ceremonial laws which the Jewish Church placed so highly, constitutes a firmly established starting point for all further development. From that time on, the Christian Church laid claim to the Old Testament as her inheritance and began to draw from it the content of her beliefs and hopes. Moreover, it became anti-national and, above all, anti-Judaizer, it condemned the Jewish religious community to hell. Now the basis was given for the further development of Christianity as a Church, it was this Church, as soon as it wanted to give an account of its faith, that tried more and more to interpret the Old Testament in its own sense, and it condemned the Jewish Church with its particularism and national forms" (S. 37-39).

Whence did such a poor in content early Christianity borrow all the richness of ideas which distinguishes the Christian Church? Harnack answers this question by enumerating the factors that contributed to the enrichment of Christian thought and ideals, although he does not indicate exactly to what time the beginning and the particular intensity of the action of these factors should be attributed. Harnack assigns the most prominent place among these factors to the elements of the Greco-Roman world. Here is his reasoning: "Christianity, after it had broken away from its Jewish roots and had been rejected by the Jewish people, received an indication of whence it had to borrow material in order to create a body for itself and become both the Church and theology. These forms could not be national and particularistic, in the ordinary sense of the word, and besides, the content contained in the Gospel teaching was rich (?). Therefore, having separated from Judaism, and even before this separation, the Christian religion entered the soil of the Roman world and the soil of Greek culture, which already ruled over humanity. It was on the soil of the Roman state and Greek culture, in contrast to the Jewish Church, that both the Christian Church and its teaching developed. This fact is extremely important for the history of dogmas. The consequence of the complete break with the Jewish Church for Christianity was that it was forced to take stones for the building of the Church from the Greco-Roman world; At the same time, it has been revealed to Christianity that it itself is in a more positive relationship to this world than to the synagogue." This is the main factor that served to the development of the Church and its teachings – according to Harnack. The second factor was Hellenized Judaism, the Judaism that merged the views of the Greek (philosophical) world with Jewish religious ideas. "On the basis of the world state (least of all in Palestine itself) there has already taken place an internal fusion of the Greek spirit with the Old Testament religion. This connection between the Jewish and Greek spirits, and with it the spiritualization of religion, had a tremendous influence, first on the success of Christian propaganda, then on the development of Christianity into catholicism, and on the emergence of a catholic system of doctrine. The understanding of the Old Testament scriptures, which we find among the most ancient representatives of Christianity among the pagans, the methods of spiritualistic interpretation of it, are strikingly similar to the methods that were already known among the Alexandrian Jews" (S. 40, 45-46). Other factors in the development of Christianity, according to Harnack, were the Old Testament, devoid of its national characteristics, and the early Christian enthusiasm, which believed in the possibility "through the spirit" to enter into "direct connection with the Divine, and directly from the hand of God to receive gifts, powers, and knowledge in order to serve the benefit of the Christian community" (pp. 44-45).

