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. . .The dialectic between particularism and universality at work in Harnack's interpretation is visible near the end of this section, in the one sentence from "Das Wesen des Christentums" that evoked the most controversy, and then in the sentence that immediately followed it (which his critics often chose to ignore): "Not the Son, but only the Father belongs in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it. But the way he knows the Father, no one else has ever known Him, and he brings this knowledge to others" (viii,91; italics added).

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. . . It is the predicament of the Christian historian to live in that tension; for, as I have suggested elsewhere, every historian must be a polyglot, speaking one or more of the dialectes of "past-ese" and simultaneously communicating to contemporaries in "present-ese." All of which confirms the thesis of Father Georges Florovsky in his conclusion:

The Christian historian will attempt to reveal the actual course of events in the light of his Christian knowledge of man, but will be slow and cautious in detecting the "providential" structure of actual history, in any detail. Even in the history of the Church "the hand of Providence" is emphatically hidden, though it would be blasphemous to deny that this Hand does exist or that God is truly the Lord of History. Actually, the purpose of a historical understanding is not so much to detect the Divine action in history as to understand the human action, that is, human activities, in the bewildering variety and confusion in which they appear to a human observer. Above all, the Christian historian will regard history at once as a mystery and as a tragedy–a mystery of salvation and a tragedy of sin. He will insist on the comprehensiveness of our conception of man, as a prerequisite of our understanding of his existence, of his exploits, of his destiny, which is actually wrought in his history. The task of a Christian historian is by no means an easy task. But it is surely a noble task.

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