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==The Question==

==The Question==

[[Image:Berlin1.jpg|right|frame]] [[Adolf von Harnack]] was a German (Lutheran) theologian of the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries who taught at the University of Berlin.  His most popular and enduring work '''What is Christianity?''' is still required reading for a basic theological education today.  In this book Harnack asserts that at the heart of Christianity was a simple message that was subsequently obscured, particularly by the philosophy, dogma, and metaphysics of the post-apostolic and Nicean periods.  Harnack produced a wide ranging corpus of scholarship throughout his career, but the effort to answer the question in the title of his signature book remained the project closest to his heart.  Along with his colleagues, Harnack pioneered new methods of scholarship that changed the field of biblical studies forever, but he ultimately enlisted those methods in the search for the missing heart of Christianity.

[[Image:What_1.jpg|left|frame]] [[Adolf von Harnack]] was a German (Lutheran) theologian of the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries who taught at the University of Berlin.  His most popular and enduring work '''What is Christianity?''' is still required reading for a basic theological education today.  In this book Harnack asserts that at the heart of Christianity was a simple message that was subsequently obscured, particularly by the philosophy, dogma, and metaphysics of the post-apostolic and Nicean periods.  Harnack produced a wide ranging corpus of scholarship throughout his career, but the effort to answer the question in the title of his signature book remained the project closest to his heart.  Along with his colleagues, Harnack pioneered new methods of scholarship that changed the field of biblical studies forever, but he ultimately enlisted those methods in the search for the missing heart of Christianity.

==The Movement==

==The Movement==

Harnack was one of a select few theologians who could collectively be regarded as the fathers of [http://nordan.daynal.org/wiki/index.php?title=Liberal_Christianity Protestant liberalism], which began as a distinctively German movement and whose influence was primarily rooted in critical biblical scholarship as well as association of the Gospel with social compassion.  Harnack's academic career was a spectacular success even though he labored under a constant firestorm from the ecclesiastical authorities for his insistence on complete academic freedom in the study of the Christian scriptures.  In spite of the church's resistance his ideas were ultimately spread from the pulpit as his many admiring students found their way into the professional ministry.  Harnack's theology was especially influential in Europe, Britain, and North America.  The rise of liberalism set the stage for the primary theological drama which was to unfold in the twentieth century, particularly in the United States.  The hallmark of Protestant liberalism can be seen, in simplest terms, as the inversion of authority.  Dating from the Reformation, authority for the Protestant faith was rooted in the concept of ''sola scriptura'', in which the Christian canon of scripture was considered to be an epistemological given backed by a divine guarantee, thus assuring an unquestionable source of certainty for Christian faith and practice.  While human reason was considered by the reformers to be part of the ''imago dei'' (the image of God within man), they nevertheless insisted that truth could only be understood when reason submitted to the authority of scripture.  Harnack and his colleagues essentially reversed this equation and proceeded on the assumption that truth could only be understood when everything, including scripture, submitted to the authority of reason.   

[[Image:Berlin1.jpg|right|frame]]Harnack was one of a select few theologians who could collectively be regarded as the fathers of [http://nordan.daynal.org/wiki/index.php?title=Liberal_Christianity Protestant liberalism], which began as a distinctively German movement and whose influence was primarily rooted in critical biblical scholarship as well as association of the Gospel with social compassion.  Harnack's academic career was a spectacular success even though he labored under a constant firestorm from the ecclesiastical authorities for his insistence on complete academic freedom in the study of the Christian scriptures.  In spite of the church's resistance his ideas were ultimately spread from the pulpit as his many admiring students found their way into the professional ministry.  Harnack's theology was especially influential in Europe, Britain, and North America.  The rise of liberalism set the stage for the primary theological drama which was to unfold in the twentieth century, particularly in the United States.  The hallmark of Protestant liberalism can be seen, in simplest terms, as the inversion of authority.  Dating from the Reformation, authority for the Protestant faith was rooted in the concept of ''sola scriptura'', in which the Christian canon of scripture was considered to be an epistemological given backed by a divine guarantee, thus assuring an unquestionable source of certainty for Christian faith and practice.  While human reason was considered by the reformers to be part of the ''imago dei'' (the image of God within man), they nevertheless insisted that truth could only be understood when reason submitted to the authority of scripture.  Harnack and his colleagues essentially reversed this equation and proceeded on the assumption that truth could only be understood when everything, including scripture, submitted to the authority of reason.   

==The Method==

==The Method==