Loisy's L‘évangile et L’église in Light of the “Essais”

Abstract

In his epochal work, L‘Évangile et l’Église, Alfred Loisy claimed to offer a purely historical refutation of Adolf von Harnack's Das Wesen des Christentums (1900). Harvey Hill demonstrates that Loisy drew L‘Évangile et l’Église from a larger unpublished work, “Essais,” that combined history, apologetics, and a reform agenda, and shows that, Loisy's claims to the contrary, his book did the same. Comparing and contrasting L‘Évangile et l’Église with its source, and taking into consideration Loisy's professional circumstances at the time of its composition, Hill clarifies this otherwise confusing combination of disciplines.