Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism: Theology and Politics in Early

Wolfram Kinzig. Harnack, Marcion und das Judentum: Nebst einer kommentierten Edition des Briefwechsels Adolf von Harnacks mit Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2004. 344 S. EUR 38.00, cloth, ISBN 978-3-374-02181-9. Reviewed by Roderick Stackelberg Published on H-German (May, 2007) In this closely argued book, church historian investigate and critique Harnack's attitudes to‐ Wolfram Kinzig explores the puzzling question wards Judaism as a religion and towards contem‐ how Adolf Harnack (1851-1930), the most famous porary Jewry as a people. academic representative of liberal Protestantism The book consists of three parts. The frst, by (known in Germany as Kulturprotestantismus) at far the longest and theologically most challenging the turn of the century, arrived at his notorious part, "Harnacks Marcion," traces the evolution of proposal to exclude the Old Testament from the Harnack's interpretation of Marcion from his canon of the German Evangelical Church. Elevat‐ prize-winning dissertation as a nineteen-year-old ed to the hereditary nobility by Kaiser Wilhelm II student of theology at the Baltic-German Universi‐ after his appointment as royal librarian in 1906, ty at Dorpat, today Tartu in Estonia, to his 1921 bi‐ Harnack made his startling recommendation in ography.[2] Harnack's 1870 Preisschrift, while his last major work, a biography of the second- sympathetic to Marcion for allegedly anticipating century Greek quasi-Gnostic heretic Marcion, the Protestant doctrines of salvation by faith which he published in 1921 at the age of seventy. alone and the priesthood of believers, was much [1] Völkisch publicists after the First World War, more reserved about Marcion's importance for including members of the Nazi-supported Christian theology than his later biography. The Deutsche Christen, frequently referred to Har‐ young Harnack did not yet embrace Marcion's nack's recommendation to justify their own rejec‐ low opinion of the Old Testament nor his absolute tion of the "Jewish" Old Testament, despite the fact differentiation between the stern creator God of that Harnack repeatedly disassociated himself the Old Testament and the good, merciful God of from the antisemitic movement and criticized its the New Testament. Kinzig carefully analyzes doctrines of racial supremacy. While the specific Harnack's growing valorization of Marcion as a focus of Kinzig's study is the genealogy of Har‐ harbinger of the sixteenth-century Reformation in nack's proposal to revoke the canonical status of his major works, the multi-volume History of Dog‐ the Old Testament, his more general purpose is to H-Net Reviews ma (1886-89), his widely circulated Das Wesen des and conventions of the Pharisees, and Hellenistic Christentums (translated as What Is Christianity?, Diaspora Judaism (represented theologically par‐ 1900), and The Mission and Expansion of Chris‐ ticularly by Philo), which reconciled biblical tianity during the First Three Centuries (1902). teachings with Greek philosophy and prepared Harnack became increasingly enamored of Mar‐ the ground for the Christianization of the Greeks cion's dualistic doctrines of God versus nature, and the religion's subsequent spread. While Har‐ spirit versus matter, soul versus the fesh, and the nack praised Hellenistic Judaism as a preliminary gospel versus the law as pointing the way to the stage to the universalism of Christianity, he fault‐ progressive development of Christian theology. In ed Palestinian Judaism and its followers in the Di‐ Harnack's evolving description Marcion took on aspora for reverting to an exclusive "Volksreli‐ more and more traits of Martin Luther. In his cul‐ gion" (p. 164). Kinzig does not hold back in his minating biography Harnack praised Marcion for criticism of Harnack's interpretation of ancient creating the New Testament canon, making the Judaism as a religion stunted by ritualism, legal‐ doctrine of salvation the center of Christianity ism, and ethnocentrism, while Christianity, im‐ rather than founding Christianity on cosmology, bued by the Greek spirit of freedom, supposedly and going beyond Saint Paul in repudiating Judaic overcame the constraints of Judaism and alleged‐ residues in Christianity, including the Old Testa‐ ly democratized and popularized Judaic ethics. ment. Harnack conceded that the second-century Kinzig illuminates the contradictions in Harnack's Old Catholic Church had been right not to have analysis, which at times portrayed Diaspora Ju‐ discarded the Old Testament, which furnished the daism as a proselytizing movement in competi‐ necessary historical justification for Christianity tion with Christianity, while at other times stress‐ in its precarious early years. He also sympathized ing its exclusiveness