It should not be thought, however, that all these factors quickly changed the original character of Christianity and enriched Christians with a sum of new ideas and concepts. No. According to Harnack's reasoning, for a long time Christianity remains poor in development and in the number of its religious ideas. The second stage of the development of the Christian Church is the century from 60 to 160 A.D., according to the German scholar. But how poor was the Christian Church of this century in its beliefs is evident from Harnack's list of the religious ideas with which the Christians of this epoch lived. The code of their beliefs, according to Harnack, was reduced to the following: 1) "The Gospel is the faithful (for it is based on Revelation) proclamation of the Supreme God, the acceptance with faith of Whom (the Gospel) determines salvation; 2) the essential content of this gospel is, first of all, the proclamation of the resurrection and eternal life, then the sermon on moral purity and abstinence on the basis of repentance before God and on the basis of the received reconciliation with God (in baptism); (3) This is proclaimed by the gospel through Jesus Christ, who is the Saviour sent from God "in the last days," and who stood in a special relationship with God. He brought the true and complete knowledge of God and the gift of immortality, and therefore He is the Redeemer who must be treated with complete trust. In His words and deeds He was the supreme model of every moral virtue, and in His person we are given the law for a perfect life; 4) abstinence is expressed in the renunciation of the goods of this world and in the renunciation of communion with the world; this is the supreme task of abstinence, for the Christian is not a citizen, but a stranger on earth, and awaits the near end of the world; 5) the gospel that Christ received from God, He passed on to the chosen men for distribution; in their preaching, therefore, lies the preaching of Jesus Christ Himself; moreover, He bestows upon Christians ("saints") the Spirit of God, He provides them with special gifts (1 Cor. 12:28-30), and above all He raises up in their midst, constantly, prophets and spiritual teachers who receive revelation for the edification of others; 6) Christian worship of God is service to God in spirit and truth, and therefore has no legal rites and established rules; 7) for Christians, as Christians, there are no differences between people that are determined by sex, age, status, nationality and secular education; according to their conception, the Christian community is a society conditioned by divine election, but opinions about this election itself were different; (8) Since Christianity is the only true religion and is not a national religion, it follows that there is nothing to do with the Jewish people and their transitory cult. The Jewish people are rejected by God, and all the divine Revelations, insofar as they took place before Christ, were aimed at the "new" (Christian) people and served as a preparation for the revelation of God through His Son" (S. 100-101). Such was the sphere of the more definite religious ideas of Christians from 60 to 160 A.D. To this, according to Harnack, we can add a few more features that characterize the position of the Church among pagan Christians, i.e., the better and more enlightened part of Christian society. These features should further indicate the poverty of religious concepts and the ecclesiastical structure of Christian society of a given epoch. Harnack says that the societies of Gentile Christians are characterized, among other things, by the following "points": "1) the lack of a definite form of doctrine in relation to the study of faith, and accordingly the diversity and freedom of Christian doctrine; 2) the lack of a precisely defined external authority in the communities, and in accordance with this, the independence and freedom of individual Christians; 3) a special kind of writing, which created (?) facts for the past and the future and which did not obey the accepted literary rules and forms, but which made great claims (the authors pretended to be divinely inspired); 4) the desire to reproduce individual sayings and explanations of the Apostolic teachers, and these sayings and explanations were misunderstood (the author in a footnote points to the fate of the sayings of the Apostolic Fathers, "who were usually misunderstood." — L. L.); 5) the emergence of trends that accelerated the inevitable (?) process of mixing the Gospel teaching with the religious and spiritual interests of the time, with Hellenism" (S. 97-98).

From the sketch of the religious conceptions of Christians from 60 to 160 A.D., which was made above on the basis of Harnack, it should not be supposed, however, that at that time Christian dogmatics was in fact too poor. Harnack gives a lot of information concerning the dogmatics of the Christians of this epoch, but only this information is given by him to characterize the diversity and instability of the Christian concepts of the time he describes. Dogmatics was poor in firm and generally accepted formulas, but rich in contradictions and disagreements. In what an apparently unstable situation the Christian dogmatics of this epoch found itself, in proof of this it will not be superfluous to cite some particular examples from the book of the German scientist. Here, for example, is the position of the teaching about the Founder of the Christian religion himself. "In the Gentile Christian communities," Harnack writes, "they could not understand what it meant that Jesus was the Christ (the Anointed One? — A.L.), and therefore the name of Jesus Christ was either not used, or was a simple name (empty sounds? — A.L.). About the person of Christ, about His essence," says Harnack, "there were very different ideas. There was no church teaching on this in the strict sense of the word. There were only more or less unstable concepts, which were often created ad hoc. In general, this kind of concept can be brought into two categories: either Jesus was considered a man whom God had chosen for Himself, in Whom the Divinity or the Spirit of God dwelt (temporarily), but who, after His sufferings, was received from God and made "Lord" (Adoptian Christology); or Jesus was considered to be a (separate) heavenly spirit (the supreme heavenly spirit after God himself) who took on flesh and returned to heaven again after completing His work on earth (pneumatic Christology). At that time, no one thought to assert that there were two natures in Jesus. Rather, either the divine dignity was conceived as a gift, or His human nature was considered a temporary shell for the Spirit. The formula that Jesus is a mere man has undoubtedly not been accepted from the very beginning and has always been accepted, but it seems that the formulas that identified the person of Christ in His essence with the Divinity Himself were not rejected so decisively (S. 129, 134-140). Or let us present another example, in which Harnack also tries to show how little stability and definiteness the dogmatic beliefs of the Christians of that century were, and how far they seemed to be from completeness and completeness. Here are his opinions on the views of Christians in the second stage of the development of the Church regarding the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Eucharist was seen as a social sacrifice, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, as it was called. At the same time, the mysterious words that the bread and wine are the refracted Body and the Blood shed for the remission of sins did not yet attract attention. The idea of a special relation of communion by the elements of the Eucharist to the forgiveness of sins would have been sought in vain; and this was hardly possible given the existence of the then ideas about sin and its forgiveness (i.e., Harnack thinks that, in the view of the Church of that time, only baptism removed the burden of sin from a person). Whether in the Eucharist the material elements become the Body and Blood of Christ, opinions differed. There were only Christians. are far from this kind of understanding of the Eucharist, understanding in the Eucharistic prayer faith under the Body of Christ, and love under the Blood; others admitted the identity of the Eucharistic bread with the body assumed by the Logos, attributing such a miraculous act to the action of the Logos. But both were equally far from the later ideas regarding this subject (S. 151-154).

