History of Dogma, Volume I (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

Professor Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was a German theologian and prominent church historian. He produced many religious publications from 1873-1912. He studied at the local University of Tartu (1869-1872) and at the University of Leipzig, where he took his degree; and soon afterwards (1874) began lecturing as a Privatdozent. In 1881 he published a work on monasticism, Das Monchtum: Seine Ideale und Seine Geschichte (1900), and became joint editor with Emil Schurer of the Theologische Literaturzeitung. In 1885 he published the first volume of his Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (History of Dogma) (3 volumes), (1894-1898). In this work Harnack traced the rise of dogma, which he understood as the authoritative doctrinal system of the church and its development from the 4th century down to the Protestant Reformation. He considered that from its earliest origins, Christian faith and Greek philosophy were so closely intermingled that the resultant system included many beliefs and practices that were not authentically Christian. In 1886 he was called to the University of Marburg and in 1888, in spite of violent opposition from the conservative church authorities, to Berlin.