Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack, the German church historian and theologian, was born at Dorpat (now Tartu) in Estonia, where his father, Theodosius Harnack, was a professor of practical theology at the German-dominated university. Carl Harnack studied at Dorpat and then at Leipzig, becoming a Privatdozent there in 1876. He held chairs at Giessen from 1879 and Marburg from 1886 before going, in 1888, to Berlin, where he was a professor until his retirement, in 1924. He died at Heidelberg.

Harnack has come to be regarded as the typical representative of liberal theology. Following Albrecht Ritschl and the members of his school, Harnack stressed the ethical teaching of Christianity and avoided the more speculative flights of theology, but he went further than his predecessors in the direction of an undogmatic, practical statement of the Christian faith. Harnack's appointment to the chair at Berlin...