Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 45:179 (Jul 1888)
Article: Two Histories Of Christian Doctrine
Author: Frank Hugh Foster

BSac 45:179 (July 1888) p. 506

Two Histories Of Christian Doctrine

Rev. Frank H. Foster

[Concluded from page 185.]

We paused in our review of Thomasius’ and Harnack’s Histories of Doctrine with the close of the fundamental part of Harnack’s work, and the beginning of his description of the formation of the system of doctrine in the church. We resume at this point, and attempt to trace the development of the system as Harnack describes it.

In closing the previous article we gave expression to the hope that we might find the remaining portion of the work “less marked by great faults, and more fruitful in valuable suggestions.” We hoped, in particular, that the history might assume less of a destructive character, less that of a controversial tract, and more that of the objective history. And we expected, if this should be the case, that Professor Harnack’s great familiarity with his theme, and extraordinary mastery of its details, would enable him to render essential service in interpreting the yet dark periods of the distant past. These expectations are to a certain extent met. In the purely descriptive parts, where details are to be presented, and where the question is simply whether the historian has sufficient knowledge of the subject under discussion rightly to understand the writers whom he is perusing, and where discrimination in weighing single elements of the development and faithfulness in reproducing them before the reader, as well as power of clear statement, are the main qualifications for the work, Harnack’s success is great, and the service that he has rendered to the discipline eminent. But in those portions where the points of transition are to be brought to the reader’s notice, and where the history is to be interpreted, and its worth, conformity to its origin, and value as a means of instruction to future generations are to be estimated,—in short, in the grander reaches of the historian’s task, the old phenomena reappear, and the same perversion and misrepresentation of the course of events, of which we have repeatedly complained, disfigure the result. Professor Harnack’s effort has been, as he remarks in the preface of the second volume, “to set forth the theme in a form which must be read in connection; for a work upon the History of Doctrine which is used only as a book of reference, has failed of its highest purpose.” This book, on account of its novel opinions, and its rush and vivacity of style, will at first be read as its author wishes; but, unless we are greatly mistaken, it will finally

BSac 45:179 (July 1888) p. 507

be laid aside and relegated to the precise use which the writer deprecates, that of a book of reference, prized indeed for its minute investigations, a trusted guide in regions ...