Abstract

This dissertation purports to determine whether the thought of the nineteenth-century Berlin theologian, Adolf von Harnack, was significantly influenced by historicism and, if so, how his historicism differed from that of other historicists. ;First, the term "historicism" was defined. Then seven attributes of historicism were identified: the perspective of anti-naturalism; the perspective of post-speculative realism; the principle of criticism; the principle of analogy; the principle of correlation; the principle of development; and the principle of the historical idea. ;An overview of the thought of principal historicist figures followed: Giambattista Vico, Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Justus Moser, August Ludwig von Schlozer, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Johann Gustav Droysen, and Wilhelm Dilthey. Harnack was not only a leading professor at the University of Berlin, which was a center of historicist thought, but he frequently acknowledged the influence on his work of such early historicists as Herder, Goethe, and Ranke. Harnack's voluminous publications displayed the seven attributes of historicism in numerous places; hence he may be properly classified as a historicist. ;Harnack differed from other historicists in his firm belief in divine providence and in his construct of the "Gospel of Jesus" as, in its core, a timeless historical magnitude. This construct was not entirely consistent with the historicist principle of development. In conclusion, "historicism" was proposed as a useful category for the study of modern Protestant thought and the methodological principles of historicism were recommended to all historians, not as ironclad norms but as components of question-framing, i.e., as heuristic devices