as the source of Christian an‐ with Luther's judgment that the Protestant Refor‐ tisemitism. Kinzig's most serious charge is that mation could not do without the law as embodied Harnack entirely neglected Jewish sources in his in the Old Testament. But while Harnack insisted histories of the early Church, although he did be‐ that the Old Testament, particularly the prophetic latedly support the introduction of Jewish Studies books and the Psalms, should continue to be read into the theological faculty of the University of as edifying literature today, he declared that one Berlin in 1912. He was not familiar with Hebrew cannot learn from it what it means to be Chris‐ and provided no evidence from rabbinic litera‐ tian. Hence he concluded that its retention as a ture for his characterizations of Judaism. By ig‐ Protestant canonical document in the twentieth noring the works of Abraham Geiger (1810-74), century was "the result of a religious and ecclesi‐ the founder of the Hochschule für die Wis‐ astical paralysis" (p. 86). senschaft des Judentums in Berlin in 1872, and The second part of Kinzig's book, headed "Ju‐ other Jewish scholars, Harnack failed to keep den und Judentum bei Harnack," is more accessi‐ abreast of the latest research in his feld.[3] Like ble to non-theologians and will be of greater inter‐ so many other Protestant theologians of his era, est to historians and general readers. Kinzig frst he saw Jesus' teachings not in relation to, but as a examines Harnack's attitude toward ancient Ju‐ contradiction of Judaism. Kinzig chides Harnack daism before addressing his attitude toward con‐ for failing to realize that a deeper knowledge of temporary Jewry. Harnack's assessment of an‐ ancient Judaism might have facilitated a better cient Judaism was based on his distinction be‐ understanding of early Christianity. tween what he called Palestinian Judaism, which The indifference Harnack displayed toward provided the historical setting for Jesus' emer‐ Jewish scholarship also characterized his stance gence as a rebel angrily combating the authority on the "Jewish question," increasingly propelled 2 H-Net Reviews into the political limelight by the growing anti‐ the present age can be healed through parades, semitic movement in Germany in the 1880s and swastikas, and steel helmets" (cited on p. 196).[5] 1890s. While he criticized the antisemitism of Im‐ Harnack's prejudices and ambivalence, and perial Court Chaplain Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909) those of Kulturprotestantismus more generally, as a "sad scandal" and insisted that antisemitism are nowhere more evident than in the third part had no place in the Church or Christian religion, of Kinzig's book, "The Correspondence between he acknowledged that there might be a Jewish Harnack and Houston Stewart Chamberlain question in a "national or economic sense," on (1855-1927)." Their acquaintance was mediated by which, however, he disclaimed any competence to Wilhelm II in 1901, who wanted the distinguished comment (p. 190). Harnack also unequivocally de‐ theologian to meet the newly celebrated author of nied the validity of notions of racial determinism, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1900). writing in the liberal Vienna Neue Freie Presse in Like many other liberal Protestant theologians, 1907 that in social and political affairs "there is Harnack had praised Foundations for its exalta‐ nothing more disgusting and infuriating than the tion of Christianity and the Reformation while ei‐ fanaticism and hypocrisy that seek to conceal ego‐ ther dismissing or ignoring its racist and anti‐ istic claims to power and dominance under the semitic content. The two writers did not exactly cloak of race and religion" (cited on p. 193). Yet in hit it off, each criticizing the other in letters to insisting that unique Jewish traits were not racial‐ third parties. In 1902 Chamberlain wrote to Cosi‐ ly determined but acquired as a result of persecu‐ ma Wagner, "Ich verehre Harnack als Gelehrten.... tion and victimization, he implicitly accepted as‐ doch geistig fühle ich mich durch eine Welt von sumptions about a negative Jewish type. Although ihm getrennt" (cited on p. 215). To Wilhelm II he rejected völkisch antisemitism without reser‐ Chamberlain complained about Harnack's all-too- vation, he was not active in fghting against it, re‐ moderate nationalism in 1903: "Er ist doch ebenso fusing an invitation to join the board of the Verein frei wie ich und hätte eine deutsche, entschiedene zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus in 1924, in con‐ Sprache reden dürfen und sollen" (cited on p. trast to his son Ernst and nephew Arvid, both of 216). Between 1901 and 1912, the Harnack-Cham‐ whom were executed for their resistance to berlain correspondence was limited to polite but Nazism

Load more