Such was the Christian Church from the point of view of its beliefs and partly of its structure from 60 to 160, according to Harnack. But if the Church at that time had so little greatness and power, then this state of affairs was soon to come to an end. In history, a phenomenon developed and intensified which was to have an extremely beneficial effect on the dogmatic ideas of the Church: for Christianity, an opportunity opened up to be especially enriched with new religious ideas, to define more precisely and fully the range of its theological views – in a word, to stand on a higher stage in its development! [8] Harnack recognizes as such a beneficent phenomenon... Gnosticism of the second century. In Christianity of the second century, there was an awakening desire to get out of the state of immediacy and enter the realm of educated thought and enlightenment. His first steps were indecisive. But intellectual interest attracted Christianity more and more, and the new religion, through a philosophical delving into the Old Testament, began to draw closer to the Hellenic spirit; And there was nothing to prevent the new religion from taking possession of this spirit more fully and completely: for there was no force (regulator) that could indicate that this knowledge could be combined with Christianity, or not. Christianity could not remain in isolation from the Hellenic broad spirit. Christianity openly considered itself to be the only true religion, but at the same time it seemed – Christians could not but know this – simply a falling away from Judaism. Christianity, in order to be a truly world religion, had to enrich itself in all respects, to give its teaching the appearance of a system, to work out an ecclesiastical organization, etc. But all this could only be achieved through a complete rapprochement with the cultural world of Hellenism. Gnosticism rendered an invaluable service to such a cause.

Now the author comes to an assessment of Gnosticism from his own point of view. Historical observation, the author declares, recognizes in Gnosticism a number of phenomena in terms of teaching, morals, and worship, analogous to those that we later find in Catholicism. If Gnosticism arose under the influence of Hellenism, then Catholicism followed up in the same sphere; Here one can find a difference, and even a great one, but it is mainly expressed in the fact that the Hellenization of Christianity in Gnosticism took place rapidly, while in Catholicism, in its system, the Hellenization of Christianity, on the contrary, took place gradually. These observations make it necessary to assign to the Gnostics a place in the history of dogmas that has not yet been indicated for them. "The Gnostics," says Harnack, emphasizing his words, "were the only theologians of their time; they were the first to raise Christianity to a system of dogmas; they were the first to systematically process Tradition; they took upon themselves the task of presenting Christianity as an absolute religion and accordingly definitely opposing Christianity to other religions, not excluding Judaism, but this absolute religion, being considered in its content, was identified for the Gnostics with the results of religious philosophy, for which it was only necessary to find Revelation as a support." How immeasurably the Gnostics of the second century surpassed the Christian theologians of the same time, Harnack expresses this in the following unexpected words: "If we compare the writers known with the name of Barnabas and Ignatius the God-bearer (for Harnack, Barnabas and Ignatius are not the real writers of the works that have come down to us with these names. —A. L.), with the Gnostics, the latter appear to be the possessors of a complete theory (system), and the first two possess only fragments of this theory, although it is necessary to recognize the striking affinity of these fragments with the whole to which they belong" (S. 161-164).