Karl Holl: Leben—Werk—Briefe ed. by Heinrich Assel

Abstract

Reviewed by: Karl Holl: Leben—Werk—Briefe ed. by Heinrich Assel H. George Anderson Karl Holl: Leben—Werk—Briefe. Edited by Heinrich Assel. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021. 499 pp. Soon after he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Adolf Harnack (1851–1930) proposed an ambitious project: a critical edition of the early church fathers. Harnack recognized that this task "required iron diligence, thorough philological knowledge, virtuosity in reading Greek manuscripts, and great literacy in the area of Greek theology." One of the first projects to be undertaken was the editing of some five hundred fragments of the Sacra Parallela of John of Damascus. Harnack estimated that "Hardly any other task in the area of . . . early church literature . . . is so difficult" (155). His nominee for research on this project was 33-year-old Karl Holl (1866–1926). [End Page 221] How did that potential worker bee in Harnack's scholarly hive become the father of the twentieth-century Luther Renaissance? This collection of essays from a 2016 conference provides snapshots of the process. The book is introduced in a lengthy (17–126) biographical outline by the editor, and the eighteen essays that follow highlight critical aspects of Holl's life. When Holl received the offer of a job from Harnack he was slow to accept. The research would be on Greek manuscripts. Holl had hoped to work on Latin texts and he had no experience in editing manuscripts. The challenge, however, led him into the whole field of Eastern Orthodoxy, in which he became a pathfinder. In pursuit of better knowledge of the Russian church, he taught himself Russian at the age of fifty (259–279). Holl met the enormous challenges of the project Harnack had outlined—and accomplished it in three years. His success brought him an even bigger project that would occupy him for the rest of his life: a critical edition of Epiphanius with its descriptions of eighty early church heresies (at his death, Holl still had sixteen heresies to go) (237–258). That project, in turn, brought him a professorship at the University of Berlin. In preparation for his lectures there he studied a new edition of Luther's lectures on Romans. The encounter with Luther shaped the rest of Holl's life. His essay on Luther in 1910 evoked little attention at the time, but after the experience of World War I and Germany's collapse, the public was ready for Luther's message of human need and God's promise. Holl reworked his earlier essay and published it in 1921 (365–381). Together with the second edition of Barth's Commentary on Romans, which appeared the same year, it set a new course for Protestant theology. In the years between Holl's two editions of his Luther article, Harnack continued to sponsor Holl's academic career, writing recommendations and encouraging his younger and more hesitant protege. Holl, however, began to grumble to friends about the relationship and did not hesitate to publish articles that implicitly questioned some of Harnack's sweeping generalizations about Hellenistic influences on the early church (145–174). Holl also began to drift away from Harnack's liberalism. He no longer considered Jesus' ministry as proclaiming the "infinite worth [End Page 222] of the human soul," but as God bridging the gulf to sinful humanity. That unique message, he believed, had powered the early spread of Christianity and set it apart from the syncretistic interpretations of the History of Religions School (283–313). This book is almost a biography, but it falls short in one respect. While it provides a full account of Holl's point of view through his correspondence, its comparative lack of public records, including book reviews, leaves the reader wishing for a more objective picture of the man. It does invite further research by providing the locations of Holl's letters, some lecture notes of his students, and other biographical documents. Six months before he died, Holl wrote to a friend, "Of course a lot will be written about me after I die, but what a joy it will be not to have to read it" (172). H. George Anderson Green Valley, Arizona Copyright...