LIBERAL PROTESTANTISM - PMM 390

HARNACK, ADOLF.

Das Wesen Des Christentums.

Leipzig, J. C. Hinrichs, 1900.

8vo. Contemporary green half cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Very light brownspotting to front free end-paper and title-page, otherwise a very fine and clean copy. (4), 189, (3) pp.

The very rare first edition of Harnack's seminal and hugely popular work on the essence of Christianity, which later gave birth to the movement of Liberal Protestantism. Today it is widely regarded as being one of the most influential works of modern protestantism. "No other book has so deeply stirred the world of theological thought as Harnack's work on the essence of Christianity" (The Catholic University bulletin, 9. Binding, P. 206).

"Harnack expounded what he believed to be the core of the Christian religion, set free from the encrustations of dogma that had been laid down through the centuries. The core is to be reached by penetrating back to the teaching of Jesus himself, and Harnack represented this teaching as proclaiming the fatherhood of God, the infinite worth of the human soul, and the ethical ideal of the kingdom of God. The supposedly original gospel of Jesus is also claimed to be the only version of Christianity that can make sense for modern minds, since it is free from theological and metaphysical mystifications." (Borchert, Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 4, P. 228).

"These lectures of 'The Essence of Christianity' by the then professor of church history at Berlin University were received with an enthusiasm unparalleled for centuries in the field of religious pamphleteering. They proclaimed the fundamental concord of the tenets of the early Church as preserved in the non-Roman Churches with the social and economic morality of the twentieth; and innumerable reprints and translations broadcast this message of liberal Protestantism all over the world. [...] Harnack's influence upon the intellectual life of Germany was enormous". (PMM 390)

The vast popularity of the of the book is attested to by the well documented fact that at one point in 1900 the railway terminal in Leipzig was brought to a standstill by goods trains loaded with printed copies of the book!

PMM 390

Order-nr.: 45064